Doug Lorimer
"Iraqi authorities will take determined steps against illegal bodies of local self-government in Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra", US-appointed Iraqi interior minister Falah al Naqib claimed in an interview with the Russian Novosti news agency, according to the July 13 New York Jewish Times. Naqib's boast was an indirect admission that Ramadi and Samarra, like Fallujah, are under the control of Iraqi insurgents.
Over the past four months, the 1000-strong 2nd Battalion of the 4th US Marine Regiment in Ramadi, 85 kilometres west of Baghdad, has recorded the highest number of casualties of any US battalion since the invasion of Iraq began. By July 11, 31 of the battalion's members had been killed and 175 wounded.
Neighbourhoods in the city of 500,000 residents "are filled with retired or former members of the Republican Guard and intelligence services", the July 11 USA Today reported. "They know how to fight and are doing so", said Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Kennedy, the battalion commander.
According to Kennedy, veteran Iraqi officers are recruiting young local men and instructing them on attack procedures against US forces. "In fighting here", USA Today added, "the insurgents have plotted marine troop movements, carefully laid ambushes, built increasingly lethal roadside bombs and demonstrated accurate sniper and rocket-propelled-grenade fire".
"They control the whole tempo of the battlefield", Marine Gunnery Sergeant Bernard Coleman told USA Today. "If they want to wait a month to attack, they can do that. While all that time, we're just waiting. There's always more people out there who hate us."
Combat Outpost, the main US marine base in Ramadi, is considered the "most dangerous US military camp in Iraq", USA Today reported. "Almost daily, rocket and mortar attacks hit the base or the observation posts that overlook a major highway and supply route bisecting Ramadi."
Since the June 28 nominal handover of power in Iraq to a US-appointed interim government, the marines in Ramadi have scaled back their patrols in the city's neighbourhoods — ostensibly handing over security responsibility to the local Iraqi police. However, "there's a sense among some marines that they have ceded these neighborhoods to insurgents", USA Today reported.
The July 11 London Sunday Telegraph reported that for "almost two weeks, Samarra — like Fallujah to the west of the capital — has been an outlaw town and a no-go area for the American-led multinational force".
Located 95km north of Baghdad, and with a population of 50,000, Samarra has long been a stronghold of anti-occupation fighters. On July 11, US Army spokesperson Major Neal O'Brien told Agence France Presse that on July 8 Iraqi resistance fighters had "hammered" a military headquarters in the city with 38 mortar rockets, levelling the building and killing five US soldiers and one Iraqi National Guard soldier.
The Sunday Telegraph reported that the mortar attack was carried out by a disciplined force of former Iraqi soldiers "under the gaze of a former Iraqi general wearing a Saddam Hussein-era olive-green uniform... Professional soldiers, who knew how to gauge and range an artillery piece were in charge, an alarming development for the Americans, who have endured mainly ill-directed artillery attacks during the year-old uprising."
After the mortar barrage, US forces counterattacked using fighter jets and Apache helicopters armed with Hellfire missiles, which they fired "at the rooftop positions of the lookouts and at commanders directing the assault".
Later in the day, US tanks and armoured vehicles temporarily moved into the city centre. "It was the US Army's first deployment inside Samarra in more than 10 days", the Sunday Telegraph reported. "In that time, the resistance, dressed in the uniforms of Saddam's state, had gained control of the streets."
US officials have publicly attributed the attacks on US troops in both Ramadi and Samarra to "foreign terrorists" linked to alleged al Qaeda associate Abu Musab al Zarqawi. However, Associated Press reported on July 9 that these claims were dismissed by a US military official in Baghdad who, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: "We're not at the forefront of a jihadist war here."
According to the AP report, "Most of the insurgents are fighting for a bigger role in a secular society, not a Taliban-like Islamic state, the military official said. Almost all the guerrillas are Iraqis, even those launching some of the devastating car bombings normally blamed on foreigners — usually al Zarqawi."
The official told AP that the guerrillas have enough popular support among nationalist Iraqis angered by the presence of US troops that they cannot be militarily defeated.
From Green Left Weekly, July 21, 2004.
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