U.S. readies for Falluja assault
NEAR FALLUJA, Iraq - U.S. armored vehicles roared through the villages surrounding Falluja, the town at the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, as warplanes pounded rebel positions and ground forces ratcheted up their preparations Friday for what appeared to be an imminent assault on the city.
Within Falluja, insurgents who were hiding themselves by day among a dwindling and embittered populace set up a defensive perimeter around the city and said they would defeat the Americans or die in a cause they called just.
Marines gathering outside the city practiced house-to-house fighting, while some American crews fitted their armored vehicles with front-loading shovels designed to unearth explosives buried in the roads on the way in. Marines fired artillery rounds throughout the day and night on positions around the city.
''We are going to rid the city of insurgents,'' said Lt. Col. Gary Brandl, a battalion commander in charge of about 800 Marines at a base outside the city. ''If they do fight, we will kill them.''
Military intelligence officials say that as much as 75 percent to 80 percent of the city's 250,000 residents have fled. That estimate was consistent with reports from inside Falluja.
As battle preparations went forward, top U.S. commanders in Iraq and senior Bush administration officials in Washington were conducting final reviews of their own.
At the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., President Bush was briefed Friday morning on the battle plans as part of a meeting with his top national security advisers to discuss Iraq.
U.S. officials said that the precise timing of any operation was being left to U.S. commanders in the field and to Prime Minister Ayad Allawi of Iraq. ''People here are asking, 'What about this issue?' or 'Have you thought about that?' but otherwise, they're leaving the planning up to the people on the ground,'' said one senior military officer in Washington.
Visiting European Union leaders in Brussels on Friday, Allawi reiterated his warning that ''the window is really closing'' on the chances for a peaceful settlement of the standoff. Negotiators for the two sides have not met in more than a week.
Meanwhile, at the United Nations, Secretary-General Kofi Annan confirmed that he had formally expressed concern about the effects any invasion of Falluja would have on stability in the country ahead of elections scheduled for January. His concerns could cloud prospects for a major U.N. role in Iraq in the elections and afterward. Allawi and U.S. officials have insisted that they must reassert control over Falluja quickly in order to pave the way for the elections. Falluja lies squarely within a region of the country dominated by Sunni Arabs, a minority group whose participation in the elections is considered crucial if the outcome is to be accepted as legitimate. Favored under Saddam Hussein's rule, disenfranchised Sunnis are now leading the increasingly deadly insurgency.
Outside the city, the Americans were setting up military checkpoints to choke off access roads. Warplanes conducted at least five major airstrikes on Friday.
Meanwhile, insurgents inside the city continued their own preparations, filtering through the waning crowds of ordinary people in the markets and on the streets.
A man who had been encountered at a fortified position on the perimeter of the city a few days before was seen downtown on Friday morning wearing a T-shirt and pants from a track suit. He was driving a motorcycle and carrying a huge bag of clips for an automatic rifle.
The man, who identified himself as Abu Muhammad, said that the fighters were more numerous and better prepared than the last time they battled the Americans, in April. ''We trust in God,'' he said, explaining why he thought that the insurgents were so strong. ''We have two choices - victory or martyrdom.''
Beyond those sentiments, the insurgents appear to have the benefit of some fairly sophisticated military advice. They have built a layered perimeter with at least one inner fortified ring that would give them a place to retreat to should the outer ring be breached.
U.S. commanders in Iraq have expressed confidence they could complete their assault in a matter of days, but one senior officer said Friday that planners had no sure way of knowing how long insurgents would hold out. ''Right now, they're hoping it doesn't go much longer than a week,'' the officer said.
Meanwhile, the insurgents continued with their deadly attacks. A U.S. soldier was killed and five were wounded in an attack on a base near Falluja on Friday, the U.S. military reported. The injuries were ''the result of an indirect fire attack,'' a term the military generally reserves for mortars or rockets, at about 1:45 p.m.
Two Marines were killed during security operations around Ramadi, just west of Falluja, on Thursday, while one soldier in the 1st Infantry Division died and another was wounded in the town of Balad when an improvised bomb exploded near their vehicle. Balad is about 50 miles north of Baghdad on the road to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's ancestral hometown.
As preparations for the battle of Falluja sped forward, there were warnings that it could have devastating consequences.
The Los Angeles Times reported Friday that Annan had sent a letter to the governments of Britain, Iraq and the United States expressing concern that continued military attacks on the rebel-held city would alienate people and disrupt elections. The United Nations did not release the text of the letter and, in a corridor conversation with reporters, Annan confirmed its existence but declined to discuss it. Amid those concerns, U.S. military officials said the exact timing of any attack on Falluja hinged on a wide range of factors. Officials in Washington said Allawi wanted more time to discuss with his Cabinet, as well as religious and tribal leaders, the political and military ramifications of a U.S.-led offensive. Some Sunni leaders have appealed to the interim Iraqi government to call off any attack.
Military officials also expressed concerns that the remaining residents in Falluja be given a last warning.
The chief Marine intelligence officer in Iraq, Col. Ronald S. Makuta, gave this description in an e-mail message from his headquarters at Camp Falluja, three miles east of the city: ''Those remaining fall under the categories of not having enough money to move out or simply do not want to leave their homes and possessions for fear that these will be gutted and or robbed by the foreign fighters, local insurgents, and criminals. Insurgents continue to wage a brutal campaign of murder, assassination, terror, kidnapping, coercion, and intimidation. The criminal content has also taken advantage of the lawlessness in the city, and are pursuing similar means.''
The operation is shaping up to be the largest since the U.S. invasion of the country 20 months ago. A senior military officer said that roughly 25,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops were surrounding Falluja and Ramadi and the corridor between the two cities. Another senior military official said that from 10,000 to 15,000 of those troops were immediately around Falluja. They face an Iraqi insurgent force in the city that Brandl estimated at a few thousand fighters.
It is all intended to set right the disastrous events of April, when a large force of Marines attacked the city following the killing and mutilation of four American contractors there. Though the Americans were making steady progress in the city center, they were forced to halt their attacks when Iraqi leaders became unnerved over reports, largely unconfirmed, that hundreds of civilians had been killed there.
That time, the fighting in Falluja helped fuel armed uprisings in other parts of the country against the American presence here.
Iraqi leaders and U.S. commanders say they are worried about similar risings now, particularly in volatile cities such as Mosul, but they say that circumstances have shifted markedly since then. This time around, with the U.S. occupation formally over, Iraqi leaders are in charge and willing to take some of the political heat for the operations.
In addition to the insurgents themselves, U.S. soldiers preparing to move into the city say they expect to find homemade bombs buried along the roadsides and fortified positions around the city's perimeter. The Americans said they are preparing for close-quarters urban fighting, which they said inevitably carried a heavy risk of killing civilians.
''We will safeguard civilian life as much as possible,'' Brandl said. ''But there are times when civilians are in close proximity.''
Thousands of Iraqi troops have moved into position with their American counterparts and are expected to take part in the operation. According to the pattern set in similar operations in Najaf and Samarra, U.S. soldiers will do most of the fighting on the way in, clearing the way for the Iraqi security forces to take control of the city once the insurgents have been defeated. By this method, Iraqi and U.S. leaders are hoping that the operation in Falluja will offer the best of both worlds: American muscle and an Iraqi face.
The performance of the Iraqi security forces is being viewed as particularly crucial in assessing the success or failure of the mission in Falluja. In April, entire units of Iraqi police and national guard disintegrated before insurgents uprisings in Falluja and southern Iraq.
This time around, U.S. commanders say they have much higher hopes, particularly because of the intensive training Iraqi units have received.