Al-Anbar Awakening

Volume I

American Perspectives

U.S. Marines and Counterinsurgency in

Iraq, 2004-2009

Edited by

Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler

U.S. Marine Corps Reserve

Marine Corps University

United States Marine Corps

Quantico, Virginia

2009
Marine Corps University Press

3078 Upshur Avenue

Quantico, VA

22134

1st Printing, 2009

PCN 10600001100
Al-Anbar Awakening

Volume I

American Perspectives

U.S. Marines and Counterinsurgency in Iraq

2004-2009

Edited by Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams and

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler

Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1

2004 • Marine Deployment to al-Anbar and . . . . . . . . . .18

the Rise of the Insurgency

Preparing for Counterinsurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Major General James N. Mattis

Commanding General, 1st Marine Division

U.S. Marine Security and Stabilization Operations . . . . 40

Lieutenant General James T. Conway

Commanding General, I MEF

The Indirect Approach: Engaging the Tribes . . . . . . . . . 60

Colonel Michael M. Walker

Commanding Officer, 3d Civil Affairs Group

Fallujah—The Epicenter of the Insurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Lieutenant General John F. Sattler

Commanding General, I MEF

Operation al-Fajr and the Return to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88

Security and Stabilization Operations

Major General Richard F. Natonski

Commanding General, 1st Marine Division
2005 • Stabilization and Elections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Major General Stephen T. Johnson

Commanding General, II MEF (Forward)

Setting the Conditions for a Turn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

Brigadier General James L. Williams

Assistant Commanding General, 2d Marine Division

Intelligence Assessment in Late 2005 and 2006 . . . . . 120

Major Alfred B. Connable

Foreign Area and Intelligence Fusion Officer

2006 • Counterinsurgency and the . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138

Roots of the Awakening

The Shift to Counterinsurgency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

Major General Richard C. Zilmer

Commanding General, I MEF (Forward)

Enabling the Awakening, Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152

Brigadier General David G. Reist

Deputy Commanding General, I MEF (Forward)

Enabling the Awakening, Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Brigadier General Robert B. Neller

Deputy Commanding General, I MEF (Forward)

Partnering with the Tribes in Ramadi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

Colonel Sean B. MacFarland, USA

Commanding Officer, 1st Brigade Combat Team,

1st Armored Division, U.S. Army

Counterinsurgency in Central Ramadi, Part I . . . . . . . . 186

Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jurney

Commanding Officer, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines

Counterinsurgency in Central Ramadi, Part II . . . . . . . 200

Major Daniel R. Zappa

Executive Officer, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines
2007 • The Awakening Turns the Tide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

Turning the Tide, Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

Major General Walter E. Gaskin Sr.

Commanding General, II MEF (Forward)

Turning the Tide, Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226

Major General John R. Allen

Deputy Commanding General, II MEF (Forward)

2008-2009 • Transition to Iraqi Control . . . . . . . . . . . . 238

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240

Major General John F. Kelly

Commanding General, I MEF (Forward)

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252

Major General Martin Post

Deputy Commanding General, I MEF (Forward)

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part III . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

Mr. James V. Soriano

Provincial Reconstruction Team Leader

U.S. Department of State

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part IV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284

Ms. Carol J. Wilson

Al-Anbar Provincial Representative

U.S. Agency for International Development

Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298

Foreword

by Lieutenant General John F. Kelly

Words like “won” or “victory” really do not apply when speaking

of counterinsurgency operations. Insurgencies grow from problems

and discontent within a given society. Solve the problems, and the

insurgency goes away, as opposed to being defeated. [e difficulty is

that a government is not always willing to address the root causes of

the insurgency because it is often the government itself that the

insurgents want to eliminate.

In Iraq to a very large degree,

we—the U.S. military and civilians—

were the source of the insurgency.

Honest men and women can argue

the whys, what-ifs, and what mighthave-beens, but ultimately, it was

mostly about unfulfilled promises

and the heavy-handed military

approach taken by some over the

summer of 2003 that caused events

to spiral out of control. No doubt the

insurgency radicalized over time with

al-Qaeda and Shi’a extremists

playing a key role, but the insurgents

did not initiate the war and only took

advantage of the discontent.

If you asked Anbaris during my third tour in Iraq in 2008 why

the insurgency began, most would look away and try to find a way not

to answer.[ey would tell you that “we are friends now, and the causes

are unimportant. It’s all water under the bridge now.” If pressed, they

would talk about mutual misunderstandings and a lack of cultural

awareness on both sides. [ey would say that expectations were too

high on the part of the Iraqis about what America could do for them

and how fast, but they seldom if ever blamed us directly. Press them

further and they would mention the 29 April 2003 “massacre” in

Fallujah, but more about the lack of an apology than the 70-plus

unarmed citizens allegedly shot that day.

vii
Another factor they would bring up was the shock and

humiliation of having their army disbanded. [e army was the one

institution in Iraq everyone was proud of—Shi’a and Sunni alike—

especially for what it had accomplished in protecting the nation against

the Iranians in the 1980s.[ey perceived the disbanding as intentional

contempt directed toward Iraq as a nation and as a people. [ey also

saw it as the disarming of the nation. In the minds of many, this is

when our status as liberators ended and that of occupier began.

Press the Anbaris one more time, and they would look you in the

eye—but only if you are considered a friend—and they would state

that after Baghdad fell and throughout the summer of 2003, the

Americans overreacted to small acts of resistance or violence and

fought in a way that was cowardly and without honor. Here they would

talk about the senseless use of firepower and midnight raids on

innocent men. [ey said that by our escalation, we proved true the

rhetoric of the nationalist firebrands about why we had invaded, and

our actions played directly into the hands of organizations like

Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq and Sadr’s militia.

Ask the same Anbari citizens why sometime in 2006 they began

to turn against the by-then al-Qaeda-led insurgency, and the answer

would be more direct. To them, their alliance with the radicals was a

marriage of convenience to fight the U.S. occupation. Al-Qaeda

brought dedication, organization, funding, and a willingness to die.

Over time, however, it overplayed its hand and wore out its welcome

by forcing an extreme Islamic agenda on a generally secular and very

tribal culture. Al-Qaeda’s campaign evolved from assistance, to

persuasion, to intimidation, to murder in the most horrific ways, all

designed to intimidate Anbari society—tribes and sheikhs alike—to

adopt the most extreme form of Islam. At a certain point, al-Qaeda’s

agenda became too much for the average Anbari to bear. It was

increasingly directed at the sheikhs themselves, and just as importantly,

it began to have an impact on the business interests of tribal leaders.

[e 17 paramount-dignified sheikhs of the major Anbari tribes

and tribal federation turned away from al-Qaeda for survival

purposes and toward U.S. forces for the same reason. [ey will tell

you that Iraqis were being hunted down and killed by both the

terrorists and the Coalition forces in Anbar. [ey knew the

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Al-Anbar Awakening
unbending terrorists would never meet them halfway, but they were

confident that the Americans would—and they were right. Many of

these men were once as much a part of the insurgency as Zarqawi

was, albeit for different reasons. Over time, it became glaringly

obvious to them that it was in their personal interests, and the

interests of their tribes, to put a stop to the war.

When I returned to Iraq in February 2008 as commander of I

Marine Expeditionary Force and Multi National Force-West (MNFW), I was amazed at what I found. Violent incidents, once over 400 a

week in al-Anbar Province, were down to 50 and had been in steady

decline for months. Where Iraqis once avoided us, as any interaction

jeopardized their lives and those of their families at the hands of alQaeda terrorists or nationalist insurgents, they were now aggressive in

wanting to engage with us. [ings had turned. [e obvious questions

were why had the change occurred, and was it sustainable, or was it

simply due to an operational pause in the insurgent’s effort? For months,

Major General Walt Gaskin and his superb II Marine Expeditionary

Force team, our immediate predecessors as MNF-W, had been wrestling

with the answers. [eir conclusions were ours to verify.

For MNF-W’s part, since March 2004 we had extended the hand

of friendship and cooperation, even as we were forced into a brutal

fight that knew no quarter on the part of the Iraqi insurgents and

foreign fighters. It was the major theme of our campaign plan, and it

never changed. [e command philosophy, a philosophy programmed

into every Marine and U.S. Army unit that served in al-Anbar since we

took the province, was that we had come to Iraq not to conquer, but

to free, that we would always endeavor to “first, do not harm.”[is was

often difficult, and sometimes you simply had to do a Fallujah II, even

if Fallujah I had been ill-advised and totally counterproductive to what

you were trying to do in the first place.

No single personality was the key in Anbar, no shiny new field

manual the reason why, and no “surge” or single unit made it happen.

It was a combination of many factors, not the least of which—perhaps

the most important—was the consistent command philosophy that

drove operations in Anbar from March 2004 forward. Each MNF-W

commander and the troops under him continued to build upon the

work of all those who came before.[ey took what their predecessors

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American Perspectives
had done and ran with it, calling audibles as opportunities presented

themselves. Consistency counts, and persistent presence on your feet

puts you in more danger, no doubt, but also stacks the deck in your

favor as you see more, hear more, know more, and engage more. It is

these Americans—Marines, soldiers, sailors, and airmen, as well as

civilians—who deserve the individual and collective credit for our part

in the miracle that took place in al-Anbar Province.[ey slogged it out

for more than six years to help the Anbaris create a miracle that spread

to other regions of the country in late 2007, throughout 2008, and now

into 2009.

I urge a note of caution to those who might have an overly inflated

opinion of the role they played in the Awakening, or to the “experts”

who write today as if they, with complete clairvoyance, predicted the

change in loyalties in al-Anbar. [e sheikhs, politicians, Iraqi security

force officials, and even the former Ba’athist members of the military

who reside in Anbar have a different opinion.[ey will tell you it was

the sense of hopelessness the war had brought to the citizenry. [e

only hope for the future they could see was to be found in what

members of MNF-W had done and were doing on their behalf despite

the heat, the criticism from home, and the killing and casualties.[ey

began to see us as a force that was sharing in their agony. Once they

tried reaching out to some soldier or Marine’s outstretched hand in

friendship, it was over.

[e interviews collected in the two volumes of this anthology do

what no previous work has done—they attempt to tell the story of the

al-Anbar Awakening from both sides, American and Iraqi. Not all the

voices could be included, but there are many pertinent ones.[e story

they tell is a complex but important one, and it should be read with

interest by all who want to truly understand what happened in Iraq

between 2004 and 2009.

John F. Kelly

Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps

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Al-Anbar Awakening
Preface

[is two-volume anthology of interviews tells the story of the

al-Anbar Awakening and the emergence of al-Anbar Province from

the throes of insurgency. It presents the perspectives of both Iraqis

(volume two) and Americans (volume one) who ultimately came to

work together, in an unlikely alliance of former adversaries, for the

stabilization and redevelopment of the province. [e collection

begins in the 2003-2004 time frame with the rise of the insurgency

and concludes with observations from the vantage point of earlyto-mid 2009.

[e anthology demonstrates that there is not one history of the

Awakening, but several histories intertwined. It is not a complete

collection, but one that provides a broad spectrum of candid,

unvarnished perspectives from some of the leading players.

[e American volume focuses on the roles and views of U.S.

Marines, who were the primary Coalition force in al-Anbar from

spring 2004 onward. At the time of their arrival, many military experts

considered the province irredeemable. [is collection chronicles the

efforts of the Marines, and the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and civilians

who worked with them, to consistently employ counterinsurgency

tactics and to continue to reach out to the Iraqis during even the

darkest days of the insurgency.

[e Iraqi volume collects from many of the key Awakening

players their views on how and why Anbaris came to turn against the

insurgency that many had initially supported and seek the aid—both

military and economic—of the Americans.[ose interviewed include

former Ba’ath Party military officers, senior officers in Iraq’s new

military, tribal sheikhs, Sunni imams, governmental representatives,

and civilians.

[is anthology is drawn from oral history interviews collected by

field historians of the U.S. Marine Corps History Division, based at

Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia. Field historians

assigned to the History Division have collected hundreds of interviews

since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom I to serve as primary

resources for future scholarship. In support of this anthology project,

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American Perspectives
Colonel Gary W. Montgomery and Chief Warrant Office-4 Timothy

S. McWilliams deployed to Iraq in February and March of 2009 to

interview Iraqis and additional American military and civilian

personnel. Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler had conducted more

than 400 interviews in earlier deployments.

Like courtroom testimonies, oral histories are told from one

person’s perspective and may include discrepancies with, or even

contradictions of, another witness’s views. [ey are not a complete

history, but they provide the outlines for one, to be fleshed out with

documents and other sources not often collected or declassified this

soon after events.

[e interviews in this collection are edited excerpts drawn from

longer interviews.[ey have been transcribed and edited according to

scholarly standards to maintain the integrity of the interviews. Only

interjections, false starts, and profanity have been silently omitted.

Details added for clarity and accuracy are indicated by brackets.

Omissions are noted by three-dot ellipses for partial sentences and

four-dot ellipses for full sentences or more. With the Iraqi interviews,

the interchange with interpreters has been omitted except in a few

cases where the interpreter is attempting to clarify a point. Much of

what has been left out of the American interviews is material that is

duplicated in other interviews in the anthology.[e full interviews and

complete transcripts are part of the oral history collection of the

Marine Corps History Division.

Ranks of officers, particularly American officers, reflect the rank at

the time of the deployment under discussion. We have not tried to insert

“then”in front of the ranks of all officers who have since been promoted.

We have attempted to verify the Iraqi person, place, and tribe names

as best as possible, but undoubtedly there are several discrepancies,

particularly in the Iraqi volume, where language barriers, dialects, the

use of interpreters, and the mentions of many minor actors and areas

made accurate transcription and identification challenging. [ere are

also many variations in the transliteration of Iraqi names and terms.

* * *

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Al-Anbar Awakening
[e editors of this anthology acknowledge and thank a wide array

of people for their support on this project. First and foremost, we thank

the people whose stories are included for their time and candor. We

particularly acknowledge Lieutenant General John F. Kelly, who wrote

the foreword and who expedited the 2009 deployment of Colonel

Montgomery and Chief Warrant Officer-4 McWilliams. In addition

to the editors, those who conducted interviews included in the

anthology are Colonel Jeffrey Acosta, Colonel Stephen E. Motsco,

Colonel Michael D. Visconage, Lieutenant Colonel Craig H. Covert,

Lieutenant Colonel John P. Piedmont, Lieutenant Colonel John R.

Way, Staff Sergeant Bradford A. Wineman, Dr. David B. Crist, and

Dr. Charles P. Neimeyer.

Dr. Neimeyer, director of the History Division; Mr. Charles D.

Melson, chief historian; and Dr. Nathan S. Lowery, Field History

branch head, provided guidance for the project. Mr. Kenneth H.

Williams, senior editor for both the History Division and Marine

Corps University Press, oversaw the editing and publication, assisted

in the editing by Ms. Wanda J. Renfrow. Mr. Vincent J. Martinez

provided layout and design for both volumes. Mr. Anthony R.

Taglianetti, the History Division’s oral historian, coordinated the timely

transcription of the interviews. Lieutenant Colonel David A. Benhoff

and Gunnery Sergeant Michael C. Coachman provided logistical

support. Dr. Nicholas J. Schlosser, History Division historian, and Mr.

Colin M. Colbourn, History Division intern, helped verify information.

Beyond the History Division, we are especially grateful to the

interpreters.[ose currently working in Iraq shall remain anonymous

because of the inherent vulnerabilities peculiar to their vocation.

Sometimes underappreciated and often overworked, their knowledge

and perseverance was absolutely essential to our effort.

Many others labored to bring this project to fruition. [ose who

work outside of the normal publishing process are listed below. If we

omitted anyone, it was inadvertent and not from lack of gratitude.

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Multi National Forces-West):

Lieutenant Colonel Bradley E. Weisz (G-3 Air Officer);

Lieutenant Colonel Todd W. Lyons (G-9 Foreign Affairs

Officer/Marine Corps Intelligence Activity); Major Adam T.

Strickland (Engagement Officer); 1st Lieutenant Timothy J.

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American Perspectives
Malham (Economic and Political Intelligence Center);

Sergeant Luke O. Vancleave (Economic and Political

Intelligence Center); Corporal Travis L. Helm (Economic

and Political Intelligence Center); Corporal Lamont J. Lum

(Economic and Political Intelligence Center); Lance Corporal

Cassidy C. Niblett (Economic and Political Intelligence

Center); Lance Corporal Orell D. Fisher (Economic and

Political Intelligence Center).

II Marine Expeditionary Force: Colonel Robert W. Lanham

(G-9 Assistant Chief of Staff ); Lieutenant Colonel Bowen

Richwine (G-9 Engagements OIC); Major Steven K.

Barriger (G-9 Governance); 2d Lieutenant Anthony M.

Bramante (Economic and Political Intelligence Center); Staff

Sergeant William J. Rickards (G-9 Support); Sergeant Robert

A. Pittenridge (G-9 Governance); Lance Corporal [omas

P. Wiltshire (Combat Camera); “Jack” Mahmood S. AlJumaily (Interpreter); Mythm Hassin (Interpreter).

Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, Quantico:

Mr. Richard C. McPherson; Ms. Basema Maki (Interpreter);

Mr. Hamid Lellou (Interpreter).

Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, Quantico: Colonel Philip

D. Gentile (Commanding Officer); Mr. Dan J. Darling

([reat Analyst).

U.S. Marine Corps MARCENT LNO Cell, Kuwait: Gunnery

Sergeant John M. Neatherton.

Marine Air-Ground Combat Training Center, Twentynine

Palms, California: Staff Sergeant Michael A. Blaha (Combat

Camera); Lance Corporal Ricky J. Holt (Combat Camera).

Marine Corps Base, Camp Pendleton, California: Captain

Scott M. Clendaniel (Aide to General Kelly); Sergeant Eric

L. Alabiso II (Combat Camera).

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Al-Anbar Awakening
xv

American Perspectives
xvi
Introduction

“If you help me get rid of those who mean me harm, then you’re

obviously my friend,” a sheikh in al-Anbar Province told U.S. Marine

Major General Walter E. Gaskin Sr. in 2007. “If you fight along with

me and shed your blood, you’re my brother.”1 A year later, the

Americans returned al-Anbar to provincial Iraqi control and turned

over Camp Fallujah to Iraqi forces.

Such a return of relative stability

to al-Anbar Province seemed

unthinkable in the midst of the 2004

urban battles in Fallujah, the

sustained insurgency of 2005, and the

rising violence in 2006 and early

2007. [is two-volume oral history

collection offers firsthand perspectives

from many of the primary actors, both

American and Iraqi, who worked

together to accomplish this unlikely

transformation.

[e pivotal realignment that

shaped the future of western Iraq for

its residents and for Americans

serving there was the Sahawa alAnbar, or al-Anbar Awakening.[is indigenous movement to partner

with U.S. forces to rid the region of al-Qaeda in Iraq grew over time

from multiple sources, coalesced in mid-2006, and blossomed in 2007.

[e Iraqi origins of the Awakening are captured in the second volume

of this collection, while the efforts of Americans in al-Anbar, primarily

U.S. Marines, to establish conditions conducive to such a shift are

chronicled here in the first.

Marines and their Coalition partners in al-Anbar developed and

persistently employed a strategy that that grew from the doctrinal

seeds of the Small Wars Manual and from the Marines’ 2003

1

1. MajGen Walter E. Gaskin Sr. intvw, 11Jan08, Marine Corps Historical Center, Quantico, VA

(hereafter MCHC).
experiences in Baghdad, Tikrit, and southern Iraq following the fall

of Baghdad. [at strategy, now preserved in Marine Corps

Warfighting Publication 3-33.5 (Army Field Manual 3-24)

Counterinsurgency, included proactive engagement of sheikhs and local

leaders, respectful treatment of the populace, and sustained efforts to

restore essential services and infrastructure. By working to reestablish

local governance and by devoting extensive resources to build Iraqi

security forces, the Marines sought to demonstrate that they did not

seek to become a long-term occupation force. At the same time, by

pursuing opportunities to provide humanitarian aid, developing ties

at the neighborhood level through active patrolling, and recognizing

the role of traditional leaders, the Marines forged relationships that

would pay dividends in 2006-2007.

[e parallel challenge amid all of these “nonkinetic” approaches

was to eradicate the foreign Islamist fighters and domestic insurgents

who could not be convinced to lay down their arms—the

“irreconcilables,” as they came to be described. [is task was essential

to create the security and stability that would allow other elements of

the plan to succeed. Underlying all of these actions was a foundation

of information operations to communicate Coalition intentions.

[e path to counterinsurgency success was not straight or smooth.

[e initial choice of many Sunni tribes and nationalist insurgents to

partner with al-Qaeda in Iraq enormously complicated efforts to

separate insurgents from the population. [e Coalition Provisional

Authority’s decision to disband the Iraqi military and conduct deBa’athification in 2003 was especially disruptive to al-Anbar Province

given the concentration of Sunni military officers and former regime

members there. Errors by some Coalition forces that included cultural

insensitivity and heavy-handed responses combined with widespread

attention on stories such as the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuses to help

fuel the insurgency and its information operations. [e April 2004

orders from higher headquarters to conduct Operation Vigilant

Resolve in Fallujah ran counter to the Marines’ plan, while initiatives

such as the summer 2004 overture to engage insurgent leaders went

unsupported. Al-Qaeda in Iraq’s February 2006 bombing of the

Golden Mosque in Samarra ignited Sunni-Shi’a strife that

undermined progress across Iraq. Although there was no sectarian

2

Al-Anbar Awakening
infighting in al-Anbar, developments such as these delayed Coalition

efforts to build trust and partnerships with Iraqis both in al-Anbar

and across the country.

2003 Actions and Their Impact

I Marine Expeditionary Force began its efforts toward

relationship-building even in the midst of Operation Iraqi Freedom I.

[e decision to establish a civil-military operations center immediately

after the fall of Baghdad to coordinate restoring essential services

demonstrated an underlying belief in the military value of winning the

peoples’ support. Marines employed the same approach in the

unwelcoming environment of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, as

the Marines of Task Force Tripoli moved northward to conduct

security and stability operations in April 2003.[e task force placed an

early emphasis on meeting humanitarian needs, such as providing

fresh water, and on engaging local leaders.

[at combination was replicated by all of I Marine Expeditionary

Force as it moved into a dramatically different environment, taking

over security operations in southern Iraq later that month. In this

predominantly Shi’a region encompassing seven provinces (nearly half

of the country), the security situation was largely positive in the

aftermath of the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni Ba’athist regime.

Brigadier General John F. Kelly, assistant 1st Marine Division

commander, recalled that “we took advantage of this lull without

realizing we were doing it. And you know the division’s motto, ‘no

better friend, no worse enemy,’ worked out for us very, very well.”2

A key theme dating back to 2003 was a determined effort by

Marines to build capacity for local control and to develop relationships

with Iraqis that defied the image of “occupier.” [e most kinetic

portion of the Marine expeditionary force’s new zone was in northern

Babil Province, which included a significant insurgent presence. It was

there that the Marines learned how to balance the iron fist of targeted

operations with the velvet glove of civil affairs and engagement. Task

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American Perspectives

2 BGen John F. Kelly intvw, 31Mar04 (MCHC).
Force Scorpion, built around the nucleus of the 4th Light Armored

Reconnaissance Battalion (reinforced), proved equally adept at

tracking down improvised explosive device makers and reaching out to

local sheikhs and imams. [is formula worked, as incident levels

dropped to near zero by the end of July and stayed at that level until I

Marine Expeditionary Force turned the sector over to the Army’s 82d

Airborne Division in September 2003.

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Al-Anbar Awakening
Returning to Iraq—The Plan for al-Anbar

As the Marines of I Marine Expeditionary Force prepared to

return to Iraq in 2004, their leaders sought to apply the lessons of their

2003 experiences while also recognizing that they would be in a more

hostile environment. “We thought that would be different in alAnbar,” recalled Lieutenant General James T. Conway, who was

commander of I Marine Expeditionary Force at the time. “It was a

different sect of the population,” and the people were “much more

unsettled, unhappy with the scheme of things.”According to Conway,

“We went back to the Small Wars Manual for our initial doctrinal

guidance. When we had conducted operations in the south, it seemed

pretty valid to us, and we thought that we could do a continuation of

the same type of thing in the al-Anbar Province.”[ey knew that the

challenge “would be tough, we acknowledged that, but we really

thought that, in time, those principles . . . would still be applicable.”3

Prior to the return of 1st Marine Division to Iraq for Operation

Iraqi Freedom II (2004-2005), Major General James N. Mattis, the

division commander, sought to create an approach to guide his troops’

actions. Recognizing that the key terrain in any insurgency is the

population, Mattis and his staff began by assessing the demographics

of al-Anbar Province. Taking into account the cultural differences in

western Iraq in contrast to the Marines’ 2003 experiences in

predominantly Shi’a southern Iraq, they identified three key groups:

the tribes; former regime elements; and foreign fighters. Each of these

groups required a different set of approaches.

[e tribes, which made up the largest group, were guided by a

network of sheikhs and elders. Success in undermining support for the

insurgency within this core group would take not only enhanced

security to allow economic development and restoration of services,

but also engagement with traditional leaders. Former regime elements,

a smaller but influential group, consisted of prior military and civil

leaders with ties to the Ba’ath Party who sought a restoration of the old

order. Some within this group could be converted to support the

Coalition by appealing to their self-interests. Others would have to be

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American Perspectives

3. LtGen James T. Conway intvw, 21 June/7 July 2005 (MCHC).
defeated militarily.[e final group consisted largely of foreign fighters

with Islamist goals. [e only effective approach for this most extreme

and dangerous minority was eradication. [e presence of purely

criminal elements within all three cohorts further complicated

planning and implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy.

1st Marine Division’s operational design for Operation Iraqi Freedom II

Interviews with Marine leaders at all levels from 2004 on reveals

the integrated application of the principles described within this

overarching plan. Posters summarizing the core philosophies of the

approach hung in virtually every command post across Iraq. Mantras

such as “first do no harm”and “no better friend, no worse enemy”were

ingrained from the Marine expeditionary force staff to the fire team

level. Given the diverse and decentralized nature of the western Iraq

battlefield, the commitment to these core beliefs was noteworthy.

[e Marines saw that the greatest challenge to their overarching

strategy was the persistent level of violence and insecurity. Without

stability, it was virtually impossible to create jobs and economic

opportunities, which were key components for winning over the

population.

6

Al-Anbar Awakening
2004—Fallujah I and Its Impact

[e Blackwater USA murders on 31 March 2004 and their

aftermath waylaid the Marines’ operational plan. General Conway

soon saw that “decision makers in Baghdad were being heavily

influenced by public perception.” His plea to higher headquarter to

“not overreact to this” went unheeded, and the increasing pressure

resulted in the Marines’ plan being set aside in favor of Operation

Vigilant Resolve, which Coalition forces mounted in April 2004 to

clear insurgents from Fallujah.4

Although ordered in against the Marines commanders’ better

judgment, the “troops made great progress,”according to Conway.“[e

snipers owned the streets, and . . . we were getting intercepts that they

were about to run out of ammunition. We had killed a significant

portion of the leadership, the rest were confused . . . arguing among

themselves in terms of what they needed to do.” What the insurgents

did have going for them, however, was information operations, and

soon Al Jazzera and others were erroneously reporting heavy civilian

casualties in Fallujah, stories that many Western media outlets picked

up. Despite Conway’s message to higher headquarters that “we can

give you the city in three more days,” the Marines received orders to

call off the attack.5

While the first battle of Fallujah hampered the Marines’ efforts

to directly implement their plans to engage the Anbaris, Colonel

Michael M. Walker, commanding officer of 3d Civil Affairs Group,

cites this period as yielding the first engagements that helped lay the

groundwork for the Awakening. At a conference in Amman, Jordan,

in July 2004 with many Iraqi business and tribal leaders, a Japanese

investment banker told this group that “you can trust the Americans.

When they say they’ll work with you, they mean they’ll work with you.

[ey don’t lie.[ey helped rebuild my country.”Walker observed that

among the Iraqis,“All of a sudden, the lights were going on that maybe

the road out of this thing is with the Americans instead of with alQaeda”6 [e concept did not find fertile ground with the diplomatic

7

American Perspectives

4. Conway intvw.

5. Conway intvw.

6. Col Michael M. Walker intvw, 24Mar09 (MCHC).
and political leadership in Iraq at time, however, and there would be

many more months of fighting, but a seed had been planted with an

influential audience.

Fallujah II—Operation al-Fajr

[e abandoned assault in April led to the establishment of an

insurgent stronghold in Fallujah, which could no longer be ignored by

the fall of 2004. [e operation to clear the city, initially named

Phantom Fury, was changed to al-Fajr by Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad

Allawi shortly before the battle. Al-Fajr translates as “the dawn,” or

“the new beginning.”7 Al-Fajr tied directly into the Marines’

counterinsurgency plan by destroying the most committed insurgent

elements—those who could never be won over by other means—and

by paving the way for improved security and economic opportunity

for the majority of the population.

Even in the heat of the most intense combat of the Iraq War, the

Marines were mindful of the implications of civil-military operations

for the long-term success of the operation. Lieutenant General John

F. Sattler, commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force

during the battle, recounted that “we were phase-four oriented before

we went across the line of departure.”8 [is focus on civil-military

operations at the highest levels went hand in hand with the tenacity

and tactical success of the combat forces. While the civil affairs

operations helped to deny the enemy the human terrain, the seizure of

the city denied the insurgents a physical safe haven. Fallujah, explained

Major General Richard F. Natonski, commander of 1st Marine

Division during the operation, “offered the insurgents the ability to

rest, rearm, refit, plan, and then go out and launch their attacks and

then come back to a secure environment.” It was essentially a forward

operating base for them. “By taking down Fallujah,” according to

Natonski, the Marines denied “a sanctuary for the insurgents.”9 [e

operation also revealed more about the barbarism of some elements of the

8

Al-Anbar Awakening

7. LtGen John F. Sattler intvw, 8Apr05 (MCHC).

8. Ibid.

9. MGen Richard F. Natonski intvw, 16Mar05 (MCHC).
insurgency, the types of things that would ultimately lead the population

of al-Anbar to turn away from the savagery of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

[e brutal tactics of the insurgents created an opening for Marine

civil affairs operations.[e contrast between the actions of al-Qaeda’s

foreign fighters in Fallujah and the Marines’ and the willingness to

help the Fallujhans opened a fissure that would be exploited during

the Awakening. As combat forces reached the southern side of the city,

the Marines began the removal of rubble, bodies, and unexploded

ordinance and took the first steps to restore water and other public

works while other units were still conducting clearing operations. It

would be weeks before the city could be systematically reopened for

citizens to return. When they did, the Marines were ready to extend a

hand with aid, including cash payments to help repair damages.10

2005—Elections, Named Operations, and

Tribal Success in al-Qaim

While 2004 was dominated by events in Fallujah, efforts in 2005

centered on the October constitutional referendum and the December

national elections. In contrast to the 3,700 votes cast in al-Anbar

during January 2005 for the Provincial Council, approximately

500,000 Anbaris voted in the December elections, an exponential

turnaround in less than a year.11

While preparing for the elections, II Marine Expeditionary Force

also conducted direct action against insurgent forces. In western alAnbar, the Marines undertook eleven named operations, including

Matador, Iron Fist, and Steel Curtain, from May to December 2005.

[e purpose of these operations was to drive al-Qaeda fighters from

the western Euphrates River Valley and deny them that terrain as a

place from which they could operate freely.12

Colonel Stephen W. Davis, commander of Regimental Combat

Team 2 (RCT-2) during 2005, noted the challenge that his small force

9

American Perspectives

10. Ibid. 11. BGen Charles S. Patton intvw , 25Jan06 (MCHC). 12. MGen Stephen T. Johnson intvw, 26Jan06 (MCHC).
faced in an area of operations the size of South Carolina, observing

that “we like to say [that] this is an RCT with a division mission in a

MEF-plus battlespace.”13 In al-Qaim region, Davis and his Marines

found that the foreign al-Qaeda fighters had “come here to kill

Americans, so they’re not doing anything for Iraq.” [e nationalist

insurgents were “fighting for Iraq, they’re fighting for themselves,

they’re fighting for their families, for their tribes.” [ey’re not

necessarily fighting for the Jihad, and that’s where this big schism

comes in.”14 Coalition forces would ultimately exploit that gap between

the Iraqis and al-Qaeda by appealing to the self-interest of the

indigenous Iraqis.Tactical successes cemented the status of the Marine

Corps as the “most powerful tribe in al-Anbar,” a point that was not

lost on the province’s traditional leaders. Simultaneously, al-Qaeda’s

interference with western Iraq’s ages-old and highly lucrative

smuggling business contributed to the growing gap between al-Qaeda

in Iraq and the Anbaris.

In addition to the success of Marine-driven combat operations,

gradual progress continued with the development of Iraqi security

forces. Iraqi and Coalition forces proved to be most effective in

tandem. Coalition forces made the Iraqis more effective operationally,

and the Iraqis provided cultural savvy to help separate insurgents from

the population. By the end of 2005, the combination of military

effectiveness, Iraqi security force development, and engagement of

local leaders was emerging as the formula for long-term success.

It was not always possible to see the significance of events as they

occurred. Commanders during 2006 were able to look back on the

actions of their predecessors in 2005 and see the foundations that had

been built. Lieutenant Colonel Scott C. Shuster, commander of 3d

Battalion, 4th Marines, was quick to give credit for the improved

environment in the al-Qaim region during late 2006 to the effective

engagement of the Abu Mahal tribe by his predecessors.“Just prior to

Steel Curtain,”Shuster recounted,“the internal and external insurgents

had a showdown, the external insurgents essentially won, and the

internal insurgents decided that they would ally with Coalition forces

10

Al-Anbar Awakening

13.Col Stephen W. Davis intvw, 20May05 (MCHC).

14. Ibid.
to push the external insurgents out and then cooperate [with us] for a

stable area.”15 [e significance of these events, which paralleled later

actions in Ramadi, may not have been apparent in 2005, but they stood

out by 2006 when the strategy of “clear, hold, build” had clearly taken

root in al-Qaim.

State of Affairs in 2006

While tribal cooperation and the named operations during 2005

enhanced security in the western part of al-Anbar, and the situation

in Fallujah had improved following al-Fajr, much of the province

remained gripped by violence and insurgent activity. [is state of

affairs was captured in a briefing prepared by the I Marine

Expeditionary Force Intelligence Officer, Colonel Peter H. Devlin,

for Joint Chiefs Chairman General Peter Pace, who visited al-Anbar

in August 2006. As Devlin recounted, “ I just wanted to tell him

precisely what’s going on here in Anbar Province regarding what the

insurgency was and why our incident levels had increased.” [e

briefing sought to explain the paradox of progress amidst some of

the highest levels of violence of the entire war.16

Brigadier General Robert B. Neller, I Marine Expeditionary Force

deputy commanding general for operations, observed, “We have killed

a very substantial number of these guys, and yet the level of attacks has

continued to go up. So we can attribute that to the fact that we’ve gone

in areas where we weren’t located before and we’ve dispersed the force

and we’ve got more surfaces for them to contact against.”17 Anticipating

follow-up questions from General Pace or others, Colonel Devlin

collaborated with Major Alfred B.“Ben”Connable at the Marine Corps

Intelligence Activity to expand the briefing into a more detailed

assessment of the situation as of August 2006. [e classified report,

portions of which were leaked to the media once it reached

Washington, depicted al-Qaeda in Iraq at the height of its power.18[e

irony was that, at the moment the situation looked most bleak, just as

11

American Perspectives

15.LtCol Scott C. Shuster intvw, 28Dec2006 (MCHC).

16.Col Peter H. Devlin intvw, 31Jan07 (MCHC).

17.BGen Robert B. Neller intvw, 23Jan07 (MCHC).

18.Devlin intvw.
much of the media and political leaders in Washington were ready to

abandon al-Anbar and Iraq as lost causes, three years of investment by

Marines and their Coalition partners were about to pay off.

Onset of the Awakening

In September 2006, Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha announced

the formation of a tribal movement, the Sahawa al-Anbar, or al-Anbar

Awakening. Frustrated with the extremism of al-Qaeda in Iraq and its

disregard for the traditions and leadership of the Anbar tribes, Sheikh

Sattar and his allies began to target al-Qaeda militants in their area and

cooperate with Coalition forces. [e tribes’ most influential role was

encouraging their military-age males to volunteer for the Iraqi police.

[e movement grew steadily, first in the Ramadi area where it began,

and then in other parts of the province. Unlike the largely localized

2005 effort of the Abu Mahal tribe in al-Qaim, the Awakening

became a province-wide phenomenon.

Colonel Sean B. MacFarland, USA, commander of the 1st Brigade

Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, in Ramadi, described the

accelerating pace of change in a December 2006 interview.“One by one,

the local tribes are beginning to flip from either hostile to neutral or

neutral to friendly,” he observed. “[at’s been probably one of the most

decisive aspects of what we’ve done here, is bringing those tribes onto

our side of the fence.” MacFarland noted the impact of tribal

cooperation on recruiting for the Iraqi police. With the blessing of local

sheikhs, monthly volunteer totals went from 20 or 30 per month to

several hundred.19 With those additional forces,“inkblots”of stability, in

the form of combat outposts or security stations, soon spread across

Ramadi as the strategy of “clear, hold, build” was implemented.

At the heart of that effort in central Ramadi during the winter of

2006-2007 was 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. Commanding officer

Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jurney described the battalion’s focus

in terms that paralleled the key themes of the Marines’ campaign plan

developed three years earlier.“We focused on . . . three lines of operations

12

Al-Anbar Awakening

19.Col Sean B. MacFarland, USA, intvw, 13Dec06 (MCHC).
in our battalion. First and foremost is to neutralize those criminal and

terrorist threats that would choose to do us harm.” [e second was on

employing Iraqi security forces, and the third was civil affairs operations,

to bring “life back to a sense of normalcy.” One distinction that Jurney

noted was the battalion’s belief that “clear, hold, build” were not

sequential, but concurrent efforts, with civil-military operations to build

in one area setting the conditions to clear the next, and combined U.S.-

Iraqi efforts to hold neighborhoods influencing both.20

While most attention during the Awakening period focused on

the Ramadi area, the Marines and their Coalition partners were

applying the same fundamentals across al-Anbar. [e Regimental

Combat Team 5 commander, Colonel Lawrence D. Nicholson,

observed of the collaboration in Fallujah that it was “quite a sight to see

Iraqi police, Iraqi army, Marine planners hovering over a map, looking

at intelligence, looking at names, comparing notes.” Like many other

commanders, Nicholson understood that the battle in al-Anbar was

one the Marines would not win directly. “Victory” would come when

the Anbaris were willing and able to win the fight themselves. He

emphasized the role of engagement, even with former adversaries,

noting that “I’ve met with resistance leaders, I’ve met with guys who

said, ‘Hey, I was fighting you for two years. Now . . . we’re fighting [alQaeda].’”In addition to engagement, Nicholson emphasized the impact

of civil-military operations, reminding his troops to “treat everyone with

dignity and respect, and we’ll get a dividend from that.”21

Engagement and Economic

Development in 2006

While the focus of the Awakening was on the tribes, Marine

leaders at all levels continued to balance engagement with the tribes

and support for the elected governments. Major General Richard C.

Zilmer, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) commander during

2006, described efforts to support both traditional and newly elected

leaders, noting that “to make those city councils, provincial councils .

13

American Perspectives

20.LtCol William M. Jurney intvw, 17Feb07 (MCHC).

21.Col Lawrence D. Nicholson interview, 3Jan07 (MCHC).
. . successful, there’s going to have to be a strong buy-in from the tribal

sheikhs, because that is the custom. . . . [e most important social

feature, I think, of the Anbar people, is that tribal sheikh relationship,

and I think we had to learn that.”22

A vital component of the tribes’ engagement was the ability to

promote enlistment in the Iraqi security forces. As Brigadier General

Neller observed, “We’ve had really great success with the police out

west and now with the police in Ramadi because of tribal engagement

and civic support.”23 During I Marine Expeditionary Force’s year in

theater, the number of Iraqi police in al-Anbar grew from 2,000 to

13,000, the maximum authorized at the time. Combined with two

increasingly effective Iraqi army divisions, these police forces not only

had a direct impact on stability and security, but they led to an

improved flow of reporting from the populace to enable targeting of

remaining insurgents. Al-Anbar Province was rapidly becoming an

inhospitable environment for the insurgents who had destabilized the

region since 2003.

While General Neller focused on security operations for Multi

National Force-West, his counterpart, Brigadier General David G. Reist,

pursued economic development opportunities. Whether meeting with

Iraqi expatriots in Amman, Jordan, and beyond or helping Governor

Mamoon San Rashid al-Alwani obtain funding from the central

government, he fought to resuscitate the Anbar economy. General Reist

noted in early January 2007 that “the governor just . . . got his first

allocation of reconstruction dollars from the federal government, and it

equated to just under 40 million dollars. . . . Projects are starting as he

distributes that money to his mayors.”[e synergistic impact of creating

jobs, improving security, and undermining support for the insurgency

envisioned in 2003 was becoming a reality by early 2007.24

Capitalizing on Success in 2007-2008

As anti-Coalition incident rates dropped from 300 to 400 per week

in early 2007 to near zero by spring, II Marine Expeditionary Force

14

Al-Anbar Awakening

22. MajGen Richard C. Zilmer intvw, 3Jan07 (MCHC). 23. Neller intvw. 24. BGen David G. Reist intvw, 3Jan07 (MCHC).
had to move quickly to satisfy the emerging desire for self-government

and economic opportunities. Just as tribal leaders had helped to improve

the security situation, their influence also played a role in enabling U.S.

efforts to improve the economy. Sheikhs urged their followers to

capitalize on American efforts to help rebuild during the window of

time that remained and noted that attacking U.S. forces and contractors

would undermine those efforts. Major General John R. Allen explained

the key to understanding that dynamic: “Tribes and tribal leaders and

sheikhs are all guided by self interest. Not selfish, necessarily, but self

interest. . . . It is the nature of Arab tribes that sheikhs are concerned

about the interests of their people.”25

[e 2007 “surge” improved the security situation across Iraq by

giving the Iraqi government and security forces room to consolidate

their gains. Major General Gaskin, commander of II Marine

Expeditionary Force, described the shift in the al-Anbar security

situation early in his tour as surge forces arrived in theater. “What

really grabbed us is that as we were able to take the population centers

back,” he said. “[e incidents, whether it be IEDs [improvised

explosive devices], small-arms fire, indirect fire, dropped

precipitously.”[e Coalition consolidated those gains by backfilling

the secured areas with Iraqi police, who had familiarity with their

communities and could leverage loyalty from local citizens that

Coalition forces could not. Suddenly, al-Qaeda’s ability to stifle

cooperation through intimidation and murder was eliminated. [e

police were instrumental in separating the insurgents from the

population, a central principle of effective counterinsurgencies. [e

police grew not only in effectiveness, but also in numbers, increasing

from about 11,000 to 24,000 during 2007 and serving in every

population center in the province.26

By 2008, al-Anbar was also able to leverage two greatly improved

Iraqi army divisions. After years of investment in them by military

transition teams, the 1st and 7th Iraqi Divisions demonstrated their

readiness during a short-notice deployment to Basrah to restore order

there. [e improved state of the Iraqi security forces and the

15

American Perspectives

25. MGen John R. Allen intvw, 27Jun07 (MCHC). 26. Gaskin intvw.
dramatically better stability allowed reductions in Coalition forces

no one would have thought possible two years earlier.27

John F. Kelly, who had been promoted to major general,

commanded I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) during 2008.

Looking back on his multiple tours, he noted the sustained

commitment of Marine forces to the phrases emphasized by General

Mattis, “no better friend, no worse enemy,” and “first, do no harm.”

Kelly recalled that “the sheikhs would tell me that ‘in spite of the fact

that we were killing you guys . . . you were still trying to force us to

work with you.’”28 [at commitment to engagement paid dividends

throughout the war.

Major Adam T. Strickland, who served as General Kelly’s

engagement officer from December 2007 to December 2008, related

that “our motto was, ‘[ere are no good and bad people.[ere are just

self-interested people.’ So individuals chose courses of action in the

past because they thought it was in their best interest. Now, we hope

to show them that regardless of what they’ve done in the past, [through

reconciliation there is] a path to a better future with the government.”

It was that spirit that led to cooperation with many of the Coalition’s

former adversaries.29 By 2007 and 2008, the misguided policies that

disbanded the Iraqi military and made enemies of those most able to

reconstruct Iraqi society were finally being reversed. [e “conversion”

of former regime elements recommended in the Operation Iraqi

Freedom II operational design has led to a reconciliation that benefited

both Coalition forces and Iraqi society. [e late 2003 vision of local

governance, economic development, restored services, and employment

of Iraqi security forces to create a stable environment for the people of

al-Anbar is an increasingly secure reality in the western Iraq of 2009.

Kurtis P. Wheeler

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve

16

Al-Anbar Awakening

27. BGen Martin Post intvw, 18Mar09 (MCHC). 28. BGen John F. Kelly intvw, 26Mar09 (MCHC). 29. Maj Adam T. Strickland intvw, 26Mar09 (MCHC).
17

American Perspectives


Interview 1

Preparing for Counterinsurgency
21

Major General James N. Mattis

Commanding General

1st Marine Division

Multi National Force • West

August 2002 to August 2004

Major General James N. Mattis is a career infantry officer who

commanded 1st Marine Division from August 2002 to August 2004.

While serving in that capacity he completed two tours in Iraq, leading

the division’s attack toward Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom

I and then during subsequent stability and support operations as part of

Operation Iraqi Freedom II. Following that assignment, he commanded

I Marine Expeditionary Force, where he served concurrently as the

commander of U.S. Marine Forces, Central Command. In November

2007, he assumed command of U.S. Joint Forces Command, where he

serves concurrently as Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation

for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In this interview, Major General Mattis discusses preparations

undertaken in anticipation of the 1st Marine Division’s redeployment

to Iraq in March 2004, the development of a counterinsurgency

strategy designed to engage the Iraqi people, and security operations

conducted throughout Anbar Province, including the first battle for

Fallujah. He notes that a key element in the division’s

counterinsurgency effort was to “try and turn down the cycle of

violence.”[is was pursued through a two-pronged, intelligence-driven

approach, designed to neutralize their adversaries’ influence over the

population while simultaneously promoting governance, economic

development, and essential services within the community.

Major General Mattis was interviewed by Dr. Charles P.

Neimeyer, director of the Marine Corps History Division, on 17 June

2009 at the Pentagon.

Charles P. Neimeyer: What was the plan for the return of I MEF

[I Marine Expeditionary Force] assets back into Iraq in the 2004

time frame?
Major General James N. Mattis: Well, some of the ships were still at

sea with our equipment and would not arrive in southern California

ports until November [2003] and even December, early December,

with our gear. So initially there was a two-pronged approach. One

was on planning, and one was on logistic preparations of gear that

we knew we had to get turned around. In many cases, the mechanics

and all from the FSSG [force service support group] and even our

own were sent down to the ports, where they would work on the

gear there and basically reload the ships. [is is during the holiday

period, [anksgiving, Christmas of 2003.

As soon as I received the warning order, and I believe it was on

November 7th, . . . I immediately directed my deputy, [the] assistant

division commander, Brigadier General John [F.] Kelly, to get over

there right away and determine what needed to be [done], get the

lay down of where the 82d Airborne was at, size up the mission,

and do all the initial planning things that you need to do to starting

filling in assumptions with information, rather than having

information gaps. [e plan for the deployment was basically that

we would get an advance team in.[ey would start integrating with

the 82d Airborne Division. We would ensure a good turnover of

the battlefield situation, understand what they were doing, and try

to exploit and move along the lines that 82d Airborne Division

had underway.

[Kelly] got there and returned. We decided that I would go out

next—this is in early December—and take with us engineering

officers, intel[ligence] officers, who would actually start working on

the camps that we would need, making certain that the camps were

ready for us to move into them, handle the turnover from 82d

Airborne to I MEF. All this is going on under the auspices of I

MEF’s efforts. [e intel aspect was twofold. We had to get the

enemy’s situation, so we understood what was going on, which was

a little unclear, since we had not operated in western Iraq before.

But we also needed to organize the intel effort correctly, and this

was really done by the MEF intel officer, Colonel [ James R.] Jim

Howcroft, who determined that the nature of this fight would

require a fusion center of all intel assets at the division level, SigInt

[signals intelligence], HumInt [human intelligence], analysis, this

22

Al-Anbar Awakening
sort of thing, so that it was closely connected to and integrated

with the operational effort. So you’d have a logistics preparation

going on, you have a planning preparation going on, and inside the

planning there’s a specific focus on intel.

Additionally, we immediately set up a rudimentary orientation that

our units had to go through at an abandoned housing site up in

the March Air Force Base housing area that had been shut down.

We had Marines play-acting like what we expected to have going

on over there. [is was the start of what eventually grew, by the

way, into . . . Mojave Viper, eventually gaining great support out of

the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab at Quantico. [ey were the

ones who really helped us. Eventually, TECom [Training and

Education Command] came in and helped further, but the efforts

that they had conducted on urban warfare back in the ’90s, some of

that expertise was still there. [e thinking was fresh to them, and

they were a great help. So we also have a training effort underway,

which also included in each battalion trying to craft one platoon

that would be organized to work as a CAP [combined action

program] platoon and [on] how could we get language and cultural

appreciation improved.*

We contacted the best Arabist we could find, Barak [A.] Salmoni,

. . . at the Naval Postgraduate School. . . . He had a unique ability

to talk to Marines about the culture they were going into and try

to start the cultural and linguistic preparation of units going in with

the idea [that] some of the units would actually live in amongst the

Iraqis. . . .

We identified three groups of enemy, or potential players on the

battlefield.[e tribes, there were criminals amongst them, and what

we thought we needed for them was jobs and securing them, the

locals. [en we had the former regime elements. [ese were the

recalcitrant ones, the ones who chose to be irreconcilable. [ere

were criminals amongst them, too. And then we had the foreign

23

American Perspectives

* [e combined action program emerged during the Vietnam War where a platoon of

Marines integrated with local Vietnamese force to protect a designated village. In Iraq, these

CAP platoons would be embedded with Iraqi security forces [ISF] and evolve into police and

military transition teams [PTTs and MTTs], partnering with ISF as mentors and trainers.
fighters, not many, when you ran into them, because you generally

didn’t take prisoners. [ey fought to the death.

Neimeyer: You wanted to destroy these guys?

Mattis:[ese we would destroy. We would defeat or convert, try to

move the former regime elements into the reconcilable ranks. [e

ones we could not, we would defeat, destroy them. But the main

effort was to diminish support to the insurgency [by] promoting

governance, economic development, essential services, and the

supporting effort was to neutralize the bad actors. In other words,

take them out, either imprison them, kill them, whatever it took,

the irreconcilables.

[ese were how we constructed what we called combat operations.

You can see the main effort was diminishing support to the

insurgency, and the whole thing . . . was done inside a bodyguard of

information ops [operations]. And this would be the scheme that

would eventually have us addressing situations like Fallujah, that we

knew was going to be a tough nut. And we had an idea of how we’d

diminish support for the insurgents there by doing things around

the periphery, for example, that sort of thing, as we continued to

maintain this effort, to include strong interaction with the tribes.

Immediately, how could we get a hold of the tribes? Down south

[in the southern provinces where the Marines had been], the

imams and some of the tribal leaders were the main people we had

dealt with. Out in the west [al-Anbar Province], we were aware—

this was based on our reconnaissance and 82d Airborne’s superb

briefings to us—we were aware that the tribes would be the center

of our efforts out there from the very beginning. And this is

reflected a few months later. Even on the worst days of fighting in

Fallujah, I would oftentimes return to Ramadi and meet with the

tribal leaders there, who were very upset. But I just kept working

with them, kept listening to them, and all of my officers were doing

that as we were working with the tribes.[e tribes, the tribes, from

the very beginning—that [was] the plan going in.

[e Army Special Forces, Major Adam A. Such, came in, linked up

with us. I believe it was in December, before we deployed. . . . Adam

24

Al-Anbar Awakening
would be the one who, with his guys out in the Hit/Haditha area,

made initial contact with the Abu Nimer tribe and actually began

what eventually morphed into the Anbar Awakening. [is is, by

the way, in April-May-June of 2004. Also, Colonel [Arthur W.]

“Buck” Connor [ Jr., USA], who commanded the 1st Brigade, 1st

Infantry, that held Ramadi, served under us for our first several

months there. He also had a vigorous tribal engagement going on

there in the Ramadi capital. So you see, Army and Marine efforts

to engage with these folks, and that’s kind of how the planning was

coming together as we went in.

Neimeyer: Let me ask you about the SASO [stability and support

operations] training that you organized prior to going back in. I

noticed LAPD [Los Angeles Police Department] was assisting you

in some of this street gang stuff and things of that nature,

understanding criminal elements.

Mattis: [e LAPD was superb. . . .[ey flew us over the city [Los

Angeles] in their own helos [helicopters], showing us how they

police, what kind of issues there are. We sat in classrooms with

them. We spent the day with them. It was very, very helpful, and

their counter-IED [improvised explosive device] guy basically

helped train our people and then deployed with us. [Notes that he

helped train 55 infantry battalions.] But the LAPD, based on a

good working relationship, was most beneficial, from the chief

down to the detective level.

Neimeyer:[is SASO [security and stabilization operations] thing

. . . is a rather unique approach. Did it just come to you, or did you

basically understand that you were going in the second time in a

completely different than you did on the march up?

Mattis: We knew it was a very different environment. We had

pulled off the preceding five and a half months and sustained I

believe one killed and 55 wounded. Out of the division, I think it

was two killed. [Referring to Phase IV Security and Stabilization

Operations in 2003 during Operation Iraqi Freedom I where

Marines governed seven Shia provinces in southern Iraq at the end

of decisive operations]. . . . But going back in, it was clear that we

would be facing a much more entrenched enemy in al-Anbar.

