WASHINGTON, July 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. military commander in charge of Ramadi, among the most dangerous Iraqi deployments for U.S. troops, believes the recalcitrant town will be wrested from the hands of insurgents without the need for a major military offensive or a berm around the city.
"I am confident that we can secure Ramadi without a Fallujah-type offensive," said Col. Sean MacFarland, the commander of the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, based in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province.
For the long haul in Iraq, which envisions handing over control to Iraqis province by province, Ramadi is a critical city. Anbar is key terrain for the largely Sunni insurgency, and it will not be brought under control until the provincial government in Ramadi can operate with safety and legitimacy, bringing both security forces and needed services and reconstruction to the rest of the region, which is roughly the size of Wyoming.
A fundamental tenet of the counter-insurgent fight U.S. forces and their Iraqi counterparts now find themselves in is that being a powerful security presence alone will not stop the fighting. It will only end when the people of Anbar province shift their loyalty to the government, because the insurgents cannot operate without at least the passive support of the population. Loyalty will be won with security, economic development, basic services like water and electricity, and a sense that the government -- both in Ramadi and in Baghdad -- is responsive to their needs.
Rather than attack the town from the outside with overwhelming force -- the tactic ultimately used on Fallujah in November 2004, which for political reasons the U.S. government in Iraq had allowed to become a safe haven for insurgents for six months - MacFarland, his forces and newly formed Iraqi army forces have moved into the neighborhoods and established five new patrol bases.
The bases are generally quite Spartan, but they allow a near constant presence, and also develop trust and familiarity between the people in the neighborhood and the troops they are seeing daily.
"These have had a very disruptive effect on the enemy. Most importantly, though, it's given us the opportunity to engage the people of Ramadi, instead of just to (turn) the sights of our weapons but an actual conversation. And we've established real relationships with the people in parts of the city that we hadn't been able to in the past," MacFarland said.
"As we create secure areas, these ink spots that grow larger and larger and begin to connect, people don't have to worry about the safety of their families when they go out and either work with the Iraqi security forces or find some other form of employment. And that creates a kind of a snowball effect," he said. "And we're, I think, approaching the takeoff point where this will become a self-sustaining phenomenon and will achieve irreversible momentum."
That has only become possible recently with the development of sufficient numbers of credible Iraqi soldiers.
"The Iraqi security forces here in Al Anbar Province, in Ramadi in particular, are in a tough fight, and yet they're sticking with it. And as long as they continue to be fed and paid and trained and equipped as they should be -- and they are -- they're staying with their units," MacFarland said.
The people of Ramadi do not cotton to outsiders so the Iraqi soldiers and police are vital, MacFarland said.
"The people of Ramadi have historically not responded well to higher authority. They didn't get along well with Saddam. They weren't particularly fond of the Brits. And, you know, we Americans are perceived as outsiders as well. And that's just a fact of life. That's just the local culture here. It's insular," he said.
The situation was made even worse with the arrival of foreign fighters and Iraqis loyal to al-Qaida in Iraq. That stepped up the level of violence and dramatically affected the economy.
"They intimidated, through murder and other acts of violence, the people of Ramadi and forced them into their homes, away from their places of employment, and really have turned Ramadi into a battleground," he said.
One of the prime battlegrounds in a city that sees daily firefights and bombings is the government center in downtown. To get there, Iraqi and U.S. officials have had to run a gauntlet of enemy fighters and roadside bombs, and the building itself frequently comes under attack. MacFarland is planning to bulldoze about a dozen buildings around it that he says are just shells now anyway to clear a safe zone for the provincial government to try to do its work.
"That will help the government workers feel safer about coming to work, and that will help in turn get the provincial government accelerating towards control in the province. And, you know, people will sometimes liken that to destroying a village in order to save it; (this is) absolutely nothing of the sort. These buildings are already destroyed, and what we're really doing is accelerating the urban renewal and rejuvenation of Ramadi by just taking them down," he said.
MacFarland predicted success but could not put a timeline on it.
"We're at a transition point in the fight for Ramadi. And we're now at the point where we're beginning to take the city back from the insurgents. And now it's important for us to hold what we've got and to begin to build where we hold," he said.
