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August 27th,
2005 - Stakes High for Marines, Residents of Iraq’s Ramadi News article by North County Times Video: |
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Stakes High for Marines, Residents
of Iraq’s Ramadi By Darrin Mortenson North County Times August 27, 2005 As Ramadi goes, so goes
Iraq, many top military analysts say. But a close look at the Sunni Muslim
stronghold about 70 miles west of Baghdad reveals the daunting challenge
confronting Marines from Camp Pendleton and their brothers in arms. Gunmen have recently opened
fire on Sunni Muslim leaders in the Iraqi city. Agents of al-Qaida in Iraq
have posted threats on Ramadi's mosques vowing to attack anyone who
participates in the October referendum to ratify the constitution, the
drafting of which has already missed two deadlines in recent weeks. About 5,000 residents filled
Ramadi's streets last weekend to protest the draft constitution, which they
say excludes them, and Sunni tribal leaders have ordered Ramadi residents to
attack Sunni extremists in the city who oppose the upcoming vote. Three car bombs targeting
U.S. forces exploded in Ramadi on Wednesday, according to the Reuters news
agency. The violence still roiling
in Ramadi - Sunni against Shiite, Sunni against Sunni, and anyone against the
Americans - underscores the high stakes there as one Camp Pendleton Marine
battalion struggles to contain the chaos long enough for Iraqi leaders and
Iraqi security forces to gain a foothold in what analysts say is Iraq's most
important Sunni city. Camp Pendleton's 1st
Battalion, 5th Regiment has been stationed there since March - the third
Pendleton-based infantry unit to have responsibility for patrolling Ramadi
since February 2004. At least 14 of the
battalion's men have died in efforts to quell the violence in the restive
town, three of them within the last few weeks. At least 80 local Marines,
nearly a third of the fatalities from Pendleton, have been killed in or near
Ramadi since the war began in 2003. Center of gravity Ramadi, a city of about
350,000 on the banks of the Euphrates River, is the capital of the Al Anbar
province, which borders on Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It is the seat of power for
regional Arab tribes such as the powerful Dulaim and Jabir tribes, and a base
for many top clerics of Iraq's Sunni Muslim sect, which was favored by Saddam
Hussein and his Baath Party. Often called Iraq's gateway
to Syria and Jordan, Ramadi has historically been a major hub of trade and
ideas, including hard-line strains of Sunni Islam imported from Jordan and
Saudi Arabia. Because of Ramadi's
strategic location and its importance as a political, religious and tribal
center, analysts and U.S. military officials alike call Ramadi the
contentious key to Iraq's Sunni heartland. "If the new (Iraqi)
government is going to succeed, it's gotta succeed in Ramadi," said Col.
Larry Nicholson, the new commander of Pendleton's 5th Marine Regiment - the
regiment that includes all three Marine battalions to fight in Ramadi. On par with Fallujah The recent history of Ramadi
offers clues to how it became such a make-or-break city for U.S. military
forces and the fledgling Iraqi government. After U.S. forces invaded
Iraq and deposed Saddam Hussein in 2003, thousands of party and military
members loyal to Hussein found refuge in Ramadi, which had long profited from
Hussein's patronage and offered its progeny to his political and military machine. Ramadi quickly emerged,
alongside its neighbor Fallujah, as the center of gravity for the early
insurgency led by Hussein loyalists, and then for Islamic fighters and
foreign terrorists arriving from the west to wage holy war against Americans. Violence there rivaled -
some say exceeded - the fighting that erupted in Fallujah when the Marines
took over from Army units in Al Anbar in early 2004. When U.S. forces launched a
huge offensive to clear insurgents from Fallujah in November, many insurgents
shifted to Ramadi and other western cities and towns. Since then, Ramadi has
been implicated several times for harboring terrorist leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi. Sunnis spurned Analysts say the Fallujah
assault helped alienate Iraq's Sunni minority and led Sunni clerics in Ramadi
and elsewhere to call for a boycott of the parliamentary elections in
January. Only about 2 percent of Ramadi's eligible voters cast ballots during
the Jan. 30 vote. John Pike, a military
analyst and director of the Virginia-based think tank GlobalSecurity.org,
said the Sunnis in Ramadi and elsewhere feared that the Americans and their
appointed Iraqi leaders sought to exclude the Sunnis from the new Iraq, and
they opted to reject the political process altogether. "They fear that they're
going to get the short end of the stick," Pike said in a recent
telephone interview. The new Shiite-dominated
government, he said, has proved to some that their fears were well-founded. "The tribal leadership
