The Falluja offensive is a public relations exercise for the flagging US military campaign in Iraq, writes Tom Clonan.
As Operation Phantom Fury concludes in Falluja this weekend, Americans and Iraqis alike will begin to consider its costs and implications.
Launched on Monday, the Falluja offensive was heralded by the Bush administration as a crucial battle in the war on terrorism and insurgency within Iraq. During the week, the US Secretary for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld said the operation would "deal a blow to the terrorists" and would "move Iraq farther away from a future of violence to one of freedom and opportunity for the Iraqi people".
Over the coming 24 to 72 hours, the US 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (1 MEF) will close in on what remains of Sunni resistance within the city, in the Shuhada district to the south-east of Falluja. At this point, American military commanders estimate the final strength of the insurgency to number around "three to four dozen militants". Cornered in the Martyrs district of Shuhada, it simply remains for the US military to locate, isolate and destroy these remnants of resistance within the town.
Despite about 22 US marines being killed and 200 seriously wounded in this action, resistance within Falluja would thus far appear to have been relatively light. Indeed, many would consider the US operation aptly named given the apparently "phantom" nature of the terrorist presence within Falluja.
With initial estimates ranging between 2,500 and 12,000 resistance fighters within the town, it would appear, according to US military statements, that only 600 such combatants have been killed in action as the fighting draws to a close. In advance of comprehensive after-action reports and analysis, at this point, it would appear that the 1 MEF faced a fairly token resistance during their assault on the town.
THE NIGHTMARE SCENARIO of US troops facing an entrenched and organised defence within the city does not appear to have materialised. Based on the rapid advance of US troops through the town, and based on their relatively light casualties, it would appear that Falluja's defenders did not engage in the classic tactics of urban warfare. They did not make effective use of the huge diversity of man-made cover within the urban environment. Nor did they fully exploit the potential of small arms and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) within the close confines of the town to funnel US troops into what are termed "killing zones" - streets, alleyways and buildings lined with roadside bombs and occupied by suicide bombers deployed to inflict maximum casualties among US armoured units and dismounted infantry.
Instead, US forces appear to have fought running battles with guerrillas armed with Kalashnikov rifles dispersed through poorly prepared defensive positions and engaged in sporadic and hastily improvised RPG, rocket and mortar attacks. The "fury" in this operation - the extended and intensive air and artillery barrage on the town - would appear to have been confined to the actions of US troops. The twin effects of both the air and artillery campaign, along with a massive ground force - up to 16,000 marines and soldiers from the US 1st Infantry Division - allowed for a fluid and rapid penetration by US troops through the northern districts of Jolan and Askari to the centre of Falluja by Wednesday morning.
The second part of the campaign to secure Falluja began on Thursday with US troops consolidating their positions in the city centre and starting operations against insurgents in the Sinaa and Shuhada districts to the south of the town. This advance pushed the remaining militants into the Martyr district and directly into the US and British cordon to the east and south of Falluja. This development allowed President George Bush to announce to the US public on Thursday - as he laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington cemetery on America's Veterans' Day - that American troops were "winning" in their mission in Iraq to "defeat the terrorists and aid the rise of a free government that can defend itself".
From its inception, through to planning and execution, Operation Phantom Fury - hurriedly renamed "al Fajr" or "New Dawn" during the week by Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi - was designed to be a showcase military operation. It is a public relations exercise for the US's flagging military campaign in Iraq.
Within two weeks of President Bush's re-election, the US military was given the task of providing the administration with an unambiguous symbolic victory designed to reassure the international community and the Iraqi people that a secure and stable environment had been created within Iraq before next January's elections.
The 1st MEF was carefully chosen for this operation. One of three such expeditionary forces - the 2nd and 3rd MEF are based in North Carolina and Okinawa, Japan, respectively - 1 MEF is based in Camp Pendleton, California. Established in 1969 after the US military's problematic and destructive recapture of the city of Hue in Vietnam in 1968, the MEFs were designed to combine both air and ground power to generate a highly effective Marine Air Ground Task Force, (MAGTF) capable of all-terrain combat - especially within the urban environment. In the US Marine Corp's 29 Palms Base in the Californian desert the 1st MEF specialised in training for desert campaigns and was especially oriented for operations in the Middle East. It was therefore the logical choice for the current campaign in Falluja.
It may be the case however that Falluja's defenders made an equally logical choice and, consistent with the strategic doctrine of guerrilla warfare, simply quit the field - thus denying their enemy the battlefield of their choosing. Timed to coincide with the beginning of Phantom Fury, the intensification of Sunni resistance operations this week in Ramadi, Samarra, Baghdad, Baquba and Mosul provide ample evidence that the vast bulk of Falluja's combatants may simply have exfiltrated through the US cordon to conduct parallel operations elsewhere. These parallel operations, including such terrorist "spectaculars" as the killing of British and US soldiers in Baghdad and the abduction of members of Allawi's family, as well as the murder of dozens of Iraqi police and hundreds of civilians, will have a powerful psychological effect on the Iraqi people.
THIS PSYCHOLOGICAL EFFECT will probably counteract that intended by the US operation in Falluja. As Sunni resistance operations intensify and spread across Iraq and as both Shia and Sunni Muslims become more radicalised with an inevitably rising civilian death toll in Falluja during the holy month of Ramadan, Operation Phantom Fury may in time be seen to have contributed to the growing unrest within Iraq.
Ironically, those most pessimistic about the consequences of Phantom Fury/New Dawn include the chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Richard Myers who, contrary to President Bush and Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld's upbeat assessment of the operation, stated: "If anybody thinks that Falluja is going to be the end of the insurgency in Iraq, that was never the objective, never our intention, never our hope."
Dr Tom Clonan is a retired Army officer. He lectures in the School of Media at Dublin Institute of Technology and is a Fellow of the Inter University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society, Loyola University, Chicago