Word: fallujah
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...street the Americans have dubbed Terrorist Café. It is lined with lean-tos and shacks that serve as teahouses and kebab stalls, some of them patronized by leaders of the Sunni militant groups that have turned Adhamiya into a hotbed of insurgency in the Iraqi capital--a "Little Fallujah in the middle of Baghdad," in the words of a local shop owner...
...patrols can't be everywhere at all times, and Adhamiya offers the insurgency an abundance of targets and cover for attacks. The densely crowded district is an ideal setting for the new insurgent tactics that are evolving in the wake of the U.S.-led battle for Fallujah. Flushed from their hideouts in the Sunni triangle, many fighters have descended upon Baghdad and Mosul, taking with them a burning desire to avenge Fallujah and a style of fighting previously unseen in Iraq. The rebels, according to sources familiar with their operations, are no longer seeking small-town havens. By basing themselves...
Baghdad's Adhamiya got its first taste of this more brazen form of rebellion even as the Fallujah assault, Operation al-Fajr, was winding down. On the morning of Nov. 20, some 300 fighters attacked the district's main police station. For Colonel Khaled Hassan Abed, chief of the Iraqi police in Adhamiya, the sheer number of attackers revealed a change in the insurgents' tactics. In the past, rebel operations in Baghdad generally consisted of two or three attackers firing mortars from pickup trucks. The more deadly operations tended to involve explosives set off by remote control or by lone...
After the attack, Abed launched an investigation to gain insights into the nature of the new threat. Most of the attackers, he found, were from Fallujah but were led and guided by a small core of local insurgents. The attackers' objective, he concluded, was not just to inflict casualties but also to seize a high-visibility target. "They knew that even if they got into the station, we would eventually have killed them all," says Abed. "But they wanted to make a political statement: 'If you can take Fallujah, we can take your police stations...
...Fajr, Mosul erupted in violence as gangs of fighters attacked police stations and engaged in pitched street battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces. It took the Americans and their Iraqi partners the better part of a week to regain control, and a U.S. battalion had to be recalled from Fallujah to help. The attackers "showed a degree of local command and control we have not seen before," says Brigadier General Carter Ham, commander of U.S. forces in Mosul. "The willingness to stand and fight signaled to me that something has changed." Also, rebels in Mosul have launched an intensive campaign...