Fallujah: The first Iraqi intifada

WASHINGTON – Anyone remember the first battle of Fallujah? Codenamed Operation Vigilant Resolve, it was launched by US Marines on April 4, 2004, four days after four Blackwater contractors were killed there. Fallujah, and associated fighting in other parts of the country, can be considered the first Iraqi intifada against the US in Iraq.

Amid all the killing that has gone on in Iraq since then, the battle has largely faded from public memory. But for those seeking to understand the past effectiveness of Iraqi insurgent forces, that first battle of Fallujah was highly significant. That is the conclusion of a secret intelligence assessment, prepared by the US Army’s National Ground Intelligence Center and was recently leaked to Wikileaks, a Wikipedia for untraceable document leaking and analysis.

The assessment says:

Enemy employment of asymmetric tactics, techniques, and procedures during the Battle of Fallujah in April 2004 offers many useful lessons learned in how a relatively weak adversary can prevent the United States from accomplishing its military objectives.

To read the assessment is to be reminded of how ill-prepared the US military was in those days to conduct counter-insurgency operations. The US military knew that Fallujah was a critical stronghold for the insurgents. General James Conway, then commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF), whose troops conducted the first Fallujah offensive, said in an interview the day before the killing of the Blackwater contractors that “Fallujah is probably our center of gravity. We know that there are more bad guys around Fallujah than anywhere else in our whole area of operations.”

Fallujah was an early example of what the military calls MOUT (Military Operations in Urban Terrain) and such operations are generally regarded as the bloodiest and most difficult.

Speaking on April 7 on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, John Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago, said:

The United States is basically in a situation where it’s damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. If we get tough on the Iraqis as we’re doing now, tough on the insurgents, it’s likely to backfire on us.

While the marines were largely successful in their military operations in Fallujah, there were a number of political and informational developments which resulted in the operation’s overall failure.

These included Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, which began attacking coalition forces on April 2 in response to the coalition’s move to shut down his newspaper Hawza and the arrest of one of his top aides. This simultaneous uprising added to the pressure to resolve the Fallujah fight as quickly as possible.

Other Sunni cells and groups escalated their attacks in areas outside Fallujah, especially in Ramadi, prompting the British to argue for a halt of the attack. At the same time, the news agency al-Jazeera was claiming that up to 600 Iraqi civilians had been killed by the US offensive. Images of dead children were being displayed repeatedly on televisions around the world.

Because of these factors, by April 9 , just five days after the start of the offensive, US proconsul L Paul Bremer prevailed on General John Abizaid, the head of the US Central Command, to order a halt to offensive ground operations. This marked the start of an American unilateral ceasefire that lasted until the end of April, although clashes initiated by insurgents continued. Actually, that may give Bremer more credit than he deserves. A footnote at the very end the intelligence assessment notes that:

The deal struck by MEF commander Conway (it was unusual for a field commander to be given negotiating responsibility) with the Fallujah Brigade was approved by Generals Ricardo Sanchez and Abizaid but not coordinated with the Coalition Provisional Authority. Bremer was furious when he found out about it, but he was in little position to overturn it since he had insisted on the ceasefire in the first place. Complicating matters was the fact that the Abu Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke on April 29, consuming the attention of senior leaders in the US government. Bremer could not organize a consensus to overturn the Fallujah Brigade decision.

The Fallujah Brigade was a Sunni militia unit led by former Iraqi army officers to which the marines turned over their responsibility for Fallujah. Many insurgents were incorporated into this unit, and its affect on the security situation in the city was negligible.

Aside from the political developments, the insurgents showed skill and competence in their choice of tactics while fighting the marines. They demonstrated operational freedom of movement by infiltrating fighters and supplies through the marine cordon around Fallujah. Small mobile combat cells conducted a fluid defense using hit-and-run attacks, ambushes, and standoff attacks using mortars and improvised explosive devices.

The insurgents also showed they could adapt and learn as the battle raged. They noted the vulnerabilities of M1A1 tanks, for example, and waited to attack until the main gun was raised or used feints and ruses to expose the rear armor. Additionally, they would initiate an ambush with small-arms fire on one side of a tank in order to get the tank crew to turn its armor into the direction of fire. They would then fire a coordinated rocket-propelled grenade salvo into the exposed rear of the tank.

They also allowed marine units to penetrate deeply into their territory so they could set up ambush opportunities on isolated targets. Once a marine unit was isolated, the insurgents would swarm from all directions to destroy them. Insurgents also exploited coalition adherence to the Law of Armed Conflict to gain a tactical advantage. They employed human shields, positioned themselves in protected structures such as mosques and schools, and appeared to be well aware of the rules of engagement that controlled marine return fire.

Controlled or not, however, some marine weaponry could be devastating. The assessment confirms that the marines used 2.75-inch flechette rockets for close air support provided by Cobra helicopters. The flechette warhead, used for anti-personnel operations, is essentially a steel dart that looks very much like steel nails with fins stamped into its back. The WDU-4A/A warhead, commonly used on the Hydra rockets carried by Cobra attack helicopters, contains about 2,200 flechettes.

Nevertheless, the most successful accomplishment of the insurgents was their ability to use the media. The assessment notes that the insurgents demonstrated a keen understanding of the value of information operations (IO).

IO was one of the insurgents’ most effective levers to raise political pressure for a ceasefire. They fed disinformation to television networks, posted propaganda on the Internet to recruit volunteers and solicit financial donations, and spread rumors through the street. Sympathetic imams calling for jihad in their mosque sermons also helped to win support for the insurgency.

The assessment found that the relative failure of the first battle of Fallujah compared to the more successful second battle of Fallujah (November 2004) offers useful political-military lessons for how to defeat asymmetric adversaries in complex environments.

• The enemy will seek to utilize the human, informational and physical complexity of urban areas to avoid direct military confrontation and exploit American political and informational vulnerabilities.
• The media presence on the battlefield was controlled by the enemy; consequently, they shaped much of the information the world viewed during the fight. In Vigilant Resolve there were few reporters embedded in marine infantry units; in Operation al-Fajr there were 91 embeds representing 60 media outlets. False allegations of noncombatant casualties were made by Arab media in both campaigns, but in the second case embedded Western reporters offered a rebuttal.
• The Iraqi government was nascent and weak and it offered no political cover for US commanders to finish the operation in a reasonable time period. Without domestic Iraqi political support, offensive operations were halted after five days of combat.

David Isenberg is a an analyst in national and international security affairs, sento@earthlink.net. He is also a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, an adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute, contributor to the Straus Military Reform Project, a research fellow at the Independent Institute, and a US Navy veteran. The views expressed are his own.