25

American Perspectives
However, we were still very optimistic after General Kelly’s initial

visit that we would earn the population. We didn’t know how long

it would take, and, frankly, it probably took longer than we

imagined, but that’s why you see the immediate main effort being

to diminish the reasons for the insurgency, why we were training

our troops, not just to be “no better friend, no worse enemy,” but

[what] we’d applied by this point during the preceding deployment

and reemphasized now was first do no harm and protect the people.

I’d studied the [French] 10th Parachute Division in Algeria in 1960,

and trying to turn down the cycle of violence is one of the lessons

I drew from that. We kept doing that, even, like I said, during the

worst fighting in Fallujah. We were still working with the sheikhs,

even though we knew many of them were actively operating against

us, to try and turn that down. So this was based on a study of history,

understanding of COIN [counterinsurgency] doctrine, and a

recognition that this was going to be an ethically and morally

bruising environment that we had to prepare the troops for. [e

lessons were pretty obvious. But we had to prioritize working with

the tribes and providing a secure local environment, which was

going to be very difficult, with the number of troops we had.

Neimeyer: Did you find it hard to hold the Marines back and

switch from a mostly kinetic sort of attitude, when they did the

march up, to a nonkinetic sort of avenue?

Mattis: No, I did not, and part of the reason was we were able to

go back in—do you have a copy of my letter to the troops?

Neimeyer: I do. I do have that.

Mattis: You’ll see where we actually say . . . that the enemy wants

you to hate all of the Iraqis. Don’t allow the enemy that victory. We

put it in terms that Marines understood [about] how the enemy

was going to try to manipulate them. It was not difficult, although

the excitement of that combat for young Marines, you always want

to bring everything to bear. We just had to keep stressing to them,

“Be careful. Don’t allow a single innocent person to be injured.

We’re the good guys.” [e Marines, it took a lot of talk, but it’s a

balancing act.

26

Al-Anbar Awakening
Neimeyer: Could you describe the situation on the ground when

you arrived back in country for the second time? I mean, was it the

way you expected it, or did you find any surprises that hit you when

you got back there?

Mattis: It was pretty much as we expected it, although the infantryrich formations that Marines bring, where we have in some cases

hundreds more infantrymen than the Army units we were

replacing, allowed us to do foot patrols and to go into areas they

had not been in. In Ramadi as we did that, we uncovered a

significant enemy presence that was probably not as well defined

during the turnover as I thought it had been. I thought I had a

pretty good idea what was in Ramadi, and then Lieutenant Colonel

Paul [ J.] Kennedy’s 2/4 [2d Battalion, 4th Marines] kicked over a

real hornet’s nest, even while we were fighting down in Fallujah.

Fallujah we knew would be a tough nut, and our approach was

going to be to get the lights turned on in one nearby community,

get jobs in another one, working around it in that manner, so that

we did not go charging into Fallujah. [e theater commander,

General [ John P.] Abizaid, [USA], and General [Charles H.]

Swannack [ Jr., USA], the 82d Airborne commander, had been

attacked on their latest visit there, so we knew it was going to be a

tough one there. But our idea was to use agents inside the city to

identify enemies, support special forces operations to go in and kill

those people, but continue to do good works outside the city, where

it was a more benign environment, and draw people’s attention to

those things.

We were not naive about it. We didn’t intend to convert the hard

core, but we knew that there were a lot of people that we could

convert, that were not committed to being adversaries. However,

we knew too we were taking an American, largely Christian force

into a part of the world where that combination did not play well,

so we would have a very skeptical audience. We were going to have

to be very stoic, and it was going to be hard. But we were very

confident we would eventually turn them. So the Fallujah situation

was understood by us from the beginning. We had Colonel John

[A.] Toolan [ Jr.], the regimental commander responsible for the

27

American Perspectives
area, he had a very good plan to deal with it. We were all on the

same sheet of music, and of course the Blackwater [USA] thing

had an impact on that plan.

But I think there [in Fallujah], and even further west, we were

unaware of just how deeply, not entrenched, but how well the enemy

had organized and the numbers of troops he had. We had some

serious challenges as that threat manifested itself from Husaybah,

near al-Qaim, on the Syrian border, to Haditha area, on down to

Ramadi, that 2/4 stumbled into, and then of course Fallujah.

Furthermore, at this very time, as we’re turning over, this MSR [main

supply route] between Kuwait and Baghdad is cut, and significant

numbers of our troops under General John Kelly had to be

committed to restoring the bridges and reopening those lines, even

as we were fighting in Fallujah. Obviously, 2/4 had one squad overrun

and decimated, and meanwhile, we have the situation in Husaybah,

where we have a company lose its company commander and five staff

NCOs [noncommissioned officers] killed in the first hour, then has

to fight its way back through this. It’s all going at about the same

time, immediately following the turnover with 82d Airborne.

Neimeyer: We talked a little bit about Fallujah, and we’re going to

get back to that, but were there any areas in Anbar when you got

there that you considered what you’d call no-go areas, where you

weren’t going to go there yet, and you were going to wait until you’d

figured out the situation or built up more forces on the ground?

Mattis: No. No, there weren’t. We had the forces we had. We did

make requests for additional forces. For part of the fight, there were

forces shifted around. First Armored Division was actually turned

around. General [Martin E.] Dempsey’s [USA] division was

turned around and sent back up to relieve some of our

southernmost units, Army and Marine, that were then brought up

closer into the fight for Fallujah.

But I mean, obviously, when you’re in the middle of fights, there are

no-go areas. [ere was no area that we said we’re going to

surrender. [ere were just areas we could not address because we

didn’t have enough troops. [e area north of the Euphrates River

28

Al-Anbar Awakening
Valley, the area up towards Lake [arthar, areas like that. For

Fallujah itself, a city of 350,000 people, all I could bring to bear

initially were two infantry battalions. We eventually got four, and

that would have been sufficient because the enemy hadn’t prepared

for this. Of course, then we were stopped.

Neimeyer: One of your hallmarks, I think, in the march up [to

Baghdad] was your demand for speed. Did you have that same

attitude in the midst of the fighting the second time around, or

were you more deliberate?

Mattis: Well, we are now going into what we consider to be a

counterinsurgent effort, and that required what I called the three

P’s: patient, persistent, presence. Patience you understood. [at

word sends a message. Persistent, you can’t go in and come out, you

can’t be episodic. And presence, you’ve got to be there or you’re not

influential. And this included building Iraqi security forces, which

unfortunately had been basically put together with uniforms and a

modicum of training, rather than taking the time to build them

correctly. And they basically collapsed pretty much—not

everywhere—but basically pretty much collapsed or joined the

enemy’s side during the uprising there in March-April.

Neimeyer: Did you find the historical example of combined action

platoons useful to you in the second time you went in?

Mattis: We did. We had attempted to organize in each battalion

one platoon, for example, that would be given extra language

training, extra cultural training. Remember, we have very little time.

[ese troops have just returned home. We’ve dropped people who

under stop-loss or whatever had to go home or extended for the

deployment to fight with their buddies. We’re getting recruits in.

We’re repairing gear, and getting it back on the ships, and sending

it back over, [and] meanwhile trying to train these units. So the

CAP units in each battalion, and that approach of being out among

the people, was our basic approach.

Neimeyer: Did you make adjustments once you got on the ground?

Is there anything that popped up that you had to adjust to that you

didn’t really think about?

29

American Perspectives
Mattis: No, no, not really. Obviously, the fighting, frankly, the

fighting piece became heavier than I desired, but I mean, to me

that’s the normal give-and-take of war. But we maintained. Even,

like I said, on the worst days of fighting, I would come back from

Husaybah and visiting there, or from out in town in Ramadi, or

most often down in Fallujah area. We’d come back, and routinely

there’d be anywhere from two to 40 sheikhs wanting to see me.

And I would continue to talk with them. I would talk with them

down in Fallujah, outside of Fallujah. It was just constant

discussions, keeping the dialogue going, but the whole emphasis

was on the tribes out there. . . .

Neimeyer: How would you describe the enemy at the beginning of

the deployment? How did the enemy react to the presence of

Marines in Anbar, once you started becoming more effective?

Mattis: Well, the enemy didn’t like us. But at the same time, we did

not have a lot of interagency support, so all we had to offer them—

the people there—were some projects that were being planned, or

CERP [Commander’s Emergency Relief Program] funds, where they

could pay people to work, and this sort of thing. Or we could provide

a generator for the Abu Nimer tribe, because they were helping us.

[e enemy obviously didn’t like us, but we kept believing that most

of this enemy was actually reconcilable. We didn’t use those words

then, but we kept thinking. We used the word “convert,” but

“reconcilable” was probably the better word, which General

[Graeme C.M.] Lamb, the British three-star, eventually breaks the

enemy’s logic train. At this point, we’ve not broken it, and we can’t

define the enemy. We hear “former regime elements,” “deadenders,” “former Ba’athists,” all this sort of thing. Eventually, a

couple of years later, General [David H.] Petraeus [USA] comes in,

and General Lamb, and he’d come up with this

reconcilable/irreconcilable, [which] is really the definition here, and

keep moving as far as you can to bring reconcilable people [to your

side]. [ose you cannot, you take them out—out of the fight.

Neimeyer: [e enemy, in reacting to you, stepped up their murder

and intimidation campaign against folks who were on the fence.

How did you deal with that? I mean, how do you deal with

30

Al-Anbar Awakening
especially the foreign fighters who were assassinating some of the

guys who were potentially reconcilable?

Mattis: Well, that’s where ambushes and working intel, HumInt

and all, as we had efforts underway to create HumInt. Some of the

intel support we got, nonmilitary, was not that good. But you try to

identify who’s doing it, and you try to secure—consistent with our

going-in proposition—secure the local environment. [at’s very

difficult when you have an area that big, as big as probably North

Carolina, and you have the paucity of troops we had, and the

untrained and questionable loyalty troops of the Iraqi security force

at this point, who have been thrown together, cobbled together, as

best both 82d Airborne and we could, but without the time to vet

them, with the enemy message gaining credibility, our message

getting muted. It’s just a very, very difficult time.

Neimeyer: Did you observe any indications that Multi National

Force-Iraq, government of Iraq, U.S. government, regarded Anbar

Province as a hopeless situation? I recall the intelligence assessment

of one colonel that said Anbar was most likely lost.

Mattis: First of all, that colonel did not speak for the Marine view.

I thought it was an unfortunate assessment, and inaccurate. From

the very beginning, General Kelly and I, Colonel [ Joseph F.]

Dunford [ Jr.], who became the chief of staff, eventually the deputy

commander, assistant division commander, we were of one mind—

as we were right down through battalion and company and platoon

commanders—that in these areas, we could turn these people.

Some were more convinced than others based on where they were

at. Inside Fallujah, it was going to be tough. But in many other

areas, we were seeing progress already.

Neimeyer: So you believe that, in fact, the assessment was

inaccurate?

Mattis: [at assessment comes years later, right at a most

unfortunate time. But the bottom line is, there was a sense that

Anbar would be the last area, I think the word used was “pacified,”

or “stabilized,” that we would just hold on. It was an economy-offorce theater throughout. It was never the main effort.

31

American Perspectives
We believed that if we could turn Anbar, we could set a new tone

for the whole war, and we were convinced that we could do that

from the very good briefings that 82d Airborne Division gave us.

[at was our assessment. I’m not saying it’s theirs, but they gave us

good briefs, we considered what they were saying, and we thought

we could do it if we had the right approach, which I lay out here.

Numerous times, . . . the priority for bringing in more forces seemed

to go elsewhere. During the surge itself, we received two more

Marine infantry battalions—several years later—but it was difficult

across the country. [e command in Baghdad had prioritized other

areas, and we did sense that the Sunnis were seen as the most

recalcitrant and least likely to come over to our side. We disagreed,

seeing with the same data reasons why they might be the first to flip.

For the first time in this war since 9/11, and probably if you go

back to when this war really started, which was in the ’80s, . . . this

is really the first time that you see an entire Arab Middle Eastern

population turn against al-Qaeda and the extremists. We never

doubted we could do it. How long it would take, we knew you can’t

calculate these things, [that] you can’t predict the future of these

things.[e tipping point would come probably due as much to our

own restraint as it would have to do with the enemy’s mistakes.

And the enemy, they were so stupid. [ey made mistake after

mistake. And eventually we, by maintaining our ethical stance, our

moral stance, the people there—watching the reality of us versus

the enemy—shift. It starts with Adam [A.] Such, Army Special

Forces major, in Hit, Haditha, out west of Ramadi, with the Abu

Nimer tribe. It then leapfrogged somewhat, although many people

are staying with the program, Marines keep rotating back time after

time to al Anbar. But Dale Alford’s battalion, Lieutenant Colonel

[ Julian D.] Alford, out in the al-Qaim area, then guts the enemy’s

program in terms of its information message and all, and he makes

great progress out there, clearly a man extremely attuned to the

counterinsurgent mindset.

But you see this throughout the battalion commanders who simply,

stoically take the casualties, hold their troops in check, do not allow

the enemy to drive us too far, although some battalions fighting in

32

Al-Anbar Awakening
downtown Ramadi during the difficult days are literally fighting

every day. It’s not counterinsurgency in the sense of winning hearts

and minds. It’s firefights. . . . But the fact is the Marines are able to

adapt and quickly shift to nonlethal activities, and it is the

forbearance of the troops, the self-discipline of the NCOs and

junior officers, that almost always keeps us on the side of the angels

here, and the people are watching this. And as the enemy cuts off

the heads of young boys, as they kill a sheikh and leave his body to

sit out there in the August sun for four days, as they continue this

sort of behavior, these forced marriages, what you and I would call

rape, where they marry someone for three or four days, these are all

telling. . . . And so eventually these mistakes, and our forbearance,

pay off, and in a very short period of time, all of a sudden the tribes

realize whose side they’re really on, and it all shifts. . . .

Neimeyer: Give me your assessment and role of, or intentions of the

Anbari sheikhs in 2004. How did they strike you?

Mattis: [ey were angry. [eir Sunni domination of the political

life of Iraq obviously was jeopardized by us coming in and dumping

Saddam [Hussein]’s regime out. We, by going with the deBa’athification campaign, we had basically disenfranchised all of

those who had been in authority, which is obviously many of the

Sunni sheikhs. By disbanding the army, many of the Sunni boys

out there, they’re very tribal, had joined the army. [ey were now

out of work. [ey had been trained, trained quite well, and so it

was a difficult time for them.

At the same time, we had time to get into very strident discussions.

I was asked on one occasion, during a negotiation outside Fallujah,

by several, “When are you going to leave?” I said, “I’m never going

to leave. I found a little piece of property down on the Euphrates.

I’m going to retire there.” But my point was that I wanted to

suffocate any hope that the enemy had that we were temporarily

there. [I wanted them to believe] that we were going to stay as long

as necessary. [at was difficult, because at times they’d be reading

things off the front pages of U.S. newspapers about pulling out and

all, but I told them that we would not leave them adrift and that

they had bought in with the wrong people.

33

American Perspectives
I knew they couldn’t admit that publicly right then, but the fact is

that they had bought in with people who said no cigarette smoking,

who would marry their daughters if they wished, whether or not

the parents wanted that.[ese were people who had no interest in

the good of the people. In fact, they would try to get innocent

people killed by firing from their homes and all on Marines. But

the bottom line was that eventually they were going to see that we

were their only best friends.

Neimeyer: I’d like to talk a little bit about the Blackwater [USA]

incident. . . . On two sides of the question, the first is, how important

is this? How did you handle this incident, the bridge incident? And

then the second thing is, did you feel pressure coming from the

American high command to do something about it?

Mattis: Our first warning of it, I was out on the road, and . . .

someone called saying on CNN [Cable News Network] there was

this incident being broadcast around the world. I said, “Okay, just

continue with what we’re doing and do what you can to recover

the bodies. Let’s find out who did it and then we’ll kill them.” I

talked with General [ James T.] Conway. I said, “I don’t want to go

into the city.” He agreed. He said, “[at’s exactly what the enemy

wants us to do right now. We will continue the operations around

the periphery of the city.”

We had people actually in the city at the time, but only for short

periods—in and out—and we would do our best to recover the

bodies and to identify who had done it, and then continue the

special forces raids. . . . I said,“Steady as she goes.”We were working

with the police chief and the then-mayor to do this sort of thing.

[ere were a lot of tribal factions that didn’t necessarily get along

in the city, so we were able to work that. We had fairly good

information come out of inside the city. For several days, we

continued along these lines, recovered some of the bodies, starting

to get names and this sort of thing.

[en, eventually, I was ordered to have a sustained U.S. Marine

presence inside the city within 72 hours. And I don’t know all of the

background as far as who did what. . . . And so we basically were ordered

to go into the city, with two infantry battalions available at that point.

34

Al-Anbar Awakening
Neimeyer: And obviously you probably would have preferred to

have more. But the incident itself, how did it affect the overall laydown of forces? Did this affect your ability to do other things in

other areas, because now you’ve tied up two infantry battalions?

Mattis: Oh yeah. See, at the same time that we tied two infantry

battalions here, and that’s insufficient to even put a ring around,

we can’t even isolate the city at this point, don’t have enough forces.

At this point, the supply lines are being cut. Bridges are being

dropped between Baghdad and Kuwait, including going through

our southern sector.

Meanwhile, 2/4 is in a hell of a fight in Ramadi and Husaybah, out

near the Syrian border. I eventually tell RCT-7 [Regimental

Combat Team 7] to get one of its battalions—it turned out to be

3/4 [3d Battalion, 4th Marines] on its way back—chopped to

Colonel Toolan. [e Army 1st Armored Division, under General

[Martin E.] Marty Dempsey, comes in—thank God for them—

and frees up 2/2 [2d Battalion, 2d Marines], that moves against

the southern sector of the city, and the 1st of the 32d and 10th

Mountain Division that moves up on the peninsula.[ose soldiers

were helping to isolate there. But already, 1/5 [1st Battalion, 5th

Marines] and 2/1 [2d Battalion, 1st Marines]—1/5 from the south

and east and 2/1 from the north—are moving into the city. Many

people have been evacuated, this sort of thing, and I then tell RCT7 to leave detachments—left them out across its zone—and move

swiftly down south of the lakes because we’re losing control around

the city outside of that.

As I pull these units in, 3/4 actually initially has to go into the

Karmah area, north of Camp Fallujah, before I can even bring them

in, in order to at least throw the enemy off balance there. So

Colonel [Craig A.] Tucker [of RCT-7] leaves elements at all

locations and comes south of Ramadi, south of the lakes, up into

the peninsula area, to the west of Fallujah, drops down and pushes

through an area . . . and then turns towards Baghdad, goes through

the western fringes of Baghdad, and comes into the Karmah area.

And what he’s doing this whole time is he’s trying to put enough

of a threat to the enemy that they cannot get braves in areas I’ve

35

American Perspectives
had to denude of troops. And, eventually, I move him back to the

west, where we are again having trouble. So we’re trying to stick

our fingers in all of the holes of the dike, and we don’t have enough

troops to go around.

Neimeyer: Yes sir. Can you give me an overview of Operation

Vigilant Resolve, . . . the two battalions going into Fallujah?

Mattis: Basically, my intention was to squeeze in at the enemy. I

knew we would eventually find where they have hard points, where

they tried to hold, and then we would take them out. I had been,

as you know, I thought this was not the best way to handle it, but

I was ordered to do it. No problem. I did ask to receive the order

in writing, which we eventually got, and I asked that we not be

stopped once started.

We went into the city, [and] 1/5 and 2/1 made good progress. We

were not fast, because I didn’t want to push so fast that we couldn’t

secure behind them, or we just pushed the enemy elsewhere in the

city where I didn’t have troops. I wanted to do it methodically at

this point. We used no artillery, no matter what Al Jazeera put on

TV.[at was manufactured, or bought tapes from some other fight

somewhere else, but we were not firing artillery into the city. As

we were pressing in, we were bringing up the 32d [Infantry

Regiment] to block the peninsula area, where the enemy was

running a good propaganda campaign out of a hospital. We

brought 2/2 up from the south. [at sealed that area, which had

been wide open, and eventually 3/4 came in for the east side.

At that point, we were poised to really crush them. I would say that

we were probably 24 hours away from the time when I’d say “go”

and all of it would now move against the enemy.[ey had not had

time to pre-stage ammunition. I don’t think they had expected us.

[ey had not built bunkers in most of the homes. And at that

point, we were stopped. . . .

[is is some of the most primitive kind of fighting, I guess you’d

call it. It’s house to house, it’s street to street. Probably the best

thing was the snipers. . . .

36

Al-Anbar Awakening
When I was stopped and told to start negotiating, I had no terms

of reference that were given to me. So I would go in, and basically,

I’d get guidance from General Conway, who tried to filter and

refine to me what I was supposed to do there. [ey would

oftentimes say, “Gosh, you have to pull your snipers back,” and I

wouldn’t do it because without a doubt the most effective force in

there were the Marine riflemen and snipers. . . .

Neimeyer: How did you measure progress [in the overall effort]?

Mattis: Well, it is very difficult, because what matters most in war

is oftentimes the least easy to measure. We were looking for a

tipping point, and we knew we had to simply maintain our selfdiscipline and our fire discipline, maintain our faith that it would

work, observe what was going on, and look at the numbers of

attacks, the number of IEDs found, the number of IEDs exploded,

the casualty rate on our side. We tried to color-code areas for what

was getting more stable, what was getting more normalized. But

really, during my period there as a division commander, it was very,

very difficult to do, because just getting ground truth from the

ground was difficult, and you had only episodic involvement with

the people because the troops are spread too thin. I’ve got to move

7th Marines out of its area just to regain control of the countryside

around Fallujah.

It was very, very difficult to measure. Much of the measuring came

from my discussions with the sheikhs, and that is very hard to

quantify, again, but I could sense if they thought we were surging—

our side was surging, [if ] it was gaining or not. And when we

started having good effect on the enemy in Fallujah, they [the

sheikhs] were quite upset, because they’d kind of pitched in with

the enemy, and this would not look good for them. So they’re trying

to bring pressure on us to say you’ve got to quit this, you have to

leave, you have to stop killing all the innocent people. We weren’t

killing innocent people. [at sort of thing. So I could gauge a lot

from the kind of the tone of my talks with them.

Come back two and a half years as [commander of] MarCent [U.S.

Marine Forces Central Command] and I’m meeting with people,

two of whom came up in suits and said, “You threw both of us in

37

American Perspectives
Abu Ghraib prison, but you were right, and we’re with you to the

end now.” [is was at a meeting at Sheikh [Abdul] Sattar [Abu

Risha]’s house, where there were over 70 sheikhs and sub-sheikhs

out there.

Really, in this kind of a war, you do the best you can, quantifying

various measures, and you apply your military judgment. At this

point, you’re as well off if you’ve read Angela’s Ashes, and Desmond

Tutu’s writings, and if you’ve studied Northern Ireland and the

efforts for rapprochement there, [and] in South Africa following

their civil war, as you are if you’ve read [William T.] Sherman and

obviously [Carl P.G.] von Clausewitz and all.

It’s a very humanistic war, this war amongst the people. So it’s hard

to measure, but the indicators that I would consider most significant

were when I walked down the street, did people look me in the eye

and shake my hand? [at was more significant than whatever.

[ere was almost an over-quantification. We had a checklist of 77

questions to ask police stations, in each police station. We went out

and asked those questions, and one of them that had the most

yeses, when the fighting broke out badly against us, they joined the

enemy. One decrepit little station with a half-dozen officers who

shared two weapons and had zero yeses on training, uniforms, radio

equipment, anything, stuck with us out on the highway. So it just

shows that when you go with this idea of effects-based operations,

you’re very likely to be measuring the wrong thing.

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Al-Anbar Awakening
39

American Perspectives
Interview 2

U.S. Marine Security &

Stabilization Operations
Lieutenant General James T. Conway

Commanding General

I Marine Expeditionary Force

November 2002 to September 2004

Lieutenant General James T. Conway is a career infantry officer

who commanded I Marine Expeditionary Force [I MEF] during

Operation Iraqi Freedom I in 2003 and the first half of Operation

Iraqi Freedom II in 2004. Following this assignment, he went to the

Pentagon as the J-3, Director of Operations for the Joint Chiefs of

Staff before being promoted to general and becoming the 34th

Commandant of the Marine Corps.

In this interview, General Conway describes the role I MEF played

in operations in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq and circumstances that led

to I MEF returning to Iraq in 2004, including the decisions to move the

headquarters to Iraq. He recounts the situation in Fallujah, the reliefin-place, transfer of authority with the 82d Airborne Division, and the

state of Iraqi security forces in 2004. He also describes I MEF’s reaction

to the Blackwater USA murders and the circumstances leading to the

first battle of Fallujah and the premature unilateral cease-fire. General

Conway provides a commander’s-level overview of the battle and

describes the role of the western and Arab media.

Lieutenant General Conway was interviewed by Major John P.

Piedmont and Dr. David B. Crist on 21 June and 7 July 2005 at the

Pentagon.

Major John P. Piedmont: When did I MEF [I Marine

Expeditionary Force] receive word that it would be returning to

Iraq for OIF II [Operation Iraqi Freedom II]?

Lieutenant General James T. Conway: I can tell you exactly when

it was. I was sitting on the BG [brigadier general promotion] board

in probably the first week of October [2003] when I received a call

from the Commandant [General Michael W. Hagee]. His initial

question was would I MEF want to send three battalions back to

Iraq.[e thought process was that the commitment would be fairly

41
small. At that point, I said absolutely. We had had two battalions

who had not had the opportunity to go out of 1st Marine Division,

and I knew we could come away with another one. So I said, yes,

we would take that, as opposed to II MEF [II Marine

Expeditionary Force], which was the option at that point.

Well, three grew to six pretty quickly. Six became nine, thanks to what

we call the Wolfowitz Regiment. [Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul

Wolfowitz] wanted to see an addition to the force, felt that more

Marines was probably better. I think we actually deployed eleven

battalions.With that you wind up with an aviation component, a CSS

[combat service support] component, necessarily, and a headquarters

component. And within probably two months, we realized that 63

percent of the MEF was going to be there, so there was no question

in my mind as to where the MEF CG [commanding general] needed

to be at that point. So we took the whole group back to Iraq.

Piedmont: Once you had received the word and you began

planning, what were your greatest operational concerns in

preparing the MEF for this second mission?

Conway: Well, when we went over for OIF [I], clearly we were

going to be in the attack. It was a very different construct for what

we call reconstruction, or nation-building, or Phase IV operations.

So we needed to look at those things, those lessons learned if you

would, that came out of our five and a half months in the Shi’a

provinces after OIF and try to determine which of those would be

applicable to what was likely to be a different environment in the

al-Anbar Province. So that was our essence.

Certainly, the division went about immersing themselves in

language training, civil affairs types of efforts, all those manner of

things, I would say enhancements over what we had done in the

southern provinces. We looked again at lessons learned, how we

would reorganize, and those manner of things. We consciously

made an effort to push all of the intelligence down from MEF level

to division level. We really felt that large intelligence-gathering

meant for large-scale units, and a large-scale conflict would not

necessarily be the best approach in this environment. In fact, we

42

Al-Anbar Awakening
wanted to get it as low as we could, and the lowest level where that

eventually made sense was in the division.

We looked at how we would do the lay down—it’s a very large

province—what would be the best lay down of those available

forces to accomplish all those types of things that we thought had

to be done, maintain security for logistics lines, MSRs [main supply

routes], those types of things. [ere was a whole assortment of

things, as you can imagine, that we needed to look at . . . [in] a fairly

brief period of time, [particularly after] we finally realized that that

percentage of troops was going to go.

Piedmont: Why was the MEF sent to al-Anbar Province, and what

was your commander’s estimate of the situation there?

Conway: Well, we had spent five and a half months initially with

the provinces in the south. We initially took over nine. Eventually,

the British came out from under MEF command and control. So

they took two, [and] that left us with seven. And then there was a

further adjustment that gave us five, so we were continually

downsizing our presence. Although we sustained a significant

number of attacks there, we were fortunate. [ere were some

Marines that were grievously injured, but nobody [was] killed.

We thought that would be different in al-Anbar. It was a different

sect of the population, people much more unsettled, unhappy with

the scheme of things.We thought that it would probably be a more

competent enemy than some of the folks we had faced in the south

because Saddam [Hussein] drew his leadership for his own military

out of the west and out of the Sunni populations. So our assessment

was that it would be a nastier place.

[at said, we went back to the Small Wars Manual for our initial

doctrinal guidance. When we had conducted operations in the

south, it seemed pretty valid to us, and we thought that we could

do a continuation of the same type of thing in the al-Anbar

Province. It would be tough, we acknowledged that, but we really

thought that in time, those principles, out of that 1920s doctrine,

would still be applicable.

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American Perspectives
Piedmont: Sir, if you would, give us a sketch of the MEF’s plan of

operations for the campaign for OIF II.

Conway: Well, we knew that there were certain population centers

in the province that were going to be critical to our scheme of

operation. Ramadi is the provincial capital, and that’s where we

decided to lay down the division. [ere was much discussion as to

whether or not division and the MEF needed to be at the same

location. We had done that after the division moved from adDiwaniyah over to al-Hillah in OIF II, and it seemed to work well

for day-to-day coordination, communication, those types of things.

In this instance, because partly of the lay down of the 82d

[Airborne Division] and partly because of the projection at the

theater level of continuing bases, continuing facilities that would be

used for some time, we didn’t do that.

[e MEF took shape at Camp Fallujah, and the division moved

into Ramadi. And that was principally because, again, of the lay

down the 82d had, but as importantly, and probably more so, is we

realized that there would need to be close coordination with the

governor and his folks, and they operated out of Ramadi. But

Fallujah was also critical to us. Fallujah is on the road between

Ramadi and Baghdad. Fallujah was clearly causing the 82d a good

deal of difficulty. So we knew Fallujah was going to have to be high

in our sight picture as well.

[e other area was out on the border at Husaybah and al-Qaim.

And we realized, of course, that the foreign fighters, the cross-border

activity that we saw between Iraq and Syria, had to be curtailed, and

we thought that we would have to position a sufficiently powerful

force out there to be able to do that. So that was our initial look. We

needed to control the population centers. We needed to take on the

insurgents where we could find them. We needed to provide a level

of stability and security to the people [and] at the same time improve

their quality of life through CA [civil affairs] efforts. . . .

Piedmont: What were your relations with higher headquarters?

Conway: [at’s an interesting question. When we were in the

south, CFLCC [Coalition Forces Land Component Command]

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Al-Anbar Awakening
had transitioned to CJTF-7 [Combined Joint Task Force 7].

General [David D.] McKiernan became General [Ricardo S.]

Sanchez. On a personal level, our relationship was good.[ere were

some things that happened that gave me cause for concern. I went

back to the States three times.Two out of the three times, [General

Sanchez] visited and poked my number two in the chest, Major

General [Keith J.] Stalder, and said essentially I want you to do

this, do that, do some things that are very different to the approach

that we were using at the time.

We were paying particular concern to the northern Babil Province.

It was probably the most hostile of all the areas that we owned

south of Baghdad. And on one occasion, [General Sanchez]

wanted to completely change our method of operations and have

us sweep through the province. On another occasion, he wanted to

sign over the province, or that portion of the province, for a period

of time and let the 1st Armored Division roll tanks and tracks

through there for a period of two weeks and then give it back to us.

And we said no, those things are absolutely not going to happen.

But I didn’t like the idea that they tried to bludgeon the MEF into

doing certain things while I was gone.

So that led to my belief going into OIF II that we needed to have

a Marine three-star on deck. We had our ways that were probably

more akin to the British method of operation than the U.S. Army

methods, and we probably needed a three-star to provide top cover

to our ground combat element and others to be able to do those

things. [e relationship continued to be cordial, but we stood on

principle any number of times. I was convinced after a period of

time that it was a wise move on the part of the Commandant to put

a three-star in there, again, not the least of which is because we had

a very tough province to deal with, and that 63 percent of the MEF

was there. I mean, it’s hard to justify sending your people forward

and sit back in California or elsewhere not being a part of that.

I and others have attempted to convince the Commandant we

probably need to retain a three-star presence there so long as there

are 25,000 Marines, but I think he was chastised once by the

Secretary of Defense [Donald H. Rumsfeld] over it.[e Secretary

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American Perspectives
asked why I was there. [e Commandant gave him an answer,

maybe not an answer he was comfortable with. But I think that

has altered the thinking some in terms of the senior Marine in

theater. Maybe the conditions are better than what they were as we

went back. I don’t know that, but I tend to think that where you’ve

got that number of Marines operating as a MAGTF [Marine airground task force], you probably ought to have the MEF

commander there. [at’s a personal perspective.

Piedmont: Do you think that the higher headquarters, especially

when it’s headed up by one of our sister services, fully understands

the capabilities of a MAGTF, or was that something you had to

continually educate them on?

Conway: I think they understand it. It was very interesting, and I

never got the full story, but at the end of OIF [I] when General

McKiernan had his first commander’s conference in Baghdad, and

we used an old palace there for the appropriate setting, he had

probably 20 Army generals of all sorts of background sitting around

the table. All of his commanders and me, a couple of Air Force guys,

I don’t remember there being any Navy being there. But he kicked

off the conference saying, “I don’t want to hear any more about this

g**d*** MAGTF.”He said,“We don’t have it, we are not going to get

it. I want that to end the conversation.”And I thought that was very

unusual, and I had no idea what he was talking about. And I looked

at him, and I didn’t know where that came from at all.

From what I could find, our sister services were fairly impressed with

the blitzkrieg effort of the MEF. [ey were particularly impressed

with the direct air support that we were able to get on a continuing

basis; our ability to use the other air [elements] that came our way.

And I think they liked the idea of combined arms supported with

your own air, your own logistics, the self-containment that we have as

a MEF. [at’s all I can draw from that. So I think at least during the

war, if they didn’t appreciate it initially, they certainly came to.

In an insurgency environment, the MEF as a MAGTF is still

effective, but it’s less obvious to most folks because you are going

to get air support from the Navy and the Air Force and all that

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Al-Anbar Awakening
type of thing. You are not gaining ground. You are doing the dayto-day things that have to be done to overcome an insurgency. So

it may be less apparent, but I think people still understood it better

than ever before, perhaps after OIF II.

Piedmont: Was the Marine Corps’ rotation plan of six to seven

months, vastly different from the Army’s, ever a contentious issue?

Conway: Well, it was contentious when the Commandant fought

and won the issue. He initially was of the thinking that our folks

needed to be there a year. I didn’t believe that way at all. I thought

six months—what we initially proposed—would be sufficient,

especially when you looked at the percentage of the people that

were going back. So we argued for six months. I got great support

from [Lieutenant General Wallace C.] “Chip” Gregson, who was

MarForPac [Marine Forces Pacific] at that point. He did the rigor,

if you will, in showing what it would mean, the preservation of the

force over time, and we eventually convinced the Commandant,

and then the Commandant had to convince SecDef [Secretary of

Defense]. But he did so against all odds, against all expectations of

the people in this building [the Pentagon] at that point. It has since

been heralded as the way to do business. I am satisfied the Army

would change in a heartbeat given the opportunity. I’ve talked to

any number of soldiers, . . . and I don’t think I’ve talked to a single

one of them who didn’t say you guys have got it right.

We’re going to break the Army, and this whole thing of

reenlistment and retention is going to get real ugly over time with

these one-year assignments. And what you lose in terms of the

continuity, the spatial orientation of the troops, those types of

things, I think are well out-balanced by the morale aspect of it.[e

fact that Marines traditionally do six-, I’ll argue now seven-month

deployments, you can recock, refresh, all those kinds of things. It

has caused some gear issues, what you leave behind, what you bring

out with you, and those types of things. Headquarters is working

through that right now. I still think we made a good decision there,

too, in terms of stay-behind equipment. Not having to transit

without armor protection in or out of the country, those types of

things, make it advantageous.

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American Perspectives
No, it never really caused contentiousness on the part of our higher

headquarters, although I got a couple of odd comments. I think in

the end, those people would have traded what we were doing in a

heartbeat, so they couldn’t say much about it.

Piedmont: Move on if you would to the RIPTOA [relief in

place/transfer of authority]. [e MEF begins to flow in February

[2004], the division subordinate units begin the very detailed

RIPTOA with the 82d. What did the 82d Airborne brief you on

the situation?

Conway: Well, I had read before we went over there, and I think it

was probably generals trying to paint the best picture they could in

terms of the effort that their troops had accomplished, but the 82d

highlighted to the media that they had broken the back of the

insurgency in the al-Anbar Province. We took that with a grain of

salt, and we realized that Fallujah was still the “Wild, Wild West.”

And we said before we ever went over that can’t be because there’s

no place in our AO [area of operation] that we’re going to say we

can’t go. And yet the word that was getting to us on the West Coast

that you really can’t go into Fallujah, and you can’t go there and

stay long because you are going to get shot at. And in fact that very

much was the case. General [ John P.] Abizaid [USA] was nearly

assassinated there. Our regimental commander who had

responsibility for Fallujah got shot at on the way into town, got

shot at a meeting, got shot at on the way out.

Piedmont: And that was very early on?

Conway:[at was his orientation to Fallujah.[at was his first meeting

downtown with the membership. And when we started peeling back

the onion, and realizing that you sort of dash through Fallujah if you

were part of the 82d and call it a patrol—that let us know that we had

a problem. Anyway, it was a good turnover. Good guys in the 82d.

[e second night that I was in Camp Fallujah, unfortunately, we lost

five soldiers and a corpsman to an indirect fire attack. In fact, there

was a lot of indirect fire coming into Fallujah. It made us realize

again that it was going to be a very different place. I highlighted to

you earlier that we didn’t lose a single Marine in [the southern

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Al-Anbar Awakening
provinces] in five and half months. By the time we had turnover with

the 82d Airborne, we lost five Marines in the al-Anbar Province.

[e awareness that they [the insurgents] had contested the turnover,

if you will, and that it was going to be very different for us in the alAnbar Province was quite real even by the time of the turnover. . . .

Piedmont: General, I would like to talk about Fallujah right now.

You just set the tactical stage. Here we are roughly at the end of

March [2004], the final RIPTOA went on the 26th of March, I

believe, and four days later, the four contractors were murdered in

Fallujah, thereby presenting us with something of a conundrum, a

quandary. What were the courses of action that the MEF staff

presented to you in response to this?

Conway: Let me highlight for you that on the same day that we lost

four contractors in Fallujah, we lost five soldiers in Ramadi, and they

were literally blown away. [ey hit what up to that point was

probably the biggest explosive device that we had seen. [ey were

riding in a [M-]113 [armored personnel carrier], and all we found

was the tailgate and a boot.[e size of the explosion was monstrous,

15 to 18 feet across, 10 to 12 feet deep. We don’t know for sure what

they hit, but it was certainly something very large, probably stacked.

I need to characterize for you our first reaction to the contractors

because that will, I hope, make what else I say make more sense.We

started seeing the reports initially on TV. And that fit, because we

had no idea these guys were going into Fallujah. And the first of the

effort was that we had to get those bodies back, and we did that.

We had three bodies back by the end of the day, a fourth body that

the police chief helped us with that we recovered the next morning.

So we got the bodies back very quickly.

Our next questions, then, as military people responsible for the area,

is who were these guys? Where did they come from? Who sent them

into Fallujah, and why didn’t they tell us, because quite frankly, four

white guys in a soft-skinned vehicle could die in a lot of cities in

Iraq at that point, and Fallujah was no exception. Now, how they

died was absolutely terrible, but we felt like there had been a serious

mistake made in causing that to happen in the first place, and one

that was very avoidable through some very simple coordination.

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American Perspectives
So that was our first reaction. And at the same time we are dealing

with what’s happened to the 1st of the 1st [1st Engineer Battalion,

1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, USA] with the five soldiers out

in Ramadi. It didn’t take long at all for us to sense that the public

reaction to this thing was significant and that in some regards,

decision makers in Baghdad were being heavily influenced by

public perception. So we cautioned people, started saying at the

outset, “hey, let’s not overreact to this, okay? We’ve got a plan for

Fallujah.”We [had] already . . . launched a battalion-sized operation

up on the northwest side of the city to ensure freedom of

movement. We were in close coordination with the Special Forces

in the area. We felt like that we were going to solve Fallujah.[ere

was no place in our AO that we wouldn’t go. . . . [We believed that]

our courses of action of developing the intelligence, developing a

credibility with the people, gaining additional tactical intelligence

from them, would eventually lead us to the leadership of what we

thought was an enclave of foreign fighters there . . . and we would

take the head off of the insurgency in and around Fallujah.

And so we cautioned people,“let’s not overreact to the death of the

contractors.” [at was a mistake, frankly, and one that should not

drive our policies, or our strategies in and around the city.

In the midst of trying to push back against that, we got word to

attack Fallujah—a division-level attack, whatever amount of force

that we thought we needed. . . . Once again, we pushed back, and

I went to certain levels in the chain of command to try to

determine where this was coming from. Again, harkening back to

an earlier question, I felt the Army could be fairly heavy-handed,

and I wanted to make sure this just wasn’t CJTF-7 telling us we

had to attack. In fact, it came from higher than that, and once we

discovered that, we said, “Okay, if this is well understood by

everyone up and down the chain of command, we’re Marines, and

we will execute our orders.”

We looked at various ways to conduct the attack. Essentially, we

looked at a feint to the south, the main attack coming in from the

north, and in the end three battalions in an attack on the city. We

were about three days in the attack; we had taken about a third of

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Al-Anbar Awakening
the city. People talk about Marine casualties associated with

Fallujah. In fact, the casualties were light.We had six Marines killed

in three days of attacking the city and I want to say 18 wounded. .

. . But if you look at what our guys had done, they had done very

well.[ere were some other deaths outside the city.[ey continued

to attack our convoys. We had a very unfortunate incident where

we lost four Marines to a large IED [improvised explosive device]

south of Abu Ghraib. So total MEF casualties were mounting. But

strictly looking at those forces attacking Fallujah, [the casualties]

were not bad over a three-day period, and we killed a lot of bad

guys.[ey were doing some really stupid things in the city, [like] 40

to 50 guys skylarking at a roadblock inside the city that our AC-130

picked up. Groups walking down the streets trying to move into

attack positions that our people could see that were flying with the

close air. Snipers were introduced to the Iraqis. We brought in a lot

of snipers, realizing that they would be a very viable weapon in a

built-up area. [It was the] first time we had to fight in a heavily

built-up area really since Baghdad.

So these troops made great progress.[e snipers owned the streets,

and we felt like, in fact, we were getting intercepts that they were

about to run out of ammunition. We had killed a significant

portion of the leadership, the rest were confused . . . arguing among

themselves in terms of what they needed to do.[ey were starting

to look at how to slip out of the city. We could never, just based on

the numbers of forces, put a complete cordon around the city, so

there was some filtering out down by the river. We had not had

time to evacuate the civilians, so we had young military-aged males

coming out with some of the civilians at the checkpoints. We

couldn’t confirm or deny. Probably if we had had some Iraqis there,

they could have helped us, but they really, once again, as I said, the

Iraqi forces had essentially dissolved, although the 36th

Commando, they were tigers, they did their part.

But in any event, after about . . . three or four days, we got word to

stop attacking the city, and that at that point was the entirely the

wrong thing to do. What had happened in the process was that Al

Jazeera and some other Arab media had worked their way into the

city, and they were reporting that we were killing hundreds of

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American Perspectives
women and children and old people, when in fact just the opposite

was true. I think probably some women and children did die. We

were dropping bombs and shooting artillery, counterbattery, into

Fallujah, no question about it. But we were being very careful. We

were checking all of those missions to try to make sure that

collateral damage was absolutely minimized, and I am satisfied that

we did that.

[ere were a couple of doctors over at the hospital who were bigger

insurgents than the insurgents were. So they were only too happy to

make comments about how we were filling the hospital with women

and children, and so the whole myth was precipitated, and just the

hysterical, I would say irresponsible, reporting of the Arab press I

think inflamed the whole region. In fact, it started giving me some

cause for concern that not only did you have the Sunnis who were

being agitated by it all, but the Shi’a down south were reading these

reports [and] believing them. And about the same time, [Muqtada

al-] Sadr and his people came to life in Najaf. We never wanted to

see a general uprising of both Shi’a and Sunni because we did not

have enough forces in the country to handle both of those writ large.

So anyway, there was cause for concern that the whole thing was

potentially going to get out of hand. I think we owe that all

collectively to the Arab media and their lack of journalistic integrity

in terms of reporting of what they were actually seeing.

Once again, we thought we had gotten some bum steer out of

Baghdad, so we pushed back, saying hey, you know, “you couldn’t

anticipate that you were going to have Sunni objection to this in

the governing body?” It was pretty shortsighted. Okay, you’ve got

this attack into motion now. You don’t just call off three battalions

of Marines just like that, especially when they have lost some of

their fellow Marines and they want to see this thing done. It would

be a huge mistake at this point to cease the attack. We can give you

the city in three more days.

And yet our orders were our orders, so we were told to hold what

we had and go into a series of negotiations. We did that with the

city fathers, but they never swung any weight. [ey were very

heavily influenced by the insurgents that were still there.[ey had

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Al-Anbar Awakening
no real authority over the people. [ey were just trying to cut the

best deal they could, and delay, and do some other things to try to

draw the thing out, which I think they successfully did. So after a

time it was pretty much just stalemate. We thought at one point

that the national will was going to be there again to go back into

the city, and we tried everything imaginable. We tried to get them

to turn in their heavy weapons, to turn over the insurgent

leadership, those kinds of things. Again, they could not have

possibly pulled that off, I am convinced of it, because they had no

real authority or couldn’t indicate any ability to make those things

happen. Anyway, we negotiated with them.[ey sent some people

out of Baghdad. Between them and me, and a number of others, we

talked to them, but the talks never came to anything substantial.

We in the process . . . evolved to the Fallujah Brigade in an effort

to try to take advantage of what we called a charismatic old Iraqi

general that could muster forces in the area, and bring security to

the city, and turn over the insurgent leadership, and that type of

thing.[at was essentially a concept that was, General Abizaid and

I, had talked about it before, and we always thought that was a key

to putting this Iraqi lead in place out there with a competent and

capable force. On the heels of that, we had a suggestion. I met one

night with General [Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed] alShehwani, who was the head of Iraqi National Intelligence Service,

and he said that he and his people knew of some Iraqi generals like

that in that area, and that he thought it was worth the effort. It

matched the thing General Abizaid and I had talked about. It gave

us a way to break the standoff, if you will. We were dealing with no

aces in the deck after it was determined that we would not reattack.

We were always bluffing to say that if these things don’t happen,

American forces will resume the offensive, but they didn’t know

that, and so they were inspired to try to do some other things.

Once again, the Fallujah Brigade indicated sort of the

ineffectiveness of locals attempting to do a security thing. We

appealed to the honor and nature of the Iraqi army, any number of

things, to try to get these guys to, to get the old spirit back, but

they just would not—could not—do it, and after a time, once again,

when we saw we were killing some of these guys in uniform right

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American Perspectives
alongside the insurgency, we took back the weapons and equipment

that we had given them, and that was sort of the quiet demise of

the Fallujah Brigade. . . .

[Further discussion of the stalemate before General Conway had to

end the conversation. [e interview resumed three weeks later.]

Piedmont: We left off last time toward the end of the battle of

Fallujah. [e very last thing we were discussing was your concern

that the stalemate you were involved in was locking down three

battalions that could have been used elsewhere. Please pick up on

that thread and take us through.

Conway: What we had found was we had about the right amount

of troops for service in the al-Anbar. But that said, we didn’t have

enough to bring in for a focused attack on Fallujah and take care

of the rest of the area of responsibility. So the division commander

massed his troops to the extent he could from areas that were not

as affected as others. But in the process, we saw that the bad guys

started to come in behind us and exact some retribution on people

who had been contributing and cooperating with us. We were

concerned that . . . we were going to start having large numbers of

troops sitting in positions and baking, in the sun, achieving no

measurable purpose. So we wanted to get past the impasse that we

saw starting to develop.

A couple of interesting things I would add to it. One is that there

was reporting, much later after the fact, that Marines were driven

out of Fallujah based on casualties and some other factors. In fact,

if you go back to check your record of those three battalions in the

fighting in Fallujah, they lost some other Marines and sailors

outside of the city through IEDs and that type of thing, but

actually fighting inside the city, we had six Marines killed and six

wounded as a result of their attacks. And we were pretty satisfied

with that. We hated to lose anybody, but at the time we stopped,

[we] own[ed] about a third of the city, and [for] the casualties to

be that relatively insignificant I thought was a testament to the

good tactics-and-operations use of combined arms and so forth by

the small-unit commanders. [e other thing of course was the

nature of the press reporting. . . .

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Piedmont: What role did the media play in shaping the battle? If

I have it right, there was a scarcity of “embeds”versus OIF I. Is that

correct?

Conway: I don’t think we ever saw the number of embeds in OIF II

that we saw in OIF I. And by embeds by the pure definition of the

term, we had some people that came and lived with us for a couple

of days, and did what the troops would probably classify as a “driveby shooting,”and then left.[at caused us to say,“hey, either you are

an embed or you are not.” If you’re just here to do a story, there’s a

difference between calling yourself an embed. An embed lives with,

sleeps with, gets to know the troops over an extended period of time.

I don’t think you can reach that status in a three- or four-day period,

which was some of what we were seeing.

Our concern wasn’t so much with the U.S. press as it was with the

Arab press.[at was where we came to understand that some of these

folks—not all—but some of these folks have absolutely no

journalistic integrity, and they were not the least bit hesitant to

virtually be the enemy combat camera. I mean, there were reports—

and this is what [reached] part of the people in Baghdad, and

especially the Sunnis as a part of the transition government—that

we had killed 750 women and children. And these guys are only too

happy to go interview the doctor at the hospital, who by the way was

probably one of the biggest insurgents in the town. But the credibility

associated with the doctor at the hospital “who says” was obvious.

In fact, we were pretty pleased with the efforts [to avoid civilian

casualties] in the attack. [ere probably were some women and

children who were killed, frankly, because we dropped bombs on

hard targets in the city. But we were also quite precise.We had AC130s up at night, and this was the first time that they had learned

to deal with that weapon system. In one instance, we had a radio

call back, “We’ve got 50 guys loitering around a roadblock in the

middle of town. Do we take them out?” We said yeah, take them

out. Another instance we had 40 or 50 come out of a mosque

headed toward positions. Again, an F-16 saw them. Again, we put

a precision weapon in the middle of them and hit large numbers.

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American Perspectives
Anyway, this hysterical and irresponsible reporting got to the

Sunnis in the country, the rest of the Arab region. . . . It was just, it

taught us that these bastards cannot be trusted, and we tried

different things over time, embedding them, making sure that they

had proper reporting, and so forth. I confronted, and that’s the only

word to use, one of our battalion commanders with a statement

that he had made in Al Jazeera, and he said, sir, those people were

with me all day, and you can ask anybody, I didn’t say anything like

that. All they got right is his name and his hometown. So they used

that to fabricate whatever they wanted to say that would continue

to inflame, and just print it.

[ings like that were just incredible to us, and again, it brought us

to realize that this whole IO [information operations] aspect of the

fight was indeed important, and very well understood by our

adversary. . . .

Piedmont: [e final question on the actual battle of Fallujah and

the immediate aftermath as the whole thing was going on—what

was your greatest concern?

Conway: Well, we had a concern for civilian casualties, of course,

and we had a concern for what was happening in the outlying areas.

I never had any doubt as to how it was going to turn out. But I

think on a larger scale, I had a concern that we were going off plan,

in that we had gone in there with the idea of trying to employ the

same techniques that we had seen work in the south. And we felt

that given our head that we could have done things differently in

Fallujah, not overreacted to the idea of contractors, which I

consider as sort of the root of all evil here, but by being on deck five

days after turnover and then assaulting the town of Fallujah.

Okay, that’s not exactly in accordance with our doctrine out of the

Small Wars Manual. Once we had Fallujah, what were we going to

do with it? [ere was no police force.[ere was no army. So we were

going to have to garrison Fallujah and tie down large numbers of

troops in a city that would probably be seething and hostile to our

presence. So we were concerned about what was going to be the

aftermath of that. And again, the fact that the Marines come to the

al-Anbar, and the first thing we do is start killing people. We had

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Al-Anbar Awakening
said before we ever got there that we knew the Army didn’t go into

Fallujah, and thought that was a bit of travesty to be saying the

insurgency was broken—you know, we’ve got complete control of our

AO, and yet nobody goes into Fallujah. [ere’s a reason for that. So,

a little bit transparent. And we had said we’ll go anyplace in our AO,

whatever that takes. And we certainly will have freedom of

movement for our convoys, and that type of thing.[at’s what started

piquing our interest almost right away. But we knew that we were

getting away from this whole idea of developing the trust and

confidence of the people, and trying to win him over through what

was both reducing the insurgency and creating a better quality of life.

[e thing that probably should be posted for the record before we

leave Fallujah is that as late as the 25th [April 2004], we thought

we were going to reattack the city. You know, we sat for about two,

two and half weeks, with these useless conversations that were

taking place with the city representatives and leadership.[ey were

under the gun of the terrorists and the insurgents. We knew that.

And it was a cat-and-mouse game that was being played, but okay,

that’s all right because when this fails, unfortunately, we are going

to get orders to attack anyway. We thought that those were coming

on about the 25th, only to find out that apparently in Baghdad,

and maybe even in the capitals, the Brits and later the Italians had

said, and I think it was again subject somewhat to what they were

reading out of the Arab media, that you are being too heavyhanded there, and if you do that, you risk us leaving the Coalition.

And that was a bucket of cold water in the face of a lot of people.

Immediately, the whole thought process changed about us going

back into Fallujah because whatever else we were doing there was

not going to be worth the breakup of the Coalition to include our

best ally.

So you know, it gets back to this whole idea of overreaction, and the

fact that we should have taken the deaths of the four contractors

much more in stride, realizing that . . . our reaction was exactly what

they wanted it to be. We should have been smarter than that, and

it’s unfortunate that it simply served to inflame the nation, and

probably the region, and now we’ve got what we’ve got. . . .

