Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 25, 2004
RAMADI, Iraq — Hunkered down in the turquoise-domed Islamic Law Center, a
dozen Marines wait for the enemy to make its inevitable move. Insurgents
equipped with Soviet-made sniper rifles keep the building in their cross hairs.
Assailants with AK-47s and grenade launchers regularly peer from nearby alleys
and roofs. Attacks can come from any direction.
The wait is unnerving,
but it's better than being in the streets of this turbulent western city. A
Marine convoy was attacked here Wednesday with a roadside bomb and as many as
100 insurgents unleashed a barrage of small-arms fire and rocket-propelled
grenades in rolling firefights that lasted for much of the day. Thirteen
Marines and one soldier were injured, and the U.S. military reported killing 25
fighters.
"When you walk on the streets, they can hide in every nook and
cranny and you can never find them until they start shooting," said Marine Cpl.
Glenn Hamby, 26, who heads Squad 3 of Golf Company. "Here, they have to come
right to us."
This is what the war has come down to in Iraq's Sunni
Muslim heartland, where providing tenuous security harks back to America's 19th
century Indian Wars — a time when the cavalry set up outposts and forts in
decidedly hostile territory. Ramadi is Indian Country — "the wild, wild
West," as the region is called.
Half a dozen or so Marine observation
posts dot Ramadi's main drag, linking heavily fortified bases and helping to
keep the inhospitable city from turning into a Fallouja-like sanctuary for
insurgents.
U.S. troops have walked away from Fallouja, 30 miles to the
east. But here in the capital of strategic Al Anbar province, the fight goes on
day after day.
The aggressive patrols that marked the Marines' arrival
this spring were met with frenzied and bloody insurgent attacks, leading to some
of the heaviest U.S. losses of the Iraq conflict. Since the patrols gave way
to the more modulated "outposting" strategy, however, American deaths have
declined dramatical ly.
Marines say the scaled-back blueprint has worked
in other ways: Unlike Fallouja, Ramadi still has a U.S. military presence
designed to keep open the city's main artery, back up Iraqi police who protect
the heavily fortified Iraqi government center and prevent the city from falling
into complete chaos or insurgent control.
The reduced U.S. visibility
here also coincides with the return of sovereignty to Iraq and a nationwide push
to keep American troops in the background as much as possible. Still, no one
doubts that Iraqi security forces would be outmatched here if not for the U.S.
military presence.
"We've had some success — Highway 10 is open,
and we're seeing the Iraqis take more and more charge of their own security,"
said Capt. Christopher Bronzi, who heads Golf Company from the frequently
attacked Marine base known as the Combat Outpost, a former Iraqi army facility
along Highway 10, the city's main drag. "People in Ramadi are ready for us to
be less a part of their cou ntry."
Even beyond the evolving strategy,
the story of Ramadi is in sharp contrast to that of Fallouja.
Although
it has acquired great symbolic potency as a symbol of armed resistance, Fallouja
is basically a backwater with no strategic significance. Ramadi, on the other
hand, with 450,000 residents, is the economic and political hub of the Sunni
Muslim heartland.
Ramadi also is the gateway to Syria and Jordan,
brimming with potential recruits for the jihad against "infidel" invaders.
Marines in Ramadi did not have the luxury of walking away.
Since
arriving in March, the 2nd Battalion of the 4th Marine Regiment based in Ramadi
has lost 31 troops and suffered almost 200 injuries, most during a series of
fierce but largely unheralded urban fights in early April.
Before the
Marines' arrival, the commander of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, Maj. Gen.
Charles H. Swannack Jr., declared that Al Anbar was "on a glide path toward
success" and pronounced the insurgency here in "disarray" — far from the
situation faced here today by the Marines who took over from Swannack's
soldiers.
The Marines' initial strategy of high-profile patrols was
far more aggressive than the Army's limited-engagement efforts. The violent
backlash demonstrated that the insurgents in Ramadi had never been vanquished,
Marines say, and probably had been consolidating forces during the Army
occupation.
The fierce house-to-house combat of April taught the Marines
a hard lesson: The kind of "hearts and minds" campaign that many had envisioned
while preparing at Camp Pendleton was not going to fly in the core of the Sunni
Triangle, where resentment against the U.S. presence is pervasive and unlikely
to diminish, many Marines acknowledge.
The thin-skinned Humvees that
made up much of the Marine fleet this spring have been largely replaced by the
tank-like "up-armored" version — but only after many casualties resulted
from the lack of armor, Marines say. "We ask ourselves all the time why they
didn't come earlier," one officer said.
Still, little here is completely
safe, no matter how much armor is used. Venturing outside a base in Ramadi is a
gut-clenching experience, even though the fortified outposts have helped reduce
the prevalence of roadside bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive
devices.
