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Iraq-Jordan
Belmont Club: The Battle for the Border
2005-08-06
From Thursday, but still interesting. Some highlights:

Making it harder for the enemy to move around while making it easier for US units has the effect of lowering apparent enemy numbers while correspondingly increasing apparent American troop strength; but this is only a means to an end. Another LA Times report on the Rawah operation, Rebels on the Run, Locals Too describes some of its effects as observed by the correspondent.

Since arriving in mid-July, the 2nd Infantry Division's 2nd Squadron of the 14th Cavalry Regiment has defeated the fighters here and will now spread out to seal the border with Syria, said Lt. Col. Mark Davis, the unit's commander. ... Having wrested control of Rawah, the division's Stryker Brigade Combat Team now hopes to press westward toward the border and, for the first time, gain control of a broad swath of the land north of the Euphrates that has eluded the U.S.-led coalition for more than two years. On Thursday and Friday, soldiers searched every one of the town's estimated 3,000 to 5,000 homes, capturing some suspected insurgents and a bounty of weapons, including mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, bomb-making equipment, sniper rifles and rockets.

"Since then, there has been no enemy attack, no explosions, nobody shooting at us in Rawah," Davis said. The town might be quiet now, but it's not necessarily friendly. On an outer school wall, spray painted in Arabic, is a note of defiance: "Praise the people of Fallouja" — a former insurgent stronghold where U.S. and Iraqi forces prevailed in November. Davis acknowledged that most Iraqis had left town but said they didn't leave under instructions from U.S. troops. The insurgents apparently had held the town hostage, American officials said. There were no police, a dormant city council, a compound of schools with no children and no teachers inside.

italics mine - pgf

(Speculation alert) There are probably many similar operations that are taking place along the river and to its north, as per the Di Rita briefing. One of them may have been undertaken by the US Marines at Haditha, during which 21 Marines were killed. One possible reason why this operation has been kept low key, despite its size, is that it may be literally ripping up the insurgent base of support along the upper Euphrates. If the LA Times article is accurate, the insurgents essentially took the whole population of Rawah with them; if the phenomenon is being repeated elsewhere, the displacement of the Sunni population must be huge. To the north there is the unsustaining desert; to the south across the river there is the sweep of the Marines; for the insurgents to leave the population in place would risk leaving intelligence in the hands of the Americans. This has got to hurt and it is only the beginning. The LA Times notes the abandonment of RPGs, sniper rifles, mortars -- stuff you wouldn't leave behind -- not willingly. The whole point of strangling the enemy lines of communication while building support bases is to set up the stage for pursuit. And they will be pursued. The focus of newspaper coverage in the coming days may abruptly shift from 'poor helpless Marines from Ohio' to 'we're slaughtering them! We're killers!' These are the hard choices of war, and as Hemingway once wrote "all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you."

This scenario is not making sense to me. Assuming two people per home, you're talking about something like 8000 people, being moved against their will? And not being picked up by whatever surveillance the town was under?
Posted by:Phil Fraering

#8  just a wild thought, what if "all the weapons" was really only a small percentage of what they did take with them.
That in their minds the few weapons left weren't that many.
Posted by: Jan   2005-08-06 23:33  

#7  Instant comment from a friend: This is like if we were able to take and hold the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2005-08-06 23:23  

#6  SO in other words, LotP is probably right, as I said earlier.
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-08-06 22:52  

#5  Also, it kind of boggles the mind, that they could take the civilians with them, but not the weapons?
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-08-06 22:52  

#4  
"avis acknowledged that most Iraqis had left town but said they didn't leave under instructions from U.S. troops."/I>

the fact that it wasn't american driven them leaving, and that they found so many weapons left behind is curious.
Were most of the folks living in this town sympathetic to the insurgents? It's hard to follow the logic that the town was held hostage, that's alot of people. I don't think the insurgents are that organized, are they?
I think not.
Posted by: Jan   2005-08-06 22:33  

#3  Thanks, LotP; that makes more sense.

It also makes sense that maybe it didn't happen just yesterday, but over a longer time period.
Posted by: Phil Fraering   2005-08-06 22:16  

#2  Phil, most likely the townspeople faded away themselves ... went to stay with relatives, maybe some of the men and boys held essentially as captives by the insurgents but not the women, kids, older people. They wouldn't want to be burdened with them.
Posted by: leader of the pack   2005-08-06 21:32  

#1  â€œWe are here to project combat power into an area where there hasn’t been much in the past,” said Lt. Col. Mark Davis, commander of 2-14’s taskforce.

Thank you Turkey.
Posted by: AzCat   2005-08-06 20:15  

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