in places like Ramadi have to be convinced that they can still get a decent
deal out of the new government," he said. "They have to be
convinced that they'll have a place and that it will be around for a while
before they'll invest in it." Pike said the U.S. military
has paid the price of not understanding the cultural dynamics of the Sunni
heartland, which he calls "Sunnistan," at which Ramadi stands
center. In the years after the first
Gulf War in 1991 and the U.N. economic sanctions that followed, Hussein held
onto control by trying to co-opt and foster existing social movements, mainly
Islam and tribalism. Pike said culturally
conservative Ramadi and Fallujah gained unprecedented prominence and became
bastions of resistance against the American occupation. "Everyone had been
talking as though Tikrit (Hussein's hometown) was going to be the hard nut to
crack, that it was going to be the last holdout," Pike said. "But
it turned out to be these towns out west. "Saddam did a big piece
of social engineering after the first Gulf War," he said. "I just
don't think anyone yet understands it." Thankless mission At first military leaders
insisted that the insurgency had to be defeated in Ramadi to achieve
stability in the region. When the American brass in
Baghdad added several Army battalions to help the beleaguered Marine
battalion in Ramadi last fall, they conducted large offensive sweeps to flush
out insurgents. While they discovered large weapons caches and killed many
insurgents, the military campaigns had little lasting effect. The latest Marine battalion
to take over there in March has also found Ramadi to be a tough, frustrating
place. A recent article in USA
Today described the difficulties facing the newest Marines in Ramadi - at
least 150 of whom are on their third tour to Iraq in some of the heaviest
fighting in the country's most violent regions: first in Baghdad in 2003,
then in Fallujah in early 2004. The Marines say they think
there are about 2,000 potential insurgents in Ramadi, led by a hard-core
cadre of about 150 full-time fighters from Iraq and other countries who have
expertise in weapons, bomb-making and guerrilla tactics. Since they arrived in Ramadi
in March, the battalion has lost at least 14 Marines and sailors in combat,
mostly roadside bombs that do not give the survivors targets against which to
fight back. "I don't think the
Battle of Ramadi can ever be won," said one company commander, according
to the recent article. "I just think the Battle of Ramadi has to be
fought every day." Keeping the pressure off Nicholson, the regimental
commander back at Camp Pendleton, said the successions of local Marines who
have patrolled and fought in Ramadi have worked and sacrificed for progress
that is real but difficult to measure. "Change has been
glacial in Ramadi," Nicholson said in a recent interview at Camp
Pendleton before leaving to check up on the Marines in Ramadi. "It's
slow going. Tough going. You don't see change every day." Despite the insurgency's
grip on Ramadi, Nicholson said the Marines' mission will remain one of
supporting the Iraqis so that maybe they can defeat the insurgency or at
least sap its steam themselves. "If we can keep the
pressure off there, allowing the government to sink some roots, that's
probably the only way they'll survive," Nicholson said. "The more
the people of Ramadi see the Marines and the Iraqi forces working together,
the more I think you'll see change." Sunni middle must be won Juan Cole, an Iraq expert
who teaches Middle Eastern history and politics at the University of
Michigan, said the U.S. cannot afford a bold military strategy or heavy hand
in Ramadi, least of all now with the constitution and two upcoming elections
in the balance. After weeks of trying to
keep the country from fracturing along ethnic and cultural lines - between
the oil-rich Kurdish zone in the north, an oil-rich Shiite zone in the south,
and an oil-poor "Sunnistan" in the middle - the Iraqi parliament
failed to meet a deadline two weeks ago to draft a new constitution and then
arrived at a draft last week that has yet to be approved. Iraqis are scheduled to vote
on the new constitution in October, when a two-thirds "no" in three
of Iraq's 18 provinces would block it. If the new document is
ratified, Iraqis will then have a chance to choose a first full-term
government in December. Cole said Ramadi will be an
important place to watch to see if attempts at democracy can survive. "If you cannot get the
Arabs of Ramadi to buy into it, you lose Anbar. And if Anbar province is lost
to the government, then it means Iraq will be partitioned," he said,
offering little hope that a breakup could be avoided. "If there could be a
breakthrough in Ramadi, then maybe there could be a breakthrough in other
Sunni cities elsewhere. But I'm not going to hold my breath," he said.
"I think the whole thing is going south." © Copyright 2005, North
County Times External link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2005/050827-ramadi-stakes.htm |