Falluja - America's Hollow Victory
By Scott Taylor
23 November 2004
AljazeeraAmerican military commanders in Iraq now claim that their troops fully occupy the resistance stronghold of Falluja and that the operation to pacify the city has been a complete success.
In the strictest terms of a tactical scorecard, the body count of casualties would appear to support that claim. An estimated (but unverified) total of 1200 fighters were reported killed so far, while the US military admits that their own forces suffered fewer than 50 battlefield fatalities.
Rarely reported by the Pentagon is the nearly 300 severely wounded American casualties and a similar number of lightly injured. When one factors in the lack of fighters' medical facilities, their willingness to die in battle, and the recently exposed manner in which US soldiers "dispatch" wounded Iraqi prisoners the casualty figures no longer appear so heavily one-sided.
Nevertheless, the discrepancy in the death count also illustrates clearly the overwhelming technological superiority enjoyed by the US forces over the lightly armed fighters -something which was never in question.
In announcing their intention to mount this fullscale operation against Falluja, the US military planners declared two major tactical objectives. The first was to either kill or capture the Jordanian born "terrorist" Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his followers who were believed to be holed up in the encircled enclave.
It has been al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida operatives that have been the most active in the recent wave of kidnappings and beheadings of foreigners.
The US's singular failure to apprehend the elusive al-Zarqawi has proven a major embarrassment for the US-led forces, and in recent weeks he has become the symbolic figurehead for the Iraqi resistance - at least in American media reports.
The second stated goal of the Falluja offensive was that the US would bring to battle and destroy some 4000 to 5000 suspected fighters. Described as "mugs and thugs" by the US Marine Commander, the Americans vowed to "liberate" the residents of Falluja from these "criminal elements".
Once the long-hyped battle was joined it did not take the Pentagon long to re-assess its chances for success.
Even as artillery and helicopter gunships pounded the rebel bunkers and American soldiers re-entered the outskirts of Falluja, it was readily apparent that the fighters were not playing along with the US script. Only 48 hours into the offensive military press officers were cautioning their embedded journalists that al-Zarqawi may have slipped outside of their perimeter defences.
It was also evident from the scale of the resistance that Zarqawi was not alone in making good his escape prior to the US attacks. Only about one third of the expected number of fighters offered battle in Falluja. While the resistance put up by those remaining fighters was fanatical and fierce, the Americans failed to score their hoped for knock-out punch against them.
Instead, the US military revealed just how overstretched and vulnerable it is in an increasingly unstable Iraq. By massing 20,000 frontline combat troops in the Falluja sector, the Americans left the remaining 100,000 "coalition" troops without a tactical reserve.
The fighters took advantage of this situation to mount a demonstration of their own increasing strength and efficiency.
As American troops pounded Falluja into rubble, the Iraqi resistance overran police stations in a number of urban centres throughout Iraq - not the least of which was the city of Mosul. While the Americans acknowledged these setbacks, they did their best to downplay their significance.
In reporting that six police stations in Mosul had been overrun, no explanation was given as to how 5000 American-paid Iraqi police could have been "overwhelmed" without a single casualty on either side. The six heavily barricaded police facilities were occupied, looted of weaponry, munitions and flak jackets and then destroyed without interference.
Such collusion between police and fighters was evident in a number of other cities within the rebellious Sunni triangle. Although one of the American battalions involved in the Falluja offensive had to be hastily diverted to attempt to restore order in Mosul, elsewhere in Iraq US troops simply bunkered down.
Some fearful American National Guardsmen, in fact, prefer to face courts martial rather than risk their lives to perform dangerous convoy duty. As further proof of their reach and capabilities, the fighters first seized relatives of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi as hostages, and then ambushed and captured 37 newly trained Iraqi police recruits returning from Jordan.
Whether or not US forces ever manage to pacify the few remaining fighters' holdouts in Falluja, their resistance has already taken on mythical proportions. Like those American frontiersmen who fought that legendary one-sided battle against superior Mexican forces at the Alamo, Falluja has now become a symbol of resistance to US occupation.
Once such passions are ignited, they will undoubtedly spark an inferno which will prove difficult for the Americans to douse.
Scott Taylor, a former soldier turned war correspondent is the editor of esprit de corps magazine and the author of six bestsellers. Since August 2000, Taylor has made a total of 20 trips into Iraq, before, during and after the US occupation.
