as the First and Second Battles of Fallujah. Insurgent attacks in the area peaked more than two years later, however, severely testing U.S. and Iraqi security forces before a remarkable turnaround. I decided to write a book about this “Third Battle of Fallujah” after witnessing the dramatic transformation during two visits there as a reporter in 2007.
In January 2007, eastern Anbar province was still gripped by violence. Despite the killing and capture of thousands of militants by coalition forces during the famous battles of 2004, and the subsequent cordoning of the city with entry control points, the insurgents still managed to infiltrate and stage daily attacks. Within days of my first visit, two Iraqi policemen were grievously wounded by gunshots, a U.S. Marine was shot by a sniper and paralyzed from the neck down, and insurgents destroyed a multimillion-dollar M1 Abrams with a firebomb. A U.S. soldier was killed while accompanying Iraqi soldiers attempting to evacuate civilians from the area around the burning tank. Roadside bombs were detonated against American and Iraqi patrols several times a day, and insurgent mortar teams and snipers prowled the area. The situation was arguably even more “kinetic” outside the city. A trip to the town of Ameriyah through the rural peninsula south of Fallujah was the surest way to get attacked by insurgents, according to a U.S. Army advisor to the police. In terms of sheer numbers of attacks, winter 2006 and early spring 2007 would be the most active period in Area of Operations (AO) Raleigh, Fallujah and its environs, during the war.
Perhaps most troubling, however, was U.S. strategy, which seemed at odds with the reality on the ground. American forces were stepping back to encourage Iraqi security forces to take the lead even though the local cops and soldiers were unready. The police had hunkered down in defensive positions within their stations, yet they were still being killed and wounded at an alarming pace; in addition, their families were targeted by assassins when their identities were discovered. The Iraqi soldiers, many of whom were Shia Muslims from other parts of the country, were considered outsiders in Fallujah, a Sunni enclave, and their ranks were undermanned due to a counterproductive leave policy, missed paychecks, and corrupt leadership that claimed a full roster in order to pocket the pay of nonexistent “ghost soldiers.” U.S. attempts to push these security forces into the lead were premature.
The situation seemed dire, but there were glimmers of hope. To the west of Fallujah, the tribes around Ramadi, the provincial capital, had “awakened” the previous year to fight al Qaeda insurgents and form an alliance with the Americans. Some Fallujans had heard of the development and hoped that a similar arrangement could be made in their area. In addition, the Iraqi police hired a competent new district chief, and the corrupt leader of the local Iraqi Army unit fled from his command after stories about his thievery surfaced in the Western and Arabic media. And in January 2007, U.S. president George W. Bush announced the appointment of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus to head coalition efforts in Iraq along with a “surge” of U.S. forces and a counterinsurgency strategy that would attempt to stabilize the burning country. When I left Fallujah at the end of that month, I thought that security progress was possible, but that it would take a major commitment from U.S. forces and a great deal of patience. In retrospect, I underestimated how quickly things could change.
By late May, news of positive developments began to trickle back to the United States. The tribes around Fallujah had risen up to fight the radical insurgents. The Iraqi police and army were operating more effectively, and the Americans had reversed course and doubled down on their commitment to the Iraqis by aggressively projecting into the population to support local tribal militias, police, and soldiers. As a result, security had noticeably improved in Fallujah and across Anbar province by the late spring and summer of 2007.
Nothing had prepared me for the improvement I witnessed when I returned to Fallujah in September 2007, however. The Marines seemed almost relaxed when driving along formerly explosive stretches of highway. The area was being rebuilt; the power grid was more reliable; and many more civilians were venturing outside their homes, cleaning up rubble, hawking wares, repainting medians, and interacting with the Marines and the Iraqi cops. The insurgents still staged attacks, but with far less frequency. Whereas in January small-arms fire, mortars, and explosions from roadside bombs had been routine background noise, only a few scattered gunshots broke the peace on my visit seven months later. The change was stunning.
I initially planned to write a book about all of the factors that had contributed to this dramatic turnaround, including the “Awakening” of major tribes south and northeast of Fallujah and the urban counterinsurgency campaign that secured the city proper. After interviewing Maj. Brian Lippo, however, my focus narrowed. In discussing the progress of the war, Lippo, a Marine who had been an advisor to the Iraqi police in late 2006 and early 2007, assigned key credit to the tribal Awakening that had taken place on Fallujah’s suburban and rural southern peninsula. He regarded the U.S.-Iraqi alliance as a turning point that jump-started progress and injected sorely needed manpower into the Iraqi security forces. Lippo advised me to speak to Maj. Dan Whisnant, the man who had served as the Marine Corps commander on the peninsula, and who, Lippo said, “did some great things down there.” The result is Fallujah Awakens: Marines, Sheikhs, and the Battle against al Qaeda.
The story told here is not a holistic view of all the factors that secured Fallujah. It does not deal with the Awakenings among other tribes outside of the city, nor does it fully detail the campaign that secured the city itself and the pivotal contributions by several successive Marine units, the Iraqi police, and the Iraqi Army in those efforts. In addition, this book does not attempt to address the decisions at high levels of U.S. command that shifted the strategy and tactics around Fallujah. Many American and Iraqi leaders, most notably the U.S. Marine regimental combat team leadership and the Fallujah district police chief at the time, Colonel Faisal Ismail Hussein al-Zobaie, played key roles that are not the focus of this book.
This book offers a glimpse of the first tribal Awakening around Fallujah by one of the area’s most important tribes, the Albu Issa. It also documents key actions at the company commander level and lower, highlighting how individual decisions by a major, captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corpsmen, corporals, and lance corporals affected the outcome of the war. Finally, it is an examination of aspects of counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) and how this strategy capitalized on changing local politics.
COIN has been the subject of controversy in punditry and military circles. Its supporters credited the doctrine with saving the Iraq enterprise, and they later sought to impose a similar strategy in Afghanistan. Its detractors claimed that local dynamics—not the change in U.S. methodology—were responsible for Iraq’s turnaround. Both camps made valid points, but ultimately the U.S. military supported community developments with the effective use of COIN to halt the growth of radical insurgent groups and Iraq’s slide toward civil war. Fallujah Awakens demonstrates how individual components of the doctrine were applied around Fallujah even before it became an official strategy for the overall U.S. effort in Iraq.
Beyond an examination of doctrine, I’ve attempted to communicate something that is more abstract, but no less essential: the importance of personalities in shaping the course of a war, especially a counterinsurgency involving actors from vastly different cultures. People matter. Strong leadership, patience, and intellectual and emotional flexibility are necessary for success in an environment as chaotic as Anbar province was during 2006–2007. To this end, much of the book is written in a narrative nonfiction style to closely re-create the events, backgrounds, and motivations of the Iraqis and Americans who took up the fight.
After the famous 2004 battles in Fallujah, the city became a powerful symbol of resistance against foreign forces in Iraq and throughout the Arab world. By 2007, however, proudly nationalistic tribesmen had begun working with the Americans. In doing so, their mindset changed dramatically. It shifted from the idea of fighting an invader from a foreign land and with a different religious background to working with it against religiously radical former allies who had turned murderous (and greedy) in their bid to consolidate power. Many Americans wonder why the Iraqis who eventually came to work with U.S. forces didn’t do so earlier in the war. This book attempts to answer that question, among others.
