The timing of Operation Phantom Fury was dictated by two elections.
Washington had vetoed an attack while the United States election was under way, not wanting to create a bloody backdrop to the campaign.
But with George Bush’s re-election, the administration’s attention turned swiftly to the polls being planned across Iraq at the end of January.
On that election hangs the legitimacy of any new Iraqi government and the credibility of the American military, which has pledged to secure the country so that people can vote safely.
In Washington, the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld said on Monday that Fallujah had to be taken to establish conditions for a new functioning Iraqi government. ”If Iraq is to be a free and peaceful society one part of the country cannot be under the control of assassins, terrorists and remnants of the Ba’athist regime,” he said.
As far as the Americans are concerned — and despite the reservations of the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Iraqi president — the Fallujah revolt has to be crushed with a military strike. If the brute force strategy works, the insurgency — the US argues — will be weakened and Fallujah, and the rest of Anbar province, will be able to take part in the election.
Excluding the area from the forthcoming poll would undermine the legitimacy of any elected government from the outset.
”You’ve got to have a legitimate process. The process is in many ways more important than the results, it gives Iraqis an opportunity to establish a mechanism in which they can be heard. It would be much, much better if all of Iraq can vote,” said Colonel Paul Hughes, an army officer at the National Defence University who served as director of strategic policy for the former US governor, Paul Bremer.
”I think it’s an important demonstration that the new government can get the Sunnis to participate.
Daniel Goure, a Pentagon consultant and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank, agreed. ”This has to be done,” he said. ”You want this area pacified to support elections.”
The assault will also be a crucial test of the mettle and loyalty of Iraqi troops, particularly the Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion which was sent in as a vanguard force. But most of the fighting will be done by up to 15 000 American marines and soldiers.
Randy Gangle, a retired US marine colonel recently returned from the coalition base outside Fallujah, said that retaking the city was a matter of pride for the marines. They were sent in to take on the insurgents but then withdrawn in April when uprisings against the assault broke out around the country.
He was sent to Camp Fallujah six weeks ago to collect material for a new US military manual for fighting small wars in the 21st century. He said that the marine units going into Fallujah on Monday had undergone new training in urban counter-insurgency in which British military advisers had played an important role, contributing their experience of Northern Ireland.
”The marines don’t see Fallujah as being that difficult,” Gangle said.
”The intelligence reports we saw were that there were about 5 000 insurgents from simple criminals on one end to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on the other end.”
However, he added, the big unknowns were how many casualties there would be among the roughly 75 000 civilians still thought to be in the city, and the reaction of the rest of the country.
”We really just don’t know what the political fallout will be — whether there is a lot of Sunni sympathy out there which will make the resistance larger and stronger,” Gangle said.
”But Fallujah has become a symbol of resistance. So we need to go in there and seize control, and then we’ll have to watch very carefully the reaction in the rest of Anbar province.
”We know we’re going to create more insurgents. Even if you’re going to create more enemies, even the diehards may realise that it’s better to just behave and wait for the elections and the Americans and Brits leave.”
Goure was optimistic that the war-weariness of the civilian population and its longing for a final resolution of the insurgency would work this time in the coalition’s favour
”I tend to think that it’s going to be easier than people think,” he said.
”I expect it will be finished this month.
”This is not a question of human waves of insurgents. There’s a strong belief that you have a silent majority out there who want nothing to do with it. And they’re not going to stick their necks out when there are guys with loaded weapons running around in their backyard.
”The insurgents’ numbers are limited, and their support is tepid.”
Goure recognised that there was a risk of a civilian death toll, but argued: ”That may not be creating any more recruits than weakness creates.”
He believed intensive training of the troops involved and a long period of intelligence collection would help minimise civilian casualties which he said the US military expected to number in the hundreds, not thousands.
No one in US military circles seems to believe that the capture of Fallujah will end the insurgency. Similar operations in other Sunni strongholds like the provincial capital, Ramadi, are likely soon.
”Frankly, this is kind of like the treatment of gangrene,” Col said. ”If you’re going to do this, you might as well as go in and do it all at once.” – Guardian Unlimited Â