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American Perspectives
Piedmont: As we wind down your tenure, your personal tour of

command of the MEF in Iraq, how would you characterize the

situation when you left? Had you seen the point at which the

initiative had passed back to us?

Conway: Yeah, listen, we were always optimists, guardedly

optimistic at times, but they could only hurt us in certain ways, and

I think that we always had the initiative.[ey were reacting in great

part to what we were doing, and we sensed that, and it made the

troops feel pretty good about things, feel pretty good about Iraq.

You can’t just talk about the kinetic aspect of things; there’s an

economic line, a governmental line. [ere were five lines of

operation that really we were operating on. We were having

intermittent talks with some of the bad guys who said, thought

that they represented a Sunni insurgency. We were creating

business conferences with Iraqi businessmen, some of them right

out of Fallujah, both in Bahrain and in Jordan. We looked for a

way to try to secure the contractors who would come to our area to

build the projects.

We had a method. It needed some tweaking, I think, before it was

all over, and security is still the principal issue there. But we were

looking for ways to try to generate business growth, and

employment associated with that.

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American Perspectives
Interview 3

The Indirect Approach:

Engaging the Tribes
Colonel Michael M. Walker

Commanding Officer

3d Civil Affairs Group

I Marine Expeditionary Force

October 2003 to September 2005

Colonel Michael M. Walker commanded 3d Civil Affairs Group

during the first deployment of Marine forces into al-Anbar Province

from February until September 2004. Previously, he served with the

Defense Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Service, and in

2003 he was in charge of captured document exploitation for the whole

of Iraq. In this interview, he describes the first battle of Fallujah and

initial efforts to engage Anbari leaders and split the insurgency.

Colonel Walker was interviewed by Colonel Gary W. Montgomery

on 24 March 2009 at Twentynine Palms, California.

Colonel Gary W. Montgomery: What was your impression when

you first got there? What was Anbar Province like, and what was

your impression of the insurgency?

Colonel Michael M. Walker: Well, actually, I had an opinion that the

insurgency was far more sophisticated and developed. . . .[e previous

tour, I saw how sophisticated the Iraqi intelligence service was, . . . and

all these guys were out there. And we saw them connecting

themselves back together again in the summer of 2003. . . .

[at whole first Fallujah fight fiasco—that was probably the single

most frustrating experience of my entire career, bar none, nothing

even close to being second. So here you go. You have probably the

best-prepared Marine combat organization in the history of the

Marine Corps going back with a great campaign plan, approved all

the way up through the whole friggin’ chain of command. Set to go,

set to execute. . . . We did the transfer of authority between I MEF

[I Marine Expeditionary Force] and the 82d [Airborne Division,

USA], . . . I’d say the last few days of March. And either the next day

or the day following, those Blackwater guys drive into Fallujah. . . .

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So the Marines were saying, look, we’ve got a campaign plan that’s

going to win here. Why in the hell would you deviate from your

campaign plan four or five days into its execution? It’s a 190-day

plan. Realistically, probably it was longer than that, because it was

obviously built for continuing operations. And you’re going to

throw that thing out of the book and go make a major fight in

Fallujah? And . . . we did. . . . But now we’re tied up in this terrible

fight in Fallujah, and the same guys who ordered us to attack now

order us to quit, so they stopped the fighting. . . .

Reacting to those four guys getting killed in Fallujah immediately

handed the tactical and operational initiative to the enemy because

now we were reacting to what they were doing. Now we were on

their agenda. Like I said, I’m endlessly frustrated, and it’s not like

the Marine Corps didn’t see it, that we didn’t know that, and we

weren’t fighting tooth and nail not to execute that operation, OVR,

Operation Vigilant Resolve.

So we did that, so now what do you do? Well, now you really better

start thinking out of the box, because we’ve got a mess on our

hands. We threw our campaign plan away. Now we’re going to go

try to start it up again. . . . What are we going to do since we’re not

going to go in militarily? So we started opening up lines of

communication, went through a whole series of negotiations.[ey

were going to hand over the prisoners, and they were going to turn

over their weapons, and all this other stuff, and we all knew that it

was hokum.

I’ve been to negotiations in my civilian work, and I studied

negotiations at Harvard. . . . You’ve got to have something to be

able to negotiate with somebody, and they knew we had no cards.

Our card was, “Well, if you do this, we’re going to go resume

military operations,” and they knew we couldn’t. So we did that

kabuki dance for a number of weeks, but the good thing that came

out of that is we finally started talking to these guys. And the thing

that General [ James T.] Conway did that I thought was so keen

was that he would not only have you talk to the guys while you’re

working, but during the breaks, and everything else. . . . He had us

start to talk to these guys, and a number of things came out of that.

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We found out that a bunch of military officers were interested in

going back into an Iraqi army in the future, and these guys, right

now, their alternatives were: starve; try to make ends meet in a

desperate way for my family; have no future; or try to get back in

the army.

At this point, there were a lot of guys I spoke to up in Baghdad at

CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority] who I think were looking

at life through rose-colored glasses and going,“[e Iraqi army was

a bad thing, and we don’t need it, and the worst thing we can do is

bring back the Iraqi army.” From the Iraqis I spoke to, even up in

the Kurds, the Iraqi army had always been considered one of the

most respected professions in Iraq. It certainly wasn’t [like] being

in the intelligence services. It certainly wasn’t [like] being a

Ba’athist Party guy for the Kurds. [e Iraqi army was a respected

organization. It was respected by the Sunnis, it was respected by

the Shia. Bringing back the Iraqi army was an important thing, so

we started seeing this as a possible way to crack the insurgency.

Some of those conversations led to the famous Fallujah Brigade.

[at was out of the box. [at was highly controversial. A lot of

people just went nuts when the Marines did that. I think that was

a great solution. I’ll defend that to my dying day. First of all, it

created a crack—again, which was one of General Conway’s

goals—in the insurgency, because now at least you had some of

these guys saying that, “Hey, I'm going to work on a day-to-day

basis with the Marines,” and you had some of their guys saying,

“No we won’t.” Well, prior to that, it was all “No we won’t,” so we

started to create that dialogue. . . .

One of the things General Conway did was to have us integrate

economically back into the region, so we had an LNO [liaison

officer] office in Kuwait, we had an LNO in Jordan, and we were

using those guys to try to get the economy going by having the

regional Arabs integrate with the Iraqi local economy here in alAnbar and see what we could get going through that end. . . . So

then we started these [discussions],“Try to get the economy going

again. [e fighting’s over. Let’s try to carry out the campaign plan

as best we can.” We put together the idea of trying to identify

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American Perspectives
leaders in al-Anbar, and we’ll take them out of al-Anbar. We’ll get

them out of that place, because it’s like a kid who was growing up

in a gang environment. You live your whole life in a gang

environment, you think that’s the only world there is. . . . So maybe

if we could get these guys out, we could broaden them to a different

way of seeing it, a different future for Iraq, and embrace that, and

take it back with them.

So we arranged to have a trip to Bahrain, and we brought a bunch

of these business guys and leaders and so forth to Bahrain, and one

of our rules was that anybody could go as long as they all agreed to

it.[e insurgency wanted to figure out what the hell we were doing,

so we knew we were bringing some bad guys along.

So we got there, but now we’re in a setting where there’s no flak

jackets, no incoming, no nothing. You’re in another Arab country.

. . . Saddam [Hussein] wouldn’t let people leave Iraq. A couple of

these guys in the delegation had been to Bahrain, but the last time

they’d been in Bahrain was in the mid 1970s, so we’re talking 30

years earlier. When they left Iraq in the mid-’70s to go to Bahrain,

Iraq was the country with the higher per-capita earnings. Iraq was

the country with the nice buildings. Iraq was the country of wealth

and stability, and Bahrain was a kind of backwater. And now

Bahrain’s got skyscrapers, and everyone’s driving fancy cars, and

there’s landscaped highways and fancy hotels. And all of a sudden

they see, for the first time, some of these guys saw what the hell

happened to them.[ey went from being the top of the pile in the

mid-’70s to being way behind by the 2000s, mid-2000s.

And I remember we were up in this one holding company, a major

corporation in Bahrain.[eir first business deal in the ’50s had been

exporting rice from Iraq into the Middle East and into India. And

they said, “Hey, my family started doing business with Iraqi guys

half a century ago. We’d love to start business again up with Iraq.”

And these guys were all anxious—“yeah, let's do it”—and all this

stuff. And then we would sit there saying, “Wait a minute. I don’t

think the security situation in al-Anbar is appropriate for you to

bring your business in right now. No, we’ve got to get the fighting

under control. We’ve got to make this place a safer place to be

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before we start closing these business deals.”So we still closed some

business deals, but we wanted to keep sending that message that if

you want this for your future, you’ve got to change the reality that’s

back in al-Anbar. At that time, also we would have dinners and

stuff so we could talk informally, and that’s when we first got the

first kind of overtures of some quid pro quos: “If we come work

with you, can you do this for me?” And they didn’t go too far, but

it was just some feelers.

So then we decided, okay, that was launched out of Kuwait, so . . .

the Kuwait guys started integrating. What’s going on in Jordan?

We’ve got an LNO sitting there in Jordan. What’s going on there?

So I took a trip to Jordan to meet with our officer there, by the

name of [Lieutenant Colonel Roy D.] “Dave” Harlan. Dave takes

me all these places, and we start meeting those people, and he’s got

a list of connections of people in al-Anbar that I’m just like going,

“I can’t believe this.” But nothing’s happening. It’s all talk, and it’s

all contacts, but we’re not getting anywhere.

And that’s when I realized that tens of thousands of Iraqis from the

al-Anbar had gone to Jordan. And not only just tens of thousands,

tens of thousands with talent: engineers, doctors, scientists, former

high-ranking government officials, guys with PhDs in economics,

guys with—you name an American university, they’ve got a degree

there. And they’re all sitting there, and they want to do something.

So I’m like,“He’s sitting on a pile of golden eggs here.”So we came

back, and I got my econ guys and said, “Look, Dave is a great

salesman. He is great at finding contacts. He’s got contacts out the

yin-yang. We need to start closing some of this.”So I sent the econ

team over there to go start putting something together, and that led

to our first economic development meeting, which was okay. And

I say okay in the sense that it accomplished all of our goals of

economics, but it was still, it wasn’t a major step forward. But they

liked what they saw, evidently, so then they said let’s schedule

another one in late July—18, 19, 20, somewhere around there.

So then all of a sudden I’m getting these e-mails from the former

ambassador to France who is a senior vice president for Citicorp, .

. . and I’m getting an e-mail from a guy who led one of the USAID

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American Perspectives
[United States Agency for International Development] projects

for reintegrating Eastern Europe after the fall of communism. And

they’re saying,“Hey, we’re getting some Iraqis [who] are contacting

us and saying they want to come to this business meeting, and it’s

supposed to be with the Marines.” And I’m going like, “Oh, the

more the merrier,” but I’m letting the chain of command know

there’s an unusual list of characters coming to this thing. . . .

So, I arrive the first day, and an Office of Secretary of Defense

White House liaison was there, Jerry [H.] Jones, and Ambassador

[Peter W.] Galbraith, and a number of other guys were there.[ere

was representative, what’s the name of the U.S. bank? It’s like the

U.S. bank for international development. . . . And then there was

the Japanese bank for international cooperation, or whatever.[ey

were there. . . . And Jerry Jones calls me over and says, “Hey, look,

one of the Iraqis here says that there’s going to be a representative

from the insurgency in al-Anbar that wants to talk to you guys,

open up an informal line of communication.” So it was, “Okay,

fine.” So then I sent that e-mail off to J.C. [Colonel] John [C.]

Coleman, [I MEF] chief of staff. . . .

So then, the next day we go in—and this gets back to your earlier

question about how organized did you think the insurgency was—

I thought they were fairly organized militarily. I was a clueless

wonder on how well organized they were until this meeting the next

day. So we go in there, and these guys have got five or six committees

organized. [ey’ve got a political committee, an economics

committee, a governance committee, a military committee. . . .

Montgomery: [ey’ve got their own lines of operation.

Walker: [ey’re ready to take over the country. I mean, so these

guys are totally organized. [ey’re not just organized militarily.

[ey’re totally organized economically. [ey’re organized

politically.[ey’re organized from a governance standpoint.[ey’ve

got all three of our lines of operation matched. [ey’ve got a

security line of operation. [ey’ve got an economic line of

operation. [ey’ve got a governance line of operation. It’s up and

running and set, and some . . . PhDs in economics are on their

economics team, and their military committee’s got former

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Al-Anbar Awakening
Republican Guard corps commanders and other generals, and

things like that. [ese guys are ready to go. . . .

So we sent that message back to MEF, and they’re going like,

“Well, that’s pretty interesting,” and now J. C. Coleman is like

chomping on the bit. He wants to get on a plane and fly out. But

during lunch that day, Jerry Jones gets pulled aside, said, “Hey, the

representative from the insurgency’s arrived. [ey want to meet

you guys up in his hotel room this afternoon.” So he tells me that

as we’re going out to lunch. So we eat lunch, go back, head count,

more of this stuff. . . . We were no longer running that conference.

[ey were running the conference. [ey were having their

committees come up and discuss what their vision of Iraq was

going to be, their vision of al-Anbar, and what role they wanted us

to do. And it was pretty enlightening. . . .

[e other thing that amazed me was the gentleman from Japan

gave an impassioned talk about becoming the friends of America.

. . . He’s saying, “You can trust the Americans. When they say

they’ll work with you, they mean they’ll work with you.[ey don’t

lie. [ey helped rebuild my country. [ey said they were going to

rebuild the country after the war. No one believed them.[ey did.

We expected them to occupy our country and take everything we

own, and leave us destroyed, and they didn’t, and now they’re one

of our best friends.”I’m paraphrasing, but no American could have

made that speech to another audience.

Again, that showed a vision of maybe being with the Americans

instead of being with al-Qaeda—and I’m talking Sunnis now,

because screw the al-Qaeda guys.[ese are Sunnis—and these are

the diehard Ba’athists for the most part—all of a sudden, the lights

were going on that maybe the road out of this thing is with the

Americans, instead of with al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda was

Frankenstein’s monster. [ey brought them in, thinking they were

going to be able to control them, and they were not. [ey lost

control of the beast, and al-Qaeda started taking over them. So that

all started helping us.

Montgomery: [e campaign plan that was diverted because of the

Blackwater incident, as a consequence of that and the first fight in

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American Perspectives
Fallujah, you said it caused them to start opening lines of

communication.

Walker: [at’s correct.

Montgomery: But was that consistent with the campaign plan you

already had?

Walker: Absolutely. . . .

Montgomery: Let’s see, this meeting, you said there was a meeting

in August, and this one is after that, right?

Walker: No, this was in July.[is one set up the August [meeting].

. . . Let me back up just a second. What we did was we wanted to

establish the bona fides of the insurgent guy we met with, the

representative of the resistance, which I never pause calling

terrorists, because they hated it, which I think did us a lot of good.

And I said, “Well, if you do this, you’re a terrorist.” So, anyway, he

was going to go back to his guys, and I got all of the stuff, the list

of demands that they had and so on and so forth, and we were

going to go in, and we were going to see if he was really, truly

representative, so they were going to do a cease-fire. And if they

could do a cease-fire in Anbar, then we believed that they had

control, and that therefore you’re a legitimate player, and we’ll take

it from here.

For a number of reasons, it just didn’t work. We tried to do it

towards the end of the following week in July, which is a very tight

timeline. We really didn’t connect on their demands and our

demands, on what we thought was supposed to happen, what they

thought was supposed to happen. I don’t think the trust was there.

You don’t build trust and rapport with somebody in one two-hour

meeting, not for something of this magnitude, not for a cease-fire

in the entire province.

So we waited for the cease-fire. We didn’t see it. We were doing

statistical—how many IEDs [improvised explosive devices] went

off, how many firefights, how many contacts were reported? Was

there a statistical drop during the cease-fire period? And then it

didn’t happen. We didn’t buy it. We had notified up the chain of

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command because they also claimed to control part of the area

around Samarra, north of Baghdad.[e Army commander said he

didn’t see anything happening there. I think we both set conditions

that were impossible to meet. . . .

We said okay, let’s try it again in August, so we’ll meet again in

August. So we set up another meeting. . . .

So I go back, report to the deputy chief of mission [James F. Jeffrey,

at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad]. I’m thinking he’s going to want

to talk about, “Do you know what we just saw—about how

organized the Sunnis are? Do you know that they’re having one of

the armed resistance wants to come talk to us about a potential

cease-fire?” No. He didn’t want to talk about that at all. He was

interested in “what in the Sam Hill was some guy from the Office

of Secretary Defense doing there in Amman?”[at this should all

be Department of State, not Department of Defense. And “what

do those guys think they’re doing?”And “what was he doing here?”

And “when is he leaving?” And “what’s his name?”

And I’m sitting there going like, “Am I or am I not sitting here in

the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and aren’t we in a kind of nasty little

shoot-‘em-up right now?”I didn’t say any of this, of course, because

I’m just sitting there. But I’m going, like, “You’re talking some turf

war back between Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. And here we

have an opportunity to possibly exploit a big crack or seam in the

enemy in the war here that might start moving us forward toward

resolving this thing.” I tried my best to pitch all that stuff, and he

would just brush that stuff aside, yeah, yeah, and go back to the

OSD-DoD-DoS turf battles. So I said my piece and I left.

Now, I said that to compare the reception that I got at the U.S.

embassy in Baghdad in the last days of July in 2004, and how I

MEF was looking at this, and 1 MarDiv [1st Marine Division].

And they were looking at this thing very seriously, and looking at

this as a real avenue to try to pursue. But you can see the disconnect.

It’s going to be really hard for the MEF to go off on a policy if it’s

not in sync with the mission [of the U.S. embassy]. And even more

so, now I’m wondering how are we going to sell this to the Iraqi

interim government and PM [Prime Minister Ayad] Allawi,

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American Perspectives
because if the U.S. mission isn’t on board, Allawi is certainly not

going to be on board with this thing, and we’re liable to kill this

thing. It’s going to be a stillborn opportunity here.

So we went back in August. Now by August, we know that the

second Fallujah fight is coming. I don’t know what date it is, but

everybody’s gearing up for it. [at train’s left the station, and it’s

going to happen. And we kind of viewed the August meeting as the

last chance to maybe avoid this fight. But again, the first Fallujah

fight had warped their perception of how strong they were. At that

August meeting, there was a special Fallujah delegation that came,

and our position was we weren’t going to talk to them. . . . [ey

were even a separate delegation from the rest of the Sunni

resistance because they had gone off on their own world.[ey were

being run by [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi . . .

Montgomery: [Abdallah al-] Janabi, maybe?

Walker: Yeah, yeah. . . . [ose guys were just a bunch of bad actors,

and we didn’t want to talk to them, but we did. . . .

So these guys [Fallujah delegation], they were totally convinced

they were going to beat us again, which they don’t realize they lost

the first time. [ey won because of politics. [ey won because the

Iraqi governing council at that time, which was the advisers under

the CPA [Coalition Provisional Authority], said that they were

going to resign, four of the council were going to resign if we didn’t

stop operations. So [Ambassador L. Paul] Bremer had said,“Look,

stop it.” [ey viewed that as they thought they beat us cold. [ey

thought they had fought us to a standstill, . . . and they weren’t

interested in negotiating. [ey were basically just giving us

ultimatums. . . . I knew there was no way that there wasn’t going to

be a second Fallujah battle. . . .

[is Fallujah delegation gave us a real interesting description of

how Fallujah was being governed at that time. And I can tell you

that the closest comparison I can give to you, if you’re a student of

history, is the Reign of Terror in Paris after the [French] Revolution.

It was a bone-chilling description of how to run a population. . . .

[ings that were just horrific, and it was all star chamber,

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informants and counter-informants, executions and summary

executions, and torturing. It was just terrible what was going on

inside that city.[e term we used was a cancer growing on the face

of Iraq. Fallujah was a cancer that had to be eradicated. . . .

We came back the second time from the meeting.[is was the first

time they gave us a detailed proposal arming the Sunnis to fight with

us, and it’s sad that that [idea] got sidetracked for about a year, year

and a half. And their proposal, in my personal opinion, was

unrealistic, even unrealistic for the future. But not only was it

unrealistic for that time frame, it was an unrealistic solution. But it

had the key components to create an armed Sunni force in the Sunni

provinces; northern Babil; al-Anbar; I think Samarra Province, I

mean, the Sunni province that has Samarra in it; and parts of

western Baghdad, that they would do that and join with us and do

that, follow that out, which in essence became the Sunni Awakening.

By that time, my tour was coming to a close. Fourth CAG [civil

affairs group] was coming on board, and the State Department was

not interested in this line of communication, and I felt that it would

probably get picked up again after the second Fallujah fight. I know

subsequent Marine rotations attempted to rebuild those lines and

re-create that dynamic again, and eventually we succeeded. . . .

Before Brigadier General [David G.] Reist deployed, he was keenly

interested in reviving this, and he kept it going. I don’t know if he

was able to move the pot from the back burner to the front burner,

but he certainly kept the flame on it. And a number of people just

kept working it and working it. I would still get e-mails from these

guys two years later, three years later. . . .

[is just goes to show you how much trust the Marines built up

with the Sunnis at this time, and how much they really, truly

trusted the Marines to do the right thing by them. Al-Qaeda was

really taking over the western end of al-Anbar, and they were

absolutely savage to the Iraqis. . . .[ese guys were [really bad], and

they’d always have a torture chamber set up, and they always had

their informants and executions going, and it was rule by terror.

And then absolute rigid, extreme Islamic proselytization. And so

that’s what I’m saying. [e Marines were offering security,

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governance, economy, and al-Qaeda’s offering a trip back to the

Dark Ages. . . .

So what finally happened, and I believe this was in 2006, one of

the local tribes [near al-Qaim] said, “We’ve had enough with alQaeda,” and without the Marines or anything, they started going

after al-Qaeda, and they were losing the fight. And they called back

to the guys in Jordan, the Sunnis that we had been talking to, who

knew how to get a hold of the Americans, who got a hold of John

Coleman, who was now the base guy [at Camp Pendleton]. . . . And

they’re literally calling him from Iraq to tell him,“Help us. Send air

support so we can beat al-Qaeda.” And J. C. [Coleman] knows all

the numbers. He calls the command center at I MEF (Rear), who

knows they can immediately contact I MEF (Forward), and they

work the comm[unication]s through, and the Marines were able

to bring in air support.

My personal opinion was that was the tipping point.[at was where

it hit the tipping point for the Sunni Awakening, because that’s

when they reached out to the Marines and said, “Come help me.”

Now, there were a lot of fits and starts after that, and steps forward

and steps back, and progress gained and progress lost. I’m just saying

it was an amazing continuum that started through that. . . .

We weren’t able to get, initially, the U.S. [State Department]

mission behind it, which is the number-one reason why we couldn’t

build, because at the end of the day, you follow orders. If the

mission’s saying this, then that’s what you’re going to do. But where

you have your own latitude within your own AO [area of

operations], you continue to keep that pot on the oven.

Well anyway, that’s my view of how the whole Sunni Awakening

continued on. So then, of course, then General Reist kept it going,

and then it started hitting real success. I remember Colonel

[Michael F.] Morris, before he deployed. I gave him a data dump

as best I could. I always gave the data dump to any CAG guy, CAG

commander, who says, “Hey, what’s going on?” [I’d say,] “Here’s

names, here’s people, here’s lessons learned, here’s whatever we’ve

got.” And I’m saying that as a representative of a whole host of

people who were doing that. So I’m saying everyone who got

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connected with that stuff all tried to keep building the network,

and building the network, and keeping that thing alive, and

working it, and keeping it going.

I’d like to back up and tell one short story.We’ve talked about when

we tried to do a cease-fire to see whether or not the people we were

talking about were legitimate, and that didn’t particularly work out.

But there was a second unintentional sequence of events that

seriously proved that the people we were talking to were who they

said they were. During the afternoon of one of the dates in July,

the Iraqi gentleman, [Talal] al-Gaood, who was a sheikh, and who

also had, I believe, a PhD in engineering, brought out the mayor of

Ramadi into a room where I was. . . . [e mayor of Ramadi had

had a falling out with the insurgents. Now I’m talking the Sunni

insurgents, not al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda was gunning for them, too.

But they did not trust him, and they were looking at him as not

someone that they wanted as part of their organization. And so

they had a reconciliation meeting there, where they made up, and

the mayor of Ramadi then became acceptable to the resistance.

At that exact same meeting, the discussion of the governor of alAnbar came up, Governor [Abdul Karim] Burghis [al-Rawi]. . . .

[e insurgency was livid with Governor Burghis, and they said he

had to go . . . because they felt he’d taken too much money, and he

was corrupt. . . . [After returning to Iraq,] all of a sudden I get this

report [from the provincial support liaison team in Ramadi] on

learning about the relationship between the governor of the

province, the mayor of Ramadi, and what that authority is. And it

was as if someone was starting to delineate who was who in the

pecking order. And I’m going like, “why is this coming up right

now?” I mean, a week and a half ago I was in Amman, and they

were talking about they wanted the mayor of Ramadi, [and] they

wanted the governor out. . . . So now all of a sudden I’m getting this

thing out of Ramadi saying that they’re having all of these

discussions about the role of the governor and the role of the mayor

of Ramadi, and yadda, yadda, yadda. It had nothing to do with the

day-to-day operations; it was a completely out-of-the-ordinary

report. So I’m wondering what’s going on in Ramadi. . . .

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Well, several days later, they broke into the governor’s home,

kidnapped his kids.[en they made him go down to Fallujah, resign

his office, and make an anti-American video.[ese guys would have

knives and clubs and things. So he did that, and he was out.

Now, for those of us that knew about the July meetings, that was

all the bona fides we needed. Skip the failed cease-fire. [ese guys

said,“[is guy’s gone.[is guy needs to go,”and within two weeks

it’s a done deal. So then we knew that these guys were what they

said, and the amount of influence they had in al-Anbar was every

bit as significant as they proposed it to be. . . .

I would just close by repeating what I said earlier, was that in my

opinion the Awakening began in the summer of 2004, and through

some very difficult up times and down times, and good times and

bad times, a whole host of Marines always picked it up. And if they

didn’t advance the torch forward, they at least kept that thing lit

and held onto it until someone else could move it forward. I think

the Sunni Awakening that eventually happened is an unbroken

chain from what happened in 2004, and who knows how many

unknown Marines, whose role is important in that, who we never

get a chance to talk about, played a role.

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American Perspectives
Interview 4

Fallujah–

The Epicenter of the Insurgency
77

Lieutenant General John F. Sattler

Commanding General

I Marine Expeditionary Force

Multi National Force • West

September 2004 to February 2005

Lieutenant General John F. Sattler assumed command of I

Marine Expeditionary Force in September 2004, midway through

Operation Iraqi Freedom II. At the time, Marines were beginning to

shape the battlefield for the decisive fight against the insurgents. Prior

to this, Sattler commanded the 2d Marine Division and was the J-3

operation officer for U.S. Marine Forces, Central Command.

In this interview, Lieutenant General Sattler describes assuming

command following the conclusion of operations in an-Najaf the

previous month and applying the lessons learned from Najaf and the

first battle for Fallujah in planning the second battle for Fallujah. He

notes the role of information operations, Iraqi security forces, and joint

forces in the second battle for Fallujah.∗

Lieutenant General Sattler was interviewed by Lieutenant

Colonel John R. Way on 8 April 2005 at Camp Pendleton, California.

Lieutenant Colonel John R. Way: One of the things that I was

struck with when I first got to Fallujah was the importance of

information operations and what was being done. Please talk a little

bit about your guidance in terms of conducting information

operations.

Lieutenant General John F. Sattler: Well, we found out that if you’re

going to wait for guidance to come down, a strategic

communications plan, which was going to push information

operations down to us with themes, that in some cases, the themes

were too late in coming or weren’t applicable to al-Anbar. So when

* For more detail, see the article that LtGen Sattler coauthored with LtCol Daniel H.

Wilson, “Operation Al Fajr: [e Battle of Fallujah—Part II,”Marine Corps Gazette, July 2005.
we took our IO [information operations] team, Colonel [Robert

M.] Mike Olivier was designated and came in to run the IO

campaign. [He] came in about the same time I did.

When we bombed targets during the shaping phase, whatever

target we hit, even though we did positive identification, we did

the collateral damage assessment to make sure there wouldn’t be

collateral damage to noncombatants, and we deconflicted friendly

forces. . . . We watched the hit and we knew who we killed, and we

knew what collateral damage was done.

[e next day there was going to be a press release coming out from

the insurgents that would show [that] we killed women, children,

and elderly men. And there would always be pictures of hospitals

with children, women, and old men in it as they talked about who

we had bombed, and that [our bombs] never killed any insurgents,

they never killed any of [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi’s [al-Qaeda]

network. It was always a standard thing.

And then we would try to rebut that. Well, we figured out that . . .

even if you have the moral, legal high ground, you’re not going to

win, because you’re trying to put a genie back in the bottle, [which

is] much harder than letting the genie out of the bottle. So a couple

of weeks after taking over, [we brought] all the smart folks together.

[ere has to be public affairs, and I know public affairs and IO are

separate; they have two different missions in life. [e way you

attack the theme is different when you’re IO or public affairs, but

the themes can be relatively the same. And they need to know each

other’s themes so they can play off ‘em inside their own arena. So

we had public affairs, civil affairs, and IO all sitting down at the

same table, working through the themes, to make sure we were

getting the effect that we wanted.

What we basically did, before we dropped a bomb, after about the

two-week mark, [a] press release went out from us, telling what we

did, why we did it, [that] the individual was a thug, a two-bit

criminal who has killed over “X” number of Iraqi civilians, has

destroyed this much of Iraqi infrastructure, and has kept this much

off the table in the form of contracts that would return essential

services to your town. So every time we struck, we told ‘em who

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went after, who we thought we killed—i.e., a member of the

Zarqawi network—and then we were able to also remind

everybody that this is not Robin Hood. . . . We twisted that over

time; we turned it around to play the way it should be played. And

believe it or not, after about a week of us getting the first shot out,

their IO campaign fell apart. . . . We started to drive a wedge

between the terrorists and the local residents, and then we drove a

wedge between [Omar] Hadeed, one thug lord; Zarqawi, another

thug lord; and [Abdullah al-] Janabi, another thug lord. Each one

of our themes was set to open the gap. . . .

Way: You invited some of the media deep into the inner sanctum

of the MEF [Marine expeditionary force] at one point. Can you

talk about that?

Sattler: Well, they [the reporters] were [using] words like

“indiscriminate bombing,” and that would be words that the

insurgents, or thugs, or murders would use, because it “played ball.”

And I was going to press conferences, and they would say,“well, you

bombed.” You know, you “indiscriminately bombed.” And I’d say,

“Stop.We have never indiscriminately bombed. Every bomb that we

have dropped has been a precision munition.” Not one armed

bombed was dropped during the whole fight, the workup, or the

campaign. Well, then we figured out that we need to get “truth in

lending.”Transparency works well. Embedded media, tell the story.

[ey’re going to tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. And you can’t

censor the ugly, or then you’re no longer perceived transparent. . . .

It paid off during the Fallujah fight. We had them in the town to

show [that it] was not a humanitarian crisis in the town.[e people

had left. [ey had gone out, based on the IO campaign and the

shaping campaign. [ey voluntarily left the town of Fallujah

because they saw the signs, and we made it clear, that if they don’t

cooperate, we’re coming. [ey did not want to be there in the

middle of the fight like they got caught up [in] last April [2004].

So they left on their own. But that was all driven by the IO

campaign and alerting them to the fact that we’re going to come,

and you probably do not want to be here. . . .

Way: At one point there was an ABC reporter . . .

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American Perspectives
Sattler: It was Martha Raddatz. What we decided to do, I looked

over at General [[omas F.] Metz [USA], my boss, and said look,

let’s bring in somebody who has tremendous credibility, who is not

pro or con, who has been very balanced, and let’s bring them in and

show ‘em the whole targeting procedure, show them how we build

targeting orders, show them how we update the folders, and when

we hit the culmination point, when the positive identification and

the criteria that we’ve established for that particular target’s met,

how we clear it, how we discuss it quickly, and how we strike it. So

we brought her into the COC [combat operations center], and she

actually showed it on Nightline, where she’s sitting there with myself

and General Metz . . . and all the fires guys right there, and we’re

watching the last phases of the target unfold to where we strike it,

where we’re watching on the gun camera of the aircraft that

actually struck the target.

So she saw the pains we went through to ensure we limit the

collateral damage, to include the lay of the fuse, the size of the

warhead on the bomb, the angle of approach that the aircraft’s

gonna use, and that we knew by a mathematical model, how many

noncombatants may be injured, and that balanced as to what target

we were going after. Some targets might be worth a risk of

noncombatants being injured, other targets aren’t. So she got a

chance to see that. She also had a chance to see how accurate the

system was when it hit. And she also got a chance to see that you

can take out a building with buildings on four sides of it, . . . and

when the dust clears, only the building you wanted to strike is

rubbled. It imploded on itself, and the other one might have a

cracked window, or a crack in the wall. She was just amazed that

our systems could be that accurate and our targeting was that

painstaking. So, again, it’s transparency. . . .

Way: Sir, talk a little bit about the issues and, perhaps, some of the

frustrations in terms of the process of defining when [Operation

Phantom Fury/Operation al-Fajr] was going to happen and the

involvement of higher headquarters and the Iraqi government.

Sattler: Well, we were working very closely with both Multi National

Corps, General Metz, and Multi National Force, General [George

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Al-Anbar Awakening
W.] Casey [ Jr., USA], on the timing issue—gonna go, not gonna go?

And, if you remember, it was during Ramadan. And it was: “Are we

to go before Ramadan? Do we prepare ourselves to do it during

Ramadan? Do we start, and if we don’t finish, we stop? Do we have

a pause during Ramadan?” All those things were being discussed.

But the bottom line was, it was an Iraqi call. Prime Minister [Ayad]

Allawi had to be the one that set the conditions, with not only the

Iraqi people, both the Shi’a and the Sunni. He had to exhaust all

opportunity for a peaceful conclusion, and then he had to let the

international community know he had done so; mainly the GCC

[Gulf Cooperation Council] countries, which surround Iraq. He

had let Muslims worldwide know that he was only going to fight

other Muslims because it had to be done. We had to paint the

picture of what was going on inside Fallujah, and was being

exported out of Fallujah. We were going have to go [into the city]

because it wasn’t working.

[e prime minister knew it wasn’t going to work, either, but he had

built a timeline, and he even came out two days before we attacked

and met all the Iraqi warriors, and then sat down and looked me in

the eye. And that was the night when he said, “What is this

operation called?” And we said, “Phantom Fury.” And he said,

“[at’s not an Iraqi name. [at doesn’t tell Iraqi people why we’re

fighting this epic fight.” And that’s when he changed it; he’s the

one who changed it to al-Fajr, which means the new dawn, the new

beginning, because he saw the crushing of the insurgency inside of

Fallujah as the breaking of their dream, as the elimination of their

battle cry, “Remember Fallujah” . . .

And the prime minister, when we talked to him, the night right

before he made the decision, we told him. I looked him right in

the eye and said,“You know, Mr. Prime Minister, don’t tell us to go

and expect us to stop.When you have exhausted all the political, all

the opportunities to solve this problem, and that we can no longer

let them export their terrorist ideas, their VBIEDs [vehicle-borne

improvised explosive devices], their IEDs [improvised explosive

devices], their raids.”[ey were exporting terrorism out of Fallujah

and bringing people in, hostages, etc., that they were terrorizing

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American Perspectives
inside Fallujah. “When you reach that point,” I actually said, “Just

tear your phone out of the wall. Don’t think about calling us and

telling us to stop because once we get going, we’re going to have to

go all the way. We’re not gonna stop ‘til we hit the southern end of

the town.”. . . And, he said, “I understand. When I tell you go, we

will accomplish the mission, we will complete the mission.” [at

was right from the prime minister.

[During the first battle of Fallujah in April 2004], the international

community got involved because of the insurgency IO campaign

that painted all the death, all the destruction, and all the

humanitarian crisis in the town. During the shaping operation [for

the second battle], we were aware of that, and [as] we continued to

shape, we brought all the press in. We had over 70 to 100 embeds

with our forces so that the world could see it live, not through me,

standing up at a press conference at the Pentagon, but through

daily, hourly press releases coming back from cameras held by

noncombatants and people who were sworn to an oath to tell the

true story. And it worked.

Way: As Phantom Fury, or al-Fajr, kicked off on 7 November, what

were your lingering concerns? What were your thoughts on that day?

Sattler: My lingering concern was casualties. Obviously, casualties

was number one, casualties was number two, and casualties was

number three. I’m sure if you cascade down to the platoon

commander, everyone was concerned about casualties. Not fear of

not doing your job, but fear of having your warriors injured or killed

because could have done something better. Because you only get

one chance in this. . . .

Way: At this point, stepping into the battle of Fallujah, if you could

recall your recollections of how those first couple of days went and

how you tracked it.

Sattler: Well, the first the attack up the peninsula was executed

flawlessly, to include the takedown of the hospital. . . . [[e initial

attack] was based on the shaping and the feints, the turnaways we

had done before. We were convinced that the Iraqis still weren’t

real sure what was going on. Not the Iraqis, but the thugs in the

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American Perspectives

town. When the sun set that second day, when the sun rose the

next morning, we had moved all the forces into position.[e town

was completely encircled. And then we shaped about 17 targets

during that day, took ‘em out daylight, which we had never done

before. We always struck at night. We took out targets in daylight,

and we had been working these targets for a long period of time,

and that sent ‘em another message. And then when we actually

worked to shut down some of the communications, the electric

power, etc. And then we crossed that LD [line of departure] that

night; that would have been the night of the 8th, after sunset.

[en, it was, we just came leading with the two [U.S.] Army

battalions, the Army mech[anized] battalion in the front, with two

Marine battalions on each side of them. So it was a six-battalion

Coalition attack coming from north to south, with two regimental

combat teams.[en we also pushed five Iraqi battalions in behind

them, and then eventually out to the side. During the early phases,

we reached MSR [main supply route] Michigan, where the phase

line [Fran was] which bisects the town, running from east to west.

We figured it might take 48 hours or a little more to get there. We

actually eclipsed that within the first 24, especially on the eastern

side, with the Army mech forces. [ere was still a lot of heavy

fighting, house to house, with Marines and soldiers involved,

mainly Marines. We continued the attack [until] the sun came up

on the 10th . . .

We had to stop and hook back to clean up some isolated pockets

that had either gone into rat holes and popped up behind us or had

worked their way through [our] lines. So we were fighting a 360-

degree fight, to be totally candid, north of Michigan. So we turned

around, and we had to attack back towards the north while forces

were still coming north to south. And we were also sweeping east

to west, along the Jolan District, because we did do a hook there to

clear out the Jolan and the old city there∗ . . .

* Originally, the Marines were going to execute a turning maneuver when they reached

MSR Michigan (Phase Line Fran), driving the insurgents into the Euphrates River. However,

LtGen Sattler met with BGen Richard F. Natonski and decided to execute a branch plan to have

both regimental combat teams continue south, driving the insurgents into the anvil of the Army’s

Black Jack and Stryker brigades.
[ey [the insurgents] went back, and we just kept a force oriented

[toward] the south. We paused, went back, cleaned up the

insurgents who snuck in behind us, and then continued with the six

battalions pressing north to south. Actually, we left one battalion in

each sector north of [MSR] Michigan to go ahead and continue to

clean up along with the Iraqi battalions.[en we pushed on south

to go ahead and culminate the fight at the southern end, and we

blocked the southern end with the Black Jack Brigade out of the

[U.S. Army] 1st Cav[alry], which was already in a position on the

southern side. [ey also had [U.S. Marine] 2d Recon[naissance]

Battalion, which was cross attached to them, fighting with them

in that southern sector. [e [1st Marine] division executed it

flawlessly. [ey did a great job.

Way: Was the planning to return the city of Fallujah to its [original

state]?

Sattler: Phase IV [security and stability operations] was totally

planned before we crossed the line into Phase III [decisive combat

operations], to include getting guarantees from the prime minister

and our higher headquarters, these resources and assets would be

available. . . . During the ROC [required operation capacity] drill

and during the planning phase, we planned a civil-military

operations phase: the rebuilding, the reestablishment of the central

services, to include the reestablishing of the Iraqi security forces to

run the town. Not us, but them. And we thought we had 10 days.

We thought after we secured the town to the southern end, we

would have 10 days before we would become targets of the people,

and we would no longer be liberators, we’d be occupiers. [at was

our assumption, [but] we were wrong there because the people had

all left the town. So until we opened the gates to bring the people

back, we really had more time to occupy with Iraqi army and

Coalition forces.

We sent two Army battalions back out, so we had four [Marine]

battalions up through the reoccupation phase, which we wanted to

start as late as possible. [e prime minister wanted to start as soon

as possible, building the town back up. He wanted to do it

ubiquitously, just open the gates and let everybody come back. We

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wanted to do it very orderly. [ey already had 18 districts defined.

. . . We came forward with a plan to populate by subdivision so we

could clear rubble and establish water and minimal essential services

in a sequential way. In other words, instead of having to have the

whole town ready, we could start with one district, and keep the

rubble clearing and the water and everything coming in, plus the

removal of standing water. We could populate the town as we

cleared. We got it ready to go, and that’s what we were able to do.

[e only place we disagreed is we were not going to permit any cars

to come in. We had built park-and-rides. We had hired buses, where

you stop, park your car, go through your bedding, go through the

protection system, whether it was BAT [biometric assessment tool]

scanner radar or some other system. And then once you proved where

you were from, you got on the bus, and they took you down to that

district. But two days before [the Marines were to allow citizens to

return to Fallujah], the prime minister cancelled the park-and-ride,

so we had to redo the berms, redo the barriers, build a serpentine,

and be prepared to let private-owned vehicles into the town. [at

obviously opened it up for easier smuggling and vehicle-borne

improvised explosive devices; somebody making a vehicle bomb,

getting it through a check system, or building it in the town. . . .

Way:[e planning for Phase III, combat operations, and Phase IV,

the rebuilding, were done in a parallel manner?

Sattler: Correct. Simultaneous.

Way: At what point did your focus switch from combat operations

to civil-military operations and rebuilding?

Sattler: Before we crossed Route Michigan to continue the attack

towards the south. Once we took the governor’s complex, the civilmilitary operations Marines, the CAG [civil affairs group] moved

in right with the SeaBees [construction battalions] and started

relaying wire . . . while we were still taking fire from across the

street. So we were Phase IV-oriented before we went across the

line of departure.

Once we got into the fight, General Natonski didn’t need my help

to fight the fight. Where he needed my help was to get the

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conditions set, the right forces, the right resources to fight the fight.

And my help was required in Phase IV to start pounding on the

ministries for the money and the resources, and to get the

ministries to come in and build the little team, which we built at

Camp Fallujah. We were actually holding town meetings at Camp

Fallujah with ministers out of Baghdad before we opened the town

back up. One of the big arguments was when do we open the town

up. And if you remember, we opened it on the 23d of December.

[ey wanted to open it on 1 December, and we—my job was to

show the prime minister, General Casey, and General Metz why

that was not a smart move, and to buy as much time as we could,

because each day, the town got better.[e stagnant water was being

pumped out, the rubble was being cleared, and you could watch it,

and it was a very systematic approach to cleaning the town up. . . .

We had the complete town opened up before the 30th [December

2004].We had to ensure we had polling centers inside Fallujah that

were safe and secure so the Fallujahan citizens felt comfortable

coming to vote. And about 7,000 of them did vote inside Fallujah.

. . . [at was very rewarding to every Marine that was involved,

every sailor, every soldier that was involved in the election process.

We felt good. And they continued to feel that way.

Because they voted, [the Iraqis] felt that they were reenfranchised,

they felt better about what they’d done. And the attitude of the

security forces, and the attitude towards those security forces, from

the Iraqi people, changed from the old days of, “if you’ve got a

uniform, you’re either gonna arrest me, arrest my family, or take

something I had under Saddam.”[ey now started to understand

that security forces were there for them and not for their own self

interests.

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Interview 5

Operation al-Fajr and

the Return to Security and

Stabilization Operations
Major General Richard F. Natonski

Commanding General

1st Marine Division

Multi National Force • West

August 2004 to March 2005

Major General Richard F. Natonski took over command of the

1st Marine Division from Major General James N. Mattis in August

2004. In this interview, Natonski describes the shaping and preparation

efforts leading to the second battle for Fallujah. He notes the effects of

insurgent propaganda, the transition into security and stabilization

operations, and the security efforts pertaining to the January 2005

provincial elections.

Major General Natonski was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

John R. Way on 16 March 2005 at Camp Pendleton, California.

Lieutenant Colonel John R. Way: I’d like to ask you about preOperation Phantom Fury [second battle of Fallujah], the shaping

phases and some of the challenges that went along with that.

Major General Richard F. Natonski: I think part of our success in

al-Fajr [Iraqi name for second battle of Fallujah] was the shaping

campaign. We ultimately attacked from the north side of the city.

However, we executed a number of feints on the east side of the city

to give them the impression that would be the direction of attack

that we would execute on. Whenever we did any of our kinetic

shaping or tried anything new in Fallujah, it was always important

to make sure that 2d Radio Battalion was collecting. If we did a

feint and we received fire, we had troops in contact, then we would

attack kinetically and hit the target. And that would light off

additional command and control networks to be collected on by

radio battalion, who would do things like fly an F-18 low-level to

see what response we would get and what signals intelligence we

could gather. Firing illumination solicited a different response. At

the same time, we had 626 [Iraqi National Guard Battalion] that

was hitting targets in the city, high-value targets affiliated with the

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[Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi network. So we were hitting some of

the higher-level leadership. We were trying to hit the insurgents.

Now, not only did we have the kinetic shaping piece, but we also

had nonkinetic. We were dropping leaflets, leaflets that tried to

drive a wedge between the insurgents and the people that were the

residents.* We knew that the residents of Fallujah were just

innocent victims of the insurgents. And when I say insurgents, I

mean the whole gamut.We had former regime elements, criminals,

but also a lot of foreign fighters from all over the Islamic world.

We would drop leaflets that would tell the people of Fallujah that

you would have a water treatment plant this month except that

your city is full of insurgents. And we tried to explain what they

were missing [out on] because of the presence of the insurgents.

Just prior to the attack, we made sure [through] leaflet drops and

radio broadcasts that the people that were in the city— fortunately

for us, most of the people left the city—they knew the fight was

coming. And I think that made it easier when we did go into the

city. We told them that any vehicle would be considered as hostile,

because we knew there was going to be a great threat of suicide

vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, or SVBIEDs. We told

them that anyone outside with a weapon would be considered

hostile. We told the people to stay in their homes for their own

safety. So we also looked at it from that nonkinetic side.

We also executed a lot of the electronic warfare pieces. Since this is

an unclassified briefing, I can’t go into detail, but there were a lot of

nonkinetic pieces that went into the shaping. Probably my biggest

disappointment was, because of collateral damage and positive ID

[identification] limitations, we could not hit as many targets as we

wanted. I believe for the enhanced shaping day, which was actually

D-day on the 7th of November, we had over 60 preplanned targets.

But we were not able to hit, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood

of a dozen, almost on par with the previous days. [ere was no

enhanced shaping with kinetic fires because of the positive ID. You

had to definitely ascertain that they were enemy and that the

collateral damage would not hurt or kill a specific number, as given

to us by higher headquarters. [at number is classified as well.

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So that really limited what we could hit. Even though we knew there

were insurgents in there, I think that it was validated that a lot of the

targets we had identified before but were limited from attacking in

the days and weeks and the months going into Fallujah turned out

to be insurgent strongholds, which we ended up destroying as troops

became in contact. So sometimes the ROE [rules of engagement],

in an effort to protect the people, worked against us. And maybe it

was good, but come to find out the only people in Fallujah when we

went in were insurgents; very, very few civilians.

Way: As you went around to talk to the Marines as they prepared

to go in, what did you tell them, what did you talk to them about?

Natonski: Well—and I did go around to all the units—I just told

them how proud I was, and that here was an opportunity now to

take the fight to the enemy. Prior to Fallujah, we had Marines on

OPs [observation posts], on patrol, and they hadn’t really been able

to take the fight to the enemy like we were going to in Fallujah.

And I drew a parallel to the Patton movie. [ey said, you know,

someday that grandchild is going to be sitting on your knee, and

they are going to look at you in the eye and say,“Grandpa, what did

you do in the war?”And you can say,“well, we weren’t shoveling s***

in Camp Lejeune or in Camp Pendleton or in Hawaii,” you were

fighting in Fallujah. And I will tell you that the troops looked

forward. Let’s face it, that’s why we come into the Marines, for that.

[ey were ready for the fight. And it was more my way just to

thank [them] for what they did and what they were going to do.

I told you about the deliberate planning process. Well, we also did

a rehearsal on D-2. Wow, when I think of what we did in terms of

just-like-the-book, we executed a movement of all our attack forces

from their assembly areas to their attack positions. We tested our

command, control, and communications. We tested our timing to

get to the attack positions. And we made a feint so that we moved

up from the north this time, where we were actually going to attack

from, and then we pulled back.[e enemy thought, well, we’d just

[feinted] from the north.

I really think that having that rehearsal paid dividends in terms of

getting everything right in terms of timing, because D-day was

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actually the enhanced shaping day.[e assault into the city actually

took place on D+1. [at was driven by MNC-I [Multi National

Corps-Iraq], and to this day, I don’t know why the assault into the

city started on D+1. But on D-day, we conducted our enhanced

shaping, which included the movement up the peninsula to take

the hospital and block the two bridges. We wanted to block the

two bridges leaving, on the western side across the Euphrates, to

prevent the enemy from escaping.

On that day, we also moved 2d BCT [brigade combat team] into

their blocking positions on the south and east side of the city to

prevent enemy from escaping in that area. At the same time, we

moved our assault units into the north side of the city so they were

in position to attack the following day on the 8th of November.

But the actual attack, as they moved into their assault positions, I

went out and I went through all of their units. I spent the whole day

of the 7th traveling from unit to unit just to see them. I told a

number of reporters that day, at that moment, the most potent

fighting force on the face of the earth was assembled around

Fallujah, and that once they started the assault, there was nothing

on the face of the earth that would stop those Marines and soldiers.

As part of the plan, we knew, unlike [in] April, that when we

commenced our assault, we had the blessing of the president of the

United States to attack through the entire city. So I knew that

nothing was going to stop us, unlike the situation the previous

April. So when they started the attack, we went all the way. [ere

was tremendous support from [Multi National Forces-Iraq and

Multi National Corps-Iraq], because they literally had to bring all

the units from Baghdad and elsewhere to help support what

became the main effort of the fight in Fallujah.

By taking down Fallujah, which was a sanctuary for the insurgents,

it’s just like any FOB [forward operating base] that we have, for

example Blue Diamond, Fallujah offered the insurgents the ability

to rest, rearm, refit, plan, and then go out and launch their attacks

and then come back to a secure environment. [Taking out Fallujah

denied insurgents of that.] Plus it was an IO [information

operations] victory for them. How could you have control in Iraq

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when you have this cancer called Fallujah? So it had to be

eradicated before you could even conceive of having a successful

election in January [2005]. And I think that’s what turned the tide

in terms of going in and assaulting Fallujah.

Earlier, I recall, the plan was essentially to keep a lid on al-Anbar

and Fallujah while we exploit the success we’re having in the rest

of Iraq. I think it came to people’s realization by the end of

September [that] Fallujah could not continue to exist in the state

it was. And by taking out Fallujah, I think we then had the

momentum in the rest of the country, that the Iraqi people

understood that we meant business, that we could now hold an

election at the end of January. And even then you can recall the

news and the lead-up to the election, that people thought, many

countries thought, there would never be a viable election. I think

the Iraqi people proved them wrong, the fact that they came to the

polls. Today we’re reaping the benefits of that election.

I’m a firm believer that you’ve got to be aggressive and take the

fight to the enemy. Otherwise, if you sit back, they will take

advantage. As long as you keep them moving, hoping that one day

Zarqawi’s going to run into a checkpoint he didn’t know where it

was, and we’re going to grab him, just like we grabbed a lot of other

foreign fighters and insurgents. You keep them moving, you keep

them guessing, you roll them up. [ey never know when you’re

coming.[ey can’t do all of the planning that’s going to be required

to attack. I think that’s what we’ve been able to do. . . .

Way: On the eve of the battle, back on 7 November, what were the

lingering concerns in your mind?

Natonski: Civilians were certainly a concern because we really didn’t

know what we were going to find in the city. I mean, there were no

doubts in my mind about the capabilities of our Marines. I knew

we would be victorious. I wanted it to go fast. I felt that the quicker

we got in, that penetration was key. We found in an-Najaf that if

you could outrun the enemy into the city, . . . if you could get in

behind them, they wouldn’t stay.[ey would retreat back, and then

they couldn’t detonate the explosives that they had laid out.

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By that rapid penetration, we were able to achieve with both the 2d

of the 2d [Task Force 2-2, 2d Infantry Regiment, 2d Infantry

Division] and the 2d of the 7th [2d Battalion, 7th Regiment, 1st

Cavalry Division], followed by the Marines clearing, we made that

rapid progress that we had hoped for. We did find some chemical

labs. We found a lot of what we coined “torture chambers,”

“slaughterhouses.” I never imagined the amount of ordnance and

weapons that we would find in the city. . . . I didn’t realize how

entrenched the insurgents were in the city. . . .

