to work with eleven Fallujah Liaison Teams appointed from his battalion. Bring your requests, Drinkwine said, and we’ll try to resolve them.
The mid-January FPAC meeting seemed to go well. A torrent of complaints about American conduct and contracts not delivered poured forth, but there were no threats of violence. Drinkwine noticed that Janabi didn’t say a word. The meeting ended with the election of a council president, and a meeting was scheduled for the next month.
Two days later a mob gathered outside the mayor’s office at the Government Center to protest the election of the council. When the paratroopers were called to disperse them, a riot ensued and two Iraqis were killed.
“It’s great to be nice,” Drinkwine said. “But we’ve found out if you let up for one second against the bad guys, they’re right back at your throat.”
Drinkwine had tried political suasion and municipal improvement, but in the end it came back to raw military muscle. The battle lines were clear: it was the Americans against the insurgents.
The composition and leadership of the insurgents were changing. As the FREs weakened, Drinkwine received warnings that foreign fighters were infiltrating into the Jolan, including the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. From Fallujah, Zarqawi sent Osama bin Laden a letter in January asking for help in continuing the guerrilla war. On a night raid two Egyptians were arrested in an apartment with slogans supporting bin Laden scrawled in sheep’s blood on a wall. Neighbors told a reporter that foreign fighters were threatening people who played Western music, styled their hair, wore revealing clothes, or even sold wood to contractors working for the Americans.
“Fallujah is controlled by two powers—the Americans and the muja-hedeen,” one Fallujan said after the raid. “If we cooperate with the mujahedeen, we get raided. If we cooperate with the Americans, we get killed.”
Some groups among the insurgents were becoming bolder, firing RPGs during the daytime from East Manhattan at Bradleys parked at the cloverleaf. More IEDs were being found inside the city than along the highways.
“We heard the Islamic fundamentalists were starting to taunt Saddam’s guys, saying the old army guys didn’t have the balls to take on the Americans,” Dudin said. “We saw changes in tactics.”
A Bradley came under fire as it passed an elementary school attended by the daughters of members of the FPAC. The insurgents kept running out from behind the school, firing a few bursts and ducking back again. The soldiers didn’t fire back. The next day Drinkwine conducted a two-company sweep from the cloverleaf on the eastern outskirts of the city. Within twenty minutes a white flare went off over the Blue Mosque where Janabi preached, about a kilometer west down Highway 10. Soon pickup trucks were darting out of alleyways, shooting at the paratroopers, and dodging back to cover. When the paratroopers moved forward, the insurgents moved back deeper into the city. Drinkwine declined to follow, seeing no gain in escalating a clash with excitable youths.
Such random fights were constant in Fallujah. Since August his soldiers had engaged in 262 firefights and come under rocket or mortar attack on sixty-one occasions. In addition, 270 IEDs had been detonated or disarmed, and there had been eight serious attacks against helicopters. Faced with such violence, Drinkwine and his brigade commander, Col Smith, preferred the scalpel of the night raid to the broadsword of the daytime sweep.
“The enemy [in Fallujah] is like a cancer,” Drinkwine said. “It has had thirty-five years to grow. When you have someone who has cancer, you go and carve out the heart of it. If you just turn away from it, it will continue to grow and it may grow back stronger.”
The opposition returned the sentiment, using the same analogy. “The occupation is like a cancer,” said Nadhim Khalil, a twenty-five-year-old Sunni cleric
The mid-January FPAC meeting seemed to go well. A torrent of complaints about American conduct and contracts not delivered poured forth, but there were no threats of violence. Drinkwine noticed that Janabi didn’t say a word. The meeting ended with the election of a council president, and a meeting was scheduled for the next month.
Two days later a mob gathered outside the mayor’s office at the Government Center to protest the election of the council. When the paratroopers were called to disperse them, a riot ensued and two Iraqis were killed.
“It’s great to be nice,” Drinkwine said. “But we’ve found out if you let up for one second against the bad guys, they’re right back at your throat.”
Drinkwine had tried political suasion and municipal improvement, but in the end it came back to raw military muscle. The battle lines were clear: it was the Americans against the insurgents.
The composition and leadership of the insurgents were changing. As the FREs weakened, Drinkwine received warnings that foreign fighters were infiltrating into the Jolan, including the arch-terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. From Fallujah, Zarqawi sent Osama bin Laden a letter in January asking for help in continuing the guerrilla war. On a night raid two Egyptians were arrested in an apartment with slogans supporting bin Laden scrawled in sheep’s blood on a wall. Neighbors told a reporter that foreign fighters were threatening people who played Western music, styled their hair, wore revealing clothes, or even sold wood to contractors working for the Americans.
“Fallujah is controlled by two powers—the Americans and the muja-hedeen,” one Fallujan said after the raid. “If we cooperate with the mujahedeen, we get raided. If we cooperate with the Americans, we get killed.”
Some groups among the insurgents were becoming bolder, firing RPGs during the daytime from East Manhattan at Bradleys parked at the cloverleaf. More IEDs were being found inside the city than along the highways.
“We heard the Islamic fundamentalists were starting to taunt Saddam’s guys, saying the old army guys didn’t have the balls to take on the Americans,” Dudin said. “We saw changes in tactics.”
A Bradley came under fire as it passed an elementary school attended by the daughters of members of the FPAC. The insurgents kept running out from behind the school, firing a few bursts and ducking back again. The soldiers didn’t fire back. The next day Drinkwine conducted a two-company sweep from the cloverleaf on the eastern outskirts of the city. Within twenty minutes a white flare went off over the Blue Mosque where Janabi preached, about a kilometer west down Highway 10. Soon pickup trucks were darting out of alleyways, shooting at the paratroopers, and dodging back to cover. When the paratroopers moved forward, the insurgents moved back deeper into the city. Drinkwine declined to follow, seeing no gain in escalating a clash with excitable youths.
Such random fights were constant in Fallujah. Since August his soldiers had engaged in 262 firefights and come under rocket or mortar attack on sixty-one occasions. In addition, 270 IEDs had been detonated or disarmed, and there had been eight serious attacks against helicopters. Faced with such violence, Drinkwine and his brigade commander, Col Smith, preferred the scalpel of the night raid to the broadsword of the daytime sweep.
“The enemy [in Fallujah] is like a cancer,” Drinkwine said. “It has had thirty-five years to grow. When you have someone who has cancer, you go and carve out the heart of it. If you just turn away from it, it will continue to grow and it may grow back stronger.”
The opposition returned the sentiment, using the same analogy. “The occupation is like a cancer,” said Nadhim Khalil, a twenty-five-year-old Sunni cleric
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