Word: fallujah
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...Retaking Fallujah has been designated the top priority in a broader campaign to stem the tide of an insurgency which U.S. officials concede has actually grown stronger since last June's hand-over of political authority to the Allawi government. The broader objective guiding the security strategy of the U.S.-led coalition is to create sufficient stability by January to allow for a national election to choose Iraq's new leaders - and there'd be little chance of holding a credible poll throughout the Sunni triangle and even in Baghdad if the insurgency was permitted to maintain its current momentum...
...Monday - the Iraqi forces deployed there are very much in a support role to the Marine spearhead. Indeed, the battle is also considered a major test of the Iraqi forces' ability to stand and fight against the insurgents, and while the work of an Iraqi commando unit in seizing Fallujah's hospital may offer grounds for optimism, that could also be offset by the reported desertion of hundreds of Iraqi troops that had been deployed on the Fallujah frontline...
...Fallujah has become the keystone to the U.S. effort to stabilize Iraq precisely because it is the one city in Iraq over which insurgents have brazenly taken control. That makes it an epicenter of the resistance that has bedeviled U.S. efforts to smooth the transition to Iraqi self-rule on terms set out by Washington and its allies. Not only has insurgent Fallujah become a symbol that allows young Iraqis to believe in the possibility that violent resistance can prevail and therefore encourages some to join the insurgency; U.S. commanders also believe it is the headquarters of the Tawhid...
...negative publicity of such casualties by seizing control of the city's main hospital overnight on Monday - previously a source of many televised claims that coalition forces had inflicted civilian casualties - many Iraqi and international actors invested in the transition process remain concerned that a frontal assault on Fallujah could have the opposite political effect to the one desired...
...viewed as allied with the insurgency, has condemned the assault and warned of an escalation of the insurgency elsewhere. And, of course, it has reiterated its call for a boycott of the January election. Others, like UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have warned that if the assault of Fallujah creates a backlash that keeps Sunnis away from the polls, then the operation will have been self-defeating. Even acting president Ghazi al-Yawer, the most senior Sunni figure in Allawi's government, has publicly warned that a bloody showdown would play into the hands of the insurgency, adding that...