So they continued to fall back, but as we advanced, we had to clear

every single building. And they were fighting. . . . We talked about

Abu Ghraib, and what a stain it was on the reputation of the

United States, and the effect it had in the Muslim world from an

IO perspective. One of the second- or third-order effects of the

Abu Gharib prison scandal was the fact that many of the insurgents

who had fought in the city had been brainwashed by films and

photographs of the Iraqi prisoners being maltreated by American

soldiers, and they were told that if you are captured, this is what’s

going to happen to you. So they did not want to get captured.[ey

wanted to fight to the death. And they did that. Some were on

drugs . . . speed, amphetamines. Others had tourniquets around

their arms and legs so that if they got shot, they could continue to

fight. But they literally fought to the death. So the fact that we had

that scandal in Abu Gharib made the resistance that much tougher

when we had to fight in Fallujah. . . .

Way: You mentioned rubble cleanup and getting the power and

water turned back on. Surely in mid-December, just after I think

Prime Minister [Ayad] Allawi declared the city secure, the 4th

CAG [civil affairs group] moved in . . .

Natonski: 4th CAG . . . I can remember going in with Colonel

[John R.] Ballard probably around the 11th of November.We were

still getting shot at, and I said, “John, you are going to set up your

CMOC [Civil Military Operations Center] over there in the

government center?”And we walked over there, and I said,“I want

you in there tomorrow.” [ey were moving in as the fighting was

going on. We wanted to get started on that, on the rubble cleaning.

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Prime Minister Allawi did declare that we had secured the city by

the—I don’t remember.[e assault commenced on the 8th. I don’t

know what day that was. I think it was on Monday. I think by

Saturday or Sunday, we had basically cleared through; we had

pushed all the way to the south end of the city, and it was just

clearing operations after that. In terms of the restoration of services,

we kept the residents south while we continued to clear buildings,

clear remains of the dead insurgents, and also clear out tons and

tons of unexploded ordnance and caches.

At the same time, we wanted to clear out the rubble, start the

restoration of services, water. . . .[ere was some flooding, because

the water table is so high and some of the water mains were broken,

and water continued to be pumped in. So from a sanitary

perspective, we needed to get the pump stations that removed the

water from the city working. And the SeaBees [construction

battalions] played a big role in that, as well as getting the city

engineers back in.

It wasn’t until around the 16th of December that we started to open

the city up, a district at a time. . . . And as we opened up each

district, and they had to prove that they lived in that district, then

we would let them in. [ey could survey and take personal

possessions out. Not too many people stayed initially because there

were no stores. We were passing out humanitarian rations, water,

blankets, because it was cold at that time. But people started to

come in, check the damage to their homes.

I think it was in January [that] we gave a $200 solatia [condolence]

payment to all the heads of households in the city to buy the good

will. We wanted them to know that we appreciated them, the fact

that they were back, and that we were sorry for the damage. More

and more people as we opened the districts from the west side of

the city to the east. We got more and more people, and today, a few

months later, people are living in the city. I’d say we have

somewhere between 40 and 60,000 people that live in there.

Businesses are open. Food is plentiful. You’ll see a barbershop,

maybe a window is broken, bakeries are open, and we’re going

around giving cash payments to start up businesses again. I mean,

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the city is really flourishing. It’s still rubble, and the next piece is

claims payments by the Iraqi government. [at will let the people

of Fallujah know that the central government of Iraq wants them

to be taken care of. And that’s really a key, because they are Sunni,

and in an-Najaf after the battle, the central government of Iraq

came in very quickly and paid claims and started the restoration

and rebuilding of an-Najaf. . . .

Way: Are there any other comments, any other things you’d like to

address, sir?

Natonski: I would just say in closing that this was an exciting period

of time to be in Iraq. As I mentioned previously, and as I told the

Marines going home, they can hold their heads proud for what

they’ve accomplished. When we look back on the operations that

led up to Fallujah, through Operation al-Fajr, then the subsequent

operations that we’ve conducted around the Fallujah area, in

preparation for the election, and now River Blitz and River Bridge

in preparation for the RIP [relief in place, with II MEF], I could

not have asked for a better performance from our troops. My only

regret are those that we’ve lost in action. I hope that our country

will never forget the sacrifice that those Marines, soldiers, sailors,

and airmen have made not only for our country, but for the people

of Iraq.

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American Perspectives


Interview 6

Targeting al-Qaeda in Iraq
Major General Stephen T. Johnson

Commanding General

II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2005 to February 2006

Major General Stephen T. Johnson commanded II Marine

Expeditionary Force during the unit’s first combat deployment when it

took over Multi National Force-West from I Marine Expeditionary

Force in February 2005. In this interview, he discusses rebuilding the

Iraqi security forces in al-Anbar Province and 11 named operations

conducted under the umbrella of Operation Sayeed. [ese operations

were aimed at driving al-Qaeda from the western Euphrates River

Valley, ensuring that people were allowed to vote in the October 2005

referendum elections, and restoring the control of the border to the Iraqi

government. He also describes the progress resulting from Operation

Sayeed, which include disrupting al-Qaeda’s leadership, operating with

Iraqi forces, and the Marine air-ground task force fight. Johnson

discusses the planning factors leading to the successful October 2005

referendum elections and the achievements resulting from the

embedding of a U.S. State Department representative in Fallujah.

Major General Johnson was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

Craig H. Covert on 26 January 2006 at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Craig H. Covert: Could you comment on the

Iraqi security forces, particularly the Iraqi police, the Iraqi army,

and the growth in effectiveness that you’ve seen?

Major General Stephen T. Johnson: First of all, the Iraqi security

forces encompass a number of things—not only the Iraqi army and

the police, but also the special police commandos; public order

battalions; the Department of Border Enforcement forces, who

guard the borders; the highway patrol; and the traffic police. So

there’s a number of different things that are all generally lumped

under the term ISF, Iraqi security forces.

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When we arrived here in al-Anbar Province in February of 2005,

there really weren’t very many Iraqi security forces. [ere were a

couple of small Iraqi brigades. [ey had been together for a

considerable period of time at that point. [ey’d fought in the

[battle of Fallujah (Operation al-Fajr)]. [ey were fairly capable,

but that was all it was. [roughout the rest of the province, there

were a number of what they called Iraqi national guard battalions

and companies. [ey were left over from a previous failed

experiment in terms of putting together security forces.[ey were

fairly corrupt, ineffective, and in many cases worked against the

Coalition forces, so one of our first duties was to disband them.

Many of them chose to go in the army. Others just went back to the

civilian world.

[ere were no police in al-Anbar when we arrived. [ere were

some local police left, but again, they were corrupt and created

more problems than they were worth. So we assisted the Iraqis in

disbanding those organizations as well.

Since that time, the Iraqi army has made remarkable progress.

Where we had approximately 2,500 soldiers in the Iraqi army when

we arrived, now there’s close to 20,000. [[eir units have] all been

formed at different periods of time over the past year, so they’re

not all at the same experience level. Four of the brigades are at a

level-two training readiness status [nearly fully trained], and nine

of the battalions are at a level-two training readiness status. [e

rest are at different stages of preparedness, and over the next year,

the rest of them will come online. [ere are two divisions in alAnbar now.[e last brigade of the second division to be formed is

still finishing up its recruit training in Habbaniyah. In February

[2006], they will join the rest of the division in western al-Anbar

Province. So over the next year, these forces will continue to

improve, continue to get stronger. And by this time next year, I

think they will be a significant force.

[e police is a second entity that we need to look at. As I said, there

were no police in May [2005]. We started off with a program to

train police for Fallujah. Over the months of May through about

October, the Iraqis screened, embedded, and hired a number of

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Iraqi citizens to be policemen. We assisted them by sending them

to school and training them to be policemen, equipping them, and

helping to provide facilities. Over that period of time, 1,200

policemen were formed in Fallujah. [ere’s an outstanding police

chief there, a man of integrity and energy. He’s made a big

difference. We have another 500 policemen for Fallujah being

trained now, and equipped. So here in the next month or so, there

will be roughly 1,700 policemen in Fallujah.[ey are just learning

the ropes, but they’re improving, and they’re providing services to

their people. Right now, we’ve started to see an improvement in

security based on the police. So that’s a big step forward. In the

rest of al-Anbar Province, there are no other police, and we’re

working with the Iraqis to correct that over the next several

months. Upwards of another 10,000 Iraqis will enter the police

force, be trained, be equipped, and provide police services in the

other cities in al-Anbar Province, the primary city being Ramadi.

[e Department of Border Enforcement forces has also grown over

the last several months. [e Iraqis, in coordination with the

Coalition forces, have built a number of border installations in the

area that we’re responsible for. I’m talking about the border with

Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. [ose border [installations] are

manned, and the border police continue to go through training.

[ere are now two [Iraqi] brigades out there, making progress,

turning control of the border to the Iraqi government and to the

Iraqi people. It’s not a unilateral effort. [ey are partnered with

Iraqi army forces, and they also get support from Coalition forces.

So it’s a three-way effort out there, but the Department of Border

Enforcement forces are showing their improvement. . . .

Covert: Would you say that the addition of all these forces has

effectively increased security for the Iraqi people, or are we still

facing a point where, yes, they’re growing, but they’re still somewhat

ineffective?

Johnson: Well, like I pointed out earlier, they’re at different levels of

readiness. Some of them are standing on their own. Several of the

brigades have been given areas of operation which they operate.[ey

do the majority of the operations and receive basic support from the

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Coalition forces. Others are very reliant, still, on the relationship

they have with the Coalition. And that will continue over the next

few months until they get in the saddle. [[e] takeaway from the

situation now is that all of the Iraqi army forces, and soon the police

forces as well, are partnered up with Coalition forces.

In al-Anbar, two thirds of the units there are partnered up with

Marines, and the other third are [partnered with U.S.] Army forces.

[e partnering allows the Iraqi unit to operate with, to train with,

[and] to get mentoring from [Marines and soldiers].[at is one of

the ways in which we improve the readiness of the Iraqi battalions,

by linking them up with a U.S. Coalition battalion.

[e second point is that each of the Iraqi forces, the Iraqi army

battalions, has a military transition team with it. [ese transition

teams are either Army or Marines, and they’re embedded with the

Iraqi force. [ey work with them on a daily basis, they teach them

the battlefield functions, and they help them learn, and help them

grow, plan, operate, and so forth.[e military transition teams also

provide a link back to the partnered battalion. So in these ways, we

are improving the effectiveness of these forces and enabling them

to get better faster.[ey still have a ways to go, and like I said, it’ll

be over the next year until we see all of those forces reach a

common level-two standing.

Another key element of what we’re doing here is providing

presence in the communities. [ese Iraqi forces are not just

centralized at one location, like Ramadi or Fallujah.[ey’re spread

out now across the entire battlespace, all the way up through the

Euphrates River Valley, in the big towns there—Hit, Haditha, the

al-Qaim region, Husaybah. In all of those places, there’s a

combination of Coalition forces and Iraqi forces.[ey’re partnered

up, and they work together in those areas. [at partnering, that

relationship, is not only good for them, but it’s also supportive of

the people in those communities. It provides more security, an

environment of security in those towns that hasn’t been noted

before. It makes it far more difficult for the insurgents to come back

in and begin disruptive behavior again in those towns. It also shows

the people that we’re committed to seeing the job through and

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getting the security forces on their feet. So the combination of

partnering together and being present in the communities in alAnbar Province, those two things are making better security for

the Iraqi people.

Covert: Could you comment on the accomplishments and

successes of Operations Iron Fist, Steel Curtain, and Sayeed, and

what it meant for the MEF (Marine Expeditionary Force) to

succeed in those operations?

Johnson: First of all, Operation Sayeed was the umbrella operation.

Operation Steel Curtain and Operation Iron Fist were named

operations under the umbrella of Sayeed. [ere were 11 named

operations under the Sayeed umbrella. [ose operations stretched

from July of 2005 until just after the December ’05 elections. [e

purpose of those operations was to drive al-Qaeda from the

western Euphrates River Valley and to eliminate that as a place

where they could operate freely. We accomplished that mission.

[e operation was also designed to ensure that we had the climate

and the environment to conduct the referendum in October and

the national elections in December. [e operations under

Operation Sayeed were designed to ensure that we had the

conditions so that people could vote. I think that the results of the

election showed, the election and the referendum both showed that

that was successful. A third goal of Operation Sayeed was to restore

the control of the Iraqi border to the Iraqi people. As I pointed out

earlier, we assisted them by helping to get the border forces out

there, and to assist them in providing security along the border. So

those were three key elements of Operation Sayeed.

[ere were a number of accomplishments and successes that

occurred during Sayeed. First of all, we put the insurgent back on

his heels. We disrupted his activities there, we killed a lot of his

foot soldiers, we took away some of the places where he felt secure,

and we disrupted the leadership of al-Qaeda and caused them to

not be able to operate freely in that part of the country. Another

success you can note there, about Operation Sayeed, was that it was

the first time that we’d operated on a large scale with the Iraqi

security force, the army security forces. It wasn’t until about

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September that we had a full brigade of Iraqi army forces out there

west of the Euphrates. [ey came, actually, after the operations

under Sayeed had begun. [ey joined their

Coalition partners during the operation and made a significant

contribution to the operations in the western Euphrates River Valley

during that period of time.[e third thing, a key point to take away

from Sayeed, from a Marine perspective, is the outstanding way that

the MAGTFs [Marine Air-Ground Task Force] fought that fight.

[e 2d Marine Division, and RCT-2 [regional combat team] in

particular, did a magnificent job of fighting a counterinsurgency

fight, taking the fight to the enemy. . . .

So it was an incredible effort across the board in the MAGTF, not

only the GCE [ground combat element], but supported very well

by the ACE [air combat element] and the MLG [Marine logistics

unit]. So those things were the successes of Operation Sayeed, and

its 11 named operations underneath.

Surely you can’t forget that concurrent with Operation Sayeed is

Operation Liberty Express, which was the named operation for

the referendum in October and the national election in December.

[at operation ran concurrent with Sayeed, but it was very

important, too, and also very well done. It required all the elements

of the MAGTF to function together to make that happen as well.

Covert: How did the operations, particularly Sayeed, affect the

national elections, as well as the referendum?

Johnson: Well, I think that you can probably look at that in three

parts. One is the amount of planning that went into that election,

[both] the referendum and the election. We started the planning

for both of them last June [2005]—it might even have been May.

. . . [e planning process went on that whole summer and

continued to change. It didn’t really go dormant, because this was

a new experience for the Iraqi people. [e Independent Election

Committee of Iraq, IECI, was the governing body that set all the

rules and did most of the planning. But the Coalition forces were

involved in the planning all the way along.

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[e fact that this was a new experience for the Iraqis sometimes

made it very difficult. [ere were some planning decisions made

by the Iraqis that weren’t particularly easy to live with, but our folks

worked closely with them. [ere was a lot of patience involved.

[ere was a lot of compromise on the part of the Coalition forces.

In the end, had it not been for that detailed planning all the way

along, we wouldn’t have been able to help them conduct the

successful elections that they had. Some idea of some of the things

that had to be planned: to move poll workers into this province,

because they could not hire enough people out here, because of the

security situation. People didn’t feel secure enough to sign up to be

poll workers, so they had to be brought in from the outside. [ey

had to be housed, fed, and protected during the time they were

here. All that planning and preparation had to be done. [ere had

to be transportation to move them to the polling sites. On the

election day, we returned them to where they were staying at night.

[ere was a tremendous amount of transportation involved. All of

these things required extensive planning.

In the preparation phase, right before the election, there were an

incredible amount of things that had to be done.[e Marines and

soldiers, who were engaged in an operation right up until a few

days before the referendum, finished that operation, turned right

around, and went to work on the election. [ey were doing such

things as putting in barriers, transporting poll materials, arranging

for security.[ose types of things had to be done on a short fuse in

order to be prepared for the 15th of October and the 15th of

December. So again, it’s a good example of how planning and

preparation, and being able to be flexible, made a big difference.

[e third piece of this is the Iraqi people themselves. I think many

of them came out to vote because they knew that it gives them an

opportunity for something better than the violence that they’d been

subjected to for so many years. Many of them came out and voted,

even though it wasn’t particularly safe in many places, even though

they were subject to threats.[ey still made it to the polls, and the

results of the election are self-evident. A vast number of people

voted—I think well over 50 percent voted—in al-Anbar Province

alone. If you remember, about 2 to 4 percent had voted in January

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of ’05 for the interim transitional government.[en a full year later,

over 50 percent of the people turned out to vote, which is pretty

remarkable in my view. So those are the three pieces I would point

out to you for the success of the election.

I would point out one thing that we learned here. All through the

planning process, we and the Coalition planned to provide security

around the outside of the polling sites. [at was a key element of

our plan. Right before the referendum, the IECI announced that

they would not want the Coalition to be used for security, that they

would take care of the public themselves. [is of course caused us

a lot of angst. We thought that that meant that there would surely

be a lot of security problems and so forth. But it was their desire,

and it was their election.[ey were in charge, so we did what they

asked. We stayed very much in the background.

What happened was, though, that there weren’t a lot of incidents,

either in the referendum or the election itself. [ey did do a good

job of running their election, providing security, and using the local

police, at least in Fallujah, to help augment the security. So in that

sense, I bring that up because it surprised us. We thought that they

couldn’t do it without us, but yet they did.[ey did a very good job

without us, and there’s a lesson there for the future. [ey probably

can do more, and quicker, than we give them credit for.

Covert: You mentioned that in Fallujah, but I believe also in

Ramadi, sir, there was quite a big success, despite the fact that right

now, it’s a little more kinetic and more dangerous.

Johnson: Well, for the referendum, there was not a big turnout in

Ramadi.[ere was a very small turnout because we believe that the

senior leaders had not emphasized it enough to the people, or had

told them not to go vote in the referendum. For the election,

however, the circumstances changed, and they had a good turnout

for the election. You’re correct—in the election in December, they

also took care of their own security for that as well.[ey expanded

the areas which they took care of. It was a good operation in the

sense that we learned a lot about our Iraqi partners and their

capabilities.

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Covert: Could you comment on the employment and effectiveness

of the CAG [civil affairs group] within your AO [area of operation]?

Johnson: We had two groups. We had the 5th Civil Affairs Group

that deployed with us, and then they were replaced in August and

September by the 6th Civil Affairs Group. I think they’ve done a

superb job of getting out into the communities and looking for

ways that we can be useful to the Iraqi people.[ere are a number

of examples of the things that they’ve done. [ey have been very

proactive in looking for ways to ensure that reconstruction money

was invested in projects that were productive to the communities.

When we got here, there was a tremendous amount of

reconstruction funds available. [e trick was not so much getting

the funds, but applying them in the right place, where something

could be accomplished for the good of the community, and in

accordance with the desires of the community.

[e civil affairs group was plugged into the communities,

particularly Fallujah, and to a certain degree later on in Ramadi,

but primarily in Fallujah.[ey were able to help the Iraqis in a way

that the Iraqis wanted to be helped. [ere was a tremendous

amount of bravery on the part of the Civil Affairs Group. [ey

spent a lot of time on the roads, in the towns. By their nature, they

have to interact with the people, and you can’t interact with the

people on the FOBs [forward operating bases]. So they’d been out

there, and I’m very pleased with the performance that both CAGs

have shown us. Neither one of them was a pure civil affairs groups.

[ey had, certainly, a [collection] of people who had that skill, who

had the requisite MOSs [military occupational specialties]. But

most of them were folks from other MOSs, other units, where

there were not civil affairs specifically.[ey got trained, they applied

their training, and they did a superb job.

Covert: You’ve got a pretty incredible State Department rep here

[ John Kael Weston]. Could you talk about the positive effect of

having him embedded here in Fallujah and how it has helped you

out with the MEF?

Johnson: Well, having Kael here is like having a political advisor

that the combatant commanders have. Kael is a very dynamic

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young man, personally courageous, and interested in seeing a

positive outcome here. He’s been with the Marines here, I MEF

and now us, and soon to be I MEF again, for almost three years. He

spent a lot of time in town, particularly Fallujah. He has been

integral in acquainting us in the personalities here and the

atmospherics that are there. He also has been very good at

conveying our intentions to the Iraqi leadership in the town. He

was instrumental in helping them have their first elections for a

city council, for a mayor. He has been instrumental in helping them

learn how to be a democratic body. And frankly, I think he’s a good

friend to many of them. He was very hurt by the savage death of

Sheikh Hamza [Abbas al-Issawi] several weeks ago. He knew the

sheikh, and he respected him, and recognized that he was a leader

in the community. Kael was very taken aback by that tragic event.

So he’s done a great job, and he’s taught us a lot about how to deal

with the Iraqis, how to deal with issues on the political side of the

house. He’s very much attuned to the balance between military and

political events. He’s not jealous of the role that the Marines play,

but he is quick to let us know when it’s time to use the political

piece, which is part of his tool kit. So we’ve got a great relationship

with him. He has a lot of friends here, and we will hate to say

goodbye to him.

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Interview 7

Setting the Conditions for a Turn
113

Brigadier General James L. Williams

Assistant Commanding General

2d Marine Division

July 2005 to January 2006∗

Reserve Brigadier General James L.Williams served as the deputy

commanding general of I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) from

January to March 2005. He focused on security and force management

while in that position. He returned to Iraq in July 2005 as the assistant

commanding general of the 2d Marine Division.

In this interview, Brigadier General Williams describes the

transition in focus of effort after the second battle for Fallujah and

discusses a series of important meetings leading to the creation of the

Anbar Security Council. He also describes the changes and successes

in al-Anbar Province during his two tours.

Brigadier General Williams was interviewed by Colonel Jeffrey

Acosta, 6th Civil Affairs Group, on 20 February 2006 at Camp

Fallujah, Iraq.

Colonel Jeffrey Acosta: Can you describe the situation in al-Anbar

Province?

Brigadier General James L. Williams: Well, if you look at the ’04 to

’05 time period, al-Anbar Province was a province that was in

essence being inundated by the influx of insurgent and foreign

fighter activity, which led up to a couple of things. Obviously, if

you take a historical perspective on this, you have to consider what

occurred during 2004. April of 2004 was very significant, when the

Blackwater [USA] team was killed and hung up in Fallujah. [at

kind of created a false expectation, I think, of what was to come, in

* BGen Williams was deputy command general, I Marine Expeditionary Force

(Forward)/Multi National Force-West, from 31 January 2005 to 31 March 2005; assistant

commanding general, 2d Marine Division, from 1 July 2005 to 12 January 2006; deputy

commanding general, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)/Multi National Force-West,

from 12 January 2006 to 13 January 2006; and deputy commanding general, special projects-alAnbar security plan, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)/Multi National Force-West, from

13 January 2006 to 15 March 2006.
the sense that I think when we came back, we thought things were

going to be much better, that there was going to be more of an

open-arms approach by the Iraqi people, and there was probably a

miscalculation of the expectation of insurgent activity.

So all through the summer of 2004 was essentially the preparation

to do Operation al-Fajr, which occurred in the October-November

time frame of 2004. [at very kinetic operation really set the tone

for 2004.

As I came into the theater, the activities of getting Fallujah back on

its feet really became the focus of effort in 2004, early 2005, and of

course that carried through much of 2005 in construction, getting

the compensation for the damages that were done during the

kinetic war, and then also providing, if you will, a model for what

cities in al-Anbar could be like.

And then, of course, during this time we had operationally probably

nine battalions within the Fallujah city limits. When 2d Marine

Division came in, it essentially moved those battalions out of

Fallujah and started looking at the surrounding areas, which

essentially became a model of activity, operationally, that led to the

kinetic operations that went from March of ’05 until the most

recent operation.

Acosta: Let’s talk now, sir, if we could about the 28 November 2005

meeting. What was the importance of that meeting? How was the

meeting set up?

Williams:[is is why history is important.[e original engagement

was with MML, Mohammed Mahmoud Latif, who was the

number-two or -three insurgent on our list. . . . General [Richard

A.] Huck, back in the May-June time frame, had a meeting with

MML, which included several go-to guys, and Sheikh [amer

[Ibrahim Tahir al-Assafi] was one of those, which was being imam,

and Latif was imam as well. But Latif decided that he probably

wasn’t going to participate like the governor [Mamoun Sami

Rashid al-Alwani] has, because it’s a government entity now. And

then he started a little group on the side, not at this point directly

competitive to the al-Anbar Security Council, but was meeting

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nevertheless, which he called the People’s Committee. What we

said was, “Hey, well, that’s good. [ey’re meeting. Maybe they’re

cooking up something, maybe they’re not.”

[e [November] 28th meeting essentially got started from the

Sheikh [Abdullah] Jallal [Mukhif al-Faraji] piece, which was, okay,

how do we do this? How do we stop guys from blowing our guys

up? Which didn’t mean we were going to stop any operations.

What it meant was, “What do you guys have for a solution?” And

so part of that discussion was withdrawal of the Coalition forces

from the city, and I just simply said, “Oh, we can do that.” [at

wasn’t anything different than what General [George W.] Casey

[ Jr., USA] [said] back in April of ’04—and he reminds everybody

about that, too—he says, “Hey, I’ve already said that the goal is to

reduce forces out of the cities, not to put permanent American

presence out there.”

So with that as a backdrop, the 28th meeting, which was pulled

together very quickly, because I think it was November 15th when

we had our next meeting, and the governor said, “Well, let me talk

with these guys and see who we get.” And then it outdid our

greatest expectations. [e room was filled. . . .

But the 28th meeting also sprang the follow-on meeting, which

was the meeting of the al-Anbar Security Council, so 12 people,

thereabouts, 14 people maybe, were selected by the original crowd

of 200 to actually go and have this interface. And as a result of that,

this group of 12 now has become essentially like the advisory group

of the governor. [e downside is that we’ve had one assassination

attempt, and that one successful, Sheikh [Nasser Kareem alFahdawi], a big guy in his [Albu Fahad] tribe. And that essentially

has unnerved many people in Fallujah; not so much in Ramadi,

because I think they’re just used to all of the incoming stuff flying

around. . . .

Acosta: Could you discuss the December 12th milestone meeting?

Williams: Well, they didn’t stop talking.[e issue was that Minister

[of Defense Sa’dun al-] Dulaymi had his own approach to dealing

with his relatives of the Dulaymi Federation. . . . It was the fact that

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we initiated the al-Anbar Security Council, and the Security

Council, I told him that we’d bring General Casey and the MOD

[minister of defense] down because it was important to engage them,

and it was about getting the forces that they needed, which is what

we told them originally, “[is is what you’re going to need.”. . .

Now, what we were able to do, there was probably a mixed

metaphor of things going on here, but General Casey was kind of

penning some notes, saying, “Okay, here’s five principles that we

ought to kind of build this thing around.” Because ultimately we

were using the base information of getting Coalition forces out of

the city, but we’ve got to build the Iraqi security forces in al-Anbar

to do that, which meant they had to participate.

As it turned out, the parts of it had come to fruition fairly quickly,

like the IPs [Iraqi police], the IP recruiting and all that. [e

weakness right now in my mind is still the army, because even

though we’re getting closer to doing the recruiting and things that

we need to do, this meeting basically set the conditions around

getting the al-Anbar Security Council petition put together.

Actually, at that point I had actually had a first draft, and then I

added General Casey’s five principles after I sent it back to him

and he kind of did a little editorial work. And he did a little more

editorial work, and then we incorporated them. [at al-Anbar

Security Council petition, . . . that’s a seminal milestone document

because that is what is driving everything right now. . . . [e alAnbar Consolidation Plan, which is the follow-on to the petition,

is the plan that will be used to roll out the fundamental pieces of

the Iraqi security forces that will be recruited, trained, and deployed,

the economics and governance piece, the detainee release program,

so all of that will be driven by that. . . .

Acosta: What changes have you seen occur in the Multi National

Force-West AO [area of operation] during these two tours of duty

here in Iraq, the big changes?

Williams: For AO Denver . . . when you only went from 32 Iraqi

security forces here, and then a small FOB [forward operating

base] in Fallujah, very small police, and a few highway patrol guys,

to Fallujah’s authorized somewhere close to 2,000. I think it’s

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actually 1,900 police officers in the region. So we’ve gone from this

sort of small footprint of Iraqi players to this larger footprint of,

okay, well, we’ve got the two divisions out here now. We have

roughly 13,000 troops from the Iraqi side, or at least that are

assigned on TO [table of organization], but the fundamental

change of that is that where we thought they were going to provide

their life support, logistics, maintenance and all that business, that’s

all coming from us. [at is a disappointment, because that doesn’t

allow you to get away. So part of the transition should be how do

you get away? Well, right now, we’ve made ourselves indispensable,

and then we also added MTTs [military transition teams], BTTs

[border transition teams], SPTTs [special police transition teams],

and PTTs [police transition teams]. We’ve got our border, special

police, the police officers in general, as well as the military. So that

is sort of the next leave-behind in the AO, is that, well, as larger

security forces pull out, what are you going to do with the MTTs,

BTTs, and SPTTs, because they require support, and so our

support won’t go away. It’ll just be a force of a different color. . . .

Acosta: What do you say were the key accomplishments for the 2d

Marine Division during your tour here?

Williams: I would say, first of all, if you run along the lines of

operation, in security, the expansion of the Iraqi security forces,

without a doubt. It got them out of just being city-centric to

expanding across the province. [e actual operations that all the

RCTs [regimental combat teams] did, the BCTs [brigade combat

teams] did, to set the conditions that allowed engagement to take

place. . . . [e metaphor of building a house—the foundation in

this case is security. So if you don’t have security, everything else

sort of falls apart.

[e next thing is really the engagements that we’ve done with the

government, both at the provincial and the city levels are really

expanding now. I mean, it’s really starting to become the heyday of

what could make this province really a significant player out here.

[ere are all types of challenges. One of the challenges for Iraq is

that between the two rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, the Turks

can jam it up in Turkey for the Tigris, and the Syrians would

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probably do the same thing [with the Euphrates]. [at essentially

can create a major problem here. It’s like, where do you think the

next war is going to be? It’s going to be over resources. It’s not only

oil resources. It’s going to be over the principal resource, and that’s

water. So right now, there are plans on both sides of those borders

to build dams, and those dams will choke off the water, and since

the resource begins in the other countries, that’s a kind of a

dangerous place for them to be. So I don’t know how that’s going

to work just yet.

I think as a challenge, the outside influences are always big

challenges, but the successes are if you can work with the people on

the periphery of the country, economic development of the people

in Jordan, for example. In Saudi Arabia and Syria, if you can get

them to successfully beat back the insurgents and the insurgent

camps, I would consider that a success. Now, those are still yet-tobe-had successes, but I think for I MEF [I Marine Expeditionary

Force] coming out here, that will be the follow-on. But I think

hopefully between the operations that we’ve done we’ve set up a

good hand off.

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American Perspectives
Interview 8

Intelligence Assessment in Late

2005 and 2006
Major Alfred B. Connable

Senior Intelligence Analyst/Fusion Officer

I & II Marine Expeditionary Forces

2005-2006

Major Alfred B. “Ben” Connable served as the Middle East

desk officer at Headquarters Marine Corps Intelligence

Department before being assigned to 1st Marine Division as a

foreign area officer. In 2003 and 2004, he was the division’s foreign

area officer and intelligence operations officer. In 2005 and 2006,

Major Connable was the senior intelligence analyst and fusion

officer for both I and II Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp

Fallujah. His final tour was as Marine and Naval attaché in Jordan

2007. Connable retired from the Marine Corps is working for the

RAND Corporation as an intelligence policy analyst.

Major Connable was interviewed by Staff Sergeant Bradford A.

Wineman on 26 June 2009 at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia.

Major Alfred B. Connable: [In 2004], I was the FAO [foreign area

officer] out there [in al-Anbar Province], and my primary task was

to come up with cultural mitigating factors and then also to deal

with the tribal leaders. . . .[is is where we planted the seeds for the

Awakening movement, and I’m going to explain to you why nothing

happened until 2006/2007. . . . I’m going to kind of touch on a

central theme as I go through this, [which] is that we never really

established security. We simply didn’t have enough troops . . .

When we showed up, we were given a brief by the 82d Airborne

[Division, USA] intel[ligence] folks, and we were given a tribal

overlay, and they showed us where the major tribes were. And we

looked at the tribal pattern as if it actually existed, the lines on the

map as if they actually meant something. [What] we didn’t really

understand very well is that especially in the urban areas, the tribes

were commingled. Lines of control really didn’t mean anything.

And then, of course, the tribal network itself, I’m not going to beat

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a dead horse here. Everybody’s written about the damage that had

been done to the tribal network in Anbar, in Iraq in general, by

Saddam [Hussein], during the sanctions period.* But essentially, it

was magnified in Anbar Province, where you had a lot of what they

call fake sheikhs in charge of these tribes.

It took us awhile, but we slowly discovered that in the absence of

security—as the fighting started to bubble up in February, March,

and then through the summer [of 2004], where it got really bad—

in the absence of security, when the Iraqis had really dug their heels

back in a survivor mentality and really started looking out for

themselves and their immediate family, even if there were

legitimate tribal leaders, and there were a few, they really didn’t

have any positive coercive authority at that point in time. In the

absence of security, the people, the tribal members—and of course

every Iraqi is a member of a tribe—are not going to risk anything

for anything other than their own self-interest, and even then they

are going to be extraordinarily cautious about what they risk.

We were saying in ’04 all of the things that were being said in, I

won’t say ’05, but ’06 and ’07 that really helped develop the

Awakening movement. We were engaging with the tribal leaders

on a daily basis across the province. We were engaging with them

on a range of issues that I think reflected the range of issues that

were being discussed during the Awakening movement period—

reconciliation, reconstruction, development. We pressed the IO

[information operations] themes home: “Hey, we’re here to help.

We want to make sure that we protect you from al-Qaeda.”

We promised a great many things, and of course we couldn’t deliver

them. And we demanded of them a quid pro quo. . . . We never got

the fact that we were asking something from somebody who was

incapable of delivering it. . . . So we would give things away to

anybody that was willing to talk to us. We would promise things to

anybody that was willing to talk to us. And we were often engaging

with people that the tribe did not see as legitimate representatives.

* Iraq’s tribal sheikhs trace their linage back hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years. During

his leadership, Saddam Hussein appointed new sheikhs to better control Anbar and its business.
So it’s a common refrain: “You were speaking to the wrong people.”

In some cases that was true, and in some cases that was pure

manipulation by the Iraqis who were saying it. . . . We were suckers,

essentially, because we were taking people at their word, people that

were not in any position to give us an American version of a promise.

So any progress we expected to make in that time period was rather

foolish. It was foolish on our part to assume that we were going to

make any progress in the absence of stability. And if you read not

only all of the counterinsurgency experts that have ever written

anything about the first phases of a counterinsurgency operation,

but also all of the insurgents as well—Mao [Zedong], Che

[Guevara], and all the other folks—they all place a primacy on

security. [e insurgents attempt to disrupt security, and the

counterinsurgents have to establish security. I think the 2006

version of the COIN [counterinsurgency] manual is kind of an

accumulation of conventional wisdom on this subject, and it goes

through, point by point, a list of things you have to do in order, and

it says to establish security.

So of course in ’04 we had done almost nothing to establish

security. I argue that we had insufficient troop-to-task from day

one. We did not really appreciate the complexity of the insurgency,

the number of different groups, the motivations of the insurgents

themselves. Of course, this is not a traditional insurgency in that it

was a single or one or two, three, competing organizations with a

political objective. Most of it was, in my opinion, an expression of

social discontent. It was a method of expressing themselves.

Violence is a method of expressing yourself in Anbar Province. We

never understood that, and from March through the end of al-Fajr

[second battle of Fallujah] in November, the province was in

essentially a chaotic state.

So any efforts we made during that time period—and we kept the

same IO theme all the way through—but any efforts we made

during that time period were essentially pointless. Anything we

did, any money we spent was pointless, because all the

reconstruction projects were corrupted. [e money was simply

taken away, and the schools would go up with watered-down paint,

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or faulty concrete, or whatever.[e overtures to the tribes to try to

get them to establish some security and to get them to bring their

tribal members to sign up for the police, or sign up for the ICDC

[Iraqi Civil Defense Corps] at the time, or the Iraqi National

Guard after that, all fell flat because we’d never accomplished step

one. So in the absence of step one, in the absence of establishing

security, the rest of it is not completely pointless, but it certainly is

not going to further your operational and strategic objectives. And

so we were essentially treading water at that point.

Now, it’s important to know that we did maintain the same themes.

A lot of people who have written a history of the Awakening to

date have written as if everything started in the middle of 2006,

and that’s simply not the case. . . . We were saying all the right

things, we were doing all the right things.We were trying to engage

with people, but we had a very immature understanding of Iraqi

culture. We had a very immature understanding of the authority

and the power of the tribes, the tribal leaders. We had a very poor

understanding of the divisions within the tribes, the fact that tribes

are not monolithic entities, that there are subentities within tribes,

and we didn’t really understand how the insurgency overlaid onto

the tribes, and vice versa.

For instance, if the Albu Fahad tribe exists as a monolithic entity,

then you would assume that every Albu Fahad joins one insurgency,

one insurgent group. Of course [that was] not the case, and the

Albu Fahad is broken down into many subtribes, and clans, and

families, and things, and you actually had an intra-communal war

in 2006 between Albu Fahad members.

So we did not see past that, or we did not see into it. But the tribal

leaders we were dealing with at that point at that point, again, you

had all these fake sheikhs that we were engaged with. [at started

to shake out—no pun intended—out at the end of ’04. You started

to see the very beginnings of the tribal system righting itself. And

this is really critical to understand what happened in late ’06 and

early ’07. In early ’04, I’m going to argue that it simply was

impossible, for three reasons.[e security situation was a mess, the

social situation needed to work itself out, and maybe as a codicil to

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that, but equally important, is the fact that the tribal system needed

a period of adjustment before it could become an effective tool with

which we could develop security, help develop localized security.

So that kind of sets the stage; ’04 sets the stage. All the mistakes in

the world, but even if we had done all the right things, I’m going

to argue that we probably couldn’t have gotten anywhere. And a

lot of us saw back in ’04 that this was going to take time, and all of

us said five years. Oddly enough, here we are in 2009, and Anbar

is past five, but we understood that it was going to take a long time,

and we also understood that we weren’t necessarily going to be

given a tremendous amount of time. But a few of us saw that these

things were going to have to shake themselves out, that the tribal

system was going to have to shake itself out, that the fake leaders

were going to have to go away at some point, and they were going

to have to regain trust in their patronage, patron-client networks,

not even in the provincial government, but even just in their own

social structure, their own informal social structures, which they

really did not have back in ’04.

So I left in early September in 2004 and went back to

Headquarters Marine Corps. . . . I showed up [back in Iraq] in

December of 2005, and we were just coming up on the elections.

[ere had been the elections earlier in the year that had failed.

Some of the tribal leaders at this point had shaken out, so you’ve

started to see some tribal leadership emerge. You also started to see

several former Iraqi general officers, military general officers,

emerge who were prominent players, not in Syria, [but who] had

remained in Iraq, had obviously been involved in the insurgency,

but started to see the light, along with the tribal leaders. And what

they started to see was that they lost, [that] they selfdisenfranchised in the elections earlier in 2005. Not every tribal

leader saw that as a mistake, some of them did.

So at the end of 2005, towards the end of it, September/October

time frame, you had a very senior, very well-respected tribal leader

who had insurgent credentials, a guy that I had spoken with in 2004

on multiple occasions, who would stare daggers into me and told me

in no uncertain terms that he wanted me to leave and wanted the

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rest of us to leave and had absolutely no interest in negotiating with

us. [is is Nasser al-Fahadawi. . . . [e Albu Fahad tribes are very

large tribal groupings, centered in the Ramadi area. Sheikh Nasser

kind of saw the light towards the end of ’05 and I think had gotten

sick of all the violence, and I think he saw that we probably weren’t

going to be making any progress on our own. He was in direct

contact with a senior insurgent leader with the 1920 Revolution

Brigade. You could probably argue he was the leader of the 1920

Revolution Brigade, which was the primary, or the most effective,

most well known nationalist insurgent organization operating out

of Anbar Province, and they were a national group as well.

Mohammed Mahmoud Latif . . . had religious credentials but was

also an insurgent leader. Latif and Fahadawi joined together and

decided to support the December [2005] elections. And they

started putting together a small coalition of other tribal leaders and

of senior general officers, brigadier and major generals, . . . guys

who were influential, guys who were fairly well known. And as we

came closer and closer to the elections, they started to take an

opposing stance to AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]. . . .[is was the Anbar

People’s Committee, [the] APC. [is is Fahadawi and Latif and

those other folks.

I showed up, and there was almost an immediate lull in activity in

Anbar Province. It was if everybody was collectively holding their

breath, and I think there was a shock that this had come off

successfully, and nobody really understood what it meant. And

when I say nobody, I mean I don’t think the tribal leaders

understood what it meant. I don’t think the Marines certainly

understood what it meant. I don’t think that the people really

grasped the meaning of a successful election, because again, they’re

not very well educated in electoral process. I know for a fact that

the Iraqi central government was distracted and did not see the

value of the opportunity that they had in front of them. And I also

know for a fact that MNC-I [Multi National Corps-Iraq] and

MNF-I [Multi National Force-Iraq] completely missed the fact

that we had an opportunity at the end of 2005. Or, if they did see

the opportunity, they completely misinterpreted.

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So at the end of ’05 you have a successful election. You have a tribal

organization that has started to recover. You have legitimate,

genuine tribal leaders coming to the fore. [ey’re starting to have

more influence over the people and their province, and this is really

important also for the Awakening. [e fact that a guy like Albu

Fahad is going to turn against AQI reflects . . . that there was a

broader grassroots discontent with al-Qaeda.

So the parallel story you have here at the end of 2005 is that [Abu

Musab al-] Zarqawi had started becoming more violent, had

conducted the hotel bombings in Jordan.[at turned a lot of people

off, including Iraqis, . . . the al-Qaeda-associated movements in Iraq

to the point that it started to get away from him. A lot of the local

Iraqi leaders were actually members of other insurgent groups that

held none of the beliefs that the AQI leadership held. So you had

guys that were in it because AQI was the biggest game in town.

If you go back to reading your counterinsurgency manuals and

books and everything, if you don’t have an ideology, if you don’t

have a political message, you don’t have an insurgency. [at’s just

the way it is. So by the end of ’05, the people were starting to really

realize at the grassroots level that maybe al-Qaeda was not doing

things in their best interest, and that maybe it was time to start

shrugging off the al-Qaeda yoke, because at that point al-Qaeda

was probably more powerful than any other organization in Anbar

Province. And you started to get that sense, but they were still

terrified. [ere was a murder and intimidation campaign.

Another thing that really turned them off, but also kept the people

tamped down, was the fact that al-Qaeda in Iraq criminalized as it

Iraqified. So as it incorporated more and more Iraqis at the mid to

lower levels, it absorbed low-level criminal networks who used

techniques that al-Qaeda was using, hijacking of vehicles,

kidnapping, et cetera, that had proved successful in ’04 for pure

self-interest. [ey were threatening people, they were hijacking,

carjacking, kidnapping, and doing all those things, but it had no

political purpose behind it. It had no real value other than the value

that it held to the people who were conducting the crimes, and the

money stayed at the low level. . . . So if you’re an Anbari at the end

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of 2005 and you’re being not only intimidated by these guys but

robbed blind by them, and you don’t see anything, any value in their

message, you don’t have much motivation to support them, or at

some point even put up with them. . . .

At the end of 2005, we had the successful election. Attack levels

plummeted to an unprecedented lull in the province since 2003. I

think they went down to 20 to 25 attacks per day, from 60, which

was at that time almost a negligible number of attacks. You had an

Anbari people who were holding their breath and were saying to

themselves, maybe this is our shot at getting rid of AQI. Maybe

there is something in this information operations message that the

Americans have been preaching since day one. Maybe if we go

against AQI and at least temporarily support some of the

American initiatives, the Americans will leave and the insurgency

will end. Not that they supported us, but that would be a way that

they would achieve their goals, because they’d been asking us to

leave since day one and we weren’t.

[at was kind of the framework at the end of ’05. You had this, I

don’t know, almost like a blank canvas, where we could have

repainted the while program, and instead of taking advantage of

this, we flubbed it. Taking advantage of it would have consisted of

sending in more troops to Anbar Province. It would have been an

opportunity to establish genuine security. Again, your baseline state

is security, and nobody was fooling themselves at the end of ’05

that we had established security simply because attack levels had

gone down. So if we had surged at the end of ’05, you have the

Anbar People’s Committee waiting in the wings to fight against

al-Qaeda. You have a people who are ready, are sick of al-Qaeda,

and maybe are on the verge of reaching a culminating point, maybe

not quite yet but are close to it.

Instead of that, General George W.] Casey [ Jr., USA] at the end

of December came out and issued a public statement saying that

the next two brigades deploying to Iraq were going to be kept back

as a reserve. So we did what we had been doing since day one in

Iraq, which was to start withdrawing. Every time we had a minor

success, we would start withdrawing troops, and each time we did

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that, we relinquished control of whatever area the troops had just

left. We lost ground in the battle to establish security, and in this

case, it proved to be disastrous.

Al-Qaeda started to recover. When they realized,“Hey, Casey says

now you’re pulling out, the Americans are leaving, now we need to

sink our teeth back in here.” We held a recruiting drive in

downtown Ramadi on January 5th [2006]. Several hundred people

in line, it was the biggest turnout we’d had, hands down, in a long

time. [e guys who were on line seemed motivated. [ey wanted

to be there for some of the right reasons, which was the first time

that had happened. AQI detonated a suicide vest in the line, killed

30 to 60 people, depending on what source you believe. Now, two

remarkable things about that. One is that a lot of the Iraqis that

were there—even some of the injured—stood back up and got into

line again. . . . [at’s a powerful signal, that they’re willing to get

back in line, to risk their lives, after seeing something like that and

still having their ears ringing from the explosion. But it also

signaled the reemergence of the al-Qaeda in Iraq murder and

intimidation campaign, and also their attacks on the civilian

populace and their willingness to reengage us at the tactical level.

Very quickly after that, the attack levels started to rise, and within

two weeks, I think 50 percent of the Anbar People’s Committee

leaders had been assassinated. I think it was January 18th that

Fahadawi was murdered. He was killed by a member of his own

tribe who was a member of al-Qaeda. So an Albu Fahad killed the

Albu Fahad tribal leader. [at was the point where it all started to

fall apart, and by the middle of February, early March, attack levels

had really risen dramatically. Al-Qaeda was completely back up on

its feet, and new leadership had come in.[e nationalist insurgents

at that point really started to stumble and fall apart because alQaeda was so dominant, and a lot of the nationalist insurgents were

joining al-Qaeda at a rather rapid rate, almost in a mercenary way,

but were supporting al-Qaeda or working with them, using the alQaeda name.

[e people were cowering from, I would say January through the

summer. [ey were increasingly vocal to us about their discontent

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American Perspectives
with al-Qaeda, but increasingly frustrated in their inability to do

anything about it. [e story of what happened in Anbar between

January and the summer of 2006 is fairly clear. I mean, the security

situation fell apart. . . . So we had completely missed the boat on our

one opportunity. [e initial Awakening movement, if you want to

call it that, or the first Awakening, was crushed by al-Qaeda and the

security situation collapse. . . .

It was supposed to be the year of the police, 2006. We had made

several fitful starts in developing police forces, and I don’t need to go

into all of the failures there, a lot of fake numbers being thrown out,

a lot of really shoddy training, and people joining the police who

were not motivated for the right reasons, and most of whom were

insurgents at one point. . . . If you had gone after this holistically and

established security and had a year of the police, maybe you would

have made some progress there in the beginning of ’06, but we did

neither. So not only did we not establish security by not providing

additional troops, . . . but we put very little additional effort into

building the police force in the beginning of 2006.

I saw almost no communication that referred to the year of the

police coming out of Baghdad at any time, and I was sitting in the

MEF headquarters. . . . I was aware of what was going on, and I can

tell you that almost 90 percent of the focus of effort was put into

destroying al-Qaeda through high-value target attacks—raids. In

essence, the 1st Marine Division, or the MEF at that point, was

seconded to Special Operations Forces, who were going after highvalue targets. . . . We didn’t see any effect other than an increasing

level of violence. So as we focused more and more on manhunting,

the level of violence steadily increased from February, when we had

the Samarra bombing, all the way up through the middle of the

summer, just a steady increase in violence, and through the end of

the summer, actually. Attack levels went from 25 a day at the end

of ’05 to something like 90 a day in the March, April, May time

frame, so essentially a tripling of the volume of violence in the

province, and a lot of it focused in Ramadi, but also Haditha was

falling apart, Zaidon, Amariyah, a lot of the other areas. . . .

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General [Richard C.] Zilmer realized that we needed to secure

Ramadi, and I’m going to say it was the end of March, early April,

he organized an operational planning team . . . to come up with a

plan to secure Ramadi. [is is the other story that doesn’t make it

into the modern history of the Awakening movement. For about a

month, a group of us put together a very, very well-constructed,

very detailed plan to secure the provincial capital. . . .

We were going to do this in the absence of any tribal awakening.

We realized at that point that the tribes were not ready.[ere were

very few tribal leaders, we felt at that point, that had the ability to

do any positive coercion, because again, tribal members were not

ready to do anything positive.[e glass factory bombing on January

5th set a tone for recruiting, and the murder and intimidation

campaign set a tone for tribal leaders. So at that point, it was

essentially a Coalition effort to establish security. Now, we included

our Iraqi partners in that. [e Iraqi army was going to play a very

big role in helping to secure Ramadi. . . .

Ramadi is split in two places by the [Euphrates] river. [e terrain

varies dramatically. Even within the urban area, you have an

industrial area, you have a semi-open commercial and industrial

area. You have the heart of the city, you have the suburbs, and it

blends out into farmland that is fairly well populated. But you can’t

really control it. [ere are ratlines everywhere. [ere are easy ways

to cross the river, many, many ways of getting in and out of Ramadi

proper, let alone the edges of Ramadi. So [it was] a major task,

requiring a significant number of troops to secure not only the city,

but necessarily the area around the city, and understanding, of

course, that Ramadi sits on Route Michigan and Route Mobile,

which is the main artery going into Baghdad from Syria, from the

safe haven in Syria. [is had strategic implications outside of the

fact that we were going to secure the provincial capital.[is should

have been a pretty big deal.

At the end of April, May, I think Ramadi, if you looked at the

color-tone map of all the cities that were good, bad, and ugly,

Baghdad was yellow. Ramadi was orange going towards red, as in

the deeper the color, the worse it gets. So Ramadi, according to

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American Perspectives
MNF-I, MNC-I intelligence experts, was the worst city in the

country, in that time frame, in the time frame that we were

developing this plan. One would think that the worst city in the

country would receive some sort of assistance, especially if we had

gone to all the trouble of coming up with a plan to secure it.

[e planning, and I want to give you a little bit of detail on this,

because it’s important to understand that we came up with a good

plan. We went inch by inch over the imagery of the city. I knew

the city first hand from 2004, and I was helping plot from an

intelligence perspective where we were going to put each

checkpoint, where we were going to put each police station. We

had built police stations out of Conex boxes [Container express

military shipping containers] that we were ready to just drop in

and provide security for with mutually supporting stations,

mutually supporting fires from the Marines. We had a very, very

solid, methodical plan to build oil-spot zones of security and build

out from there. We knew that there were areas in the southeast of

the city that were no-go for us, essentially. We knew where the rat

lines were. We knew how they were coming across the river, and

attacking the government center every day, and coordinating their

attacks through the mosque loudspeakers. We knew what was

happening.We knew what needed to be done to fix it, and we knew

exactly how many troops we needed, or thought we needed.

[e plan called for an overlap of the two brigades. In order to

establish the security in the city, we were going to overlap the

arrival of the new brigade with the departure of 2/28 BCT [2d

Brigade Combat Team, 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania

Army National Guard)] by a month. . . . We were going to surge in

Ramadi and overwhelm the lines of communication and then use

that opportunity to set the police, the first few police stations, and

really just kind of get the ball rolling. . . .

I’m going to do some informed speculation here about what went

wrong at the strategic level in early 2006, and why the first

Awakening failed, and why things got so bad towards the middle of

’06 that the scene was set for the second Awakening. Essentially,

everything had just been thrown up against the wall. From day one,

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General Casey and General [ John P.] Abizaid [USA] believed—I

think incorrectly, although not cynically—I think that they believed

it genuinely and I think they believed it with good intention, that

we were the cause of the insurgency, that our presence was the

disease, was the foreign body that was causing the antibodies to

activate, so to speak. And they never really understood the fact that

it was really the underlying social conditions in the country that

were creating the insurgency, that the insurgency was not just a

reaction to American presence, that it was an expression of Iraqi

discontent across the board, and that led them to both pull us back

into the FOBs [forward operating bases]. When we did that, we

lost our intelligence collection opportunities, human intelligence.

We lost our connection to the population. Again,

Counterinsurgency 101. We lost control of the lines of

communication, and this happened between ’04 and early ’06. So

we basically did everything you should not do in a

counterinsurgency campaign.We disconnected for the populace, we

pulled back from our efforts to establish security, and every time we

had an opportunity to capitalize on a success, we withdrew troops.

[e bottom line is that we were told point blank, very clearly, that

we weren’t getting any more troops. Now if you recall the public

statements by senior general officers and secretaries of defense, all

the way through the war, our commanders will get what they need.

If they ask for more troops, they’ll get them. So obviously, that was

not true. [at was a blatant lie, to be perfectly honest with you. . . .

Colonel [Peter H.] Pete Devlin was the G-2 for the MEF, and he

can give you a really good insight of how 1/1 AD [1st Brigade

Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, USA] adopted our plan,

modified it, and then was successful. . . .

By the middle of ’06, Ramadi essentially looked like Stalingrad.

We were dropping shells in the middle of the city. . . . It was a

disaster at that point. I argue that mid-2006, the population had

recovered from the blow of the destruction of the first Awakening,

and they had reached their culminating point with al-Qaeda.[ey

had reached the point with al-Qaeda where they had had enough.

