Word: fallujah
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...find them. Fearing retribution, locals are scared to be seen talking to the troops, much less providing intelligence. The insurgents themselves remove their injured or killed before they can be found. "Very few of us have ever seen one," says 2nd Lt. Brian P. Iglesias. Unlike the tactics in Fallujah, the Marines in Ramadi have not been using air strikes. It's a street-to-street battle, as much police work as anything else, which the Marines must wage without the benefit of a viable police force...
...took command of Combat Outpost on September 17, five days after a seven-hour firefight had served as a reminder that Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, remains a key battleground in the war to shape Iraq's future. Not quite a no-go zone like insurgent-controlled Fallujah, Ramadi instead is the scene of an ongoing contest for control - The Marines on one side, various insurgent groups on the other, the people of Ramadi in the middle. "There is fighting near houses in the neighborhoods, says one of them, Waleed al-Haeti, 31. "You can lose your life...
...security needed to hold elections in the Sunni triangle. Insurgents, however, their numbers estimated in the hundreds, are intimidating locals, kidnapping and killing local officials, and staging frequent hit-and-run attacks. Regiment commander Lt. Col. Randall P. Newman believes foreign fighters are coming back and forth from Fallujah, mixing with ex-Baathists and local criminals in a combined effort to keep the city unstable. "It's almost like a chess match," says Golf Company executive officer, Lt. Dennis Doyle - one the U.S. and its Iraqi allies must win because "what happens here will have ramifications for the whole province...
...plans to address the security situation by launching an offensive in December, between the U.S. election and the Iraqi one, to break the grip of insurgents on some of the population centers in the Sunni triangle. But as Fallujah and Najaf have previously shown, frontal assaults on population centers tend to produce a furious backlash in the Iraqi public, even when Iraqi troops are used on the frontlines. Keeping to the January deadline would require conducting the election campaign amid bloody battles in some Iraqi towns, whose political effect would likely to be to radicalize the views of the civilian...
...towns and cities under their control and installing competent local administrations is under way in Shi'ite areas south of Baghdad. The northern Sunni stronghold of Samarra is being targeted in a similar push, with U.S. troops ousting fighters and returning a civil administration. But in nogo zones like Fallujah, enlisting the help of rebels willing to part ways with al-Zarqawi may be the only way the U.S. can avoid bloody battles down the road. It's hardly the arrangement Washington had in mind. But if the U.S. hopes to avert disaster in Iraq, it's going to need...