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Stakes are high in Ramadi
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. 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. 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. 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." 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." 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." 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." I'm shocked to hear that, coming from Juan Cole ... Posted by: Dan Darling 2005-08-28 |
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