So now you had, at a very broad level, the people—not everybody,

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but the people, a majority of the people in Anbar were ready for a

change. A lot of them were ready to come in our direction, and you

saw a change in rhetoric, and I got this because I was reading all the

traffic every day and engaging with people. Guys that in 2004 were

saying, “Get out, get out of the cities. We’ll take control of

everything,” were saying, “You need to secure the cities for us, and

then leave.” You saw pockets of resistance against al-Qaeda. You

saw an intra-tribal fight in the Albu Fahad tribe sometime in the

middle of ’06. You saw all sorts of indicators that they were done

with AQI. So the conditions, the social conditions, had been

established, and what we needed at that point then was security.

What 1/1 AD did was come in and do two things correctly—and

of course the Marines, too. I mean, 1/1 AD seems to love getting

the credit for this stuff, but they managed to establish security while

simultaneously taking advantage of the shift in social conditions

on the ground, which meant taking advantage of the growth, or

the rebirth, or the correction of the tribal lineage system, the tribal

power structures. So there were tribal leaders at that point that were

capable of positive coercion, of getting people to join groups. [e

people were ready, and the tribal leaders were ready, and so

everything kind of neatly fell into place in ’06. You had that

culminating point. You had the tribal leaders ready to go, and even

though we didn’t get all the troops we asked for, you had an activeduty Army brigade that was very competent, had just come out of

a very tough area and was getting a fresh look at a problem, and did

a very good job executing a security plan. . . .

By late summer, early fall ’06, Colonel Devlin—and this is

unclassified now, I mean, the damn thing’s been released—Colonel

Devlin sent me an e-mail. I was back at the Marine Corps

Intelligence Activity, where I was the head of the cultural intel

program. And he said, “Here’s a PowerPoint brief on the state of

the insurgency in Anbar. Turn it into a paper.” I agreed with just

about everything he said, so we wrote the 2006 state of the

insurgency paper that was leaked to the press, to [[omas E.] Tom

Ricks [of the Washington Post] in particular, where it was twisted,

misquoted, and taken out of context. And Colonel [Sean B.]

MacFarland [USA] cites that leaked version of the paper in his

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article in the Military Review article that’s so widely quoted for the

Awakening. . . .

What was left out of the equation there is that at the end of the

paper, we also made some recommendations, so it was not a purely

negative paper.Tom Ricks did not portray it that way, and that was

how it was consumed by the general populace, and also by a lot of

military people. So it was misconstrued, it was taken out of context.

[e Marines had not given up. [at’s absolutely absurd. It was a

couple of intel guys making a point, and nobody was reading the

intel traffic for a year before that that led up to the writing of that

paper. It was a good example of what happens when you leak intel

reporting, the negative consequences for leaking intel reporting.

Okay, and then specifically why was Sheikh [Abdul] Sattar [Abu

Risha] ready to go? We, collectively, the Coalition, had kept him on

the sidelines for quite some time. Various people had been

engaging with him informally, but he had never sullied himself by

engaging with Coalition openly and directly. He had insurgent

credentials, he had smuggling credentials, and he was enough of a

kind of criminal vagabond, these kind of suave criminals that

became so popular in western Iraq during the sanctions period. He

was one of these well-respected criminals, and he still had a little

bit of an aura of mystique about him. So he was the right guy at the

right time, and he was able to capitalize on the fact that a lot of

other tribal leaders were ready to go. . . .

Staff Sergeant Bradford A. Wineman: In the Awakening process

there’s the dynamic of two forces, the Iraqis and the Coalition.

How much do you see the Iraqis doing this under their own power,

and how much do you think is this being genuinely driven by

U.S./Coalition forces in sort of the ’06/’07 time frame?

Connable: Insurgency, any civil violence, whatever you want to call

it, revolution, rebellion, civil war, uprising—all the terminology—

it’s about social conditions. I mean, at the heart of it, you get to the

root of the problem, and it’s about social conditions, whether it’s

land reform, whether it’s political repression, or lack of human

rights, or whatever it is. And you cannot effect legitimate change

in the absence of a shift in those conditions.

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American Perspectives
Now, did we change the social conditions in Anbar Province? [at’s

really the question here. No, no we did not. [ings happened

naturally over the course of time. What we did do was provide a

poorly run; no, not poorly run, [but] a poorly supplied resource, a

poorly resourced stabilizing element. So we were basically, and I’ve

used this analogy before in an article I wrote. We were like the

control rod in a nuclear reactor.[e control rod was about halfway

in, so we gave them a kind of semi-protected environment in which

they could work out a lot of their own social problems.[ey worked

a lot of them out against us, obviously, but they also worked them

out against each other. [ey had to reach the conclusion that the

Awakening was the way to go on their own. You can’t force-feed

this stuff. You can’t convince people that it’s in their own best

interest to do something when they know damn well that it’s not.

. . . You cannot make this happen through coercion. So all of our

recruiting drives, all of our IO [information operations] messages,

we basically were giving them the mechanisms to take advantage

of the shift in social conditions.

So okay,“we’re here to help; al-Qaeda’s bad.”[at was our message,

essentially, our theme. And they didn’t believe it, they didn’t believe

it, they didn’t believe it, and finally they said, “You know what?

We’re getting pretty sick of al-Qaeda. Maybe that is true.” And

then the whole time we’re saying, “We want to help you establish

an army and a police force, and we want security.” And they didn’t

believe us, they didn’t believe us, they didn’t believe us, and now so

they didn’t want to do it, essentially, because they didn’t believe us.

So they’re not going to take advantage of the structure we provide

because they don’t believe in the message.

So they get to the end of all this, all of these things happened, all

this cathartic activity takes place.[ey start to see Iran as a greater

threat than the United States, because of all the stuff that happened

in early 2006, and they see the criminalization of al-Qaeda and all

of these things, and then they say,“You know what? Maybe joining

the police force or whatever, maybe we take the Americans up on

their offer.” So being consistent helped us.

I think that consistency and the persistent presence paid off in the

end, but it didn’t make it happen. You can’t make an insurgency

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end. If you make an insurgency end by killing people, then you

really were fighting a terrorist organization. You weren’t fighting

an insurgency.

Wineman: Is there a misunderstanding you wish you could correct

about the concept of the Awakening?

Connable: It’s a process, not an event. [is is not something that

happened overnight. [is is not something that was created by an

American unit, or a series of American units. [is was not

something we did.[is is something that happened over time, that

we helped set the conditions for, and so you’ve got to understand

that counterinsurgency operations take time. [ere is no miracle

cure, no surprise negotiation with the right guy that’s going to turn

the whole thing around. [at happens only in very, very few cases,

and I would argue even in those cases [that] the social conditions

have to be right for that to occur. So you’ve got to take away from

this, it’s a long process. It’s the social conditions, it’s the root causes,

that matter at the end of the day.

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American Perspectives


Interview 9

The Shift to Counterinsurgency
Major General Richard C. Zilmer

Commanding General

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2006 to February 2007

Major General Richard C. Zilmer commanded the 1st Marine

Expeditionary Brigade in 2005 and served as the commanding general

of I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) [I MEF] in Iraq from

February 2006 to February 2007.

In this interview, Major General Zilmer describes the goals and

progress of I MEF during its tour and the significant improvements in

the Iraqi security forces in 2006. He discusses the Awakening and its

impact on improved security, as well as Coalition efforts to improve

the economy and self-governance in al-Anbar Province, especially as

a partner and mentor to the provincial governor. He notes the

importance of cultural understanding in the success of military and

police transition teams and the need to balance engagement of tribal

leaders with support for the elected government.

Major General Zilmer was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

Kurtis P. Wheeler on 1 January 2007 at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: Sir, a year ago as you took

over I MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force], what were your key

priorities? What were your objectives?

Major General Richard C. Zilmer: [e key priorities when we got

over here were really to focus on Ramadi. At that time, a year ago,

the operations out west up in Husaybah, al-Qaim, River Gate,

those operations had been pretty much concluded at that point.

[ey swept most of the western Euphrates River Valley, had some

hugely successful operations up there with II MEF and RCT-2

[Regimental Combat Team 2]. And we were still in the aftermath,

if you will, of al-Fajr and Fallujah, so in one sense we thought we

had two bookends that were reasonably secure. No one would have

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thought that in one short year, the progress that has happened out

west in Husaybah and al-Qaim would have been as great as it’s

been.[at’s been hugely successful and a very, very pleasant surprise

to see that area rebound from being inundated with insurgents to

rebound to the point now where they have a police force, they have

a city government, they have Iraqi army forces out there and the

economy of the town has come back. [at has been a truly

remarkable good-news story.

Fallujah. We got here a year ago [February 2006], barely 2,000

police in the entire Anbar Province, most of which were in Fallujah,

which was a good story. You had a city council there. You had a

mayor there, so Fallujah was doing very well, and we saw the

beginnings of the emergence of the shopkeepers. [at sort of

economy was beginning to get traction again, and every day that

you drove down ASR [Alternative Supply Route] Fran or

Michigan, it almost seemed by the day you could see more

businesses.[ere would be more fruit sellers out there, there would

be more auto shops opened up.[ere would be more, just the shops

that are important to the Iraqi economy, and particularly out here,

out west. So we thought we were pretty solid on the ends, but, at

the end of the day, Ramadi is the key to Anbar Province.

Ramadi, at the time, just by design, by necessity, was an area that

we did not have firm control on.While I would say our forces could

go anywhere in Ramadi that they wanted to—I mean, any fight we

got into we would win in Ramadi. [e fact is, we saw the

population decreasing. It was the provincial capital of Anbar

Province. [e governor was a one-man single point of failure. [e

provincial council still does not meet in Ramadi.[ey did not meet

then. [ere is no mayor in Ramadi. [ere is no city council in

Ramadi. Yet because it’s the most populous city, about 400,000, in

Anbar, and because it is the capital, you aren’t going to secure all of

Anbar until you take Ramadi. So our focus coming out here was to

zero in on Ramadi. [at was the main effort, in terms of our

security operations, was to focus on Ramadi.

[at needs to be seen in a larger context. While I MEF Forward,

and II MEF before us, were the lead in the counterinsurgency fight

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in Anbar, the long-term plan—strategy of success—was to

transition that fight to the Iraqi security forces. So when we got

here, our mantra was to make as many police as we could possibly

make, train properly, as well as increase the size, the capability, of

the Iraqi army. And 2006 was supposed to be the year of the police,

and in the grander strategy, the Coalition force was the windbreak,

if you will, to allow the Iraqi army to come behind us, and then

behind them, as we built the police force, to turn over to the police

force, the city security to the police. All those things would

contribute to Provincial Iraqi Control, or PIC, and that was a

measure of security that would allow the governor [and] the

division commanders out here the ability to address security

emergencies and essentially provide for their own security without

the help of the Coalition. [at’s what we’re trying to do: put Iraqi

army in the lead and really enable the Iraqis to do it themselves. So

that’s what we set out to do, coming here.

When we came here, there were slightly under 2,000 police in all

of Anbar Province. After a year, we’ve got about 8,500 trained Iraqi

police. Our ceiling that we’re working under is 11,300 police, so

we are still below where we need to be. [e original timeline was

to be there by December. We hit some months in March, April,

May, where we were not able to generate any young men from

Anbar to join the police or the army. Of late, meaning since

October, that trend has just gone straight up. We are now able to

recruit almost all the police we need to recruit, and right now I

would say by about March [2007], possibly as late as April, we

should be able to achieve that figure of 11,300 police, and that’s

for all of Anbar. [at’s Fallujah, Ramadi, Husaybah, Haditha,

Haqlaniyah, Barwanah, all those cities will have a police force of

their own. . . .

[e inroads that we’ve established in terms of trying to create a

province that has confidence in their ability to generate an

economy, I think we’ve made tremendous progress there, mainly

through the efforts of General [David G.] Reist and his efforts to

attract investment from outside of Iraq and Anbar. He’s maintained

a very aggressive relationship—I mean that in a positive sense—

with the expat community that lives in Jordan. Most of the

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intelligentsia, the affluent Sunnis from Anbar left. [ey went to

either Jordan or Syria, or other places. And his experience in the

last year was [focused on] trying to attract them to come back in.

We’ve looked at international support to attract investment. He

has bridged to the secretary of defense’s office to bring in economic

transformation specialists in the form of Mr. [Paul A.] Brinkley to

come in here and examine some of the state-owned enterprises—

a glass factory, the cement factories—and what could we do to help

transform those businesses, state-driven businesses, and have them

now take on a more profit-generated, profit-incentive development.

And, again, these are new concepts. . . .

[e work we’ve done to establish the central services—electricity,

water, sewage, trash, employment—I think we’ve established a

foundation for those things to work. Trying to get, the Iraqis out

here in Anbar, who have been suppressed for the last 30, 40 years

by a state-driven economy, to now ask those people to look at a

capitalist view economically is a major change. It’s a sea change for

the people. So through a series of meetings, conferences,

conventions, we’ve been able to bring a lot of people who have

some ability to influence what’s happening here in Anbar. And you

look at the natural resources, this place abounds in natural

resources.[e one natural resource that Anbar lacks is petroleum—

oil—but there is wild speculation that out west there are huge

natural gas fields that are out there, awaiting to be developed.

Anbar is largely an agrarian province. Estimates are that the

agricultural production is only at about 30 percent of what it could

be. [e Euphrates River Valley is a hugely fertile area. It could

easily feed this country, if not most of the Middle East, but trying

to take a 19th century view of farming and accelerate that into an

industrial farming mindset is a big change. So there are a lot of

resources out here, not the least of which is the people themselves.

I think they have always been tied to Baghdad with petrodollars,

and it’s the fear of the unknown, breaking away from Baghdad,

because of that support network that the petrodollars always

provided. Oil is still the biggest producer of cash in Iraq, and it

probably always will be, but trying to get the Anbar people to have

confidence in the other things that are here has been, that will take

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more than a year to do that. So those are the things I’m very

optimistic about.

Watching the governor [Mamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani] grow,

the governor was—again, he’s still a one-man band—but watching

him develop, sending him off to workshops to teach him how

healthy bureaucracies work in a provincial government, training

him, taking his staff with him, that has been very rewarding. We’ve

watched the governor grow from being very uncomfortable with

his position as the governor to the point now where he can go into

meetings. He acts like a governor. He acts very authoritative, in a

positive way. I’ve watched now mayors come up and acknowledge

his presence as a governor. A year ago, no one saw him as the

governor of Anbar Province. So he’s grown into his position.

He’s become more influential, and he’s taken a very active role in

the development of the economy of Anbar Province. He’s all over

the businesses, whether that’s trying to get microfinancing up and

working, whether that’s, again, returning essential services, banking.

It’s a lot of work that remains to be done, so the governor has seen,

I think, a very, very positive improvement in his capabilities. . . .

Wheeler: What have you seen as the key hurdles with Iraqi army

recruitment nationally? [at is a national issue.

Zilmer: Nationally, it’s not a problem. [e problem is out here in

Anbar Province, where 90 percent of your province is Sunni.[ere is

absolutely no problem with Shi’a. Shi’a soldiers, or jundi recruits, are

very interested in joining, so the problem out in Anbar is that we can

continually infuse or have jundi soldiers come out here, but we’d like

a better mix with Sunnis. And trying to entice the Sunni young men

to come out and join the army, that has proven problematic for us.

Many of the kids out west cannot pass a literacy examination,

which is a requirement to join the police and the army. We think

that a literacy program and waiver needs to be established to allow

these kids to join the army, and during boot camp, or recruit

training, or after some period of time, that there is a national

program that teaches these young men how to read. In our view,

that would be hugely successful in helping them come along.

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American Perspectives
But again, total numbers across the country I think are pretty good,

but we’re after Sunnis out here to join, and we’ve had checkered

success on that. Now, what’s changed all of that in the last three

months, at least with respect to Ramadi, is the emergence of the

tribal sheikhs. [ey have taken a much, much larger role in the

security for their communities.[ey have come together in Ramadi

to resist al-Qaeda, and in so doing, they’ve been able to chase out

the young men to join the army, join the police most notably.We’ve

seen great interest in joining the police, and, of late, in the last

month and a half, we’ve had this organization sanctioned by the

Ministry of Interior, called the Emergency Response Units, three

battalion-sized units, about 750 Iraqis, or soldiers, or policemen,

per battalion. So we’ve been able now to get our numbers swelling

in terms of Iraqi police. I’d say in the year that we’ve been here,

that’s probably the biggest positive change we’ve seen.

So the key there was trying to get the sheikhs and the tribes that

they lead to take a larger role in their own security, and I think

that’s come together for a combination of reasons. One, I think

they’ve watched the success of the Coalition forces and the Iraqi

army forces out there in their communities. We’ve been persistent

there. In most of these communities that we’re operating in, we

remain a stable entity. In other words, we continue to be there. I

think that’s the trust that they were looking for, but that’s been

important. But what has also been important is the brutal murder,

[the] intimidation that al-Qaeda practices on a daily basis has

absolutely—before this—had smothered the tribes and some of the

other groups. So I think they finally hit a point where they said,

“Look, we’re not going to survive this way, we’re not going to

progress this way.”

So you have a couple of those things all come together at the same

time, and then you get a couple of key personalities, like Sheikh

[Abdul] Sattar [Abu Risha], and that’s what we’re looking for, this

middle-class leadership to emerge and bring the people together.

We’ve finally found some of that in Ramadi, and we’re hoping that

phenomenon [the Sahwa or Awakening] will spread throughout

Anbar. But there are some parts of Anbar where it won’t work.[e

tribes are strong in Ramadi. [ey’re strong out west. [ey’re less,

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Al-Anbar Awakening
though, as you get closer to Baghdad, so again, that same

phenomenon may not take place in other places that are in our area

of operations. . . .

Wheeler: How does the Coalition plug in to the [Provisional Joint

Coordination Center (PJCC)]? We’re enablers, we’re mentors?

Zilmer: Absolutely.We are advisers to the PJCC. Again, eventually

we want to be able to extract ourselves from that, but, in the

meantime, through our MTTs, our military transition teams,

through our PTTs, our police transition teams, through our

governance support teams who work out of the governor’s office in

Ramadi, through our advisor role, if you will, and our ability—

frankly, we still have a lot of capability. We have a lot of enablers

that the Iraqi people still need, whether that’s the army or the

police, so our involvement helps to facilitate the process, but also,

if there are capabilities or enablers that only we have at the present

time, then we can reach back and do that. But I think there’s a great,

at least in our experience out here, there has been I think a very,

very strong relationship has developed between us, the police and

the army, and the governor.We travel frequently with the governor.

We spend a lot of time with the governor, now at the government

center. We’re joined as advisor teams with the army and the police,

so I think for the most part they are very, very comfortable with

us.[ey do trust us.[ey believe in what we’re trying to do, so there

is not an issue of us not being there. . . .

Wheeler: Has the Marine Corps had to shift their way of doing

business to a more patient approach in al-Anbar?

Zilmer: Well, patience is certainly a virtue out here. I think we do

recognize it, as a service, as a Marine Corps. We recognize that

dealing in a counterinsurgency in the Middle East, or in the Arab

world, requires a fundamental understanding of the culture, which

gets back to some of the things we’re now doing as a Corps in

terms of identifying our officers, core areas where they will become

experts, they’re expected to become experts over the course of their

career, whether that’s in the Western Hemisphere, or the Middle

East, or the Pacific region, or Europe. We’ve gone to great lengths

to develop our cultural center that works out of Quantico [Center

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American Perspectives
for Advanced Operational Culture Learning]. Mojave Viper . . . all

the Marines would go through a four-hour session of cultural

training with Dr. Barak [A.] Salmoni, and he would go through

the cultural nuances of how Arab people live, how they act, and

understanding that cultural difference. And so we’ve applied a lot

of that. We spend a lot of effort to get our Marines sensitive to

that. It’s hard to do in a four-hour class, to make you an expert on

Middle Eastern culture. You just won’t be there. But I think if we

at least make our Marines and sailors coming over here, walking

into a new culture, a new society, and these are the sort of norms,

these are the sort of things you’re going to have to do, and making

sure that they have realistic expectations of what they will see

happen, I think is important.

When I brief all the new MTTs, military transition teams, I talk to

them specifically about that: is this an unrealistic expectation? [ey

are not Western, and they have a certain style and methodology

that is unique to their culture, and we ignore that at our own peril,

and we set ourselves up for frustration. We want to see things

happen—[snaps his fingers] boom, boom, boom—just the way

Americans are, and it doesn’t work over here. But if you look back

at where you were two months ago, and two months before that,

that’s when you see the progress. If you want to see what changed

today from yesterday, you’re going to go nuts. But if you allow

yourself to work through and then say, “Ah, two months ago,

remember, we couldn’t even do this before. We didn’t even have

this two months ago.”[at’s where you see the success, and almost

without exception, every Marine that I do talk to that finishes an

advisor tour will tell you that this has been the most challenging,

and yet the most rewarding, assignment he’s ever had.

Like I said, it’s not the guy who finishes number one at [e Basic

School. It’s not the guy that finishes number one at EWS

[Expeditionary Warfare School] or Command and Staff. It’s not the

guy that is six feet, two inches, 300 PFT [physical fitness test] guy.

[e people that come out here, their greatest gift is communications,

and if they can’t do that, if they can’t immerse themselves with the

Iraqi people, they can’t communicate, they will not be effective.

Almost any Marine can come in here, with the skills he brings with

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Al-Anbar Awakening
him, if he has the ability to communicate, he will be an effective

advisor. I mean, he certainly has to have a certain basic combat skills,

particularly weapons employment, that sort of thing, but he doesn’t

necessarily have to be a combat arms guy to be successful in this role.

And the more senior they become, the more apparent that is, and

I would use the example of our division MTT leader, Colonel

[ Juan G.] Ayala, who is a logistician. [e requirement calls for a

ground combat guy to be in that job. For a variety of reasons, we

picked Colonel Ayala, and he has been wildly successful as an

advisor, and he has just fit in so well here that they absolutely trust

him to always shoot straight with them, and they will follow his

lead. [ey will ask for his advice, and he will force them to work.

So that’s been a beautiful example, I think, of how the guy with

the right skill sets can be a successful advisor.

Wheeler: You talk about this acknowledgment of Iraqi culture, Iraqi

ways of doing things. Do we also acknowledge and bring in the

nonelected, traditional leadership in places like Ramadi? What

lessons have we learned?

Zilmer: Well, I think the biggest lesson we learned, you can be told

a lot of things, but until you stick your finger in the fire, you don’t

understand what hot means, and then you understand not to do it

again. And I think probably the biggest thing that we learned out

here was the importance of the tribal engagement. Tribal

engagement, in my view, at least for the near future, without tribal

engagement, without tribal involvement, to include in the

government, we’re going to have a tough road. [ey are absolutely

essential to the social fabric of the people in Iraq, and specifically

in Anbar Province. And they must be part of everything.[ey must

be part of everything that we do. [at’s probably been the single

biggest lesson I think we’ve learned here. I think understanding

what democracy is, again, it’s easy for Americans because that’s all

we’ve ever known, the only thing we’ve ever lived under. And every

American, every kid who’s graduated from high school, has a

working knowledge of government and democracy.

[at just did not exist here. So you’re asking here for the Iraqi

people to place their faith, and trust, and confidence in something

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American Perspectives
that they don’t really understand, because they’ve never had the

opportunity. It’s not because they’re not smart enough. [ey are

clearly smart enough. [ey may not be book smart, but they are

very, very intelligent people. And it takes time for them, when

you’re trying to ask them to place trust and confidence in a

government, a network, or a system of elected officials who may

not necessarily have a tribal rank, that is foreign to them.

I think the votes were good, the elections were good, the people

came out, there was a certain novelty to that. But I think then we

start sitting down, okay, well, what does that mean, particularly the

elected officials? Okay, all right, you are an elected official, these are

the sorts of things that elected officials do. And when you resort to

votes over and over and over again, whether it’s a vote in a

committee or a vote in a council, those are the pieces of democracy

that I think are new for the process and that will simply take time

to do.To make those city councils, provincial councils, to make them

successful, there’s going to have to be a strong buy-in from the tribal

sheikhs.[at is the custom, that is the most important social feature,

I think, of the Anbar people, is that tribal sheikh relationship, and

I think we had to learn that. And we’ve seen now, with the

development of the Iraqi response units, the Sahwa Anbar, or the

Awakening, that is purely being driven by the tribes and the sheikhs.

Wheeler: Sir, is there in any way a tension between supporting the

sheikhs? Is there a danger of that undermining the elected

governments?

Zilmer: Absolutely. We saw some examples of that where some of

the sheikhs would go straight to Baghdad, and they would have an

audience with the prime minister, or any of the ministers. [ey

would curry favor with the ministers, who would bestow authorities

unto them, would empower them to do things that completely

circumnavigated the provincial governor. And so in some cases

where it got them an immediate gratification, it was something

that was maybe good, but long term it just undermines that ability

of the governor to be the spokesman, if you will, for the province.

It’s like a chain of command. When you now allow these people to

go straight to the top, you marginalize the capacity of the governor.

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So yes, that potentially can be destructive to that provincial

government you’re trying to establish here. . . .

Our problem set is being driven by al-Qaeda. [at’s the common

enemy to everybody out here. With a common enemy like alQaeda and some of these Sunni extremist insurgent groups out

here, there’s been a lot of common ground that we’ve been able to

have between us, whether that’s the Iraqi army, the Iraqi police, and

Coalition. Our enemy is a common enemy that we all are sworn to

defeat, so I think that’s enabled us to do that.

So I think we’ve been able to have entrees into these teams. Every

one of our transition teams is embedded with their battalion,

brigade, division. [ey are embedded. [ey live there with those

units. Many of these units still have partnerships with our

battalions, meaning their companies live with our companies inside

the combat outposts. We have that relationship, which doesn’t

always exist further east of Baghdad. Because of that, we’ve been

able to build this trust and confidence, and I can go places with my

division commanders.[ey can come up here and meet with me. I

can go down there and visit with them. We can travel together

throughout our areas of responsibility. [ey are TaCon [tactical

control] to us, so they freely acknowledge that relationship.

[e last thing that makes it easy to work with them, going back to

this historic gulf that exists between Baghdad and Anbar—Anbar

Province has never, ever been close to Baghdad.[e real cynics out

here would tell you that Baghdad has no interest whatsoever in

seeing Anbar Province succeed, for any number of reasons. So we

have in many cases become the champion of the Iraqi army and

Iraqi police. We advocate for them, we fight many of the fights for

them in Baghdad, whether that’s Ministry of Defense, Ministry of

Interior. We become the advocates for them, and in may cases,

when the Ministry of Interior or Defense fail to provide

sustainment, we provide that sustainment at a price. So we are

always there, and so that’s why I think we have a relationship out

here that is different than other parts of the country, and for the

most part, it’s a very, very solid relationship.

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American Perspectives
Interview 10

Enabling the Awakening, Part I
Brigadier General David G. Reist

Deputy Commanding General (Support)

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2006 to February 2007

Brigadier General David G. Reist is a logistics officer who

commanded 1st Transportation Support Battalion (redesignated

Transportation Support Group during Operation Iraqi Freedom) from

2002 to 2004 and Combat Service Support Group 11 during

Operation Iraqi Freedom II. He was the commanding general of 1st

Force Service Support Group (redesignated 1st Marine Logistics

Group) from 2005 to 2007 and served as deputy commanding general

(Support) for I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward) from February

2006 to February 2007.

In this interview, Brigadier General Reist discusses the

relationship between security and growth in the economy and selfgovernance in al-Anbar Province. He describes the economic potential

of al-Anbar and the role I Marine Expeditionary Force has played in

helping Anbaris to tap into that potential. He notes the relationship

between key leaders who remained in al-Anbar amid the violence and

those who were outside Iraq in places such as Jordan. He concludes

with a description of the overall progress in al-Anbar and it potential

to reach a “tipping point” toward rapid improvement.

Brigadier General Reist was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

Kurtis P. Wheeler on 3 January 2007 at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: Sir, when you stepped on

deck, what did you see as the priorities, and what were your key

goals during your tour?

Brigadier General David G. Reist: First of all, the focus obviously

was economic and governance. And of the five LOOs [lines of

operation] that exist, we kind of viewed it that the economics and

governance would be the decisive effort, but not the point of main

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effort on a daily basis. So it’s kind of that silent hand that needs to

happen that will turn events and will offer the things that will prove

to be the tipping point. But on a day-to-day basis, realize that the

security situation is going to drive everything around here. And

that has proven very true.

One of the things when I say that, though, is a lot of people always

ask, how can you sit there and have economic growth when you’ve

got a security situation, [with] violence that doesn’t, or would not

be perceived that it would allow that? A recent article said that the

GDP [gross domestic product] grew somewhere between 4 and 17

percent here in Iraq in 2006. A lot of folks went,“But how can that

be happening? [at’s a country at war.” Discounting that probably

most of that growth comes from the Kurdish section, there are

some things happening here. [e unfortunate thing is it’s not like

measuring the GDP back in the United States.[eir housing starts

aren’t monitored, the things we see on the news, but there are some

things happening. It’s touchy-feely, though. It’s when you’re out

riding around and you see more people on the street. You see shops

open. You see students on the street that you haven’t seen in a long

while, going to school and carrying their books. [ose are

indicators. Can you put it in a win-loss column and come up with

an arithmetic formula? No. And that’s the frustration sometimes,

and quite honestly, I don’t know if we want to do that. I don’t know

if we want to turn it into a total metric so that you’d put it into

some algorithm and you’d come out with, “oh my God, here’s

exactly where you’re at.” [e economics is slow, too. I mean, it’s

literally like watching paint dry.

Now on the government side, looking at things when we got here,

once again, watching paint dry, but even slower-drying paint, because

there is some frustration as we sit here on the ways the Sunnis view

Baghdad, the way they see the national government as nonsupportive,

the way they look at the government in that nonsupportive role, on

the perception that it is a Shi’a-led, Iranian-backed government. Now

whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t matter, because that’s what they

perceive. [at’s manifested in that they don’t get their budget, that

they don’t get reconstruction funds, they think they see other people

getting some things. It just adds to the fray.

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Al-Anbar Awakening
How do we overcome that? [e governor and I, we go to Baghdad

probably once a week [to] lobby with some of the ministries. Our

provincial council happens to be in Baghdad. And that’s not a

perfect situation. It should meet in Ramadi.When we first got here,

it was meeting in Ramadi, but the security situation—going back

to that—did not allow that. So what we’ve got, and I know this is

a long, twisted thing, but you’ve got the five fingers of the LOOs

here, the lines of operation, and you’d like to be able to slip them

into a nice form-fitting glove, and each finger being equally

important. Boy, I gotta tell you, this is something that you take

maybe two steps forward every day, and some days you only take

one step back, and some days you take three steps back. [en you

wake up the next day, and you look where you can make some

progress and bolster success, watch to keep failure from happening

too much in one area. [e most challenging thing I’ve done in 28

years, the most exhilarating thing I’ve done in 28 years. . . .

Wheeler: How do you balance, on a daily basis, the subtleties of

something like tribal engagement versus enhancing the elected

government, which are, to some extent, at odds with each other?

Reist: Good question. First of all, I’m not going to pretend that

there’s a cookbook for this. [ere might be people who have done

this their whole life who understand it and know the complexities.

For a lot of us that get put in a billet like this—I don’t say this

flippantly—but we make it up every day. Yeah, we have a plan, we

have a goal. But that goal is framed from engagement and listening

to different people at all levels.

We’re engaged at Amman, Jordan. Why? Because there’s a number

of expats, there’s a lot of very, very wealthy men that are there who

are of Sunni origin, and Amman is a trading hub for this part of the

world. So we go there, and we listen to some things that are

happening there. We bounce it against some things that we hear

from the RCTs [regimental combat teams], bottom up and top

down, and we bring those things together. We had an economic

conference, bottom up, from the city of Fallujah in Amman in May

[2006]. We did a thing with the sheikhs, top down, in Amman

later. . . .

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American Perspectives
Occasionally those folks cross a border, a border that exists for us on

a map, a border that really doesn’t exist for them. But these men are

in touch, and they feed off each other.[ey are shaping things.[ey

are probably determining who’s going to be the winner in this.

[ey’re looking for economic gain. . . .Very wealthy men are looking

at the situation for how they can exploit the economic gains that are

going to come down the road. . . . What we’ve tried to do, I’m not

sure how well, but you put the pieces in the same room and let the

puzzle kind of come together, don’t try to force the puzzle together,

because forcing it will have a U.S. flavor on that force and probably

not be as productive as the way the Iraqis will do it. . . .

Wheeler: If you could, connect back—and this is an additional

complexity, or perhaps a benefit—when you’re dealing with these

businessmen, they can also influence the security situation because of

their influence on the people. How does that all fit into the equation

in terms of IP [Iraqi police] recruitment and things like that?

Reist: When we first started involvement, yes, we did tell them that

we would love to have seen them—“gentlemen, can you influence

this?” [at’s a dynamic that’s been explained to me as follows:

there’s guys on the inside and there’s guys on the outside, and guys

on the inside are the guys that stay.[e guys on the outside are the

rich guys that either always had a business in Amman, or, because

the security situation and maybe they were threatened, they left.

Some folks have estimated that there are as many as 500,000 alAnbaris that have gone to Amman, Jordan. So what you’ve got is,

with this inside-outside dynamic, there’s a little bit of friction there.

If you’re one of the guys who stayed, and you’re fighting through it,

and you’re having a little bit of success, . . . you’re the guy whose

friends have died, and now there’s that feeling that the rich guy,

when everything settles down a little bit, is going to come back in

and reestablish either an economic foothold, a traditional tribal

relationship, this that, and the other, and we’re dealing with that.

What we’ve done is we’ve tried to put these guys in the same room

and let them work it out, because there are traditional tribal entities

that exist out here that they will sort out. For example, if you were

always the sheikh of sheikhs of the Dulaimi Federation, even

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though you’re in Amman, you’re still recognized as the sheikh.

[ere might be somebody inside al-Anbar that stayed that went,

“You left them. I’m the sheikh now.”[ey’ve got to work through

that. I don’t think we’re in a position, both from enforcing, or

cultural sensitivity, or knowledge-wise to know the nuances of who

was doing what to whom within the tribe.

Now you get back to what you just asked, and where I kind of

hinted at the start of the answer, can they influence things in

Amman? Yes, I believe they can. I think they can influence it for

two reasons. [e first is the traditional, tribal nature of al-Anbar,

and even though some of them have left, there is still that, “I am a

member of the Dulaimi Federation,” and 88 subtribes—about 15

prominent ones. It’s there, though.[at will not go away.[ree years

of fighting, four years of fighting, I don’t think that will disappear.

[e other thing, and the other aspect, is [that] there [are] very

wealthy men in Amman. And money talks. Follow the money

sometimes in life, and usually you get to where you’re going.[ose

two things together are very important. . . .

[e success in the police and the army appears to come, though,

from the inside to date, not from the outside. [at’s provable at

this point in time. But who knows what the subtle influence and

that silent hand can do from the outside. It might be a call, a

gesture, a meeting that we don’t even know about that’s happened.

[at’s why we continue to engage, because those subtle nuances

can make all the difference in the world. . . .

Wheeler: Sir, what have you seen in terms of refugees? [ere’s been

a lot of publicity about people fleeing al-Anbar, but what are we

seeing recently in terms of people actually coming into al-Anbar

from Baghdad and other places?

Reist: I don’t have a count for you, but I’ve heard this, just talk on

the streets and talk from people. It’s kind of ironic that people are

coming to al-Anbar for refuge when you would think that

everybody, if you listen to the news, you would go, “Oh, I’m not

going to al-Anbar, that’s the worst place in the world.” [at’s not

the case. Fallujah is a city that is known, that is accepting refugees

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from Baghdad right now because of the killings that are going on.

Around here, it’s done where families take in families and matters

such as that. Are we seeing growth? Yes, we are. [at’s why

economic growth is even more important, because we will have

extra people in the province. What we need to do is we need to

create as many jobs as possible so idle hands don’t find other work.

[e governor, just before Christmas, got his first allocation of

reconstruction dollars from the federal government, and it equated

to just under 40 million dollars. He’ll get another 30 million dollars

here, hopefully, in another couple weeks. And there are projects

that are starting as he distributes that money to his mayors that

will do a couple things. It will be a physical sign for the people that,

“Wow, projects are starting, my community is getting a little bit

better”—a success-breeds-success type thing. [is is a slow ball to

get moving, though. Once that happens, though, then possibly with

some AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] getting pushed out, with the tribes

taking control, the synergistic effect of several of these things

happening all at once, that’s what we’re looking for.

And what are we waiting for? [e tipping point. What will that

tipping point be, as [Malcolm] Gladwell put it in his book? I don’t

know. Will we know it when we see it? Probably not. Will we be

able to look back and hopefully say, “[at was it”? I hope so. And

that just like Gladwell describes in his book, De Tipping Point, it’s

there. Do some of us feel that we’re in that area in some areas? Yeah,

we do, because al-Qaim is a relatively good area right now. A

combination of increased police across time, tribal entity, Coalition

forces all working together after AQI was pushed out last year under

II MEF’s offensive campaign out there. So good things [are]

happening where good things can, once again, based on the security

situation. But that doesn’t mean that good things can’t happen where

the security situation isn’t pristine, either. I mean, there’s economic

growth in some bad areas all over the world. It just happens. . . .

Wheeler: On that note, sir, in Ramadi, which many people consider

the worst of the worst, talk about some of the progress there in

terms of improving security and how that’s leading to improved

status of governance and economic growth.

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Reist: [e way Ramadi’s kind of been done is it’s been a clearing

effort that Colonel [Sean B.] MacFarland [USA] out of the Ready

1st Combat Team has done from west to east across the city, and

that’s in process right now. But in the areas where there’s been a

persistent presence, increased IP, things like that, there is where we

look at the atmospherics for a few more shops open, more kids on

the street, things like that.

I can give you an example. Right around the government center,

there were some buildings that had been just absolutely destroyed.

. . . [ose buildings were dropped, and they were dropped because

they could not be repaired. [ere was a contract to remove the

rubble. It took a lot to even get a contractor to go in there under the

auspices of a safe enough umbrella to do the rubble cleanup. But

that’s the sort of thing that just started right before Christmas.[en,

okay, you’re a local citizen, and you see your community starting to

be cleaned up, that’s one of those visible signs that we hope link

towards the tipping point of, “Geez, they’re picking up my city.”

And commerce is just starting to show. Even if they see traffic on

the street in a positive way, as opposed to a bomb going off.

I’ll go back to Gladwell’s De Tipping Point, when [Mayor Rudolph

W. L.] Giuliani cleaned up New York City, one of the things that

Gladwell emphasizes is, he painted the subway cars to keep ‘em

clean, and just kept painting them every night, so when somebody

sprayed graffiti on them, repaint it—clean it up. . . . I think there’s

a basic thing in every human being that they just want things to be

a little bit better.[ey want a little bit more money in their pocket.

[ey want a little bit more food on their table. [ey want their

neighborhood to be a little safer. And there’s a basic understanding

that when they see that, they will want more. And that will

continue to take off.[at’s a very, very long fuse that’s hard to light.

But we hope that once it’s lit, that fuse will really burn faster and

faster as it gets closer to the nice boom at the end—a good boom,

not a bad boom.

Wheeler: Sir, on the concept of the provincial capitol, what have

been some of the thoughts behind the decision to stay with the

traditional government center despite the fact that it is in ruins

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versus building, moving to another location that might be more

secure and more . . .

Reist:[e government center is not in ruins. . . .[e governor works

in there, he’s got workers there, Civil Affairs does some business

out of there, we’ve got a company of Marines living there, for

example, so the building itself, no. . . . Is it a fortress right now? Yes.

I don’t think anybody would deny it. . . . I guess a translation into

an American analogy, it’s kind of like the Alamo. If you leave that,

you’re saying you’ve given up. And the governor is adamant about

that. . . . He told me a story once about walking by the government

center as a young boy. He’s from Ramadi, so he has seen that as

the kind of central hub, the Alamo, since he was a kid. Even

departing for a short time while things get better, he pushed back

hard on that. . . .

Wheeler:[e road ahead, sir—your last few weeks here, as you turn

over to II MEF, what’s going to be your advice to them—where to

focus their energies, where do we go from here?

Reist: Keep pressing a lot of the economic things. We’ve got a

business conference in Dubai.[e governor is going there. Why are

we going to Dubai? We’re matching up businessmen from inside

Iraq with folks from the Middle East to attract investment, not just

in al-Anbar, but there’s a couple other provinces that are

participating with us. We initiated this here, though, and we’re

working with the governor. And these are the sort of things you need

to do. [is is the sort of thing I think the governor needs to do. He

needs to look internally at some things, but he needs to look outside.

[at’s why going to Amman, look outside, and bring some things in.

[e wireless local loop [telecommunications system]—we need to

get this thing up and running. It’s going to be huge—tips hotline,

voice and data capability. [e world runs on the Internet today.

[ese folks need to open up their horizons. And the Internet will

do that for them. I’m not talking about subverting the Muslim

religion, or the culture, or anything, but just think of what that’s

going to do. [ey’re going to get online, and they’re going to be

able to expose themselves [to more ideas and information].

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I’ve met some of these folks; they are extremely well educated. I

meet with one guy who’s got his college degree from USC

[University of Southern California] and his master’s from MIT

[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. He’s smart; he’s a lot

smarter than I’m ever going to be. Some of these guys get it. And

they’re just looking to get it more.

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American Perspectives
Interview 11

Enabling the Awakening, Part II
Brigadier General Robert B. Neller

Deputy Commanding General (Operations)

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2006 to February 2007

Brigadier General Robert B. Neller served as the deputy

commanding general for operations of I Marine Expeditionary Force

(Forward) in al-Anbar Province from February 2006 to February 2007.

He was promoted to major general in 2007 and assumed the

presidency of Marine Corps University in September 2009.

In this interview, Brigadier General Neller describes the

significant improvements in the Iraqi security forces in 2006 and the

transition of battlespace those gains have allowed. He emphasizes the

role that tribal engagement has played in the growth of Iraqi forces. He

discusses the resiliency of the insurgency and the lingering level of

violence despite enhanced Iraqi and coalition force capabilities. He

also details the success of the Marine air-ground task force in 2006-

2007 despite the loss of some forces to stem the sectarian violence in

Baghdad and comments on the role of the media in the conflict and

the impact of information operations.

Brigadier General Neller was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

Kurtis P. Wheeler on 23 January 2007 at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: Sir, if you’d begin by going

back to the beginning of the tour, as you took over the operations

in this area, what were your key priorities, key objectives, as you

came on deck for the year?

Brigadier General Robert B. Neller: Before I even arrived at I MEF

[I Marine Expeditionary Force] in the summer of 2005, I MEF

had already put together a planning team and had done a detailed

mission analysis and COA [course of action] development and had

written a mission statement that said that their task was to focus

on development of the Iraqi security forces [ISF] and then conduct

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counterinsurgency operations. So we felt that our success here was

going to be our ability to develop Iraqi security forces, the idea

being [that] as we developed them and transitioned, we would then

transfer authority to them and transfer increasing levels of

responsibility to them, and that we would reposition our forces into

those areas where we had not yet been able to do that.

Conceptually, we thought that was going to happen, basically from

the east to the west, or an inside-out approach. [at was the plan.

As it’s turned out, we have focused on ISF development. I know the

Iraqi army is not any larger in number, but capability-wise, they’re

better trained. We transitioned a significant amount of battlespace

to 1st Division.[e number of police has gone from somewhere in

the neighborhood of 2,000 arguably trained, and whether they’re

going to work or not, and I’d say anywhere between 8,000 and

10,000 police.

[e effect that we wanted is taking place more in an outside-in, or

west to east, flow. In other words, the level of violence in the west

has decreased faster than the level of violence in the center. Right

now, the level of violence in the eastern portion of the AO [area of

operation] is much higher than it is in the center or the west. So

we’ve transitioned the battlespace of the force and repositioned

forces in the west because of the level of the Iraqi security forces,

particularly the numbers out west that we plan on transitioning the

battlespace. So we executed the plan, yes, maybe not in the way the

operational design was, but I think we executed the plan, in some

places faster than we thought, in some places not as fast.

It seems to be the type of fight you really can’t measure progress in

days, or weeks, or even months. You have to look at it over a longer

period of time.We’ve only been here three years, going on four, and

that isn’t a long time to conduct this type of a fight. How long will

it take is another question.[e other question is how much time do

you have, and I don’t know really the answer to either of those.

Wheeler: Sir, the deviations from the plan you just described, or

things turning out differently than anticipated, has that been driven

more by the uneven development of the ISF, enemy action, or a

combination of those things?

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Neller: I think it’s a combination. I think we were surprised early

on that we were unable to recruit men from al-Anbar to join the

army. I look back at it now, and I think we were probably naive.

[e people out here, being Sunni, and a very large retired army

crew, they do not view the army as their army. [ey were very

reluctant to, particularly out west, join the army at first.[e mayor

in Fallujah promised us 5,000 recruits, [but] we’ve gotten basically

at the end of the day a very small number. So that said, people have

been willing to join the police. However, the police are subject to

murder and intimidation since they live out in town, so there’s the

disadvantage. So it’s a mixed bag.

We’ve had really great success with the police out west and now

with the police in Ramadi, because of tribal engagement and civic

support.When we got here, there were police in Fallujah, and there

was the beginning of police in Ramadi, and maybe a few guys in alQaim. Now there’s police, some form of police force, in every city

of the province except for Rutbah, and we think that that may turn

here soon.

I think the thing that we really didn’t understand or appreciate to

the extent that we do now is the importance of tribal

engagement—engaging the different tribes, tribal support for the

people joining the army and joining the police.We also didn’t think

that we would have issues with literacy, joining the army or the

police. We believed the almanac that Iraq had a certain percentage

of literacy. In the far west and out in the country, it’s a rural area.

Going to school out there, particularly for men, is not, the academic

situation is not real good.

We’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to get the Iraqi Ministry of Defense to

waive the literacy requirement, and they haven’t done that.We tried

to get them to start a reading and a literacy program; they haven’t

done that. Over the last month, we finally did it ourselves. We

actually took guys out of an Iraqi army division, set up a division,

and set them up in Camp Habbaniyah to bring guys who couldn’t

pass the initial screening for reading and teach them—in effect,

teach them to pass the test.[at was a real missed opportunity for

the Iraqi government, to have a national literacy program. It’s

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American Perspectives
difficult to have a democratic society when people can’t read or be

employed in a lot of areas.[is society is one which is not based on

literary communication. It’s based on oral and visual

communication. You see it on TV or you hear it from your friends,

or your tribe, or the sheikh, or from the imam, and then passing it

in verbal information. [at’s the way they communicate.

Wheeler: Is that cultural difference why you think you got the push

back, or the lack of action, on setting up the programs?

Neller: I don’t know why we got the push back. Honestly, I don’t

know. I think it was just another thing. We didn’t have anybody to

champion it, so we championed it ourselves. We’ve found that in

several cases, we’ve had ideas of things that we thought were good

ideas, and there’s a lot going on, everybody has needs, and so we

ended up being our own advocate.

Wheeler: Sir, when you look back over the tour, what have been the

greatest challenges that you’ve faced in the operational realm and,

subsequently, how have you overcome them?

Neller: I think a lot of what we’ve done has proved to be much more

difficult than what we thought. Life support and administrative

support of the Iraqi army and the police, the simple pain, the

Herculean task, spent a huge amount of energy on that. Life

support, even in the army, getting them their gear, we’re giving them

all that stuff.[at’s really not an issue anymore, but it was something

that took some effort on our part. I think trying to figure out what

was the right operational design for each area, whether you should

berm an area or restrict movement, or whether you should give or

not give certain support, find out who the sheikhs were, who were

the real sheikhs that could influence the action.

I think we were surprised to some degree about the resiliency of the

insurgency at the beginning, and that’s probably the most

discouraging point. We have killed a very substantial number of

these guys, and yet the level of attacks has continued to go up. So

we can attribute that to the fact that we’ve gone in areas where we

weren’t located before, and we’ve dispersed the force, and we’ve got

more surfaces for them to contact against. Or that they’re just, that

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the insurgency is very resilient and they’re able to regenerate. We

know they’re very, very well financed, and again, it’s a vicious circle

of, “Why can’t you hire people, why can’t you put people to work?”

Well, if you try and it comes from the Coalition, then they get

murdered, or threatened, or intimidated, or killed, and therefore

there’s no work. So when there’s no work, they can take money to

participate in the insurgency. [ere is a certain level of zealotry

involved in the insurgency, but there’s also a certain level of “it’s

just business” and a way to feed my family.

Wheeler: On the other hand, looking back over the year, what have

been the greatest successes the MEF has achieved in its time here?

Neller: I think all those things surrounding the ISF. I think we

increased the number of police and the proper provision of

administrative support, life support, base support, putting the

support on the army and the police, facilities, communication,

setting up a joint coordination center for the city and the provincial

joint coordination center in Ramadi.

Repositioning forces. If you looked at the battlespace geometry of

this AO and put it on a time-lapse photography, it would appear to

be a moving, amoebic-like force as people have repositioned,

moving on, adjusted for maybe the loss of forces or reduction of

forces and repositioning of forces. We operated at a deficit almost

from the day we got here. We lost 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, had

to go to Baghdad and support that, and then soon after that was

over, we lost the Army battalion that was out at Rawah, so that one

was never replaced. When the 2d of the 28th [2d Brigade Combat

Team of the 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania Army National

Guard)] were replaced by the Ready 1st Combat Team at the very,

very last minute, we had a net loss of a battalion. So the weapons,

and combat power, and the ability to generate presence have

diminished ever since we’ve been here, until the MEU [Marine

expeditionary unit] came aboard. We mitigated that by

repositioning forces and taking risks in certain areas and also

positioning or developing the ISF. We’re having them assume

greater responsibility for certain areas, which allows us to reposition

with our forces and the Iraqi army. I’m very proud of the flexibility

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and the planning process that took place that allowed us to keep

this thing going. . . . [is has been I think very innovative, very

flexible, very aggressive, very much taking calculated risks in order

to try to improve the security environment.[e downside is that we

haven’t been as successful as we would like to have been in reducing

the level of violence.

Wheeler: You mentioned a couple possible explanations for that in

terms of causes. What would be the one that you would point to,

that you think is the leading cause, for why the violence has not

decreased, despite the successes in many areas?

Neller: I think when the Samarra mosque was bombed, that

changed the whole calculus for the violence. [at let the sectarian

genie out of the bottle, and all the violence, the increase in violence

everywhere has been fed by that. Anbar is a—with the fighting that

goes on in Baghdad, the Sunni-Shi’a—Anbar, because of the

demographics, is a friendly place. You remember that the

insurgents, they have families here, they have tribal connections

here, and the people, even though they may not support them,

they’re not going to rat them out. And because of the empty and

wide spaces out here, it’s very easy to hide in plain sight. It’s just

another tent in the desert, another Bedouin sheet tent. So I think

the level of violence has gone up everywhere, to include here, and

I think the level of violence here is directly related to the level of

violence in Baghdad.

Wheeler: To what extent do you think the violence is caused by us

pressing into neighborhoods where at one point the insurgents

operated freely, and now they’re being . . .

Neller: I’m sure that’s some of it. If you don’t want to have any violence,

all you’ve got to do is stay on the FOB [forward operating base]. If

you don’t want to have any engagements, or any contact, or escalation

of force, just don’t go out. [e downside to that is, I think we’ve seen

in areas where we haven’t been, or where we were and then

subsequently left or repositioned, the insurgents will move immediately

back in and establish themselves.[is hasn’t happened 100 percent of

the time. In some places where there were police, or when the citizens

will stand up and they didn’t get killed, that hasn’t happened.

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Understandably, the majority of them don’t want us here. [eir

answer is,“If you leave, all this would stop.”Well, no, it wouldn’t stop.

It would stop what is happening now. And Baghdad certainly

wouldn’t stop. What might stop is them fighting us, because there

wouldn’t be anybody there to fight. And I think very clearly that the

al-Qaeda-led insurgents would very quickly overwhelm the

nationalists, or what’s sometimes called the legitimate resistance, and

make them be subjected to the will of al-Qaeda, and they would do

what they have said they’re going to do, which is to establish an

Islamic caliphate, or Islamic state of Iraq, based out of al-Anbar.

Wheeler: Could you assess for me, sir, the strategy, the berming,

and the enhanced security in the various cities across the province.

Where has that worked best? Where is it still ongoing? Discuss

that overall strategy.

Neller: One could make the argument that one of the bases of this

fight is population control, and that we want to have some control

so that we can provide security for the population, and I think the

insurgents in these areas want to have some control. Keep the

insurgents out, keep the good people in, and be able to provide

them a secure environment so that they’re confident in the security

forces, and they’ll also tell us when the bad guys move in on them.

You can do that with entry control points to the city, you can do it

with the barriers, the berms, and the badging of people, like

Fallujah has a Fallujah city badge.You can do it with biometrics, all

those things, providing population control, driver’s license, if they

had drivers’ licenses—if they had a driver’s license, if they had a

national ID.

Where has it worked best? Well, it works to some degree

everywhere. It’s not perfect.

As far as physically berming of the city, the engineering effort to get

it done is substantial, so if it’s a large city, it’s much more difficult

than a small city. Geography plays a role. Are there any natural

barriers, like railroad tracks or rivers or something which gives you

somewhat of a barrier, so that the amount of engineering work that

you have to do is less? Like every other obstacle you put in, you’re

going to have to figure out how to overwatch it and cover it by fire.

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American Perspectives
So the most successful berming has been normally on smaller cities,

although the Haditha-Haqlaniyah-Barwanah berm has almost

25,000 meters of berm. [at was substantial. Sometimes you can

berm inside the city, you can put barriers, like Jersey barriers or

Hescos filled with dirt to block off certain streets so that people can

only enter a neighborhood through one way or two ways in. . . . I

think the berming up at the triad of Haditha, Haqlaniyah, Barwanah

was very successful. I mean, you can see the day it was done, the level

of violence just dropped right off, because none of the bad guys

wanted to be caught inside the city. Now, some of them have made

their way back in, and maybe even through the ECPs [entry control

points]. But we do census operations, and we get biometric data on

everybody, and it will become more and more difficult to move

around without having somebody be looking for you.