"We heard about IEDs before we got here, but nobody realized
that Ramadi was just saturated with IEDs," said Capt. Rob Weiler, who heads the
battalion mobile assault company.
One of the main tasks of the
observation posts is to spot and kill bomb-emplacement teams, while also being
alert to mortar men, car bombers, ambush squads and other attackers.
The
insurgents know exactly where the Marines are and regard the posts as prime
targets: Four Marines were killed last month in Ramadi when their post was
overrun in the early morning darkness; stunning images of the sniper team's dead
and bloodied bodies sprawled on a rooftop were captured on vid eotape and
broadcast worldwide. Marine commanders decline to provide details on how the
post could have been taken — apparently by surprise, with no time for
backup to arrive.
The ferocity of the fighting in Ramadi and the
tenacity of the mujahedin — as the insurgents are widely known, though one
commander favors the snappier "Johnny Jihad" — have produced a very
specific view of who the enemy is here: A mostly home-grown mix of anti-U.S.
nationalists, loyalists of Saddam Hussein's former regime and a seemingly
endless supply of part-time fighters — many former members of the Iraqi
army — willing to pick up a rifle or grenade launcher to fire at U.S.
forces and their Iraqi allies.
Most insurgents here, the Marines say,
are natives of the Ramadi area, where the insular tribal culture and tradition
of cross-border smuggling have fostered an undercurrent of violence and
suspicion of outsiders. Even Hussein's regime had difficulty exerting full
control.
Neith er foreign fighters nor religious militants drive the
insurgency here, commanders say, though both strains are present. "It's one big
overlapping mishmash," said Maj. Michael P. Wylie, battalion executive
officer.
The cell networks can be virtually impenetrable, and seem to
regenerate quickly after leaders are arrested during Marine raids.
"It's
not as if we have foolproof intel — we're dealing with a different
language, a different culture," said Capt. Kelly Royer of Echo Company, which
has lost 18 Marines — by far the most of any company.
Marines
speak of a classic urban guerrilla force — a transient, elusive enemy that
quickly melts into the population, spiriting away all evidence of its
presence.
"It's like ghost fighters," Cpl. Hamby said. "You can get
into a firefight, and afterward when you go to the exact spot you were firing
at, you won't find any shell cases, bodies, nothing. They grab everything and
they're gone."
The insurgents are belie ved to have used captured U.S.
materiel against the Marines, including a lone Humvee seen wandering about like
a phantom ship — though the latter accounts have acquired the feel of an
urban legend.
There are few illusions among U.S. troops here about
being liked in a city where ubiquitous graffiti extol the exploits of the
"brave" mujahedin and declares, "Down With the U.S.A."
"They pretty
much hate us here," said one Marine commander as his Humvee maneuvered through
the dangerous side streets of Ramadi's explosive south side, where fighting was
intense in April. Slim youths approached with smiles on a recent morning
— and then let loose with a barrage of stones.
Arriving at the
Islamic Law Center, where the Marines of Squad 3 were pulling a 12-hour shift
the other day, is an unequivocal war zone exercise: Several Humvees block all
traffic along Highway 10 and form a safety cordon with machine guns at the
ready, while other Marines dismount and train their weapons on build ings,
passersby and vehicles. Relieving troops sprint the final 10 yards or so to the
metal front door, which is quickly opened and shut.
The four-story brick
and concrete structure offers a strategic perch near downtown. Claymore mines
are laid within the walls of the now heavily damaged center, where junked
computers still sit in a classroom and bookshelves brim with law books in
Arabic, English and French.
Marines say their task here is mostly about
waiting, watching for insurgents planting bombs or laying ambushes, and then
repelling the assault.
That morning, men with AK-47s were seen mingling
among civilians at a taxi stand across the street to the north. A pickup truck
disgorged more fighters from the east. At least three attackers were killed in
the ensuing, adrenaline-charged 10-minute fight, the Marines say; no Marines
were hurt. Marines fired half a dozen rockets, destroying the taxi kiosk, which
lay in a ruin of bricks and mortar.
The months of fighting have made it
clear to these Marines that they are in an inhospitable place where much of the
population would like to see them gone — and many want them dead. A
decisive military victory here is widely viewed as unlikely, Marines
say.
The recent hand-over of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government
was generally welcomed as the first step in an exit strategy that eventually
will remove the incendiary presence of U.S. troops — and put Iraqis in
the front lines of their own fight.
"Personally, I see this as a
stalemate: We could keep fighting in this same manner forever," said Lance Cpl.
David Goward, 26, who had a copy of "The Great Gatsby" to read in his spare
moments. "They have no shortage of weapons. And neither do we. As long as
Americans are here, they're going to keep on fighting."