Marines Gearing Up for Offensive Against Insurgents in Fallouja

Marines just outside the insurgent stronghold of Fallouja were making final preparations Friday for a large-scale offensive that U.S. commanders and diplomats on the ground in Baghdad now describe as all but inevitable.

“We are gearing up to do an operation,” said Brig. Gen. Dennis J. Hejlik, deputy commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force. Speaking to reporters at a base near Fallouja, Hejlik said: “If we’re told to go, we’re going to go. And when we go ... it’s going to be decisive, and we’re going to go in there, and we’re going to whack ‘em.”

Officials of the Iraqi interim government have held out hope that their long-deadlocked talks with representatives from Fallouja will yield results and head off the prospective assault. But Marine commanders who would mount the operation expressed little confidence in the talks. The negotiations “are a ruse ... to stall for time,” Marine Col. Michael Shupp told reporters gathered here in anticipation of the offensive.

Fallouja representatives have said they will lay down their arms only if U.S. troops agree to stay out of the troubled city west of Baghdad -- a demand that the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government has rejected.

Hejlik said that the Marines were awaiting word from interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi on when to launch the attack. The scope and timing remained secret, but it was widely believed that no attack would come before the U.S. presidential election Tuesday.

U.S. officials view the impending offensive as key to reasserting control over the country’s Sunni Muslim heartland in preparation for landmark Iraqi national elections scheduled for January. They cite recent military successes in reversing rebel gains in other Iraqi cities and say they cannot let Fallouja stand as an inspiration and sanctuary for Sunni insurgents who fan out across the country.

“If you decide to fight for Fallouja you have to fight for it early enough so that you can get past the battle and have registration, reconstruction [and] elections,” said a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad.

U.S. officials in Baghdad confirmed that an assault on the well-entrenched guerrillas of Fallouja was imminent.

“I think we’re going to have to clear those guys out,” a senior U.S. commander in Baghdad said this week. He called Fallouja “the Dodge City of Iraq.”

In an indication that the assault may come within days, the first wave of British troops from the Black Watch regiment has arrived at a base near Baghdad, the Defense Ministry in London said. U.S. officials requested the help in an effort to free up more American forces for Fallouja.

In addition, the Camp Pendleton-based Marines here held a gas-attack drill Friday and have switched from three hot meals a day to two.

An assault on Fallouja appears to be the logical step after U.S.-led offensives in Najaf, Samarra, Tall Afar and the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City.

In each case, Iraqi troops fought alongside U.S. forces -- a pattern that will be repeated in Fallouja, say authorities, who expect Fallouja to be the toughest fight.

Once Fallouja is under control, U.S. authorities say, Iraqi troops will take the lead in restoring law and order. However, coalition forces also plan to maintain a strong presence in the city and will be ready to back up the Iraqis when needed.

Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, operations chief of more than 150,000 troops in Iraq, has referred to Fallouja as a “cancer.” But Metz has stressed that any invasion must leave behind an Iraqi-run infrastructure that will enforce law and order and manage reconstruction projects.

“What I don’t want to do is create a vacuum,” he said in an interview last month.

U.S. forces are using their experience in Najaf as a partial model for Fallouja. Troops retook Najaf in August, forcing hundreds of militiamen loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr to leave the city after weeks of fighting. Sadr’s men had forced a lengthy stalemate by taking cover in and around the sacred gold-domed shrine of Imam Ali.

Much of central Najaf was destroyed in the three weeks of fighting, but Iraqi forces loyal to the government are now in control of the city and reconstruction projects worth tens of millions of dollars have begun.

Fallouja has no central shrine, which will make the invasion somewhat less complicated, commanders say, because in Najaf, U.S. forces had to avoid damaging the Imam Ali facility. The fight for Fallouja could be shorter than the standoff in Najaf, commanders say, but they expect the resistance to be larger, better armed and better trained.

It was unclear how many troops would participate in an attack, but officials said it would be many more than the 3,000 or so who led a Marine offensive in Fallouja last April.

That attack was halted within days after reports of hundreds of civilian casualties raised alarm among international observers and Iraqi interim lawmakers, who feared a bloodbath. The Marines eventually pulled out of Fallouja and the insurgents regained control of the city, which has become a symbol of resistance to U.S. power.

At the time, Marine commanders were privately livid about the order to halt an advance that, in their view, was going well. Now, there is a palpable sense among many Marines that they will be finishing a job that should have been completed in spring.

This time around, much of Fallouja’s civilian population appears to have fled amid an intensive U.S. bombing campaign that authorities say has targeted suspected hide-outs and meeting places of Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Fallouja officials say scores of civilians have been killed in the strikes; the Marines deny large-scale civilian casualties.

The bombings continued Friday night, with American warplanes firing at least 10 missiles in the city, Reuters reported. There was no immediate news of casualties.

Elsewhere in Al Anbar province, a U.S. soldier was reportedly killed and a second wounded by a suicide car bombing near Ramadi. No details were given.

Up to 80% of Fallouja’s population of more than 250,000 has fled the city, said Maj. James West, an intelligence officer with the Marines outside the city. Recent visitors have described Fallouja as a ghost town, with little traffic and few shops open, and masked insurgents, who call themselves mujahedin, guarding principal entrances and exits.

According to U.S. estimates, 3,000 to 4,000 armed insurgents are present in and around Fallouja. Despite the U.S. focus on foreign militants loyal to Zarqawi, officials say it is likely that most fighters in Fallouja are Iraqis. Militants have been digging in for months in anticipation of a U.S. strike, commanders say.

Among the leaders of Fallouja’s armed factions, U.S. intelligence officials say, is Omar Hadid, an Iraqi who is thought to have an alliance with Zarqawi. Hadid, in his mid-30s, is said to be a follower of the fundamentalist Salafi movement, an offshoot of Sunni Islam, which has attracted many young jihadis in the Arab world.

U.S. officials say Hadid’s group is involved, along with Zarqawi, in the kidnapping and beheadings of foreigners, among other deeds.

A key ally of the rebels in Fallouja, officials said, is Abdullah Janabi, imam of the Saad bin Abi Waqas mosque.

Janabi is an adherent of Sufism, a mystical branch of Islam that has many followers in and around Fallouja. Janabi is also a leader of a religious council that has been loosely governing Fallouja and enforcing a conservative Islamic code.

The various Fallouja factions have differences and have frequently clashed, U.S. officials say. However, the factions appear united against coalition forces, and officials have little hope that the divisions will cause the insurgents to fall without an invasion.