Wheeler: Could you compare then, sir, the two alternative strategies.

In most of the cities, we’ve tried sort of an outside-in approach

with the berming. Ramadi is almost a different approach with the

“inkblot” strategy. How is that approach?

Neller: [e first wave with Ramadi, we went outside. We isolated

the city by using the railroad track as a berm, using the river, using

ECPs on main roads to block the roads. So we did isolate Ramadi,

probably not as effectively as we had hoped, and we then started to

move from west to east in the city, tried to keep the Coalition forces

in the front, followed by the Iraqi army, followed by the police. And

we were delayed in that effort because there was a period of a

couple of months when we couldn’t recruit any police. [at’s

changed, so that strategy now, we kind of push our way into the

center of the city, and I would say the east-southeast portion of the

city is about all that’s left.

Wheeler: So that was really a modified form of the same strategy?

It was just driven by geometry?

Neller: Yes.

Wheeler: Looking back on the tour, sir, are there any anecdotes, things

that you’ve experienced out here that you think capture the essence of

what the story’s been like for you and for the MEF as a whole?

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Neller: I think you asked me what I’m frustrated with, and I’d say

when you do information ops [operations] and everybody opines

and wrings their hands about why aren’t we winning the operation

with information ops. I think the answer is very simple. [e

Western media is the most powerful information operations tool in

the world, and they tell the story they want to tell. We try to get

them to tell our story, but they get to choose. Whereas the

insurgency, al-Qaeda, the Arab street, most of the media outlets

that cater to that particular clientele tell their story rapidly, quickly,

immediately. We timed it the other day. We had a tank attacked

with an IED [improvised explosive device], and it caught on fire,

and an hour and 45 minutes later it was on Al Jazeera. A couple

hours after that it was on video. Now, why is that? Because that’s

who they cater to. [ey cater to Arabs who feel that the West has

been unjust to them, and [that] the Israeli situation and Palestine

situation is a great injustice to the Arabs, and that the invasion of

Iraq is unjust and unfair, [that] this is all about America wanting

to steal their oil.

To counteract that, we can set up our own media outlets, but

nobody’s going to listen to that. [ey certainly aren’t. So I guess

the question is, how do you get either the Western media or the

Arab media to tell our story, the story that, hey, we came here. You

can argue about the reasons we came here, but we’re here, and we’re

trying to do a good thing. We’re trying to improve the life of the

average Iraqi, trying to give the average Iraqi an opportunity for

choice and for economic development. We’re not going to be here

forever. We are going to leave. We don’t want your oil. We’re here

to help you. Why do you continue to persist in this fighting when

all it does is delay the reconstruction of your country? [ey watch

the TV, whether it’s Al-Iraqia or Al Arabiya or Al Jazeera, and all

they see is IED after IED strike after IED strike after IED. [e

message is [that] the insurgency is doing great things, the Web

pages, they cue them for donations all over the world.

And yet the Western media, and I know that they’re required to

remain balanced in their reporting. One could argue whether they

maintain that balance. I mentioned, before we deployed, I went to

a course at Carlisle [PA, at the U.S. Army War College], the

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CFLCC, Combined Forces Land Component Commander

Course, and they’re like, “It’s a media battle.” One of the four

members of the panel was from Al Jazeera, and I said to the guy,

after they gave their little introductory talk, I said basically the same

thing I told you: “Hey, we think we’re doing a good thing.We think

we’re trying to help. We don’t understand why they’re trying to kill

us. We’re trying to rebuild their schools, fix their power, fix their

water, fix their streets. We can be out doing this, but these guys just

can’t get away from the fact that they feel like shooting at us and

killing us. How do I tell our story to the Arab street, through your

TV station? How do I tell that story?”

He goes, “You don’t.”

I said, “You don’t?”

[He replied,] “You know I can’t say that. If I printed that, nobody

would watch my show and I would lose all my advertising.”

Okay, you’re like, “All right, I got it.”

I’m not whining at the media for any of our failures, but I guess I

would pose the question, what if the media really wanted us to be

successful? How would that change their reporting? And I certainly

think they do want us to be successful. I do think they want

democracy, I do think they want economic opportunity. I do think

it would be difficult to discern that from their reporting.

Wheeler: When you say media, Western or Arabic?

Neller: Any. It is somewhat ironic that on the Arabic media, you

watch, and [they have] very attractive young Arabic women

announcing the news, [yet] when there is an Islamic caliphate, they’ll

all be home, burka’d up, having children. And they can’t see that.

Wheeler: Given all that you just described, sir, is there an answer in

the IO campaign?

Neller: I don’t know. I think you just try to reach out, like we’ve

tried to reach out aggressively with the media, to try to tell your

story, try to get them to be balanced and fair. It’s the way you report.

I had a reporter with me, and we went out and saw the police out

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west, talked to him about all the increase in police and how many

there were. We went to a police station, and obviously they had

concerns. It’s a young police force. And I thought it was a great

story, and, hey, al-Anbar police are increasing by X thousand. All he

wanted to talk about was one guy said he had a pay problem.[at’s

all he wanted to talk about in the whole article. Very discouraging.

But that’s the risk you take. [ey’re going to see the world from

where they sit. . . . So that was a teaching point.

Wheeler: And in the end, obviously, he printed the story that

focused on the negative as opposed to the . . .

Neller: [at was my opinion. He would probably disagree with that.

And the next day, he wrote another story which was a little more

positive.We’re not Pollyannaish out here.[ere are good things going

on, good things for the Iraqi people and the Iraqi nation. You don’t

hear that that often.[ere’s certainly enough problems that you could

keep busy reporting on that, if that was your propensity to do.

Wheeler: Is there more that we could be doing to try to shape that?

As you said, you can kind of show both sides, and they’re going to

pick what they’re going to pick, but is there more that we can be

doing from an IO standpoint to steer that?

Neller: I don’t know. We put out all the IO messages and flyers and

public pronouncements. If no one’s going to pick them up, and no

one’s going to print them, and no one’s going to read them, they

don’t have the effect they should have. If you put them on your own

TV or radio station, and no one watches it because they think it’s

propaganda, you’re not having effects.

Wheeler: You mentioned before, sir, that the primary medium in

the Arab world is verbal. Some would argue that the greatest IO

tool that we have is the individual Marine out on patrol, talking to

people in the neighborhood. Has there been a broader effort to

focus that as an IO tool, from your perspective, . . . to harness the

power of all those individual squads out there?

Neller: [at’s part of why you have to go out on the streets. You

have to put a face on us. You have to put a face on the occupier. If

all they see is guys driving by all buttoned up in Humvees with

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machine-gun turrets, and everybody’s got their sunglasses on, it just

fulfills that perception. But our inability to speak really hurts us.

[ere’s risk when you go out and talk to the local people. I wish we

did more of it. I wish we were down at the al-Anbar University

teaching a class on civics, but unfortunately, that hasn’t been

achievable through security.

[e most effective tool we have is the kindness, and the

compassion, and the discipline, and the courage of Marines and

soldiers and sailors. But unfortunately, most of the time they’re

doing operational things where it’s kill, capture, do another op.

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Interview 12

Partnering with the

Tribes in Ramadi
177

Colonel Sean B. MacFarland, USA

Commanding Officer

1st Brigade Combat Team

1st Armored Division, U.S. Army

Multi National Force • North

January 2006-June 2006

Multi National Force • West

June 2006 to February 2007

Colonel Sean B. MacFarland is a career Army cavalry and armor

officer who served in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. His

1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, the “Ready First,”

spent six months in west Ninewa Province as part of Multi National

Force-North before moving to Ramadi to serve under the control of I

Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward). Colonel MacFarland’s brigade

had a battalion of Marines (1st Battalion, 6th Marines), a Marine boat

unit (Dam Support Unit 3, 1st Platoon, comprised of Marines from

4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion), and a Marine

detachment from 4th Civil Affairs Group under his command.

In this interview, Colonel MacFarland describes the changes

during the brigade’s tenure in Ramadi associated with the Awakening

movement. He discusses the strategies employed to develop the Iraqi

security forces in his area, as well as their growing independence. He

also describes the joint nature of his command and the successful

collaboration between elements of all services.

Colonel MacFarland was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel

Kurtis P. Wheeler on 13 December 2006 at Camp Ramadi, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: Once you assumed control of

the battlespace, what was your focus, initially? What were your first

objectives in AO [area of operation] Topeka?
Colonel Sean B. MacFarland: When I got here, my first priority

was to complete the isolation of the city.*[ere were still too many

ways into the city for insurgents. And shortly after we got here,

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed, and we decided that we would

jump over the next phase of the operations, which was shaping,

which was developing the Iraqi security forces and growing them,

and go straight to decisive operations, which meant installing

combat outposts throughout the city with what Iraqi army and

Iraqi police we had, which at the time was not a lot.

So it became a matter of necessity being the mother of invention,

where we were kind of deliberate and seized one neighborhood at

a time rather than seizing numerous combat outposts in one fell

swoop. Of course, the limiting factor there was availability of barrier

materials, material handling equipment, and engineers to install all

these COPs [combat outposts]. But in June [2006], we began that

process, and then we just basically did shaping operations in parallel

with our decisive operations. General [George W.] Casey [ Jr.,

USA] and General [Peter W.] Chiarelli [USA] came down here,

and we were able to make a good case for retaining five maneuver

task forces in Ramadi.

We were able to maintain that momentum, which is a good thing,

because the fruits of those operations are only now just being

realized as, one by one, the local tribes are beginning to flip from

either hostile to neutral or neutral to friendly. And that’s been

probably one of the most decisive aspects of what we’ve done here,

is bringing those tribes onto our side of the fence.[at has enabled

us to massively accelerate Iraqi police recruiting, from 20 to 30 a

month to routinely 700 guys will show up, of whom we’ll take 400,

because a lot of them are illiterate or have bad ID cards. But they’ll

come back the next month with the right ID cards, and they’ll get

in the next month.

And then the tribes have formed a group, called the al-Anbar

Rescue Committee by some.[ey call it the Awakening, the Sahwa

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Al-Anbar Awakening

* Initiated under 2d Brigade, 28th Infantry Division (Pennsylvania National Guard), at

the direction of I Marine Expeditionary Unit (Forward).
al-Anbar. And this group has initially begun actively targeting alQaeda in their tribal areas while sending off their military-age

males to serve in the Iraqi police forces and have now begun

integrating themselves into the provincial government. So that’s

all been very exciting, and we’ve been working with them.

[ey’ve also begun forming Emergency Response Units, which

we’re still grappling with the support issues, and command and

control, and a whole host of questions. But it’s the kind of problems

that you want to have, because now we have more friendly forces

than we almost know what to do with. When we got down here,

we were kind of alone and unafraid. So we have an embarrassment

of riches, so to speak.

Wheeler: How does that pose challenges in itself, sir, almost

controlling some of these newfound forces that you have, who aren’t

necessarily 100 percent on the same sheet?

MacFarland: Well, one of the things, like I said, shaping operations,

we had to do in parallel with our decisive operations. And up north

I was responsible for the entire 3d Iraqi Army Division, partnered

with me, plus a brigade of border troops. So I had four brigades,

plus a division, that I was working with up there. And we had a

number of programs in place up there to train their officers, develop

their command and control, and their division-level troops, and

provide kind of finishing school-type training for their junior

officers, actually all the soldiers and police. What that gave them is

the ability to stand up and fight a little better than the average Iraqi

army soldier or Iraqi policeman. Iraqi police come back from

Jordan trained, but not trained to fight in an urban environment, in

a paramilitary role. So we give them that training, and we have not

had a single Iraqi police station or Iraqi police squad defeated,

overrun. In fact, they routinely destroy suicide VBIEDs [vehicleborne improvised explosive devices] at standoff distances. I’d

venture to say that the Iraqi police have killed more suicide VBIED

drivers than suicide VBIED drivers have killed Iraqi policemen,

since we have been here.

We transported a lot of those programs down here. We run our

own training camp here on Camp Ramadi, called Camp Phoenix.

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And we put about 100 or so either police or soldiers, Iraqi army

soldiers, through it each week. It’s run by my artillery battalion.

Over time, they’ve trained up a cadre of Iraqi army NCOs

[noncommissioned officers] who actually do most of the hands-on

training for both army and police, which is good, because that

builds up police-army cooperation from jump street. And then of

course we’ve reached out to the 7th IA [Iraqi Army] Division and

the brigade MTT’s [military transition teams]. And we have a

number of embed programs and combined targeting meetings, and

so forth and so on, which has really built up the partnership at the

command and control level.

More importantly, when I put out a combat outpost, it’s never—

well, I shouldn’t say never—but it’s usually a U.S. company with an

Iraqi army company living in the same buildings, eating the same

chow, and operating side by side. And that has tremendously

accelerated the professionalism of the Iraqi army, when you have a

one-to-one partnership experience like that. It’s almost one soldier,

one Marine, per jundi [Iraqi soldier], in some cases more than one

soldier or Marine per jundi. And now it’s sometimes soldiers and

Marines, jundis and shirta [Iraq police officer]—police, Iraqi army,

and U.S., all living under the same roof, operating together. [at

really mitigates any challenges that I might have had with dealing

with the Iraqi army because they’re living cheek by jowl with my

own soldiers, who I have very good control over. So that’s one of the

ways that we’ve done that.

Over time, we have turned over a number of these combat outposts

to Iraqi army control and then have turned to purely Iraqi police

control, once we have beaten down the enemy resistance to the

point where the army alone, or the army with the police, or just the

police alone, can handle it all by themselves. So they go through a

confidence-building period, and then we move out. And in those

combat outposts, we have well-established leadership, and there’s

never really a problem with controlling them.

Wheeler: What do you see as the next phase of that type of

approach here in Ramadi?

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Al-Anbar Awakening
MacFarland: Well, we’ll just continue doing more of the same. We

have the ink spot strategy. All of the ink spots haven’t connected up

with one another yet and completely covered Ramadi, like the

Sherwin-Williams commercial, where the paint covers the globe.

We’re working toward that end state, but as the tribes come over to

our side, more and more, they want to stand up some sort of

security force presence in their own tribal areas, to keep al-Qaeda

out of there. And so, over time, what I expect is because of the great

acceleration we’ve had in Iraqi police recruiting, is the city of

Ramadi will be predominantly patrolled by Iraqi police, with Iraqi

army really only in selected locations, mostly outside of the city.

[en outside of the city, we’ll have army and police working

together, wherever al-Qaeda tries to establish a safe haven. And of

course our role will diminish over time.

Wheeler: Is there a problem, or is there a gray area between tribal

militia and heavy tribal recruiting of IPs [Iraqi police]? Have you

sensed any . . .

MacFarland: [ere was a crossover point. When the tribes began

to work with us, they began sending their young men off to Iraqi

police training. [e first combat outposts, or IP stations we stood

up were in the tribal heartland so that the IPs that were going off

to Jordan for training didn’t have to worry about the safety of their

loved ones while they were serving as police. After they sent off

about 600 or 700 guys to training, they said, you know, we need to

take a knee for about a month until some of these guys start coming

back from training, because it’s about a three- to four-month

turnaround, because they needed to keep enough of their tribal

militia folks around them to secure their families. Once we had

that crossover point, which I think was in September [2006], we

were back up to 400 recruits being shipped per month, and there’s

been no turning back since then. So we’re up to about two-thirds

of our quota here of police, and we’ll keep on pressing. [e tribal

militias, to an extent, have been absorbed into the Iraqi security

forces, which is what we wanted, either the Iraqi police or now the

newly established ERUs [emergency response units] are really what

used to be tribal militia.

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American Perspectives
Wheeler: Could you describe the capabilities of the ERUs?

MacFarland: I wish I could. [ey’re just still standing up. Very

limited weaponry. [ey seem to be well disciplined, but they just

don’t have a lot of equipment at all. I mean, as you would expect.

[ese guys are just kind of right off the farm.

Wheeler: Sir, as you look back on your experience here, what are

some of the most vivid memories you have, throughout your tour,

but especially your time here in AO Topeka?

MacFarland: Well, we’ve had a couple of interesting days here. One

of them I would say would be the 24th of July, which was the first

and really only massively synchronized counterattack that the

enemy was able to mount, where we had I think 20-some attacks

in less than half an hour and all five maneuver battalions were in

contact at the same time.[e enemy paid a price for that.We killed

about 30 of them and lost two of our own, but that was probably

the most significant resistance that we’ve met since we’ve been here.

Since then, enemy resistance has been on a steady decline.

Another very memorable thing was the day that I went into Sheikh

Sattar’s house, where they were kind of holding their “Philadelphia

convention,” writing their manifesto, and forming the Awakening. I

felt like I was kind of on the ground floor of an historic moment there.

Another memorable day, which unfortunately I was traveling back

from R&R leave—it was very frustrating—was the day the tribes

in the [ Jadellah] Sofia stood up to al-Qaeda and we had to rush to

their assistance. And since then, we’ve been very active up in the

Sofia area. But I know I’m not going in chronological sequence

here. Also, the very beginning of our operations, where we, the first

thing we did was we opened up the railway bridge on the south

side of Ramadi, and pushed a company across there, and established

our first combat outpost [COP Iron]. It felt a little bit like crossing

the Rubicon. [ere was no turning back at that point.

Lots of memorable days, a lot of good ones, some bad ones, [like]

when I lost two officers and we lost six soldiers and Marines in one

day on the 5th of December. We were in contact right up until

midnight, all across the AO, and I think almost every battalion task

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force had a KIA [killed in action] that day, with the exception of

2/37 [2d Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, USA], so that was

pretty memorable. Having some of our important visitors, like

General Casey and General Chiarelli, come down here and

suddenly realize that Ramadi is not an unrelenting source of bad

news, that there really is progress being made here, and watching

them experience that revelation. [at’s pretty interesting and

rewarding. From that, we’ve been able to get the resources that

we’ve needed to continue to make progress down here.

Wheeler: Along those lines, has it been frustrating to you to be

doing so many positive things here and not see very much of that

show up on the network news back in the States?

MacFarland: I don’t care if it shows up on the news or not, as long

as the newsmakers understand what’s going on, the higher

echelons, the chain of command. It’s amazing how little of our

story gets out as far as Baghdad. Our higher headquarters in

Baghdad, I think the commanders understand when they come out

and they see it, but so much of what we’re doing here is being

filtered at the staff level that it gets lost. I had a reporter in here

earlier today, and I was explaining to him how we’re flipping these

tribes one by one, and I said the thing people don’t understand in

the States, and you see it in the Baker-Hamilton Report, is this

underlying assumption that Baghdad is Iraq and that the [Shi’a]

are monolithic. Well, Baghdad is an important part of Iraq, but

they are no more representative of the rest of Iraq than New York

City is of the rest of New York state.You can have a totally different

dynamic outside of Baghdad than you have in Baghdad.[ere’s no

sectarian violence here. [ere are no sects. [ere’s one sect—

Sunni—so where is all the violence coming from?

We had sectarian violence when I was up in Tal Afar. We had

Sunnis and Shi’as. [ere, my biggest problem was keeping the

Sunnis from killing the Shi’a. Here, my biggest problem is to keep

al-Qaeda from killing the IPs.[e IPs are absolutely the center of

gravity here, and al-Qaeda recognizes them as their greatest threat,

so they tend to go after the IPs, which is why I invest so much in

training them. And I’ll tell you that, as a nation, we’ve invested far

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American Perspectives
more in the training of the Iraqi army than we have in the Iraqi

police, and 2006 was supposed to be the year of the police. Look at

the Iraqi army MTT [military transition] teams, headed by full

colonels, lieutenant colonels, 11 guys per battalion. When I got out

here, the provincial PTT [police transition] team consisted of one

U.S. Army major, Chemical Corps. He wasn’t even an MP [military

police], with really no staff. And again, an entire police district like

Ramadi, we put one MP company, headed up by a captain.

And really, we’re authorized as many police here, almost as many

police as we are army, over 3,400 police in Ramadi. And where are

all the full colonels, and the lieutenant colonels, and the majors,

and the captains that are supposed to be lining up with these Iraqi

police brigadier generals and major generals, like we do with the

Iraqi army? [ey’re not here.[ey’re nowhere. We never really put

our money where our mouth was on the Iraqi police, so we have

formed out of hide some PTT programs and teams that have, I

think, borne some fruit. But if you don’t do something like that,

you’re not going to really make any headway on the police side. So

it’s painful, it’s out of hide, and all that kind of stuff, but it’s been

worth it. . . .

Wheeler: Your command, sir, this is a great example of a joint

enterprise. Can you talk a little bit about some of the joys and

challenges of that experience?

MacFarland: Well, I’ll tell you, first of all, it frustrates me

somewhat that this is not recognized as a joint unit. We work for

a Marine headquarters [I MEF]. I have a Marine battalion [1st

Battalion, 6th Marines]. I have a Marine boat unit here [Dam

Support Unit 3, 1st Platoon, comprised of Marines from 4th Light

Armored Reconnaissance Battalion]. I’ve got Marines on my staff.

I’ve got Navy on my staff. I’ve got Air Force on my staff. I’ve got

Navy doctors. I’ve got a Navy Catholic chaplain. I’ve got a Marine

PAO [public affairs officer] and a Marine now S-9

[engagements/governance officer] to replace the Army S-9 who

was killed [Captain Travis L. Patriquin, USA]. . . .

But because there’s no JMD [joint manning document] for this

brigade that authorizes a certain service for a certain position, it’s

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not considered a joint organization. We have [U.S. Marine]

ANGLICO [air naval gunfire liaison company] on the staff. You

walk around, you see the mix of uniforms everywhere you go. We

have [U.S. Navy] SEALs that work with us. I call them Army

SEALs because they wear Army combat uniforms and they’re so

well integrated, living with us out at the combat outpost, and we

work so well together that I’ve adopted them. [ey like it. But it’s

been great.We’ve got SeaBees [U.S. Navy Construction Battalions]

working with us. We had an Army engineer company commander

putting in COP Firecracker for the Marines. He had three platoons

out there. He had an Army engineer platoon. He had a SeaBee

platoon and a Marine sapper platoon out there working together

on that project. [at’s “joint” at the lowest possible level. We have

Army tank platoons attached to Marine companies, and Marine

companies attached to Army infantry battalions, and on and on

and on, and Marine ANGLICO guys working as JTACs [joint

tactical air controllers].

So it’s been great. [e Marines and Army each bring their own

capabilities to the table, and the Marines have helped me out with

some kit that I don’t have, and I’ve helped out the Marines with

some kit that they don’t have. It’s been a very fruitful partnership.

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American Perspectives
Interview 13

Counterinsurgency in

Central Ramadi, Part I
Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jurney

Commanding Officer

1st Battalion, 6th Marines

Assigned to 1st Brigade Combat Team

1st Armored Division, U.S. Army

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

September 2006 to May 2007

Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jurney assumed command of 1st

Battalion, 6th Marines, in October 2004, ultimately commanding the

battalion for nearly three years, including a tour in Fallujah following

Operation al-Fajr. During its September 2006 to May 2007

deployment, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, served in central Ramadi

under the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored

Division, which fell under I Marine Expeditionary Force Command

as part of Multi National Force-West.

In this interview, Lieutenant Colonel Jurney describes the mission

of 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, and the focus on three primary lines of

operation. He details the battalion’s approach to partnering with Iraqi

security forces and the use of augmentation teams in addition to military

transition teams and police transition teams. He outlines the battalion’s

strategy to protect the government center area and the role of security

stations in the area of operations as well as the critical role of

information operations in creating a perception of stability in the city.

Lieutenant Colonel Jurney was interviewed by Lieutenant

Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler on 17 February 2007 at Camp Hurricane

Point, Ramadi, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: As you arrived here for your

second tour, what did you see as the mission for 1/6 [1st Battalion,

6th Marines] in this area of operations?

Lieutenant Colonel William M. Jurney: Overall, our mission was

to improve the security and stability of the area we were responsible

187
for, so that’s what I perceived as our mission. By doing that, we

would then facilitate the continued progression of both the Iraqi

security forces taking greater responsibility and control along with

the local leaders in the area and their appointed and elected officials

and the government’s role.

Wheeler: So, taking that broad mission, how did you begin to

marshal your resources and forces to accomplish that?

Jurney: Well, across the board, I think we focused on what I would

call three lines of operations in our battalion. First and foremost is

to neutralize those criminal and terrorist threats that would choose

to do us harm. You can do that by killing or capturing them.

Second would be a focus on not so much training, but employing

the Iraqi security forces. And employing is training to us. So we’re

not running a boot-camp type of rudimentary training regime here,

we’re employing right along side with the Iraqi security forces, and

that’s both Iraqi police and Iraqi army. And third was conducting

those operations in support of civil affairs units, CMO [civilmilitary operations], that not only provide for essential services for

the people, which brings their life back to a sense of normalcy, but

you also want to do those in such a way as to give you a tactical

advantage, which leads back to neutralizing the insurgency and,

more importantly, also supporting the elected and appointed

officials and the Iraqi security force in that you want the populace

to gain a new-found trust and confidence in them.

So the objective here is, . . . the key terrain is the population and in

securing that population, i.e., improving the security and stability.

We’re gonna focus our attention on those three lines of operation. We

say that we execute those concurrently, not in a linear sense. We talk

about clear, hold, and build. I will tell you that we don’t specifically

follow clear, hold, and build. I mean, you can conduct civil-military

operations which set conditions for kinetic neutralization of the

insurgency. It’s one street, one block at a time. What’s interesting in

that respect is that it’s in different degrees. We think you pursue all

three lines of operation concurrently, not a step at a time.

[e difference is understanding that it depends on which area

you’re in. In one area of our AO [area of operation], you may be

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conducting a significant amount of civil-military operations and

getting a lot of success out of that. In another area, you may simply

be discussing with key leaders future projects, economic and social

development. But I don’t think you should give up on any line of

that operation. No matter how bad the enemy threat is in a

particular area, some people might argue, well, you gotta go in and

clear those enemy [insurgents] out first, and then you can begin

rebuilding. I would argue against that. I agree that the security

situation may not allow contractors or SeaBees [construction

battalions] to actually go in and repair a water main, or a sewage

line, or something of that nature. But that would not prevent me

from engaging local leaders in that particular area in a discussion

about how we’re going to do that, and what we need to do in order

to achieve that, and what benefits to them and their wasta [respect,

clout] and the people around them are.[at’s my policy on how we

were going to approach improving security and stability in our area

of responsibility as we saw it. . . .

Wheeler: One of the aspects that’s impressed me as I’ve travelled

across your AO is the degree to which your ISF [Iraqi security

forces] are partnered with, working with, living with your companies,

your forces out in the battlespace. How have you gone about creating

that circumstance, and what’s been your approach there?

Jurney: It was a stated mission-essential task that we undertake

actions to accelerate, expand, employ the Iraqi security forces. We

don’t want to come back. So if we’re not going to come back, we’re

going to have to get them stood up, moving forward in greater

degrees, taking responsibility for their own security. It’s an order,

first and foremost. How you go about doing that? I think you’ll

probably see varying approaches to it. Our experience has been that

if you live with, plan with, execute with [the Iraqis], you stand a

greater chance of success—success being defined as their

progressive increase in responsibility and leading to independent

actions. So that’s the end state.

A lot of times, it’s built on relationships. I mean, I get my Iraqi

counterpart to extend his responsibilities or undertake actions that

quite frankly are dangerous, that he would prefer not to do,

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sometimes simply because he doesn’t wanna let me down, or

because we’ve become friends. And he doesn’t wanna do it, but he’s

gonna do it. I mean, I’m not opposed to their being repercussions

with milestones, and I’m not talking on the political level, but when

an Iraqi unit has the capability to take the next step, there are many

times when they will look at you [and say], “I don’t want to.” I

mean, why should they do more? Why should they put themselves

at greater danger? Why should they work harder and impede their

leave, when they know we’re gonna do it? So quite frankly, as we’re

absolutely partnered with them, I give them the shirt off my back.

And when I say, “Now I need you to do something,” I expect them

to do it. And if they don’t, then there will be repercussions. I’ll call

off support to ’em.

I’ve never asked an Iraqi soldier to do something that I wouldn’t or

couldn’t do, or my Marines themselves. I mean, they can see right

through that. It’s simply [that] you wouldn’t ask another Marine unit

to go into harm’s way in a situation that they’re not capable of

handling. And we all do that. I move Iraqi soldiers around the

battlefield under the same protection as Marines. We eat the same

chow, attempt to live together. So we’re building this together. I show

them the same respect as a lieutenant colonel, or colonel, or whatever

their rank is. We openly discuss options for moving forward.

[e other part of this is we’re taking advantage of a strength here.

As we pursue our lines of operation, I mean, you would no sooner

attack the old hill without the proper fire support planned in

advance, so why would you approach this situation without taking

full advantage of all the strengths? Iraqi police who are Sunni, and

live here, and can see a terrorist a mile away, who have there own

ability to do indigenous R&S [reconnaissance and surveillance],

which we have them moving around in plain clothes, undercover,

coordinated, validating targets on a regular basis for us, where no

American could go or uncover the information that they are. I

mean, you should take full advantage of that.

In order to do that, your operations have to be synchronized with

them. Some people will argue there are risks associated with that.

I agree, there are risks. [ere is some high-value targeting

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information that we do not share with them. But there is other

intelligence information that we do share, that there are risks of

the target getting away, or risks to our Marines. But you’re never

going to move forward if you’re not working in a combined sense

with their operations and intelligence sections. So that’s been our

approach to it, in addition to, we say we’re a combined action

battalion. You hear about the old CAP platoons [combined action

platoons] of Vietnam. We are a combined action battalion. . . . We

provide an 11-man MTT team, you know, military transition team.

[at was an “A” team we put together. All those guys were on the

last deployment with us.

If I could invest $11 in the stock market and get nearly $500 back,

that would be a pretty good investment. So for providing 11 quality

Marines and a sailor to our MTT team, in return I’ve got an Iraqi

battalion of about 550 personnel who can now be effectively—or

more effectively—employed. [at’s a pretty good investment, or

bang for your buck. So we did that. Secondly, when people ask what

else are you doing to support the Iraqi security force—“have you

put any more people with your MTT team?”—I would say “yeah,

about a thousand.” Everybody in this battalion, if you look at my

original intent, no one says “no” to the Iraqi police or Iraqi army

unless there is a damn good reason for it because that’s why we’re

here.

We partner down, you have to partner down to the platoon level.

A MTT team is 11 guys. It’s set up to advise a battalion staff. Now

when you assess the battalion that you’re partnered with, it may

require partnership down at the company and the platoon level. A

MTT team is not manned to provide that. And when you

piecemeal two guys from the MTT team, and you put them down

at the company level, now you’ve hurt your opportunities for

developing the logistics, sustainment and C2 of that Iraqi army

battalion when you do that. So it’s the responsibility of the

partnered U.S. battalion to pick up that relationship, training, and

deployment. Or that’s our sense of it.

So for that reason, you see Iraqi companies co-located with Marine

companies, and there is a partner relationship that exists company

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American Perspectives
commander to company commander, platoon commanders to

platoon commanders, you know, jundi [individual soldier] to our

team leaders and lance corporals. And pretty soon, the training that

is occurring is nothing more than mimicking. You see how it is to be

done correctly from pre-combat checks and inspections to execution.

Pretty soon you then can transition to supported and supporting

relationships. For example, in Alpha Company is the supported

company, and the Iraqi army is supporting them in a raid or a cordon

and search. A month into it, you should be able to change that

relationship, and the Iraqi army company is now the supported and

Alpha Company is supporting. So that would be a progression.

[at may have been more than you were interested to hear about

military transition teams and training. I’m pretty disgusted when I

watch TV and I hear people say, “We need to do more to train the

Iraqi army.” I want to ask them to define it, define what training is.

What the hell are you talking about? [ese guys are absolutely

capable, the ones we are working with, to conduct security

operations. Now, do they need specialized training if you want them

to develop EOD [explosive ordnance disposal], boat, special ops?

Sure. But day in and day out, they can conduct security operations.

[eir greatest limitation right now is manning. I mean, an Iraqi

battalion is about 850 people. It’s only manned at about 550. And

then when you take that 550, and you send one-third of it on leave

at any one time, you’re only working with about a 300-man unit.

[With] 15 guys in an Iraqi platoon, there’s no way they’re going to

assume battlespace. And then when you send another third on leave

while they’re swapping out, two-thirds of that Iraqi undermanned

battalion is gone. No way they’re going to achieve any level of

independence until they overcome the manning issue. . . .

Wheeler: What types of functions are being performed by your

augmentation teams down with your Iraqis? What types of tasks

are you asking them to do to be a force multiplier, to make the

Iraqis more effective?

Jurney: [e short answer is, they’re there to facilitate

employment—operational and employment focus.[at’s what our

augmentation teams are there for. Typically, a PTT team [police

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transition team], those guys, they’ve got a [lot] of paperwork

they’ve got to do. [ey’re accounting for gear, they’ve got higher

headquarter reports. . . . And what’s most important to me?

Employment and operational focus. And it has to be synchronized

with all the other efforts that are ongoing in the battlespace. [e

police force that operates in this AO, the police, the Iraqi army, and

the Coalition force all have to try and work as one element. So that

augmentation team there is the focus on that employment piece of

it. So he’s not necessarily inundated with those other tasks. More

importantly, I will tell you, in the police, we have eight Marines

who live in the police stations 24-7, which didn’t happen

beforehand. When there’s time-sensitive information that comes

into a police station, which it does, there is a fleeting target of

opportunity.Typically a police force couldn’t move on that because

they’d be afraid they’d get shot by Coalition forces, at night, moving

around. . . . Now with Marines living there 24-7, you know they’re

going to pick up.

I sat down with the police chiefs with the Iraqi army and said, “all

we have to do is coordinate. We’re all three trying to do the same

things. Sometimes we’re going to do them together, sometimes

we’re going to do them independent. But every time, we’re going

to do them, and they’re going to be coordinated so we don’t shoot

each other.” Pretty simple stuff, they all understand that. [ey say,

“Very good, we don’t want to do that. You’re right, this has been a

problem in the past.” So now they just pick up the radio [and] my

augmentation team chief says [that] the police want to go to this

sector to execute this mission. I’m able to provide him with up-todate intelligence; “okay the route’s clear, there’s not an IED

[improvised explosive device] there,” or there is one there. I’m

trying to protect them just the same I would a Marine unit. What

does the police chief need? Does he need casevac [casualty

evacuation]? QRF [quick reaction force] support? I’ve got fixed

wing overhead. I’ll provide you up-to-date information on what

our ISR [intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance] assets are

seeing, all of which enable his mission to be successful, which at the

end of the day, if we’re capturing and killing bad guys, it’s a win for

the whole team.

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So that’s what our augmentation teams are doing on a full-time

basis down there. [ey have the trust, and respect, and friendship

of those that they work with because they live there 24-7. And

those relationships facilitate expanding and accelerating that

particular ISF element’s employment. You just can’t show up every

now and then and expect to get anything. I’m not some cultural

guru, but it just doesn’t work that way.

Wheeler:[e next question I have is how you, basically, evolved this

battlespace during the time that you’ve been here. You fell in on a

situation where most of the preceding battalions’ forces were

focused here on the western side, closer to Hurricane Point. Talk

about how that’s changed over time from the initial layout of your

forces to what it is today and how that’s happened.

Jurney: You always go back to “think like the enemy.” Operations

have to be enemy-focused, not reduction of internal friction. If I

were the enemy, you have the provincial government center of all alAnbar Province in the middle of our AO. If I were the bad guy, every

other day, if I can go down with only two insurgents, empty a

magazine and shoot at the government center, then I get great press

out of that. And the press is, “Al-Anbar Province is defunct, the

government center is under siege, there is no progress, there is no

stability.”What an economy of force for an insurgency.To be strong

everywhere is to be weak everywhere. I don’t have to be strong all

over al-Anbar Province, I just need two guys to shoot at the

government center and it looks like I’m kicking everybody’s ass in alAnbar Province. So that was my assessment. If I’m here to facilitate

eventual provincial control—Iraqi control—then you’ve got to be

able to go to the government center without getting blown up.

Having said that, a deliberate operation was not going to happen in

one week or one month. You can’t rush to failure given the threat of

IEDs and sub-surface IEDs. So we started one block at a time, and

then basically we just started clearing from west to east.You provide

for your own secure LOCs [lines of communication], and when you

clear an area, you stay there. If you go in and you wreak havoc for

two or three days and you leave, well, the bad guys are just going to

come back. People aren’t going to help you. Everything is driven by

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information. [e first question the people are going to ask you is,

“When are you leaving?”You’ve got to show them you’re not going

to leave. I mean, if they tell you things and then you leave, they’re

going to be dead. So it’s got to be based on permanent presence.

So we started clearing areas, seizing terrain.We established a secure

facility. [at secure facility enables introduction, full time, of Iraqi

security forces. It all builds on itself. Iraqi police and Iraqi army

don’t have the enablers to put up Jersey and T barriers in a hostile

area, so they’re going to sit out on the periphery and never go down

where it’s dangerous. I happen to believe that there should be

shared hardship and shared danger. [is is their country. But in

order to move them into that portion of battlespace, they [should]

take part in a combined operation to clear it. [ey take part in a

combined operation to build the facility, fill the sandbags, build the

positions, and then they live there with you.

So we’ve moved basically from west to east in that clearing evolution.

It’s all conducted, like I said, consistent along all three lines of

operation. . . . We coined the name “security station” because a

“combat outpost” don’t sound like things are getting back to normal.

So we told people we were building police stations. Our permanent

positions are future police stations. And so we called them security

stations. So now they’re combined security stations, some of which

will, in fact, be police stations. [ey’re obviously manned by police

now. Soon thereafter, you want to start providing for essential services

in and around those security stations. I mean, “okay, that’s great, you

just came in, you ran off the bad guys, I appreciate that. Now what

else is in it for me?” And that’s where, as we were conducting these

operations, CERP [Commander’s Emergency Response Program]

projects, CMO, economic development, opportunities for jobs and

improved essential services closely followed to the tune of almost $3

million worth of projects now that are ongoing. So pretty soon, you

have people on the other side of town going,“When are we going to

get some of that?” Well, as soon as you start taking an active role in

helping us help you, then as you can see, good things and good

opportunities start presenting themselves. So now you’re leveraging

CMO. Even though you may not be building, you’re still leveraging

that line of operation to neutralize the insurgency. . . .

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Wheeler: As you’ve moved from west to east, right now, the sort of

forward edge, as you mentioned before, the enemy’s FLOT

[forward line of troops] has been pushed out now to the Qatana

area. What’s next on the horizon during the remaining time that

you have here?

Jurney: Well, as you know, we were extended an anticipated 60 to

90 days, but I think it’s only going to be about 45. I’ll turn the clock

back just a little bit. When we first got here, our advanced party

was composed of myself, my company commanders, and my

primary staff. We came on the advanced party because once you

TOA [transfer of authority], you need to be in the execution mode,

not the find-your-head-from-your-ass mode. One of the things we

did is we established a 120-day plan, called a four-block plan,

which had some significant milestones set against time, although

they were conditions-based and event-driven. It was our glide path

to accomplish the things we just talked about, which led us up to

about January the 12th. And all of the things we’ve discussed were

on the plan and were, quite frankly, were achieved.

When we received notification of the extension, we sat back down

as a staff and with the commanders, and we were determined not

to slow-roll this thing. We’re going to treat it completely as a new

deployment, because for all intents and purposes, it was. We put

together another four-block plan of what our milestones and goals

were, and there were several things that were part of that. At this

juncture, each one of the company commanders has a different set

of circumstances in his battlespace. So I had him develop along our

three lines of operation what he saw as the primary initiatives he

thought should be undertaken relative to neutralizing the

insurgency, employing/expanding the ISF, CMO, and IO

[information operations]. If you’ve noticed, everything we do is

relative to those three things. . . .

Just off the top, I would say that one of the major initiatives that’s

a part of this will be to increase the Iraqi security force, and I say

ISF because that includes both IA [Iraqi army] and IP [Iraqi

police]. We’re going to increase their taking the lead by at least 25

percent. And I think that’s absolutely doable in really what is the

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three fully operational months that we have available before we

start turning over battlespace. So that’s our focus.You basically have

to take a month to socialize that plan. I mean you can develop a

plan, you develop it with the Iraqis, you’ve got to let them think

about it, it’s going to take two weeks, and then you’re going to

implement it.You’re going to develop, socialize it, plan for it—that’s

going to take you a month. I mean, things take time. [en you’re

going to implement it. And then once you implement it, then

what’s real important to us is to basically, as always, you’re assessing

and revising. It’s constant; it’s never-ending. It’s a thinking man’s

game. But we have to assess and revise that plan so that it’s steady

state, more of an enduring task for the ISF before our replacement

gets here. In other words, we’re not going to implement a good idea

right before our replacements get here and go, “Hey, check out we

did. Why don’t you go ahead. We set you up for success, you can go

ahead and smooth this out.” We want it to be smoothed out, fully

functional, kind of the expected, the norm, prior to them getting

here. So that’s probably the major initiative that we’re undertaking.

Wheeler: How do you measure that 25 percent shift to ISF lead?

Jurney: Well, you can measure it by the operations and the

enduring tasks that are ongoing. It could be as simple as, at this

particular site, for example, if you have 25 percent less Marines

standing post, that’s pretty measurable. If you have the Iraqi army

conducting 25 percent more dismounted patrols then they were

previously, that’s very measurable. . . .

Wheeler: [e last topic that I wanted to inquire about specifically

is your IO piece. What’s driven that? What you’re doing is fairly

unique in the AO. How did you conceive that and carry it out?

Jurney: I think the IO piece that you’re speaking to is the

broadcasts approach that we’re utilizing. I think we all recognize

that you can be doing great things and changing the security and

stability of an area, but what really matters is what people perceive,

what they think. If they don’t know things are improving, then it

really doesn’t matter what you’re doing, because their behaviors are

going to be driven by what they think. [e question we posed to

ourselves was, how do you get the word out? How do you

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communicate with the populace? We simply took a look at what

means were available to us, which were, you have your standard

paper products, your flyers, and things of that nature.You have your

standard TPT [tactical psyops team] broadcasts that go out. And

our experience has been that those are not very good. So we started

trying to look at other mediums that we could influence.

We have a nonkinetic effects working group here in the battalion

which is headed up by the battalion XO [executive officer, Major

Daniel R. Zappa]. [ey sort of coalesce not only the 2/3 side of the

house, but an IO cell, our CMO efforts, because again, those things

can achieve making the enemy less effective. So that group was tasked

to basically analyze other ways in which we could do this. Amongst

that meeting, we recognized, we were tasked with monitoring

mosque broadcasts. Our brigade tasked us to monitor mosque

broadcasts to see what messages they’re putting out. And we said,

holy cow, why don’t we broadcast our messages? I mean, people are

already conditioned, that’s the way they receive information. We can

do this. And so there are some systems, public announcement systems

that are out there—LRAD [long-range acoustic device],TacWave—

we inquired about getting some of those, but in the interim, we just

went to a local contractor, went to Baghdad and bought a big PA

[public address] system. Our three target audiences for that are both

the Iraqi police and Iraqi army, which strengthens their resolve;

obviously the population; and the insurgents.

You have to make this credible, and the way we felt we could make

it credible was that these broadcasts would only come from locations

in which police were actually located. We created a basic cover story,

which was this is the voice of Ramadi coming from the Iraqi police.

Initial broadcasts were basically to desensitize the people to hearing

it. [ey hear the national anthem, local music, we take credible

information of things they are interested in off the BBC [British

Broadcasting Corporation] and Jazeera, and we say thank you for

listening. For several weeks, we play that, and people get used to

hearing it. It’s coming from a police station—this seems okay.

[en soon thereafter, we start wickering in our own PsyOps

[psychological operations] products, which cause reactions by the

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enemy and influence the people. In addition to that, we start

including the police chief, the governor, local officials to make their

own announcements, which then further makes this a credible

medium for transmitting information.[e whole time we’re doing

this, it’s almost like conducting marketing. We’re taking focus

groups, we’re getting feedback, what they liked, what they didn’t

like, what their reactions to it were. And we’re slowly modifying

this to reach out and touch more people. And we expand the

speakers across every fixed position where we have police, so that

now we’re reaching a larger audience. And the feedback we started

getting was, it was well-received. [ey said, “[is is how we used

to get information.” We didn’t even realize that they used to do

more of this, so they perceive a sense of normalcy. We now have

leaders coming to us wanting to make broadcasts on this system. So

now it’s really just taken on a whole life of its own.

We’re not really having to drive, I mean, they’re saying the things

that we want the word to get out about in terms of areas which are

secure, areas they’re having trouble with and they need the peoples’

help in getting rid of folks. We’re also having reactive messages,

which are off the shelf. If there’s a firefight, it’s ongoing, that says,

you need to go inside for your children’s safety because the

insurgents are at it again. It’s always turning things back onto the

insurgents. You wouldn’t believe the number of incidents which

occur in which the people think we did it because everything works

off of word of mouth and rumor and we weren’t breaking into that

at all. . . .

It matters what people think, what they perceive.[ey just started

believing their area was getting safer, even if nothing changed. Now

contractors started working. Shops started opening. Schools started

opening. Yeah, this area is safe now, the police are here. And I’ll

tell you, nothing really changed. But it changed in their mind. It

developed its own momentum. It’s become a key tool in driving a

wedge between insurgents and the population. Again, we’re all after

the same target.[e insurgents are after the people, and so are we.

[ey can’t exist without them and their ability to blend in with

them. So we’re all after the same thing.

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American Perspectives
Interview 14

Counterinsurgency in

Central Ramadi, Part II
Major Daniel R. Zappa

Executive Officer

1st Battalion, 6th Marines

Assigned to 1st Brigade Combat Team

1st Armored Division, U.S. Army

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

September 2006 to May 2007

Major Daniel R. Zappa served in Iraq as the commander of

Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines, in Saqliwiyah, outside

Fallujah, during a tour in 2004-2005. He returned to Iraq from

September 2006 to May 2007 as the battalion’s executive officer. [e

1st Battalion, 6th Marines, was assigned to the U.S. Army’s 1st Brigade

Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, in support of I Marine

Expeditionary Force (Forward) in central Ramadi.

While Major Zappa’s commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel

William M. Jurney, concentrated on building Iraqi security forces and

overseeing the battalion’s kinetic efforts, Major Zappa played a key

role in the battalion’s engagements with Iraqi leaders and its nonkinetic efforts. His work with Sheikh Abdul Satter Abu Risha and

Sattar’s confederation of tribes at the outset of the Awakening laid the

foundation for U.S. Army Colonel Sean B. MacFarland’s engagement

and support of the Awakening movement.

In this interview, Major Zappa describes taking part in meetings

with local sheikhs. Although 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored

Division, under Colonel MacFarland took the lead in engagements

with Sheikh Sattar, Major Zappa met frequently with other local

sheikhs, including Sattar’s brother, Ahmad Abu Risha.

Major Zappa was interviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P.

Wheeler on 17 February 2007 at Camp Hurricane Point, Ramadi, Iraq.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P. Wheeler: Two of your nontraditional

roles that I’ve heard about in my travels around the battalion are,

201
one, chairman of the non-kinetic effects working group, and second

of all, a pretty significant role with sheikh and local leader

engagement. Can you talk a little about each of those roles?

Major Daniel R. Zappa: I think the non-kinetic effects piece is

important for counterinsurgency operations. . . . It’s an operations

function, but it’s not going to get a lot of attention unless we put

someone over the top of it, and the OpsO [operations officer] has

got too much to do when it comes to kinetic operations, and

managing battlespace, and assets, and things like that.

So really, what it entails is once a week I get the key personnel in

the non-kinetic world together. It’s all based off of how we can gain

tactical advantage. How can we further our abilities or our influence

in our battlespace? When you’re doing counterinsurgency

operations, the population is the terrain. So how [do] you identify

what the people want, how [do] you address that, how do you solve

problems together effectively and attack the perception that you

are an occupier?

Our goal is not to solve all the problems in the world, but it’s to

make things a little bit better and to promote the Iraqi government

and the Iraqi security forces, specifically the army and the police.

[e key is the police. It’s been that way, we’ve seen that it’s what the

people respond to. It’s the return to normalcy. If you’re standing on

the street corner in your home town, and three vehicles role by,

United States Army or National Guard, you’re going to get up in

arms, and it’s going to bother you. You’re not going to have a very

warm feeling about that. But if you see a police car drive down your

street, it makes you feel secure, it makes you feel comfortable. You

probably know that guy or have at least seen him before if it’s a

routine local policeman. So we promote that.

[When] we got here, we went from zero. We had no pending

projects.We had no points of contact in the town.We had no civilmilitary operations tracking. If you talk to Major [Scott J.] Kish,

he’ll tell you how he basically started at ground zero when it came

to contracts and points of contact, who was going to get things

done. So we pulled him, we pulled the intel [intelligence] officer,

humint [human intelligence] officer, information operations was

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our Arty LnO [artillery liaison officer], the attached tactical

PsyOps [psychological operations] team, public affairs, staff judge

advocate, and operations officer.[ose are really the primary players

in this. And we just talk about the opportunities and the threats

that we face in the battlefield. How are we going to address the

threats to us? What are some things, outside-the-box things, that

we can do to further our agenda? [at’s kind of the long and the

short of it.

From this group, we’ll cover the kinetic operations that are coming

up and how can we support them with information, how can we let

people know what we’re doing? Because too often we’d see

destruction in town that the insurgents could turn around and pin

on us, regardless of if we caused it or not. An IED [improvised

explosive device] destroys a vehicle and causes civilian casualties, it’s

easy for the enemy who is on the site there and speaks the language,

is part of the culture, can turn that on us and say, “Well, the

Americans blew up that.[ey blew that up.[at wasn’t something

we did.[ey plant the bombs on the streets.” And in this world, in

the Arab world, in the Middle East, and here in Iraq, it’s the rumor

in the street, it’s what everyone listens to. [e word on the street

gets out quickly. Our biggest challenge was how we addressed that,

how we fight that. What do we have in our arsenal that we can put

against that? One is to co-opt the locals and pass the word through

them.We don’t have an effective telephone or Internet or television

station capability here, so we had to go back to 100 years ago, 150

years ago in technology and just ask what could we do to increase

the word of mouth, the good news.

We’ve got ECP’s [entry control points] that we control. We can

pass the word through the Iraqi police and the Iraqi army at the

ECP’s.Technologically, we’ve got the LRADs [long-range acoustic

device] that we can use and we can post information. Captain

[Sean P.] Dynan, the H&S [headquarters and support] company

commander, had the idea of putting big white boards at the ECPs

where the Iraqi security forces can write information as it occurs up

on white boards, to impact people as they drive and walk through

the city. [ey’re going to see that, and that’s going to get

information to them quickly.

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[e other thing we’re attacking is perception. I mean perception

of this being the most violent city in Iraq, the provincial capital is

controlled by insurgents. I’m sure everyone has read about that.We

did before we got here. In March and April when we were reading

blogs about this place, we thought what are we getting ourselves

into? [ey’re pinned down there, and you can’t do anything. [en

you get here, and you realize a lot of that has to do with perceptions

. . . enemy perceptions, friendly perceptions—people’s perceptions.

And that’s what we’re battling here.

So we try to manage our own information flow. How do we talk

about Ramadi? How do we . . . this goes right down to the articles

your PAO [public affairs officer] Marine, your corporal is writing

about 1/6 in Ramadi. He doesn’t write about, you won’t see, the

articles on the sniper engagements—even if we win the sniper

engagement, even if we kill five guys with snipers—you won’t see

articles about 1/6 like that.You’ll see articles about we met with the

mayor, or we’re engaging the sheikhs, or personality sketches on

Lance Corporal Smith from Arkansas. You’re not going to see a

lot of kinetic stories coming out of here, and that’s for a reason,

because we’re managing perceptions. I think that’s pulling the

curtain back a little bit on what we do. Some people might say

public affairs is not information operations, but I take the other

side. And I think there are a lot of people that would agree. You

spend a little bit of time here and you see how important that is to

shaping people’s perceptions.

Wheeler: What was behind the battalion’s thought process with

regard to the speaker broadcasts? Where did that come from, when

did you start doing it, what are the effects you’ve seen from that?

Zappa: Well, it was something we developed during our skull

sessions in September, October, November [2006]. We really

couldn’t get past how do we beat the word in the street, about

what’s going on, how do we get information to people? And we

had certain things in our arsenal, that the military provides, the

loudspeaker systems, the LRADs. But we talked about it at the

table. I don’t know whose idea it was specifically; I know Major

[Tiley R.] Nunnink pretty much picked it up and lent a lot of time

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and energy to shaping what the actual procedure to producing it.

But it was pretty much a team effort. . . . When we were banging

our heads on the table with how do we do this, I don’t know if it

was me or if it was somebody else who said,“Why don’t we just buy

the same speaker systems that they use on the mosques?” Buy the

same PA [public address] systems that they use and put those up

on the stations that we own, on the fixed sites that we own. And so

we did. And people take to it very kindly.

[e implementation and the way that it has been used to not only

provide information but to effect the enemy’s OODA [observe,

orient, decide, act] loop by, he’s now looking over his shoulder

because when we put in the broadcast [things like] “thank you for

your continued support of Iraqi security forces,”“thank you for using

the tips line,” “thank you for reporting information on insurgents.”

[e insurgent is now looking over his shoulder saying, who’s

reporting on me? Who’s doing this? And we can tell we’re having an

effect with it. And by the same token, you’re impacting the friendly

audience and your neutral audience, conditioning them to be familiar

with hearing it, they hear the Iraqi national anthem, they hear

familiar voices, they hear things that people have to say to them. It’s

about this place getting better, the mayor, and sheikhs, and governor,

and police chiefs—people who are on their side—and it gives them

a little bit more faith, hopefully, in their government and in their

security forces, which is all we’re trying to effect.

Wheeler:[e other piece that is very encouraging here is just seeing

the central role which civil affairs and CMO [civil-military

operations] play in your battalion’s overall strategy. Where has that

come from?

