Anger in City Shows No Sign of Abating

After a year of trying, the U.S. military can’t figure out how to quell the rage in Fallouja, perhaps the most dangerous city in Iraq’s most dangerous region.

Last spring, the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment sent in a small, light force that got into a firefight and was forced to retreat. Next came the 3rd Infantry Division and then the 82nd Airborne, with more-ironfisted approaches. When each left, the insurgents seemed as strong as ever.

Last month, the Marines arrived with a different strategy, running 24-hour-a-day patrols to hunt down insurgents while spending millions of dollars aimed at winning civilian hearts and minds.

But no change in strategy was able to prevent Wednesday’s gruesome developments during one of the deadliest months since Iraq was invaded a year ago. Four American civilians were killed and at least one body was dragged through the streets. Two charred corpses were hung from bridges by jubilant crowds.

Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told a group of Navy chaplains recently that the Marines had been given a “God-sized challenge” to bring security and stability to the region known as the Sunni Triangle.

But at the Pentagon, senior military officers are beginning to question whether any military strategy can sway a region where anger, religious zeal and intense economic need run so deep.

“We’ve got to recognize,” said one senior officer, “that Fallouja is certainly the hotbed of the insurgency in Iraq. It is clearly the hardest nut to crack in terms of the religious issues.”

The area also reflects the residue of the influence wielded by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the senior officer said.

“It is clearly where most of Saddam’s most loyal subjects have and continue to play a role and feel they have the wherewithal to resist any attempts to change,” the officer said.

“That means that until we get the Iraqis in there to handle it, and we get out, this is going to continue to happen.”

That sort of pessimism is born of a difficult year in Fallouja, a city about 30 miles west of Baghdad where Sunni Muslims maintain prayer rooms in restaurants and where women are rarely seen in public.

Under Hussein, Fallouja, never wealthy, became a major recruiting center for the regime’s military and security services. Heavy investments were made in the city’s infrastructure and services. Standards of living climbed in direct proportion to loyalty to the regime.

“When you look at Iraq’s future, it’s clear that there’s not much in it for places like Tikrit and Fallouja,” said Anthony Cordesman, a former senior Pentagon official.

“They have no reason to reap anywhere near the kind of funding and infrastructure they had under the regime,” he said.

“They were artificially subsidized and given support and employment and preferences that they are never going to have again.”

Since the U.S.-led occupation began, neither military forces nor Iraqi police have been able to maintain order in Fallouja for more than short periods.

Their attempts have been hampered by a lack of reliable intelligence from a population that largely resents the American presence.

Before leaving earlier this year, the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had given up efforts to maintain a major presence in Fallouja, instead retreating to the perimeters of the city and mounting patrols from there.

When the 1st Marine Division, based at Camp Pendleton, took over operations in Fallouja from the Army on March 24, strategists opted to boost the presence of U.S. troops on the city’s streets.

Marine Corps commanders said they planned no change in their long-term tactics in Fallouja as a result of Wednesday’s deaths.

Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding the 1st Marine Division, has told troops that the test of their mettle will be not to lash back at the Iraqis because of casualties.

To the division’s classic motto, “No better friend, no worse enemy,” Mattis has affixed a preface for the mission in Iraq’s Al Anbar province, which includes Fallouja: “First, do no harm.”

The Marines are using what they call the “two-track” approach.

The first track involves 24-hour patrols to hunt down insurgents and those making and planting so-called improvised explosive devices.

The second track is to help improve schools, clinics and other government services by pumping in money and management expertise.

“Everybody understands destroying the enemy, that’s what the Marines do,” said Lt. Eric Knapp, division spokesman. “But the second task is to diminish the conditions that caused the Iraqis to resent and distrust us.”

However, Marines on Friday engaged local insurgents in a long, bloody battle that left at least 18 Iraqis and one Marine dead, including five civilians. The civilians included an 11-year-old boy and an ABC television network cameraman. That battle stoked the region’s anti-American sentiments.

As one military experiment after another fails to make a dent in the hatred toward Westerners in Fallouja, analysts question whether the U.S. military can ever be successful in such an environment.

Michael Donovan, at the Center for Defense Initiatives, a liberal-leaning Washington think tank, suggested that only NATO-sponsored combat troops would have a chance.

“I don’t think the American military has the practical capability to do the kinds of stability missions needed there,” Donovan said.

“You need NATO-quality troops in large numbers to supplement American forces on the ground. We’re at a disjunction in terms of what’s needed and what’s happening,” Donovan said.

Bathsheba Crocker, a reconstruction expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: “We’ll never be totally successful in a place like Fallouja as long as we talk about winning it militarily. From the beginning, the occupation has gone very badly in Fallouja.

“It’s unfortunate that there is so much water under the bridge, and I think it’s a very valid question whether we will be able to swim our way out of it,” she said.

Even the Marines, based in nearby Ramadi, acknowledge that they have a long road ahead.

Conway, the commanding general, said one of his goals was to institute regular soccer games between Marines and locals, as he did when the Marines were in charge of the Shiite Muslim area south of Baghdad after the fall of the regime.

But this region is different, he noted.

“There are no games scheduled yet,” he said.

Schrader reported from Washington and Perry from Ramadi.