Zappa: It comes from the boss. He makes it a priority. He outlines

[that] we’re going to do three things: we’re going to neutralize antiIraqi elements, we’re going to train and partner with Iraqi police

and Iraqi army. And when I say train, I don’t mean little academies

where you’re teaching them to point their weapons in the right

direction, they already know how to do that. I’m talking about

partnership—living with them, operating with them, getting them

operational. And the third thing would be to pick up and support

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any civil-military operations, any civil operations that contribute

to that return to normalcy or that construction or that impression

that things are going forward and getting better.[ose three things,

they come straight from the boss, and that’s from his vision as part

of where he wants to operate. And those three lines of operation

have worked, I think, for us in a good way. It also tempers a lot of

things that Marines are trained to do that you can’t just do

wantonly in this town. You can’t just be all about kinetics and

killing and shooting people and talking about it, which is what we,

as a culture, value.

So when you make a priority out of civil-military operations, you

made that a priority, you’re conditioning your Marines, too, to avoid

incidents that will hurt you more, and hurt you strategically. You’re

now sharpening the edges and taking some of the rough spots out of

potential serious liabilities that impact far beyond our own AO [area

of operation]. He’s got a friendly audience as well, you’ve got several

audiences he’s working on, and that’s one of them. I think that’s part

of the reason why we’ve been so successful. It’s not just blanket

leadership that keeps people from doing that, from doing bad things,

or stepping outside the lines. You have to make them aware how

important it is to have that right mentality, that mindset that you’re

not in al-Fajr here, that we’re not conducting the Fallujah assault.

Although there are times when we are, and it goes full kinetic. And

that’s been evident by the statistics. We did our operations in

December, in January we’re like in a mini al-Fajr in the middle of

the city with the number of caches found, with the number of

contacts, the amount of attacks, our success, the numbers of enemy

killed and captured. You can look at those and say, on a microcosm,

that’s pretty tense. And it still is intense. [at’s the long answer.

Wheeler: Many battalions have spoken, during my interviews with

them, about their frustrations with the “catch and release”program,

and [your commander] credited a lot of your lack of frustration

with that with the fact that you’ve just plain old killed a lot of the

bad guys and the detention piece hasn’t been as big.

Zappa: I think HVI [high value individual] pursuit, I don’t

personally, from where I sit, I don’t see the results as well as some

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other people do, or I don’t lend a lot to that. I think, especially these

days, you need to empower the local population, you need to

empower the policemen to take out and capture the bad guys.[ey

know them a hell of a lot better than any of the task forces that we

have do. I’m sorry to say that, but you aren’t going to kill or capture

every bad guy and flip this thing on its head. But you can help the

Iraqi people and help the Iraqi security forces by going after maybe

the key individuals or leaders, or flushing them out of the AO. Just

by putting their picture up, you’re impacting them. Putting them on

the loudspeaker,“we’re after you,”is just as effective as killing them

or capturing them. [at’s why I don’t think we stress too much

about that. [at’s my own personal feeling. You can’t kill enough

bad guys. I mean, we killed the number-one bad guy over here, and

what happened? Nothing. It got worse. You aren’t going to chop

the head off the snake. He’s just going to sprout a new head, or

maybe a couple. So that’s not the way you win here. And I think

that’s evident in the way we do business here.

Wheeler: Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about that

you think may be important to get on the record about your role

here, about 1/6’s approach to this battlespace, about 1/6’s experience?

Zappa: I think we have great relationships with our higher

headquarters. We’re here with 1/1 AD [1st Brigade Combat Team,

1st Armored Division, USA] and I MEF [I Marine Expeditionary

Force]. We have a lot of assets and the ability to bring things to

bear materially that the Iraqi people don’t, the [Iraqi] leadership

doesn’t. [ey can’t get fuel, they can’t get certain food items, so we

go and get it for them. . . . Because of our relationship with the

sheikhs, and more importantly, with the mayor—even though he is

a brigade-partnered key leader, he falls in our sphere because he

works in our AO—we own the center of the city. We can identify,

we can partner with him most effectively and most frequently, and

I think because of that, we can identify needs and operate quicker.

You know, if you’re at the brigade level, you might not check in

with the mayor every day. You may check in with the mayor once

a week, maybe check in with him a couple times a week. We have

the ability to do that every day, and we pretty much do.

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Wheeler: You mentioned the key local leaders. How is it that you’ve

become one of the key people, interacting with local leaders?

Zappa: It was an accident, really. [e first time this happened, the

JCC [ Joint Coordination Center (between Iraqi army and police

and Coalition forces)] is in town. [ere was a meeting that was

allegedly going on between some tribal leaders at the JCC.[e CO

[commanding officer] didn’t want to become involved with the tribal

leaders himself, he’s more along the lines of the legitimate

government, you know, governor, mayor—[that is] if there is one,

because this was before we had a mayor. So he sent me to link up

with them. It ended up being at the Sheikh [Abdul] Sattar [Abu

Risha] compound, where he and his brother live, which is not in our

AO, it’s on the other side of Camp Ramadi. And we ended up going

there to this meeting, and we were the only Coalition forces there.

[ere were dozens and dozens of sheikhs and important people in

it. I’d been here before, and this is the most impressive group of men

I’ve ever seen gathered in one spot. Very businesslike, there wasn’t a

lot of smoking cigarettes and glad-handing; it was all business.

[ey were frustrated. [ey had organized, and they had decided

that they were going to fight al-Qaeda, and they just needed

someone to start telling them that they were going to be listened

to and they were going to be supported. Major Kish and I were

there, [and I was] just kind of like, okay, sounds good to me, I like

it. Maybe you’re not talking to the right people. And brigade ended

partnering more with that. But we recognized that as a spot where

we could go and we really set it up with Sheikh Sattar’s brother,

Sheikh Ahmad [Bezia Fteikhan al-Rishawi]. We said, hey, we like

talking with you guys, and we think we can do business. He said,

every Monday, come back. So we did.[at was in early November,

and we basically go there every Monday or so. Even if we don’t

have a lot of business, they get used to seeing us there.

One of the things it yielded is there is a multi-million-dollar rubble

removal contract in the middle of the city of Ramadi. In front of

the government center, down on Michigan, they demolished a

bunch of buildings that were providing the enemy with cover and

concealment to attack the government center. To deny it, they

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knocked all those buildings down, and there was a contract to

remove all that rubble. It was in our AO, so the MEF asked us to

supervise it. Well, the contractor never did anything. So we

recognized that the sheikhs—Sheikh Sattar, Sheikh Ahmad—had

a contracting business, and we said, hey, we might be able to get you

a piece of this, and eventually, long story short, they got the whole

contract. It’s a difficult place to work. You’re working in a former

impact area, in front of the government center. But these guys have

worked slow and steady and really made a dent in it down there. So

that is something that we think is a small victory.

We also, we’ve asked them for interpreter support because we,

everyone across the AO, it’s difficult to find good interpreters.

Based on my relationship with a guy, with an engineer who works

with them, . . . he brought a guy to meet me, this former teacher,

he’s out of work, he lives in Fallujah, he’s one of our interpreters

now. . . . Because he’s local and we want to protect his identity, we

put him in a place where he’s working just with Marines and Iraqi

army. But he’s making money now, because Titan [defense

contractor] is paying him, and he’s freed us up to continue to work

with the Iraqi army and . . . with Marines there. Now we don’t need

an interpreter dedicated to that spot, so everybody wins. I just view

this as another way to strengthen the ties with these people. It’s

little things like that that kept us going back.

We’ve also partnered with them.[rough them is how we got very

close with Sheikh Raad [Sabah al-Alwani], who is the leader of

the Abu Awan tribe, who lives in our battlespace and really has

done a lot of good work. Contract-wise, he finds people who will

get work done, not just people who will sign the contract, take the

money and run, but people who will actually do the work, [like]

remove burned-out vehicles from the city, which is another small

cosmetic thing which increases the appearance and takes away

some of the everyday IO [information operation] reminders. If

you’ve got burned-out vehicles from VBIEDs [vehicle-borne

improvised explosive devices] lying all over the city, that’s a loss on

IO because it’s a reminder every time people walk by or drive by

[of ] who’s running the town. We contracted through [Sheikh

Raad] to get all those removed and clean things up around here.

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Plus it’s a security issue, you get those things cleaned up, there’s

not going to be something concealed in them. So he’s turned out

to be a very important, very valuable leader. And really he has done

a good job, he’s been very courageous in the fact that he’s assumed

that sheikh leadership. He’s not really the senior man in that tribe,

[but] the guy who was was too afraid to lead the tribe anymore, so

he’s basically ceded it over to Sheikh Raad, who’s done a good job.

Wheeler: Is there anything else I haven’t asked you about that you

think would be important to get on the record here about your

experiences, about 1/6’s experiences?

Zappa: Be persistent. Don’t rest. You’re only as good as your next

visit. Your relationships need to be maintained. [ey can’t just be

left to rot. People expect to see you frequently. Learn a little bit of

Arabic. Learn some things beyond hello. Learn to say a couple

things that they will recognize, and it will go a long way. Personal

relationships are really important with working with them.

But don’t forget the big picture. When it comes to dealing with the

tribes, you can’t sell yourself all the way on them. You have to

remember that there’s an elected government, there’s a legitimate

government, and however the two sides may fight over joint forces,

you, at the end of the day, need to remember that you’re on the side

of Iraqi government, so they may or may not be as effective at

leading the people. But the tribes have to be subordinate to the

governor and the mayor.

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American Perspectives


Interview 15

Turning the Tide, Part I
Major General Walter E. Gaskin Sr.

Commanding General

II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2007 to February 2008

Major General Walter E. Gaskin Sr. took command of the II

Marine Expeditionary Force in June 2006 and deployed to al-Anbar

Province in February 2007. [is interview, conducted near the end of

the tour, details the progress during that period and is a follow-on to

one conducted with the general the previous year. Major General

Gaskin describes continuing operations and the success of taking back

population centers from al-Qaeda, economic governance development

efforts, the drop in kinetic action and transition to counterinsurgency,

and helicopter governance.

Major General Gaskin was interviewed by Colonel Michael D.

Visconage on 11 January 2008 at Camp Fallujah, Iraq.

Colonel Michael D. Visconage: If you look at that period from late

June [2007], when we spoke last, and today, how would you

characterize what you have seen as the key operations initiatives,

evolution of the fight out here in west?

Major General Walter E. Gaskin Sr.: I think what you’ll see is a

continuation of what we discovered from right at the beginning of

March through June, and that was the taking back of the

population centers from al-Qaeda, pushing them out into the

hinterland north of the Euphrates River, east of Lake [arthar, and

south and down into the wadis, and into the areas toward the route

and the MEF’s [Marine expeditionary force] security area. We

believed then that we had—as we are seeing now—we had to have

a single focus of both our kinetic effect toward removing al-Qaeda,

but followed very closely, we had to have economic development,

a sense of development of governance, and the building of capacity

of the Iraqi security forces.

215
So the first thing that kind of grabbed this thing, we were right at

the beginning of our contribution from the “surge.” What really

grabbed us is that as we were able to take the population centers

back. [e incidents, whether it be IEDs [improvised explosive

devices], small-arms fire, indirect fire, dropped precipitously, so the

enemy realized that we were really onto something. But it was not

like we had done before, because we had fought in al-Qaim, we

had fought in Fallujah, we had fought in Ramadi. But this time,

what we did differently is we backfilled, so there was a persistent

presence with the Iraqi police.

When I got over here, the year 2006 was the year of police, but I

would now characterize 2007 as the actions of the police, because

they brought to the table familiarity with their communities, loyalty

from their community, respect from their communities, being one

of them.[eir agreement to provide a rule of law made them a very

viable force for eliminating what we discovered was the TTPs

[tactics, techniques, and procedures] of al-Qaeda, and that is

stifling, intimidating, and murdering the folks within the cities.

[is is a classic COIN [counterinsurgency] operation, separating

the enemy from the people.

We made the people the center of gravity, and there, when we saw

these [things] happening, the discovery was, as we got into the city,

not only did we gate up the city by dividing it into precincts or

districts within the city and establishing a joint security station that

had Iraqi police in charge, in number, but also engaging the

populace in the support, engaging the mukhtars, who was the civic

leader for that community and also bringing in Coalition forces,

along with Iraqi forces together as a team in that. But clearing that

out, al-Qaeda out, putting in those security forces and immediately

bringing some relief to the people.

When there was humanitarian aid, or some claims to fix things

that were broken during the actual fighting, . . . we started having

the civic government looking at bringing the services back to the

folks. Immediately, once they got some security, they wanted these

services: electricity, water, sewage, trash, rubble removal. All of

those items were very meaningful to them. Rubble removal meant

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clearing away places for their kids to return to school. It also meant

day labor for hiring those young folks who were kind of thrown

out and caught in the middle of fighting or because the stateowned enterprises were closed. [ere were no places to work. So

not only this hiring of these Iraqi police meant meaningful work

for somebody in the community, it also meant that for us, stability

and security so other people can work. [ey can open up their

shops, and they could participate in the day labor program that was

pushed throughout the community.

We saw this moving throughout the major population centers,

whether you’re talking about Ramadi, Hit, Baghdadi, al-Qaim,

Rutba, or Fallujah. It’s the same process that was working, so we

watched the Iraqi police grow from about 11,000 up to its current

state of 24,000. We also knew that we had to train those Iraqi

police, professionalize them, and make sure that they were working

within the rule of law. But, instantly, we discovered that because

the people believed in those indigenous personnel working in the

cities, the tips came in. So we created our own HumInt [human

intelligence] pool that actually provided information to us about

those who shouldn’t be there, and those who were passing through

that were foreign fighters, because they have a different accent or

facial structure. [ey knew all of that, we were glad to see.

Discovery of cache finds went up exponentially, and we got through,

like I said, the incidents just dropped down, so the cities became

instantly calm places to live, and you saw the bustling marketplace.

I think that we were onto something. We discovered how al-Qaeda

operated, and they operate near a mosque. [at’s where they did

their recruiting.[ey had some type of chop shop or place to make

IEDs, whether that be vehicles or just the kind that they buried or

shoved out in the road, those pressure plates.[ey had a safe haven

where they could actually hang out and have meetings. We

discovered that they were very closely located, and they used that to

intimidate the police and the leadership in the community. Once we

found that out, we would even engage the imams, as far as their

leadership and helping to rebuild a mosque. We would not go into

mosques.[e Iraqis go into mosques.[ey appreciate the respect for

their culture and their religion that we brought with this.

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American Perspectives
Visconage: Since we spoke in June, what has been the continued

growth of governance and economic pieces?

Gaskin: I think it’s tremendous. As a matter of fact, probably one

of the best things we did in the organization was having the deputy

oversight over the economic development portion and the tribal

engagement, so the governance, economic development, in addition

to those members of the G-5, and as well as the CAG, civil affairs

group. All of that came with oversight. . . . From the staff

perspective, [this engagement gave us] the ability to understand

what was happening and how the Iraqis felt at being

disenfranchised and separated from their federal government, and

even most of those separated from their provincial government

because of a boycott of an election in 2005.

So it ended up fairly consistent, and most of them are now

experiencing new principles of democracy that they had never had

before. [ey were very, very used to it just being pushed down to

them—this is what you get, this is all you get, shut up and be happy.

And now, in order for them to get anything, they had to find the

means to pull it out of a government, a government that they didn’t

really trust, because it was now run by Shi’a—Shi’a from a political

sense, and influenced by Iran—so they figured that the government

failed them.

We started at the grassroots level; there were some sparkles of hope

out there. We had a Governor Mamoun [Sami Rashid al-Alwani]

all those years from IIP, Islamic Iraqi Party. He was still a very brave

person, and he never gave up the governorship. His life was [nearly

taken] 35 times, but he came to work every day, and on the vehicle,

got put on a vehicle, but he believed that that was the seat of

government, and that if he ever left that, he would leave the

government. [e provincial council was meeting in Baghdad, and

there was no city governance at all. [ey were of course in the

hiding because of the murder and intimidation campaign that alQaeda took against anybody expected to be leadership, other than

the implanted emirs that they put up.

So once we were able to remove al-Qaeda from the cities, each one

of these cities started setting up their own government. [ey

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appointed a mayor, they had a city council. [ey were explained

the rules that city councilship means, that each one on the city

council is subdivided into sections, the sections have technicals, and

there are so many technicals, meaning a professional person. You

have so many seats for sheikhs, and you have so many seats for the

party membership or political membership. But what you are

beginning to see is representative membership.

Once we started getting those formed up, we then can explain to

them [that] in order for you to get money from the governor, you’ve

got to prioritize projects, and that includes some of the rebuilding,

the electrical power, the fuel, all these services that you want. You

have to also understand that your government, very, very stovepiped

as it goes from the director generals of each level right up to the

central government under the ministries, and that you have a

governor, and we have a mayor, and you have that line.

So we found that it took time to train them on how to plan city

planning, how to run a city, and how to develop a budget, because

they’ve never had a budget before. We did some classes up in Irbil,

where we got the leadership sitting down and doing “Governors

101.”We did it in Jordan.We had the leadership come together and

say this is how you plan a budget. Here’s your budget that you had

that we can’t really have any transparency of in the 2006 budget,

but here’s what we know we have in 2007, and this is how you’ve got

to administer, how you expend that, and the cost of that expenditure.

[ey were able to go back and petition the prime minister for a

supplemental, and they were the first one to get a supplemental

budget of $70 million because we could show how we were

expending the $107 million that was given, so that [helped].

[en we had a thing called helicopter governance, and that’s where

the DCG [deputy commanding general], General [John R.] Allen,

was absolutely phenomenal. He was able to put the governor on a

helicopter, along with the precinct chair, the provincial police, some

of the DGs [director generals], and some of the members of

provincial council, and they would go out and see the constituents

around Anbar. In Anbar, we talk about the tyranny of distance.

When you’re talking about an area the size of North Carolina or

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American Perspectives
New York, it’s an all-day drive to go there. When we put them on

a helicopter, and they could actually fly into these municipalities

and actually do what they are supposed to by their rules—in other

words, when the provincial chairman goes in, he validates that city

council. You can tell them, “Yes, you’ve got so many of those

representatives on here.Yes, you’ve got that, and, okay, what projects

have been council-approved?”[e governor meets with the mayor

and accepts the mayor’s papers: “Yes, you’ve gone through the

proper vetting, and you have been nominated by your provincial

council. I now say that you are the mayor, and, oh, by the way, I’m

Governor Mamoun,” because some of them had never seen him

before. [ey’d heard about him. He’s over there in Ramadi. And

you’ve got the provincial chairman.

We discovered that, by their own method, Anbar is divided up into

10 police districts. We were trying to divide them up, but then we

said, “Wait, they know what the districts are. Let’s just send over

the districts.”And it turned out they’ve got 10 districts.[e district

of al-Qaim includes [Ubaiti], Husaybah, all that. Haditha has a

triad, like we thought, but we found with Hit, it had Baghdadi and

Husaybah. . . . He goes out and he meets with the police, district

police, and talks about hiring orders, training, criminal enterprise,

and those things that you would expect the chief of police to do,

and responds to the provincial chief of police. And they would do

this, and, of course, the government will then take their petitions

of what they need to bring it back and prioritize for the province

based on funds that he has available. He had $107 million, and he

looked at all the things people needed, and it exceeded the capacity

that he had, so that’s what drove him to do that. But [in] the major

cities around Anbar is where he did helicopter governance.

[e other part that governance is, is that this whole country, this

whole area, is tribal, and if you understand how important and how

fundamental the tribal society [is], and the influence and the

position of the sheikhs, then you begin to understand how

everything works. [ey will tell you that they were tribal before

they were Muslims, and they will always be tribal. You can ignore

that fact if you want to, but it’s to your own peril.[ey will also tell

you that nothing happens unless the sheikhs agree to it, and they’ll

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tell you, too, that the sheikhs are the ones that say fight, and the

sheikhs are the ones that will say don’t fight. [e sheikhs are the

ones who said don’t participate in the election. So understanding

why they do what they do, and who the power brokers are, as far as

the sheikhs and their influence, and seeing how the sheikhs are

grouped together.

We were very fortunate that the sheikhs happened to be, just like

we had our areas of operation grouped together, so we had the

Fallujah sheikhs, the Ramadi sheikhs, and everybody to the west,

the western sheikhs, and, frankly, that’s what they called

themselves, too: the western sheikhs. And then we’d have a number

of sheikhs who were expatriates.[ey were living in Jordan or Syria.

Five of them have come back. Five of the major sheikhs have come

back, five out of eight. But there’s a real misunderstanding if you

believe that these sheikhs left and deserted their people. It was all

the other way around, with people who sent their sheikhs off.

Sheikhs are so important in this society that when they are killed,

as al-Qaeda had done to sheikhs, it was devastating. It was like

losing the patriarch. You just lost the head of your existence. You

actually lost your connection up through the tribal ones through

Mohammed, or through Moses. I mean, these guys trace their

history all the way to Adam and Eve, and they can tell you, one

sheikh talked to me 21 grandfathers ago. So when you lost these

sheikhs, who were the keepers, who were the protectors, who

provided for them, they said, “No, we can’t handle that,” so they

sent them out of the country.

[ey’d never lost influence; they were always sending word to

whoever they designated to handle it while they were gone. So

being able to engage with those sheikhs, and talk about the future

of Anbar from a position where, it’s that you’ve got to realize that

the Shi’as are in charge—get over it. Get over the fact that the

Shi’as are in charge, and connect what that government is going to

be with security [people]. So our thing that we want to do with the

engagement with the sheikhs is use them in the connecting and

the reconciliation that has to occur between the government and

the province. [at’s what we did, and I think that was the major

movement that connected together. [e sheikhs approved the

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leadership. [e leadership used the sheikhs’ council, as they have

always through history. I mean, right out in the government sector,

for example, there is a sheikhs’ room, because of how the sheikhs

meet, and they remind you that [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamil

Mohammed Hassan al-] Maliki, or any of the leadership in

Baghdad, belongs to a tribe. [ey understand. . . .

[ey understand exactly what we’re saying, and they’ll play this

political game, but they understand the influence, and we will not

be ignored. [e sheikhs believe that they are the foundations of

reconciliation that will occur out here. But there will be ways to do

this to forge genuine relationships with the sheikhs. So I talk about

Sheikh [Hamid], and when I talk about Sheikh [Hatoum], or

Sheikh Ahmad, or Sheikh [Kheba], I’m talking about guys I know.

We sit down and eat goat together and talk about the issues of the

day. It’s not someone who I just send a note to, who actually

[generally] understands.

[e two things that I think have brought about our relationship

with the sheikhs that are very, very important, [are] trust and

respect. If you trust me, then when we talk, we can talk very

candidly. I can tell you when I fought you, why I fought you, and

why I won’t fight you again, and why I hate al-Qaeda and I’m not

ever going to turn again on you because you helped me kill alQaeda, and I have a blood feud with al-Qaeda, and it takes six

generations to eliminate a blood feud, so it’s permanent.[e other

thing is respect. I am not somebody running around the fire with

a loincloth on. I am a man. I am a very educated man—and a lot

of them are. I have a sensing of my country, I have a history, and a

respect for my history and meaning means a lot. So I don’t expect

you to talk down to me, at me, or by me. So when you get that, it’s

like you aren’t the only one with good ideas. You may be in a better

position to use your ideas, but I have good ideas as well. And that

professional interchange, built on trust and respect, allowed us to

get further along, and I’m convinced faster than we ever dreamed

possible for creating stability and peace out here.

[ey prefer to call us brothers rather than friends, and I used to

ask,“okay, are we a friend? Do you call us friendly forces?”Friendly

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forces are colleagues, but a brother is family. So with friends you

can get mad with and lose. Brothers, you can get angry with your

brothers, but that passes because you are bound by blood. So that’s

the relationship that we sought, and that’s what we had in the

makings. [at relationship has been started a long time. It wasn’t

just II MEF Forward coming out here, but the relationship had

been started.[ese Marines out here, there’s something about these

Marines, and their ability to see that we were sincere in it, whether

we were out in al-Qaim or in Fallujah.

So when they hear us talking about leaving, they’re concerned, and

I have got several examples of what they think about leaving. One,

I was talking to the mayor of Haditha. He says, “Are you leaving?”

I said, “Well, eventually.” He said, “No, are you leaving? Because

the last time you left us to go fight in Fallujah, they lined us up in

the soccer field and shot some of the leadership of the city. So we

just need to know if you’re going to be here with us until we can get

up on our feet and be able to defend ourselves.” And I have

promised him that we would be here, and we’re still here, and we

have built the capacity of their police. But as [one sheikh] says

about leaving, you can’t take the cake out of the oven before it is

done just because it smells good. He believes that. He was talking

about us moving out of the city. He was talking about the IPs [Iraqi

police]. He said, “[ese IPs are training. [ey’re going to be very

good one day, but what the Coalition forces do for them is give

them professional training and allow them to be able to do what

they’re put there for. [at is security, and that’s a lot to them.”

Visconage: What do they say when you talk to the tribal leaders or

the governor? What is their metric for knowing when it will be

time for us to leave?

Gaskin: [e first thing we have to learn is, talking about culturally,

an awareness of what they need and how they go about making

decisions. . . . [ey come to the meeting for the formal part of the

discussion and probably eat. So if you go in there thinking that

you’re going to get a decision, you’ll get a lot of talk, a lot of back

and forth, and if you witness it, you will see a lot of arguing back

and forth. But they’re only talking about the issues that they didn’t

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get to discuss before they got to the meeting, because it’s already

decided. [Decisions that were made ahead of time.]

So they have already decided that we are their guests, and like

guests, we have to stay forever. You’re here for a different purpose,

and so they wanted us to very candidly and openly state what our

purpose was, because they remind us that there is no land in Iraq

that doesn’t belong to the sheikhs. You can’t buy it. You can’t come

out and build a house on it. [ere’s only a few ways to get land. It

is hereditary. You get it through the government taking that

Saddam [Hussein] used to do, or you get it through conquering.

Well, [they want to know], “what are you doing?”When they hear

that term “occupation,” their connotation of occupation is in the

conquer mode. “You’re here to take my land. But if you help me

get rid of those who mean me harm, then you’re obviously my

friend, and if you fight along with me and shed your blood, you’re

my brother.”So they think that we’re going to leave eventually, but

they didn’t want us to get caught up in the political implications of

leaving that they hear, and they’re very astute as far as that part.

[ey didn’t want us to leave until they were able to stand up on

their own independently.

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Interview 16

Turning the Tide, Part II
Major General John R. Allen

Deputy Commanding General

II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

January 2007 to February 2008

Major General John R. Allen was responsible for governance in

al-Anbar Province for Multi National Force-West and II Marine

Expeditionary Force (Forward) under Major General Walter E.

Gaskin Sr. Since his return to the U.S., he was promoted to lieutenant

general and became the deputy commanding general for U.S. Central

Command. In this interview, Allen, provides a concise description of

his tour while providing additional insight from the vantage of his

position at Central Command.

Lieutenant General Allen was interviewed via telephone by Chief

Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams on 23 April 2009 at

Central Command, Tampa, Florida.

Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams: In a series of

recent interviews with Iraqis, former Iraqi ambassador Sa’doon alZubaydi described meetings between Iraqis and Marines in

Bahrain and Jordan in 2004 and suggested that there was an

opportunity that could have prevented two years of conflict. Could

you address that statement?

Lieutenant General John R. Allen: Sure. Let me comment on that

first. I need to qualify what I’m going to say as not attempting to

disparage the person who made that comment, or to disparage

Arabs. But I need to make this comment. First of all, before I left

Anbar, the provincial council made me an honorary Anbari, so I

really do consider myself somebody who has an affinity for the

tribes and Arabs. However, people who want to aggrandize their

positions, to ensure that they get credit—within the tribal system,

it’s all about power and never giving up power—will make

statements like “had someone listened to me in 2004,” or “if I had

been listened to when we did talk in 2004, I’d have saved you two

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years of war.”I’ve been down that road a thousand times with people

who never were called upon to deliver on the things they say they

could have. Consequently, they live in the world of the possible.

I’m sure there were conversations that occurred in 2004. [e

difference between 2004 and 2006 and then 2007 was really on the

battlefield and security. In many respects, we, the U.S. [United

States]—not we, the Marines—had created a perfect storm in

Anbar. We had dismantled the military, and Anbaris in large

numbers were the security forces. [ere’s a great martial tradition

among those tribes, to be in the army. We had de-Ba’athified the

government, so everybody who was a member of the Ba’ath Party,

and it required you to be a member to have any real status in that

society, and when I say status, I mean be a director general within

the province, representing the ministries from Baghdad. So a

director general of electricity would be the chief guy for electricity

in this socialized system in the province. And if you were a

Ba’athist, you were out of a job [after de-Ba’athification].

Now, not only were you out of a job, but the guy who runs

electricity is now no longer a player inside the province. I mean,

you’ve got all kinds of problems. And then the third thing we did

is we closed down all state-owned enterprises. So a lot of people

were looking for anything they could do to put a little food on the

table and make a little money. And so an awful lot of folks entered

the business of fighting United States Marines and soldiers, and

in 2004, it was starting to get bad; 2005, it got worse; 2006, we

killed about 1,700, almost 1,800 al-Qaeda, put another 4,500 of

them in Bucca and places like that, and the violence levels doubled.

So we were really in a very serious security situation, where you can

have all the discussions you want in Jordan, and they’re not going

to play out in a meaningful way in the battlespace. So, when folks

make those kinds of comments, I am always a little skeptical,

because if it were a perfect world, then we wouldn’t have gone to

war there to begin with.

McWilliams: Can you describe the engagement and reconciliation

efforts prior to your tenure?

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Al-Anbar Awakening
Allen: I absolutely will. We had a lot of success in ’07. In fact, I

think it created the conditions, ultimately, for the complete turning

of the province, which General [David H.] Petraeus [USA] has

said “what began in Anbar spread throughout Iraq” [in a letter to

the troops, 28 December 2007]. So people who were there in ’07

should be very, very proud of what they’ve done, but I want to say

this up front, and I want it to be very clear, that the MEF [I Marine

Expeditionary Force] that was there before us, and all the MEFs

did a great job. But the MEF that was there before us, I MEF, led

by General [Richard C.] Rick Zilmer and [Robert B.] Bob Neller

and [David G.] Dave Reist, the work that they did—I’m absolutely

convinced of it now that a couple of years have passed—the work

that they did during the darkest hour of the violence in the Anbar

Province, which was in the latter part of ’06 and into the first three

months of our tour, they set the stage for our success. I absolutely

believe it, from the engagement that they did.

For example, the young Army colonel who commanded the brigade

in Ramadi, a kid by the name Sean [B.] MacFarland, who has since

been selected to general, he took a chance on a coalition of sheikhs

and tribes, small tribes, around the northwest of Ramadi, and that

chance paid off in very, very important ways.[e history is starting

to shape up that the MEF didn’t support him.[at’s not true at all.

General Zilmer was very supportive. In fact, General Zilmer, on a

number of occasions, with General Reist and Colonel MacFarland,

sat down at the table with the sheikhs and the provincial

government and refereed the sharing of power and the balance of

civil governance with tribal activity. So I MEF, from roughly the

summer of ’06 until our handoff in February of ’07, I think that of

all of the occasions where reconciliation was initiated and paid off.

It was under General Zilmer and Dave Reist and Bob Neller’s

general officer leadership where the seeds were planted, the shaping

occurred that ultimately permitted us in ’07 to cash in on that. In

essence, they did the blocking, they opened the hole in the line and

we ran the ball down the field. [at’s how I view it, and that’s how

I want history to understand it. [ose guys had a hell of a kinetic

battle. At the same time, they were putting steel on target in terms

of real, valuable, long-term reconciliation, and we capitalized on it.

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American Perspectives
McWilliams: Could you describe your engagement in reconciliation

efforts in 2007?

Allen: When we got there, we were already talking to the tribes.

What happened, though, was the tribes really had not made final

decisions with respect to aligning themselves with the Coalition.

[ere were isolated large tribal areas that had made the decision

they were going to come with us, but there were other substantial

segments of the tribes that were on the fence. As in any

counterinsurgency—this is not my term, it’s a term of the art—“the

peasant waits to see what the government can do or will do about

the insurgents before the peasant will come off the fence.” At the

time we got there, there were still a lot of folks on the fence because

it was uncertain that the provincial government and the government

in Baghdad would ever be able to build sufficient power. . . .

It was not certain in their minds that this government would ever

have enough power to really be a factor for the good in their lives.

And as long as al-Qaeda was a nightmare in their lives every day if

they appeared to be aligned with the government, then they were on

the fence. So what we did was to do two things. We empowered the

sheikhs, because there really wasn’t a government functioning. It was

the governor in his government center. He was basically a

government of one in a building protected by a Marine rifle company.

And we did all we could to empower the sheikhs in the short term,

to give them back the power that had been taken from them by alQaeda, and we did that both in terms of a kinetic alliance against

al-Qaeda, but also supported the sheikhs in affecting projects in their

tribal areas to the good of the people, turning on water treatment

facilities again, reconnecting the electricity, paving the roads that had

been blasted by years, now, of IEDs [improvised explosive devices],

repairing bridges, helping merchants to get their shops open again.

All of it we funneled through the sheikhs, and all of it in the end

empowered the sheikhs again, when al-Qaeda had done everything

it could to marginalize the traditional tribal leadership. So that was

our first step to get governance going again in the province.

[ereafter, we worked very hard at the provincial and district levels

to get those governments functioning and in alliance with the tribes,

which is always a bit of tension in a tribal society.

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But ensuring that the two of them knew that we weren’t going to

favor the one over the other— we weren’t going to favor the tribes

over the civil government, but the civil government couldn’t

function unless they incorporated the tribes. We worked that very,

very hard, and we began to see, we had a lot of kinetic fighting. In

fact, the highest violence levels of the entire war in Anbar were

during the first three months that we were there. We began to see

this drop off significantly when the third factor started to play on

the battlefield, and the third factor was—first factor being the

tribes, second factor being the civil governance—the third factor

was Iraqi security forces. We were training and employing and

getting them out to the field, and partnering with them as much as

we possibly could. And when we cleared Ramadi in April, roughly,

of ’07 and made it—while it was heavily supported by Marines and

soldiers—made it appear to be a police action, that was what really

began the turning. And once Ramadi began to quiet down, we then

turned our attention to Fallujah and did the same thing in Fallujah

in the summer, which was to make it a police action.

We moved the Iraqi army out of the cities so that the cities didn’t

appear to be occupied cities by the Iraqi army, and [we] continued

to build and empower the police force. And we went from about

3,500 police that we could find on any given day when we got there,

and I got there in mid-January of ’07, to about 29,000 police, all

totaled, when we left, and they were pretty well trained, on the

whole. So the three legs, if you will, of the reconciliation, we worked

them concurrently, because we knew we had to. We were not

stumbling around, figuring this out. We knew what we needed to

do, so we empowered the sheikhs, we connected them to the civil

leadership, and we supported them with indigenous Iraqi security

forces, and then we provided the security top cover through

constant conventional and special operations throughout the width

and breadth and depth of the province.

McWilliams: From your perspective now at CentCom, have you

had an opportunity to see how engagement and reconciliation

efforts have continued since you left?

Allen: Well, I think that the successive MEFs, and we’re now in

the second MEF since I’ve been there. I MEF has gone back and

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returned and now II MEF is on the ground. I think that they have

been clearly just as dedicated to engagement and reconciliation as

we were, but the problem set simply just evolves and changes so

that points of emphasis and objectives and outcomes change. I can’t

speak for how it’s going right now, although in fact I do stay in

touch with a number of the sheikhs.[ey surprisingly have e-mail,

and they find somebody passing by that can write English, and

every now and then I’ll get an English language e-mail from these

guys. [e current MEF that’s in there is getting very high grades

for maintaining this close relationship to the tribes, and to some

extent the brilliance of the Marine Corps approach with Anbar

really deserves a lot of credit in the history, and that is, General

Petraeus is trying to do it right now in Afghanistan.

You send the same units back over and over again and, guess, what?

[ey know the ground, they know the people, and they know the

enemy, and the people know us. Not long ago I was in Afghanistan,

meeting with national legislators, and the national legislators from

the Helmand Province had gotten wind that American troops were

coming, and they said, “Please send the Marines to the Helmand

Province, because when they were here before, we had a decent

quality of life and the Taliban were not factors.” [ey call it the

darkness.[e Taliban were not a factor in creating the darkness in

our lives. So Anbar Province was a place where Marines went back

to all the time, and your battalion may not have gone, may have

gone to Haditha one time and al-Qaim another time, but as big as

the province was, you were still going to meet people that you’d

served with before.

So I think the Corps deserves, in the annals of history, a lot of

credit for the wisdom of sending, first of all, maintaining unit

integrity to the maximum extent it can, and it could do that with

seven-month tours. And, number two, sending the same units back

over and over again. It’s still going on, . . . and it’s still successful.

McWilliams: How do the Marine successes in al-Anbar fit in the

greater picture of Iraq?

Allen: [e Sahwa [Awakening] was a phenomenon, and while the

idea of the Awakening was a tribal idea, it could not have gotten off

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the ground if it hadn’t been supported by the Coalition forces. So it

started in Anbar, with a fellow by the name of Sheikh Abdul Sattar

Abu Risha. His brother [Achmad Fteikhan al-Rishawi] gets high

marks for continuing the process of organizing the tribes to become

factors in good governance. [e nature of the Marine and Army

engagement with the tribes gave the tribes the breathing space they

needed, got al-Qaeda off their back, gave them the breathing space

they needed to get themselves organized and ultimately begin to

defend themselves, and that spread. And, as we would watch, for

example, I would go see Sheikh Sattar, and he would have in his

diwan, in his guesthouse, he’d have a guesthouse full of 40 or 50

sheikhs when I’d go to see him. And these guys would be from

Diyala Province, Salah-ad-Din Province, Ninawa Province. [ey’d

come from Baghdad, and all around the Sunni Triangle, these

Awakening movements were starting, almost like franchises. And

I’m sure if he hadn’t been assassinated, Abdul Sattar would have

eventually had them pay dues or something, because he was a

consummate businessman as well as a counterinsurgent.

It started there, and I don’t want to put words in General Petraeus’s

mouth, but I think he’s been quoted in other places saying that what

began in the Anbar Province spread throughout Iraq and emerged

ultimately in the form of the Sons of Iraq. And this whole concept

of the Sons of Iraq created neighborhood security that took some

of the heat off the police and let the police get after their own

counterinsurgency operations, which took some of the heat off the

Iraqi army and let them do the large-scale counterinsurgency that

they needed to do. And so that’s really how it got kicked off, and so

in many respects now the Sahwa, which was the Sahwa al-Anbar

[and] is now the Sahwa al-Iraq, and it’s become a political party.

It’s much less about counterinsurgency operations now than it is

about politics, both at a provincial and national level.

McWilliams: What are the things that the Marines did in al-Anbar

that Coalition forces in other parts of Iraq are doing now?

Allen: Well, I’m not sure necessarily that the Marines were doing

it differently than the Army. I think the circumstances permitted

what the Marines were doing to be more successful more quickly,

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if you follow what I’m saying. So what I want to be clear of is that

I don’t want to convey that the Army wasn’t doing it right. What

I would convey is that the outcomes can be different, based on the

security environment.

What the Marines were doing, to get very specific, was from top to

bottom, at least when I was there, we were organized and guided

by a very clear commander’s intent that we worked very hard to

craft. . . . It was something to the effect of the commander’s

guidance for the conduct of counterinsurgency operations in Anbar.

We created a whole series of objectives based along the lines of

operations, and the commander’s intent unified everything from

the conversations I had down to what rifle company commanders

were attempting to do with the local tribal elements. So we were

unified from top to bottom.

Plus, we fought as a MAGTF [Marine air-ground task force], and a

MAGTF fights a single battle, and that is tactical superiority. So the

combination of having a well-thought-out, easily understood

commander’s intent, and the fact that as a MAGTF (and I include the

Army brigade in that MAGTF), we fought as a single battle

throughout the entire width and breadth and depth of the province,

which was a third of the country, [which] gave us the ability to take a

huge chunk of the Iraqi terrain off the map as a place where al-Qaeda

could find safe haven and safe passage. When we were able to do that

for a third of the country, the simple dynamic changed in Iraq.

McWilliams: When you look at Iraq as a whole, how does Anbar

presently fit in that?

Allen: It’s very quiet, which is just what you want. When I read the

intelligence reporting or I talk to people that have been in there

visiting, they echo all of that. And so what’s happening in Anbar is

what we want to have happen in any country that is emerging from

an insurgency, and that is predictability of government, the

establishment of the rule of law, the effectiveness of the security

forces, [and] the development of economic opportunity. All of that is

well underway in the Anbar Province because when you get up in

the morning there, your first question isn’t “am I going to live to see

the sunset,”your first question is “how do I get my sheep to market?”

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And if that’s the worst problem you’ve got that day, then things are

okay in that part of the Arab world. It took longer for that to be the

first question in other places, but throughout a great deal of Iraq,

much of what occurred in Anbar is occurring also routinely now.

McWilliams: Sir, going back to Colonel MacFarland, you said he took

a risk in engaging these local sheikhs. Was that on his own initiative?

Allen: Sure. Because General Rick Zilmer created an environment

where he expected his regimental and brigade commanders to take

initiative, it was. It was on his own initiative.[e history is inaccurately

painting that the Marines were unhappy with him for doing that. To

my knowledge, that is in fact completely erroneous.[at’s not true. So

I don’t know where that comes from, but Sean MacFarland deserves

a lot of credit for having reached out to Sheikh Sattar.

Now here’s the problem. . . . It was difficult to contact the sheikhs

when the security environment was so bad. If you were a sheikh

and you got seen with Americans, the chances were very good you

were going to pay for it in a very bad way. Your family was going

to be assassinated, you were going to get killed, your flocks would

be driven off. Something bad was going to happen to you. We

talked about operating inside the tribes. You can’t win an

insurgency as long as you’re operating outside the human terrain.

Once we were able to penetrate the tribes and be accepted and

trusted by them, then we were able to then isolate al-Qaeda and go

after them and eliminate them, and that was our goal. So the

problem was penetrating the tribes, and from roughly the latter

part of the summer of ’06 until our battle handover, that process

was just really getting underway.[at’s where I credit Rick Zilmer

and Dave Reist and Bob Neller because they continued to have

very aggressive security operations throughout the province and,

where possible, make contact with the tribes with the idea of

creating relationships.

Part of the problem was [that] you couldn’t find sheikhs to talk to,

because of the reasons I just said. But sometimes you’d talk to

sheikhs, and they weren’t the right ones. You’ll hear the term “fake

sheikh.” And some of these guys were fake sheikhs. [e problem

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with Abdul Sattar was because others of his family had already

been killed by al-Qaeda, he was not really what you might consider

the preeminent member in his family to be the paramount sheikh.

[at was the first thing. Second, the Albu Risha tribe isn’t a

particularly significant tribe. It pales in comparison with the lineage

of the Albu Nimer or the Albu Mahal or the Albu Issa tribe, many

of these other—Albu Fahd. I mean, these are famous tribes in the

history of Araby. You don’t hear anything about the Albu Risha

tribe. So he’s a guy who isn’t necessarily the number-one guy in his

tribe, in a tribe that's kind of a second- or a third-tier tribe. So

when Abu Risha comes to you and says, “I’ve got the ability to

provide three battalion-sized formations of tribal militia, right now,

if you’ll help us out with some projects to try to make life better for

our poor people,” that’s a risk, because you’re going to give him

money, and you’re not sure where that money’s going to go, because

it’s difficult for you to get into that area, because of security, to

ensure the projects are being taken care of.

Here’s the other problem: a lot of the sheikhs that we were talking

to, the lineal sheikhs, and remember I told you it’s all about power?

A lot of those sheikhs aren’t going to give any credit to a guy like

Abu Risha for being an organizer and a leader because, in giving

that guy credit, in giving Abu Risha credit in the concept of

patronage and zero sum with regards to power and honor and

shame, when a sheikh of a large lineal tribe gives credit to a guy like

Abu Risha for being successful, when that sheikh himself wasn’t

successful, he has just assumed shame and given up honor.

I’m not being theoretical here. I’m telling you the way it is, in terms of

tribal dynamics. So the way these guys, in order not to make

themselves look impotent or incompetent when the time comes to

justify to their own tribes on how come Abu Risha is doing so well on

behalf of the Coalition, is to say [that] the Coalition doesn’t

understand him.[e Coalition doesn’t understand that he’s a murderer

and smuggler and a criminal. [ey constantly denigrated him.

So the risk was for those people outside who didn’t really

understand what was going on with the tribes, and Sean

MacFarland reaching to Abdul Sattar.[e risk was the appearance

that Colonel MacFarland was dealing with a common criminal and

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a murderer, and the truth was, guess what? All the sheikhs are like

that. Now I’m not proposing that all the sheikhs are common

criminals and murderers, but what I’m telling you is, the way they

portray each other in this concept of honor and shame, you’ve got

to be very, very careful about what you hear and what you believe

when one sheikh starts talking about another sheikh.

First of all, Sean is a great student of history. He’s also a great

student of tactics, and he understood counterinsurgency ops, and he

understood that people are the critical terrain. People are the center

of gravity in an insurgency, and if you don’t pay attention to the

people, then you will always be surprised by what happens around

you, especially in a tribal environment. If you don’t leverage what

the tribes bring you on the battlefield, then the tribes will always

confuse you. As we used to say in the Anbar Province, the first lens

you look through when you’re considering what’s happening in

front of you is the lens of tribalism.

McWilliams: You mentioned Marines approached Anbar as being

historically significant. Do you have any other observations on that, sir?

Allen: Sure. We studied the tribes. We truly prepared ourselves and

prepared our minds for what we were going to encounter there,

and not to take away from anyone else’s efforts in previous conflicts,

but for the moment—and I’ll speak to II MEF, because I only

know II MEF, really. From the moment we all came together as a

team, we put our professional military education to work in shaping

our minds, understanding that unless we went in fully

understanding the tribalism, understanding the personalities that

we were going to face, and the whole dynamics of this code of

conduct associated with being a member of an Arab tribe in

Mesopotamia, you were not going to fully grasp the opportunities

in front of you.

So we trained, and we studied, and we spoke with members of

tribes. We learned from Iraqis, we brought in sociologists, and we

went over.[is was an historic means of preparation, and we hit the

ground running and immediately were able to capitalize on the

great work that had been done by I MEF ahead of us.

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American Perspectives


Interview 17

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part I
Major General John F. Kelly

Commanding General

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2008 to February 2009

Major General John F. Kelly was deputy commanding general for

I Marine Expeditionary Force and served as commanding general of

Multi National Force-West from February 2008 to February 2009, his

third tour in Iraq. Previously, he served as assistant commanding

general of 1st Marine Division during the drive to Baghdad in 2003.

He subsequently led Task Force Tripoli to Tikrit, then supervised the

division’s security and stability operations in seven Shi’a provinces in

southern Iraq during the summer of 2003. He returned to Iraq in 2004

in the same capacity when I Marine Expeditionary Force deployed to

al-Anbar Province.

When Major General Kelly returned to Iraq in 2008 as the

commanding general of Multi National Force-West, he focused on

closing U.S. camps, downsizing Coalition forces, demilitarizing cities,

and transferring control of al-Anbar’s governance and security to the

Iraqis.

In this interview, Major General Kelly describes meeting with

Iraqi sheikhs, police, and soldiers to gain their perspectives on the

insurgency, al-Qaeda, and the Sahwa, or Awakening. He details the

Marines’role in the Awakening, particularly how Marines trained Iraqi

police and soldiers, and also mentions erroneous accounts of the

Awakening. Finally, he notes some of the elements in turning al-Anbar

Province’s security over to the Iraqis.

Major General Kelly was interviewed by Colonel Gary W.

Montgomery on 26 March 2009 at Camp Pendleton, California.

Colonel Gary W. Montgomery: What differences did you see from

deployment to deployment, as far as on our side, or from the other side?

241
Major General John F. Kelly: . . . After I left [September 2004], alQaeda had come in strong at that point, you had [Abu Musab al-]

Zarqawi, and these were brutal, awful men. [e price for working

with us might have been that your eight-year-old daughter is

brutally raped, and they send you the videotape, or she’s raped and

thrown into a bonfire.[ese kind of things were commonly reported.

When I came in for this last tour, I started to talk to sheikhs, and

[Iraqi] policemen, [and Iraqi army officers and listened to] the stories

they told. Many of the men that were now policemen were former

insurgents. . . . I could sit and talk to a lot of these men and ask,“How

did it start?” And they’d all say, “Oh, my brother,” or “my friend, let’s

not talk about those days.” No, it’d be interesting, particularly [with]

the army guys, to see what we did wrong, how did this thing start?

And they’d say, “What did you do wrong? Everything.”. . .

Everyone, when they would talk to me, sheikhs, policemen, army

guys that we would deal with, [told me that] it all came to that April

’03 “massacre,” as they called it, [fighting between U.S. soldiers and

Iraqis in Fallujah] was the point at which they were convinced we

were bad people, “we” meaning the Coalition. We were anti-Sunni,

we were pro-Shi’a, and they couldn’t work with us because we had

gunned down 77 people—this is them talking—and didn’t

apologize, wouldn’t admit that we had done something wrong.

Subordinate to that was the disbandment of the army and the fact

that we didn’t seem to be working very hard in Anbar to right some

of these UN [United Nations] sanction-type wrongs. . . .

As the insurgency started, let’s call it outraged citizens getting guns

to fight us, the so-called “nationalists,” because of the heavyhandedness or whatever it was called, outraged citizens. And that

insurgency then was taken over by al-Qaeda, who came in with a

willingness to die, a lot of money, a lot of organization. Over time,

the common cause between the two groups that were fighting us

turned into an al-Qaeda kind of directed insurgency, but then the

sheikhs again telling you that as al-Qaeda began to try to establish

their brand of lifestyle—extreme sharia law—and started to

actually execute people, beating women who are uncovering their

faces. If they saw someone smoking, they’d beat them.

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As the sheikhs started to resist them—or not cooperate with them

maybe is a better way to do it—they started trying to kill the

sheikhs. More than one of the paramount senior sheikhs, the

paramount dignified sheikhs, of which in Anbar Province there’s 17

of them, these are the guys that when you meet with them don’t ask

you for anything. [ey don’t ask you for the contracts. [ese are

the top-tier tribal leaders.

Kind of as a sidebar, one of the statuses that the Marine

commander had on the ground—me now, [Richard T.] Rick Tryon

before me, [Walter E.] Walt Gaskin before him, General [Richard

C.] Zilmer—we were considered to be a paramount dignified

sheikh of sheikhs of the Marine tribe, and that became the

recognized, most powerful tribe in the province—the richest tribe,

and the most militarily capable. So I would go to these sheikh

engagements where sometimes there would be 200 sheikhs there,

but my proper place was with the paramount dignified sheikhs.

And if I spent too much time with one of the second- [or] thirdtier sheikhs, one of my peers, if you would, would come over and

direct me.“Okay, you’re being very benevolent, but you’re spending

too much time with him,” would be the message. “Come over here

with the senior sheikhs.”

As they relay the story, al-Qaeda couldn’t be reasoned with, there

was only one other force there that might be willing to work with

them, and that was us, the Army and the Marines that were in the

province. . . .

What I find interesting is . . . the number of people who were taking

credit for the Awakening—and not Iraqis, but U.S. military guys. .

. . Before the history was written, revisionist history was already

being written around individuals. [ere are colonels and even

generals that are saying,“I was the one that started the Awakening.

I dealt with the tribes.” It’s always fascinating to me when people

want to take that much credit. But, in any event, when the

Awakening did start, it was an amazing process, because suddenly

you had a people that were fighting us, and in their mind fighting

us for good reasons—the nationalists, or the righteous men,

wronged kind of guys—they suddenly started working with us.

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American Perspectives
Montgomery: Was the Awakening something that we caused, or

that we enabled?

Kelly: I wasn’t there for it, but many conversations with the sheikhs

lead me to believe strongly that al-Qaeda caused it, and we enabled

it. [e people that had been fighting us, or trying to stand on the

sidelines were between a rock and a hard place, one of the rocks

was al-Qaeda. [ey couldn’t go to them and say, “Hey, listen, let’s

make an accommodation,” because of course al-Qaeda had a view

of the caliphate and Iraq and extreme sharia law and all of that, so

they couldn’t turn to them. And then you had the hard place, the

Coalition, but maybe that was sandstone. And we had always said,

and General [ James N.] Mattis actually coined the phrases “no

better friend, no worse enemy, than a United States Marine,” and

“first, do no harm.”

[e sheikhs would tell me that in spite of the fact that we were

killing you guys, either us or al-Qaeda, in spite of the fact that we

were rocketing you all the time, you were still trying to force us to

work with you. Limited use of force, trying to work with them all

the time, working with the governor, trying to repair stuff—all of

this, even in the bad days, [kept the door open]. So they came to us,

and we enabled them to continue this so-called Awakening process.

[ey deserve a lot of credit. [But] to a degree, they did not fight alQaeda. [ey no longer supported the fight, and helped us identify

who al-Qaeda was, where they were. [ere are individual sheikhs

who would take down the one or two fighters and drop a headless

body off at the main gate of one of the combat bases. And you

cannot understate the effectiveness of the task force, the special

operators who [went] after al-Qaeda—the individual takedown of

individual fighters. [ey took the network down at the leadership

level. It cannot be understated how much work they did and

continue to do, and they did the same thing, focusing on the Shi’a

militia groups.

But to answer your question, I think al-Qaeda caused it and we

enabled it. In this last tour, I’m more than willing to give my wasta,

as it’s called, as the head of the Marine tribe, to the head of one of

the other tribes, so that his people will hold him in high regard,

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because he’s helping us help them, if you know what I mean. I used

to talk in groups and give huge credit to sheikhs who were there,

who fought al-Qaeda, knowing full well the guy spent all of his

time in Jordan. Still, he would pump up, and his people would

become proud of him, and all that kind of thing. [ey rule with

this issue of wasta and respect and all of that.

Many of these sheikhs were sent outside the country. We in

America sometimes looked at the guys who left the country as

cowards or something. Many of the tribes—these guys left the

country, the tribes told them to go to Jordan and Syria, because

they were the senior guys, and it’s too messy—there’s not a real

process to select a new sheikh—so they sent these guys.[ey were

the obvious targets of al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda was going after them,

and the tribes for their own safety [sent them of the country]. . . .

Sheikh [Abdul] Sattar [Abu Risha] got an awful lot of the credit,

but he’s not a paramount dignified sheikh, nor is his brother

normally considered one of the paramount sheikhs. . . .

Montgomery: But do you think that we could have won in Anbar

if al-Qaeda had been less heavy-handed?

Kelly: . . . [at’s an interesting question. What if al-Qaeda had

never shown up? If al-Qaeda had never shown up, and we were

allowed to fight the fight we wanted to after Fallujah II, without

the constant pressure to fight the insurgents militarily—at that

point, it would have only been nationalist insurgents. I think we

could have won. [e Iraqis admit that they couldn’t fight us. [e

things that the insurgents deal with with us was how fast we could

react to them. [ey knew when they fought us, when they had an

ambush, they had 40 seconds or less, because just a minute after

that, we had gunships or we had, I was talking to some of them

about how when they fought us, ambushed us, it seemed we were

always trying to get around behind them, cut them off.

In this fight, the built-up areas were the sanctuaries. In the

Vietnam War, it was the jungle where they hid. In this war, it was

Fallujah, Ramadi, Saqlawiyah. Get back to those built-up areas,

bury the gun or throw the gun in the loft, and then go back to being

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American Perspectives
just a normal Iraqi. Many of them would comment to me that as

soon as it started, you immediately started maneuvering to try to

get in behind us. [at’s what we teach Marines. But within a few

minutes, we had gunships [on scene]. So they understood that they

couldn’t beat us militarily.

Had we, the Marines and the Army units in Anbar, only had a

military approach to the problem, we could be still banging away

at each other today. But you had the “do-no-harm” stand, and the

task force tracking down the bad guys. At the same time, us

attempting to help, I think, was the war-winning strategy. We just

couldn’t apply it until the population at least became somewhat

supportive of us. . . .

Montgomery: Given that we’ve heard from various sources that

insurgencies often last 10 years—it’s not unusual—this one turned

relatively quickly.

Kelly: . . .[e advantage we had, of course, was our police, certainly

by the time I got there, they were good enough to handle things.

And the two army divisions that we trained in Anbar, starting back

when General [ John F.] Sattler was there, were very good. So the

advantage we had was our security forces, so-called ISF, Iraqi

security forces, were appreciably better than anyone else in the

country, and everyone acknowledged that.

And we, in this third tour, started to back away, because it became

clear to me that we were stunting their growth.[ey’d gotten to this

point, but as long as there were Marines working so close with them,

they were never going to advance beyond that point, so we started

to back away. We started to take Marines out of the police stations

24/7.We didn’t stop engaging with them, but we started to back out.

We went from 109 police stations occupied to 21, and we shifted

the duties of the Marines and soldiers in the PTTs, the police

transition teams, to training them to do police work, protect-anddefend kind of work, crime scene preservation and investigative

techniques, this kind of thing. Did the same thing with the army.

And the reason we won in Anbar, in a lot of ways, we had very, very

large military transition teams, MTTs, down in the division level,

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Al-Anbar Awakening
or division, brigade and battalion level. [ey were three times

bigger than the requirement [set] by the RFF, by the request for

forces. [ey were three times bigger. Why? I think it was General

Sattler that said, “In order to train these guys, we’ve got to be with

them 24/7. We’ve got to eat with them, play soccer with them, live

with them, fight with them.”We didn’t know if we could trust them

three and half, four years ago, so we made the transition teams big

enough that if there was treachery, the transition teams could

defend themselves until a grunt unit, QRF, quick reaction force,

got to them.

By the time I got there, standing on the shoulders of every Marine,

soldier, and sailor that had served there before me, started looking

at the fact that we were stunting the continued professionalism and

growth of the army because we had these very large transition

teams. So we cut all of the transition teams pretty much when I

got there down to the RFF levels. As an example, we had at the

division level 37 in a MTT team.[ere was only a requirement for

11, so we cut it down to 11. And then a Marine colonel, pretty

high-quality guy, post command, maybe battalion commander, . . .

as long as that colonel was the adviser, the head of the MTT team,

he essentially was the commander of the division, and the two-star

Iraqi guy would defer to him so much that in reality, again, the

two-star Iraqi guy was not truly the commander. It was the colonel.

Every decision, they’d look at the colonel and say, “Well, is this a

good decision?”

So we also not only cut the MTT teams down to RFF size, but we

went one rank lower, so the colonel became a lieutenant colonel,

and obviously every rank one rank lower. And then frankly by the

midpoint of my tour, we started to un-MTT [remove advisors

from] the battalions to where there was no MTT team with the

battalion, and we maintained a MTT team significantly smaller at

the brigade level and at the division level. When I left, we started

to un-MTT at the battalion level, and then change them from

what they were, which is really a shadow command structure, to

advisers, as opposed to, again, what they were, which was this

shadow thing.

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American Perspectives
All of this is why we were so successful in training our police and our

army units.[ey did very, very well in the fights, independent fights

they got involved in. [ey were the ones that went down in Basrah

in March of ’08 [and] saved the day. [ey went to Sadr City and

saved the day. [ey’re in Diyala fighting now, they’re in Baghdad.

[ese are independent brigades that do very, very well. It shocked

people in Baghdad when they watched how good the 1st [Iraqi

Army] Division [was]. Most of the 1st Division left Anbar and went

under Major General Tariq [Abdul Wahab Jassim] to Basrah. [is

is after the 14th Division mutinied, or melted away, or whatever—

collapsed. And the next division they sent in was the 1st Division,

trained in Anbar by the Marine Corps, and they were phenomenal.

[e British commander called me and said, “How the hell did you

guys do this?” He said, “We can’t get them to leave the base, and

they [the 1st Division] went right to work. [ey’re in the city,

they’re fighting. How’d you get them to do that?”When units from

these divisions flew out to Diyala, the American division

commander called and said, “Where’d you get these guys?” And,

just as importantly—more importantly—the Iraqi division,

battalion, brigades that they fought with in those other places saw

what was possible. And what was interesting, the 1st and 7th

Division out of Anbar [is] 60 percent Shi’a and only 40 percent

local Sunni boys. So you had a mixed division that was Iraqi [that

was] very good in a couple of tough fights. And the prime minister

[Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hassan al-Maliki] recognized how

important it was for the Iraqis to fight these fights. . . .

More than once I’ve been asked in interviews and whatnot, how

much did the surge help or turn the tide in Anbar? Of course the

reality is there were almost no surge forces in Anbar. When the

surge came in, General [David H.] Petraeus put the surge forces

where he thought he most needed them. . . . So you didn’t have

much in the way of surge forces out there, and really, in a lot of

ways we were kind of left alone. [e Marine commanders were

kind of left alone.

Once the disastrous decision was made, I think, to go into Fallujah

I, and of course an awful lot of people were involved in making us

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do Fallujah I ran for cover, and to this day, you can never find the

guy that actually ordered it. You read [former Ambassador L. Paul]

Bremer’s book, and he’s critical of the Marines and all that, but the

point is that we were allowed to kind of do our own thing out there,

which is consistent with our culture anyway.

But I was talking about the counterinsurgency manual. People have

asked me, was it the counterinsurgency manual, that you finally

had an updated counterinsurgency manual, so you could then

execute and fight the war? And I said, “Well, I think the

counterinsurgency manuals we had in the past were perfectly good,

in my personal opinion.” I think the counterinsurgency tactics,

techniques, and procedures we learned from Vietnam and other

counterinsurgencies were very valid. . . .

One of the ways we kept the nationalist insurgents that used to

make a lot of noise about starting to fight us again when I was just

past in Iraq was to convince them we were leaving. We would talk

through some of the former Ba’athists, through some of the

generals that had contacts with these mostly former army officers

who were national 1920 Brigade, those guys. And I would do it

personally, and all the commanders would say the same thing.We’d

say, “Look, the number-one item on your agenda is for the

Coalition to leave.[at is also the number-one item on our agenda.

So you’re going to get what you want. In the meantime, we’re trying

to help, so don’t fight us.”

One of the reasons we closed Camp Fallujah [is that] Fallujah in

this war, it will be the Mount Suribachi or the Hue City or the Tet

Offensive, if you will. Fallujah will be the name that will always be

remembered from this war. We had a Camp Fallujah. I needed to

get smaller anyway. We were in the process of trying to guard

ourselves, so we picked Camp Fallujah [in part because of the

name]; the message was, the camps we needed the most in the bad

days were closing because we were getting smaller.

Remember, when I got there, I had 38,000 U.S. military personnel

under my command. When I left, I had 23,000. [e Army left

almost entirely, but the point is that I believe we convinced the

nationalists that were getting a little bit frustrated, because the

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American Perspectives
security situation got better. However, things weren’t getting better

fast enough, because the central government wasn’t very quick to

respond, and we convinced them we were going home. And I

would get out there and tell them all the time. Look, I did radio

shows. We put these in newspapers. I used to be 38 [thousand],

now I’m 30, now I’m 25, now I’m 23, we’re getting smaller. We

closed Camp Fallujah with a lot of fanfare. It took us about a year

to close it. We started an IO [information operations] campaign to

tell the communities we’re leaving, and we have to close these bases.

We closed the base at al-Qaim. We left Habbaniyah. And all of

this was purposely advertised to convince a lot of these guys that .

. . we’re going home, we want to go home, this thing is all but over.

Hang tough.

And we engaged an awful lot of senior former Ba’athists, and they

had blood on their hands, but they were excluded from

rehabilitation by the anti-Ba’ath laws, but these weren’t murderers.

. . . We engaged with these guys. We worked on behalf of them to

get their pensions. I think about 75 percent of them finally got their

pensions from the central government. We won them on our side,

and they had big influence with these young guys who were the

former leaders of the nationalist insurgents. And the message was,

just be patient, and they worked on our behalf to keep those guys

patient.

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American Perspectives
Interview 18

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part II
Brigadier General Martin Post

Deputy Commanding General

I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward)

Multi National Force • West

February 2008 to February 2009

Brigadier General Martin Post, a Marine aviator, was deputy

commanding general for I Marine Expeditionary Force and served as

deputy commanding general of Multi National Force-West from

February 2008 to February 2009. He was responsible for governance,

economics, and reconstruction in al-Anbar Province.

In this interview, Major General Post discusses the transition from

II Marine Expeditionary Force to I Marine Expeditionary Force, work

on the fuel and power supply, and efforts to improve governance and

economic capacity. He describes the relationship with the State

Department’s provincial reconstruction teams and embedded

provincial reconstruction teams and their joint efforts to improve the

agriculture sector. He details helping the Iraqis develop budgets and

describes improvements in security, the drop in kinetic violence, the

transition to Iraq control, the success of Marine military and police

training teams, the reduction of Coalition forces, and detainee releases.

Brigadier General Post was interviewed by Colonel Stephen E.

Motsco on 18 March 2009 at Camp Pendleton, California.

Colonel Stephen E. Motsco: Can you describe your recent tour as

the deputy commanding general of Multi National Force-West?

Brigadier General Martin Post: . . . Let me just preface the timing

of what transpired. II MEF [II Marine Expeditionary Force] was

there [in al-Anbar Province] prior to us. II MEF really came out of

the fight.When they got there, there was still some pretty significant

fighting going on. [at would have been in early ’07 time frame.

And then, come about the summer of ’07, things started to improve.

[at was really kind of the back side of the Awakening, if you want

to call it that, where the Sunni tribes came and were working with

the Coalition forces in Anbar to fight al-Qaeda.

253
One of the things that you really have to understand is the tribes

are Anbar. [ere are tribes all throughout Iraq, but the tribes in

Anbar, the Sunni tribes, are really the real deal. [ey pretty much

run [things], from a day-to-day perspective. [ey are the

connecting file here with the people. [ere’s nothing that goes on

inside Anbar Province that is not affiliated in some way, shape, or

form through tribal connections or tribal law or so forth.

So one of the things that General John [R.] Allen did, who was the

deputy CG [commanding general] for II MEF, he spent [a great

deal] of time bringing back tribal leaders back into Anbar who

[had] gone to Jordan. He spent a lot of time doing kind of shuttle

diplomacy and went back and brought them back. And so, really, by

the time we showed up, in January of 2008, for all intent and

purposes, all the paramount sheikhs for the tribes were back in

place. [ere were still onesies and twosies in Jordan, but, quite

frankly, at that time those guys were never going to come back.

And even though we did talk to a couple of them, they were kind

of sitting pretty comfortable.[ey were truly more businessmen at

this junction, turned into international businessmen, and I don’t

think, they may come back here in three or four years if Iraq

continues to progress. So really, when you take a look at the tribe

piece of this thing, the II MEF had brought all the tribes back, so

I didn’t have to really worry about that. I didn’t have to worry about

doing that type of engagement, because they were all there.

What we worked on . . . was really economics and the governance piece

of this thing, continuing to try to ensure that process. I spent a lot of

time, obviously, as you would expect, with the governor, with the

provincial council, which was a body of about 49 folks that were kind

of your legislative side of the state, which in this case was the Anbar

Province. And so we, collectively, with the PRT [provincial

reconstruction team], but really to start with—I’ll kind of describe

this—there was a transition while we were there. When we got there,

it was kind of like the MNF-West [Multi National Force-West] was in

charge, and the PRT followed . . . Even though the PRT had a role and

responsibilities, because of the security situation, because of how this

thing had transitioned, we kind of ran everything, if you would, in

coordination and conjunction with a good relationship with the PRT.

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[ere were four PRTs in Anbar. [ere was the provincial PRT,

which was in Ramadi. You had an ePRT [embedded provincial

reconstruction team] in Fallujah, another ePRT in Ramadi for the

city of Ramadi proper, which was the capital, and then you had an

ePRT in al-Asad, which covered from Hit all the way out to the

Syrian border, up the Euphrates River Valley.

We got in there, sat down and started taking a look at the state of

affairs with respect to Anbar. It became real clear early on that there

were two common denominators. One was on the infrastructure

side—power and fuel. You weren’t going to get anything done

because of the current state of those two primary, key linchpins in

restarting an economy. So the deal was, if we could increase the

amount of fuel that’s brought into the province, and at that point

they were getting less than 10 million liters a month of all types of

product, whether it be kerosene, gas, or what I call benzene, which

is their gas. It was about a tenth of what they needed, what they

required. [ey were getting about 20 percent of the power they

needed in the province, off the national grid, because of the status

of the national grid. So what that told you it would be is they were

getting about four to six hours of power a day, off the national

grid—average—across the province. And everybody depended

upon generators for the rest of the time. Of course, you need fuel

to run generators. And so you can see, again, it was this Catch-22-

type deal with them.

So if you’re talking about businesses, if you’re talking about trying

to get investors—all of the things that you want to do to try to get

this economy turned around—always went back to fuel and power,

right from the get-go.[e power situation was such that we weren’t

ever going to solve that problem, because that’s about a 5- to 10-

year problem. [For example,] a major power plant [is] being built

in Anbar, by Haditha. . . . [But] they stopped work because the

negotiations with contracts. . . . Haditha Dam [is] the big power

producer for the province, [but] even though the Haditha Dam

was pushing out power inside Anbar Province, they couldn’t keep

it all. [ey had to push it out and get their allocation back.

So at the end of the day, we knew that the power situation was

going to be kind of a throwaway, so we really concentrated on fuel.

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When we first got there, they were doing two fuel runs a month,

up to the Baiji oil refinery, escorted by Marines, basically bringing

back about 200 trucks a month, 250 sometimes, of the products—

kerosene, diesel, and benzene, or gas, if you would. And of course,

as I said, that was hardly enough to make anything work. I sat

down with the governor, I said, “Listen, this isn’t going to work.

We need to come up with a better way.”Plus, we said,“Us going out

and escorting your fuel shipments, in the long run, we’ve got to get

out of this. We’re not going to do this forever for you.” So there

was a lot of negotiations that went on.We finally got them to come

to the table and get a private contractor in to start moving fuel. It

took a while to get this thing cranking. It was about a four- or fivemonth process. But, at the end of the day, when we left, they were

getting about anywhere between 800 and 1,000 trucks a month, so

it was about a four- to five-fold increase in fuel coming into the

province, which was substantial.

[e second piece of it was there was an oil refinery up near

Haditha, called Haqlaniyah, or . . . “K3,” that’s the oil refinery.

Obviously, the pipes from Baiji to K3 were mincemeat, so that

wasn’t going to work, so we sat down and figured out, hey, how can

we get crude oil down to the refinery and start refining the product

in the province proper? We decided, hey, maybe we can move it by

train. [ere was a large train station right there, within about four

klicks [kilometers] of the K3. I took a look at the mechanics of this

thing, said it’s feasible, and so over about a three-month period,

from nothing but dirt to a facility at a railroad [siding], where you

could pull train cars in, offload the crew right there, put the pumps,

put all the piping in and pump it all the way four klicks over to K3.

[en it went through the whole iteration of restarting K3 refinery.

[e U.S. government spent about $4 million on that, and there was

some Iraqi government money spent, not a lot, but the governor

provided us some money. But at the end of the day, as that effort

works and we got the refinery started, and actually, we started

producing fuel right there in Anbar.

[ere’s a subset here to this, because I told you about the power

plant up by Haditha. [ere was a pipeline running from this K3

over to that power plant.[at power plant ran off of heavy fuel oil,

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which is a by-product of refining, and there was a pipeline built to

that. So at the end of the day, when that power plant is completed,

you have to have K3 running, because they’re going to use the byproduct of heavy fuel oil to run their generators, to produce the

power. So there was a connecting dot here in the long term for how

you were going to get power, more power to the national grid. Also,

another refinery running, putting more people to work and so forth.

So that was probably one of the successes that when we walked

away, from a fuel standpoint, where in some cases we were getting

equivalency up over 1,000 trucks a month, when we started with

less than 200 when we first got there.

When we first got there, everybody complained about fuel. When

we left, there were never any complaints about having enough fuel.

It was power. And of course the one thing that was increased

because of what the fuel, all the local generators, they had more

fuel.[e moms were happy because there was maybe four or five or

six hours of additional power a day being generated there by

neighborhoods or your own local generator.

So those things, again, it gets back to the basic premise of when

you’re trying to recrank a country back up, with the infrastructure

of a country. [ere was some war damage to infrastructure, but it

was primarily superficial. When you get down to water, sewage, all

the basic, fundamental things you need to run a society as we would

think of it, most of it was dilapidated. It was in place, or in some

cases just had not been maintained, so what we found ourselves is

we had to go in and, in a lot of cases go in and start fixing that type

of stuff.

As you would expect, [such efforts were] problematic because,

again, Anbar Province is kind of unique.[e eastern side of Anbar,

Fallujah and Ramadi, was about 70 percent of the population—

two cities. Of course, eastern Anbar is the smallest size. [en you

go from Hit all the way out to the Euphrates, Syrian border, and

then all the way down to Jordan. As you know, it’s spread out pretty

well, so now trying to go back into those cities, up toward Hit,

Haditha, Rawah, Ana, al-Qaim, and so forth and trying to look at

those individual infrastructures and fix things that needed to get

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done. So really, what we did on that was we had our civil affairs

dets [detachments] that were actually with the RCTs [regimental

combat teams], and they worked hand in hand with the ePRTs.

And so what you had was—I call it the tactical-level stuff—they

were down there looking at individual problems in individual cities,

prioritizing with the local councils, trying to figure out what money

they were getting from the Iraqi government to fix things. And

what we would do is come in, either using DoD [Department of

Defense] funds, CERP [commander’s emergency relief program]

or DoS [Department of State] funds, QRF funds—quick reaction

funds. [ey would try to identify an issue and try to help fix

something, some piece of infrastructure.

So it was slow going in some cases, but in other cases, because of

how we could manipulate or how we could use DoD funds,

especially CERP, is we could get things done pretty quick. Going

through our process was fairly quick at the MEF, so repairing

infrastructure, repairing schools, post offices, community centers, all

the things that had to get done. A lot of that, quite frankly, is

because Marines have lived in a lot of these facilities, or the Iraqi

forces have lived in these cities during the fight. So what we did is,

when we started getting this province back on its feet, all of a

sudden, well, those buildings used to be part of running cities or

towns. So now you had, once you pull them out, of course, they

were, as you would expect, gutted, nothing there. So we went back

in and put them back to really better than what they were

previously, whether it be a schoolhouse, or a mayor’s office, or a

municipalities building, power, electricity, air conditioning, all the

things that you would need so somebody could go in there and go

to work.

So we spent [a lot] of time through 2008, all the way through

Anbar, basically rebuilding that infrastructure that could sustain,

as I would call it, kind of the leadership or the workforce to get the

economy moving, to get the things up and running. So that was a

balancing act, and of course the toughest challenge we had—and

it was a learning process—was training the Iraqis how to plan and

how to do, as you and I call it, O&M, operations and maintenance.

We don’t have the time or energy here this morning to go through

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the ministries in Baghdad, how all that worked, but needless to say,

it’s pretty chaotic, it’s pretty top-down, and quite frankly, the Iraqis

would build something.[ey’d build it and that was it.[ey would

not have budgets to go back in, like we would have a budget, to,

okay, I’ve got to put X amount of dollars in there to keep the thing

running, check filters, and go back and do all the things you would

want to do.

So trying to have them understand that, well, that’s a key piece. I

could build the facility for you, but in six months, if you don’t keep

up with it, if you don’t have trained technicians doing it, then in six

months it’ll break, and then you’re going to walk away from it.

[eir weakest—from a provincial level, the governor of the

provincial council and the director generals (the DGs) of all the

different entities—their weakest thing was planning. You’ve got to

remember, they were [used to] centralized planning, everything

from Baghdad.[ey gave it to you, they executed it, and nobody—

you never questioned Baghdad. So if they didn’t give you the money

to sustain it, it was like, well, tough.

[We’re] trying to have them understand that, okay, if you’re going

to do this, then where is the follow-through? I’ll rebuild this school,

get the DG of education for the city and the DG of education for

the province, have them sit down and say, “Okay, where are the

teachers? Where are the school supplies? Where are all the desks?

Where are all the things that you need to stand this school up?”

And once we started doing that, all of a sudden, the light bulbs

started coming on with these folks. Okay, they got it. What we

were trying to do was reengineer 40 years of mindset of how things

work. . . .

[e planning piece was the most difficult, and part and parcel of

that was . . . the ability to build a budget. Again, previously,

provinces were just given things. [ey never submitted a budget

request, per se. Each ministry would go down through their

director general into a province, minister of electricity, minister of

oil, minister of health, minister of education. [ey would all have

individual budgets, would come into the province, and those

director generals would do what they needed to do in their health

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American Perspectives
or education, disconnected really from what the governor or the

provincial council was doing. So trying to get those two bodies to

sit down and say, “Okay, let’s look strategically at the province.

What do we need to do to build a budget?”

So in 2008, an extraordinary amount of work was done, and we

brought some comptrollers in, a couple of guys from Headquarters

Marine Corps who do this for a living, actually from P&R,

Programs and Resources, and we basically. We give [the Iraqis] an A

for effort, but it was probably a C- end product, but they built a

budget. And [the comptrollers] went from city to city and sat down

with each city council, and they said,“Okay, you prioritize what your

issues are. You break it out by sector. What projects do you need?”

And they went all through the province, brought all that back to

Ramadi, racked and stacked them all, and then at the end of the day,

they submitted that budget back there, and that was submitted in

July of 2008. So that was the first time that a province had ever really

that methodically had gone through and looked at it.

And again, first time, it wasn’t perfect, how we would look at it

from a Western eye. We’d kind of go,“Oh, I’m not liking this.”But,

at the end of the day, that worked. . . .[ey’re going through those

throes in Anbar right now in preparation for the 2010 budget.

[ey’re working now for that next iteration. So hopefully what will

happen here is what they learned last year, what they’re going to see

for what they need for this year, build that dedicated planning, but

a budget also built on a good planning foundation, and submit that

to Baghdad.

And, hopefully, over time, they will slowly start to build their

infrastructure back up to where it needs to be. Again, I go back to

the basic fundamentals. I think three to five years, the power is

going to be, there’s obviously from a national grid perspective,

there’s going to be a substantial increase in power in the province

and throughout Iraq. So what that will happen is, to me, [when

that happens], it puts them as a second-tier world country, because

now they have power 24/7. [In the United States] it’s a state of

emergency if you don’t have power for two hours, especially with

our wives. But if you can imagine living on six to eight hours of

power when it’s 120 degrees out—tough living.

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[is equates back to who wants to go in and invest in Iraq? A lot of

people said, “Oh, the only way to fix Iraq is to get investors to come

in and do all this, and they’ll make it happen.” Yeah, but there are

certain things that an investor wants to have. So if I’m going to go

build a plant down in Georgia, I’m going to have water, I’m going to

have power. I’m going to have all the things that are there. I go and

just plug into them, quite frankly. It’s not easy, but it’s fundamentally

there. If you’re going to build a plant in Anbar Province, well, the first

thing you’ve got is you’re going to have to bring in four onemegawatt generators because there’s not enough power to run that

plant. Oh, by the way, you have to have fuel to do that, and how are

you going to [get that]? [ere’s just a degree of difficulty that some

people, quite frankly—and I’m talking about some very senior

people in the U.S. government—never thought through.

But, having said that, we did spend a lot of time over in Jordan.

We did spent a lot of time working with international businessmen.

A lot of expats from Anbar went to Jordan, took a lot of money

with them.[ey’re willing to come back, and some have come back

and, quite frankly, some of them are already investing in Anbar

Province, which is good, which we didn’t have to set up. [ey’re

entrepreneurs. If they see there’s money to be made, guys will figure

out how to do it. [ere are already capitalists running around,

without a doubt, in Anbar, throughout Iraq. [ey’re figuring out

real quick if there is money to be had, people will figure out a way

to provide a service, and they’re making that work. So, as I look at

it, there’s going to be a steady increase. . . .

[ere was one constant in Anbar—agriculture. At one time, Anbar

Province used to be kind of the bread basket, because the Euphrates

River runs right through the middle of it. And, quite frankly, if you

have water in the desert, anything grows. But what we found, like

anything else, was the infrastructure of that had not been taken

care of. [[ere was] a lack of education of how to maintain fields,

how they do water management. It was very, very poor. Now, quite

frankly, I will tell you that we happened to have a couple—go

figure—a couple farmers, Reservists. One guy was a potato farmer

from the state of Washington. He knew this stuff. [e PRT

obviously had some USAID [United States Agency for

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International Development] guys in there, and also some ag experts

from the States.

We sat down and took a look at what could we do in the agriculture

sector. First thing is, well, it’s like anything else.[ere’s subsets.[e

first is the water. You’ve got to move the water, and then you’ve got

to get it to the fields, and then you’ve got to—there’s about eight

steps here to make things work. [irty-five provincial-level water

pumping stations, three-quarters of them weren’t working. Okay, let

me fix that. [at’s mechanic stuff, that’s pumps and generators, so

we did that, through the Iraqis—sat down with the Iraqis, mapped

it all out. What do we have to get done? Where are they at? Even

finding some of these damn things, by lat-long grid, took us a

while. But at the end of the day, we got all that squared away.

Hundreds of miles of canals in Anbar, small, large, basically have to

be maintained on a three- to five-year cycle or they just go up in

reeds. And the reeds that grow in these damn things, it’s like a piece

of barbed wire. . . . And so what happened was they hadn’t been

maintained. So damn near every canal over there was choked with

these large reeds. [ese things were probably 10, 12 feet high. So

we spent an inordinate amount of money, an inordinate amount of

time, working with the Iraqis, and the Iraqis used some of their

resources also to go back and start clearing canals. . . .

I don’t know what the final number was, but we cleared thousands

of kilometers of canals, again, as part and parcel, so now you can get

the water to the fields, and then to the local farmers. And then,

working with the appropriate ag specialists, and we had some folks

from Texas A&M come in; . . . they’d sit down with the local

farmers, [from] trying to develop co-ops to how they could go to

an end-to-end process. Again, it goes back to 40 years of you were

given seed by Baghdad, and you planted. [e government bought

your product, and it just repeated. No initiative, per se, open market

where if you could try something different and go and basically

take your product and sell it for the best price, because you always

got the price. So, again, their mindset was, hey, if I can sell it, the

government will buy it, and I’ll be okay. Trying to step into a free

market sector and, again, I’m not an economist or an agriculture

specialist, but try and get them to understand. [ey got it.

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Quite frankly, the younger generation over there gets it. [e ones

that are in their 20s and 30s, who haven’t been so ingrained by the

past, will turn this country around. [e guys who are my age, in

their 50s and 60s, who have been there, their whole life was driven

by [the] top-down [system], from Saddam [Hussein], here’s how

we do business, then, well, trying to break them [out of the past]

and get them to see a different way. . . . From a governance and

economic standpoint, what we try to do is, working with the

governor, working with the provincial council, working with all the

city mayors, try to develop a process, sector by sector, and again,

have them establish priorities. It’s tough for them to grasp. Hey,

this is all broke. Well, okay, great. You’ve got 10 things that are

broke, what’s number 1 and what’s number 10? Just like we do.

[at’s the same thing that we do in the States, and sometimes you

don’t like it. So that was a process that we had to kind of ingrain in

them, and they’re figuring it out, and it’ll be a slow, it’ll be a

continued, hopefully a positive trend over here in the next several

years as they continue to work. . . .

I had not been to Anbar Province before. So I didn’t have an

expectation, whereas some guys who had been there, like General

Kelly had been there previously, had seen the darker days, and gone

back. It was a startling difference. . . . When II MEF left, II MEF

had lost 90 Marines in combat operations in a year, in their year

there. In the year we were there, we lost 22 in combat operations.

We lost some other Marines in noncombat. But if that’s the scale,

that is some scale, 90 to 22. So we weren’t fighting, and most of

our casualties were IEDs [improvised explosive devices], losing

Devil Dogs [troops] in vehicles, for the most part. Some onesies

and twosies, a couple of other situations, but primarily in vehicles.

We very rarely ever started a shot first. We did offensive operations,

we did some operations up in the desert. We ran a lot of guys down

in the wadis and so forth, but at the end of the day, I think offensively,

we didn’t shoot any artillery the whole time we were there, not a

single round. We did some illum[ination].[at was about the extent

of it. I think we might have done four to five missions, with aircraft,

when we actually got hold of some bad guys running around a desert.

. . . But really, the offensive, kinetic operations, [while] we were there,

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really we mounted pretty much nothing. We were still being

proactive, but it was just less and less and less, the entire year through

2008, which obviously was a good thing.

And again, it goes back to—you talk to the Iraqis—when we first

got there, . . . security was still the number-one priority—security,

security, security. When we left, if you asked them what their

problems were, the first five things weren’t security. It was not

enough power, we need to fix the schools. . . .

What we did when we first got there in April, . . . the MEF was at

Camp Fallujah. I moved my G-9, our CMO [civil-military

operations], to Ramadi and collocated it with the PRT, for two

reasons. One was, it needed to be there, because if we’re going to

do a single effort, you can’t have two entities out there running

around doing things, not connected. And we built a joint common

plan with them that basically was signed by General Kelly and Mr.

James [V.] Soriano, who was the PRT lead, saying basically,“[ese

are our priorities, and this is what we’re going to do,” kind of the

first step. And we worked that over the summer.

At the same time, and again, I’ll give you a couple of the challenges

that we saw going in. One challenge was we were going to have to

shift the security file to the Iraqis, provincial PIC, provincial Iraqi

control. We were supposed to do that; actually, we were supposed

to do that in March-April when we first got there. [ey weren’t

ready. We ended up doing it 1 September. It took about 60 days

because of some political stuff in Baghdad on the Iraqi side, not

necessarily on the Coalition side. [at was a big deal, . . . and that

was kind of a mindset change for them to say, okay, that’s not our

problem anymore. You’ve got a problem, that’s yours to solve,

whether it be the police, whether it be the Iraqi army. But that was

a good step to kind of get their feet on the ground.

[en the next piece of this thing was the elections. Now, the

elections were supposed to go in October.[ey got slid because of

political maneuvering in Baghdad, but that was really the next

iteration of where they kind of are really standing on their own two

feet. And just when we left, and it was within days of us leaving,

they had over 300,000 Sunnis vote in al-Anbar Province, where

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they had 3,000 vote in the first election. [ese people were ready.

[ey knew they screwed it up. In hindsight, you’re always smarter.

[ey didn’t vote the first time around, so they looked at the elected

officials who were running the province as, “You weren’t elected.”

But it’s like, well, hey, tough. [e ones that voted, we’re working.

Somebody’s got to do the job. So it’ll be an interesting year. We

were hoping to be there through the transition, where we started

the new provincial council, the new governor, just to see all that

work. And of course, II MEF is going through that right now as we

speak, which is nothing but goodness.

At the same time, in the fall, and basically in October, we did

something in Iraq that no other province had done, or no other

MND [multinational division] or MNF [multinational force] had

done. We basically put the PRT in the lead for all governance and

economics, and several reasons for that, but really the fundamental

reason was, at the end of the day—and this is probably my biggest

complaint of how things ran in Iraq, proper—was you can’t have

two cooks in the kitchen. It’s the fundamental view, there can’t be

two bosses. It doesn’t work. So if you took a look at Baghdad, you

had Department of State, you had the embassy. In the embassy,

they had an economic section, and then they had the OPA, which

is the Office of Provincial Authority, which the [call] still was in the

embassy, who all the PRTs worked through.Yes, you had engineers,

another organization called ITAO, which is Iraq transition

[assistance] office, who worked—actually, it was a surrogate for the

embassy, and they kind of did engineering-type stuff. And then you

had MNF-West [Multi National Force-West], you had MNF-Iraq

[Multi National Force-Iraq], MNC-I [Multi National CorpsIraq], Corps, and they all had their hands in reconstruction and

that type of thing.

So if you took a look at how the U.S. government was doing this, it

was [messed] up. You had all these different people, all great

Americans, all wanting to do the right thing, but in my opinion, not

a single guy or gal in charge who said, “[is is the way we’re going

to go,”and make it go.[e challenges there were—which you would

expect—is you had to work through multiple agencies in Baghdad

to get things done. Okay, fine. You figured out who the players were,

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American Perspectives
and you made it work. I won’t go through the iteration on that. But

what we decided to do was, hey, if we’re going to talk the talk, then

let’s walk the walk. So what we did was, we went to the PRT and

said, Jim [Soriano], “We’re going to give you the lead on all these

things. What talent do you want?” I had about, oh, 35, 40 folks

working for me in the G-9, CMO. Actually, the number was higher

than that, but there were a lot of enlisted kids driving and so forth,

but really, the nuts-and-bolts guys that were doing the stuff. Jim was

going to handle about 45 folks in the PRT-ish ballpark, so I said,

“What talent do you need from us?” And so they came up with

about 15 folks, and I gave 15 Marines to the PRT, in different

disciplines, with different expertise. And then they didn’t work for

me anymore. [ey worked for Jim Soriano, worked for the PRT.

[Notes that the new organizational structure “caused a hell of a lot

of consternation in Baghdad,” particularly when they told people,

“Don’t talk to us, talk to PRT. [ey’ve got this. [ey now are the

lead for Anbar Province.”]

[e interesting thing is, when we went up and briefed this concept,

the ambassador said, “[is is the best thing I’ve seen. [is is the

way we ought to be doing business in Iraq,” kind of the one-guyin-charge type thing. Candidly, if I was given the mission to go do

this and start over again, knowing what I know, is I would have put

the reconstruction czar under the DoD [Department of Defense],

and I would have taken all the smart, appropriate DoS

[Department of State] folks, whether it be the ag folks or all the

different folks who were out there, and put them in one

organization under DoD. Because, quite frankly, whether you like

it or not, is the culture of DoD, we can get things done, where the

culture of DoS, different culture, God love them to death. It just is

what is what it is. . . .

[e other thing we did during 2008, we started weaning them off

of Coalition force capacity. For example, the governor never went

anywhere without the Coalition force taking him, never went

anywhere—to Baghdad, to a city, to go to work in the morning.

And, candidly, as you well imagine, when he first got the job, they

were fighting; he was fighting to get into work and fighting to go

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home every day, during the bad days. At some point we told the

governor, in the late summer,“Governor, we’re not going to do this

anymore for you. You’re going to go to work. You had your own

PSD [personal security detail], [should have] trained your guys in

your own PSD. If you want to go to Baghdad, governor, you’ve got

to get yourself to Baghdad. Now, if there’s something we need to

go up there with specifically, sure, we’ll fly in.” And we did fly him

a couple of times for key meetings and so forth.

So what we tried to do, under our watch over there, when we were

dealing with the Iraqis, was to try to take a step back and say, “You

guys start doing this.”. . . We had to minimize our footprint. We

had to get out of the cities, and that’s where we go back into

rehabbing all the things that we broke, and all the facilities we hadn’t

maintained, and go refurbish them and so forth as we pulled out.

[e ECPs [entry control points] [were a] big deal. I mean, that’s

how you control the people going in and out of Fallujah. We turned

the ECPs over to the Iraqis, [but] we waited until they asked us to

do that. After the security arrangement, after we did provincial Iraqi

control on 1 September, it was about two months later that they

came to us and [said], “Hey, we’re ready to take the ECPs.”. . .

So our year, . . . we predominantly closed the deal on the security

side, continued to do the training with the police, training with the

border patrol, the border forces.[e Iraqi army was really in pretty

good shape. [e commitment the Marine Corps had made to

transition teams, TTs, years ago, paid off. I mean, the 1st and 7th

Divisions were the best two divisions in the Iraqi army, and it

showed, because they pulled them and went to Basrah. [ey went

to Diyala, they went to Mosul with those divisions, and they kicked

ass, operating unilaterally, with Marine Corps TTs with them.

Quite frankly, the biggest compliment the Marine Corps ever got

was when they had that little dustup in Basrah, and they sent the

1st Division down there, and we sent our TTs with them. [e

British commander . . . said, “Hey, the only reason that Basrah

didn’t fall was because of the Marines.” Now of course you can

imagine the Army guys almost fell out of their chair. What he

meant was, the 1st Division was so good, and having the Marine

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TTs with them, they came in there, they were just astounded how

good they were, because their division, the 14th Division, the one

in Basrah, was the one that just fell apart, ran away. So the Marine

Corps over the years spent an inordinate bill with TTs and

[getting] the right people in there, and so the 1st and 7th Division

were extraordinary divisions. . . . [ey were the best in Iraq. . . .

[e police matured substantially in 2008, probably have a couple

more years really to go, but they basically now have the confidence

to manage the security, the civil capacity, civil governance, in the

cities and making that work.

[e last thing that we were working on to try to close the deal was

the professionalism of the border forces. . . .We’re trying to increase

the resources and logistics of the border forces so they can be a

better entity, if you would, for the whole makeup.

So, on the security side, when we basically turned it over to II MEF,

[we] said, “Listen, they’ve got it.”. . . I think in another month or

two, they’re going to be down to three maneuver battalions in

Anbar Province from when we were there. It was 14 when we first

got there. So, again, you can see, a lot of things had changed.

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Interview 19

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part III
Mr. James V. Soriano

Provincial Reconstruction Team Leader

U.S. Department of State

September 2006 to Present (as of mid-2009)

Mr. James V. Soriano is a career U.S. Department of State Foreign

Service officer with 25 years of experience. He has served in various

capacities at the U.S. embassies in Yemen, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan,

and India. He had previously worked in Iraq in 2003-2004 as the

senior Coalition civilian official in al-Muthanna Province under the

Coalition Provisional Authority. Soriano returned to Iraq in

September 2006 as the leader of a 60-person provincial reconstruction

team in al-Anbar Province. He followed Mr. John Kael Weston, who

worked closely with Marines in Iraq from 2004 through mid-2006.

As the provincial reconstruction team leader, Soriano worked with

Multi National Force-West building capacity in al-Anbar’s provincial

government, private sector, and civil societies. In this interview, he

details the team’s structure and its relationships with Marines and

Iraqis. He describes arriving in al-Anbar during the height of the

insurgency as the Awakening movement in Ramadi was beginning

and explains how the Awakening progressed from an anti-al-Qaeda

security movement into a political party.

Mr. Soriano was interviewed by Colonel Gary W. Montgomery

and Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams on 13 February

2009 at Camp Ramadi, Iraq.

Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams: Please tell us a

little bit about yourself and the provincial reconstruction teams

[PRTs].

Mr. James V. Soriano: I arrived in Iraq in September of 2006, so I’ve

been here in Anbar Province heading up the Provincial Reconstruction

Team for the last two years and five months now.[ere are four PRTs

in Anbar.[ree of them are embedded at the regimental level [ePRTs],

and the one I lead [provincial level within Ramadi], which is now

about 60 people, combined military-civilian, at the provincial level.

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We are partnered with the MEF [Marine expeditionary force]

headquarters. My counterpart is the deputy commanding general,

[Brigadier General] John [E.] Wissler. [is new MEF that just

came in, II MEF, which just arrived just a few days ago, is the

fourth MEF I’ve worked with, . . . so I’ve seen a lot of changes since

September ’06.

I arrived in the height of the insurgency [and] was initially

stationed at Camp Blue Diamond in Ramadi.[ere was very little

to do in Ramadi at that time because of the insurgency and the

kinetics. So I moved myself over to Camp Fallujah, which is where

the flagpole is [MNF-W headquarters], and I sort of embedded

myself, if I could put it that way, with the MEF staff until the

spring of ’07 [because] there was very little to do here in Ramadi.

I couldn’t get out. We couldn’t engage the provincial government.

[e purpose of a PRT, as you know, is capacity building.[at’s our

job. And my Iraqi counterparts—I just told you about my Marine

counterpart—is the governor [Mamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani],

the provincial council chairman [Abu Abdul Salam], the provincial

council, and then my staff engages the directors of the various

departments—sewage, water, electricity, and so forth.

[e PRT’s activities rest on three legs, I would say. One would be

capacity building with the provincial government. [e other is

encouraging the private sector.We’ve got some activities there. And

the third would be civil society, trying to encourage civil society

organizations, such as a farmers’ co-op we’re trying to set up, and

so on. We were active very recently, in the last several days, with

having NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] do a voter

awareness campaign during the recent provincial council election

in January of ’09.

As I said, when I first arrived, there was heavy fighting. [e high

point of the battle, if I recall correctly from the graphs, was

November of ’06. After November ’06, the graph of monthly

security incidents starts to trail down, and by the spring of ’07, it

falls out then. It just heads due south. At this time, the provincial

council of Anbar fled Ramadi. Actually, it fled in March of ’06, as

I recall, before I arrived. [ere was a sustained attack on the

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government center, [a] 24-hour attack that Marines [who] were

based there [had] to beat it off. But the council decided to pull up

stakes, and they moved to the relative safety of Baghdad, where

there were some secure areas for Sunnis. Even there, it was a touchand-go situation for Sunnis. [e council met ad hoc in Baghdad

[but] did not disband. . . .

Only the governor kept normal office hours at the government

center in Ramadi, in downtown Ramadi, surrounded by a company

of Marines.When I first met him at his office, I think it was the last

week of September of ’06. [ere was a gun battle right outside on

the street, RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] were going off, and a

few months later, his office where we were having that meeting was

destroyed by I guess a rocket or a mortar. [at was December of

’06. [e government center was a shambles. It was a war zone, it

was a battlefield. When I got there, we could run between buildings

with full PPE [personal protective equipment] and crouching down

and all of that. Today, we just walk around in shirtsleeves.

[e council fled to Baghdad, where they met infrequently, and I

would have to say that its only contact with Americans during

those days was with a USAID [United States Agency for

International Development] contractor called RTI, Research

Triangle Institute, which was doing capacity building with

provincial councils around the country. [ey have a campus in the

IZ [international zone in Baghdad]. RTI and several of the leaders

of the provincial council were regulars there, and, practically

speaking, their early contact with Americans was through RTI

through those dark days of the spring, summer, fall of ’06. [e

council moved back to Ramadi slowly, in stages, in the spring of ’07.

[e Marines flew them out by helicopter back to Ramadi. [ey

landed at Blue Diamond, and we had a few meetings on Camp

Blue Diamond. [e Anbaris didn’t like that. [ey didn’t like the

appearance of needing American military protection to meet the

guys on the council. [ey did that in April, May, June of ’07.

By July ’07, they moved back to the government center in Ramadi

and returned to their traditional seat of power. By August of ’07, the

ground floor of the government center, where the governor has his

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American Perspectives
office, was repaired using CERP [Commander’s Emergency Relief

Program] funds. [e upper floor was still a shambles. (It’s a twostory structure.) And [the governor] began to have normal business

hours. [ey [Iraqis] started coming in looking for services in

September, October of ’07. Women and children were crawling all

over the place, looking for assistance with their various petitions

and needs with the government.

When I arrived, of course, the Awakening was an early

phenomenon in September ’06. I think it started in Anbar in about

September 13th, ’06, after some false starts earlier that year in ’06,

in which al-Qaeda apparently beat back an earlier attempt by the

Ramadi sheikhs to form an anti-al-Qaeda coalition.

Sheikhs cooperating with the Coalition was nothing new. It

happened first of all in al-Qaim, but that was a localized

phenomenon. It didn’t travel very far, and it was due mostly for

economic reasons, because al-Qaeda was encroaching upon their

trans-border smuggling business. In Ramadi, Sheikh Sattar Abu

Risha and a group of like-minded sheikhs got together, formed a

coalition; earlier it was called the Anbar Salvation Council, [then]

the Anbar Awakening Council. [e latter phrase, Anbar

Awakening Council, still exists and is a political party not

associated with the Abu Rishas. It is associated with someone else

who was a founding member. Many founding members, maybe two

dozen or three dozen local sheikhs and notables.

Abu Risha, Sheikh Sattar, I saw him many times. I shared meals

with him many times. He had the utmost contempt for the Iraqi

Islamic Party and contempt for any political party that had a

religious basis or a foundation. He became a media phenomenon

almost immediately, and this was September ’06. By November,

October in ’06, he was badgering the provincial council, which was

in Baghdad, for seats for representation. [e election for the

provincial council took place in January of ’05. It was widely

boycotted. [e mosques called for boycott, and you know the

story—3,700 votes were cast in a huge province, and the IIP or

Iraqi Islamic Party was the one that won the right to form the

council and control.

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Al-Anbar Awakening
By the fall of ’06, that became intolerable to the Awakening

sheikhs, Sattar and his fellow travelers there, and they felt that they

stood and fought. [e council fled. [ere was a sense of

entitlement. [ere was a sense of contempt because they were

religiously based. He went on TV many times. Sattar started a

media campaign against corrupt government, absentee

government, and all of the rest. [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Kamil

Mohammed Hassan al-] Maliki intervened in early November of

’06. He sent Dr. Rafe al-Essawi, who was a cabinet minister in

those days, but today he’s a deputy prime minister from Fallujah.

He had him broker a deal, which was brokered at the Rasheed

Hotel in Baghdad, in which the IIP, the governing party, agreed to

expand the number of seats on the council from 40 to 48 and gave

the additional seats to the Awakening.[ey had another person on

the council that was sympathetic to them, so they had nine votes

out of 48. [at was the situation that existed, nine out of 48,

throughout the next two years, until there was just an election a

few days ago, basically.

Sattar certainly sent al-Qaeda on the run. By winter of ’06, early ’07

I should say, it was clear that the battlefield had tipped in our favor,

that his phenomenon did travel, as opposed to the early one in alQaim that was imitated in other provinces. However, his leadership

was basically localized to Ramadi. It never really got very much

beyond Ramadi, and I think when we did the analysis of the last

election, I think most of the votes that his group has gotten will

come from Ramadi. [ere are probably several of the tribes that

are sort of associated with him, and they probably gave him the

bulk of the votes earned. It would be surprising to me if the

Awakening sheikh—since [Sattar] was killed later—if his brother,

Ahmad Abu Risha, was able to get a lot of votes outside of Ramadi.

It’s not a bad place to be, because Ramadi is the most populous

city, has the most votes, so strategically, it’s a well-orchestrated

political campaign. He was pretty much in a pretty good position

because he got a lot of votes where most of the people live.

By the spring of ’07, Sattar launched an attack-and-withdrawal

kind of approach against the provincial council, turning up the heat,

usually through a media campaign and complaints about

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American Perspectives
corruption and malfeasance and so forth, always with the intention

of getting more seats or increasing his power-sharing agreement

to his favor.[e governor’s position at this time was precarious.We

all thought that Sattar was after the governor’s chair, to get him

kicked out. Mamoun Sami Rashid, as I just said earlier, was the

only government official who actually maintained office hours

during the dark days of ’06, survived many assassination attempts.

[He] thought that Sattar wanted him out. I was at an Iftar dinner,

hosted by General Zilmer at Camp Fallujah. [is would be

October ’06, at which Sattar and the governor were invited. And it

was a very unpleasant dinner. . . .

As a compromise, the governor agreed to take on a deputy governor

who would be named by Sattar Abu Risha. He was, as you know,

supported by the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, under thenColonel Sean [B.] MacFarland [USA], now General MacFarland,

and then later, after March of ’07, by the 1/3 BCT [1st Brigade

Combat Team, 3d Infantry] with Colonel John [W.] Charlton

[USA]. [ey parked an M1 Abrams tank right outside the front

door of Sattar’s compound and residence, right outside Camp

Ramadi here, within eyesight for many months. It was taken away

finally in October of ’07.

So through the spring of ’07, Sattar was keeping his pressure on. At

that time, the deputy commanding general, General John [R.] Allen

and I [went] to broker a cease-fire of words, if you will, with the

governor and Sattar Abu Risha and a lot of other sheikhs, a lot of

shouting going on. And we sort of kept the lid on. Meanwhile, the

battlefield was tipping into our favor throughout this period of time,

and by the summer of ’07, as I said, the provincial council returned

to its normal seat of power and business returned to normal.

In September of ’07, President [George W.] Bush visited and called

on Prime Minister Maliki, the governor, and several sheikhs,

including Sattar Abu Risha [at Al Asad air base]. Seven days later,

Abu Risha was killed by a bomb planted on his compound, as he

was apparently moving from his horse stable back to his residence.

[ere was a roadside bomb, and I was downtown in Ramadi. I was

at the government center, actually, and we heard the windows rattle,

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Al-Anbar Awakening
and we saw a plume of smoke and we didn’t understand what it

was until we got back to base. I went to the funeral. You can

imagine who was there. General [Raymond T.] Odierno [USA]

was there. At the time, he was the MNC-I commander. Many

hundreds, hundreds or thousands of mourners were there.

At this time, I had organized a visit to the United States for the socalled Anbar eight, as I called them. [is was the governor, the

provincial council chairman, I wanted Sattar Abu Risha to join

[us], and I got the provincial council chairman as well to agree with

it, and he chose Mayor Latif [Obaid Ayadah of Ramadi]. So there

were two members of the Awakening on that delegation, four from

the IIP, and two independents. One was the governor and then his

deputy governor. Governor Mamoun has IIP roots, but after he

took office, I think in ’05, he professed to govern in a nonpartisan

way. [e assassination created a vacancy on this delegation.*

[is is an International Visitor [Leadership] Program. It was two

weeks in the States. I accompanied them. General Allen

accompanied them. We did a week in Washington. Sheikh Sattar’s

older brother, Ahmad Abu Risha, took over the wings of leadership

of the Awakening and was added to the delegation. We called on

the president in October or early November of ’07, Secretary

[Robert M.] Gates at DoD [Department of Defense], Secretary

[of State Condoleezza] Rice. We did many calls to Capitol Hill.

We flew down to Houston, Texas. We met the president’s father

[George H.W. Bush] down there and flew back up to Vermont. I

think we were in Montpelier, and there was a National Guard unit

that had served in Ramadi. . . . [roughout that visit, the behavior

of all participants was, of course, in my presence, it was very proper,

and polite. Perhaps behind my back, there was a lot of backbiting

between them. . . .

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American Perspectives

* [e eight members of the delegation were Mamoun Sami Rashid al-Alwani, provincial

governor of al-Anbar Province; Dr. Abdulsalam Abdullah al-Ani, the provincial council

chairman; Ahmad Bezia Fteikhan al-Rishawi, Satter Abu Risha’s brother; Latif O. Ayada, mayor

of Ramadi; Dr. Othman Hummadi, vice governor for planning; Dr. Ashour Hamid Saleh, a

member of the provincial council and the Islamic Iraqi Party’s top official in the province; Dr.

Zekei Obaid Fayad, a provincial council member and the Islamic Iraqi Party leader in Fallujah;

and Dr. Rafe al-Essawi, the minister of state for foreign affairs.
From New York, we went to Amman, Jordan, in November ’07, and

we had a week there for a workshop, organized by this USAID

contractor I referred to a moment ago, RTI, and my staff. And the

upshot of that workshop was to draft a provincial development

strategy. We broke down into working groups, and the RTI guy

paid the bills. It was over at the Marriot Hotel in Amman. [ey

invited about 120 Anbaris, and about that many showed up. We

had about 120, so that was the provincial council plus. And they

invited—this is IIP, now; they’re the ones who are giving us the

guest list, the participants’list comes from the IIP, and they gave us

a list of the Awakening folks to invite, too. It was supposed to be

all inclusive, a joint effort, by Anbaris, to draft an economic vision

statement of their own future in the immediate aftermath of an

insurgency. [e exercise was well worth it. [e final product was

kind of badly written, but the exercise of bringing people together

was worth it. . . .

Ahmad Abu Risha transformed the Awakening from what was a

counterinsurgency security organization, a wartime ally of us.

[rough the spring of ’08, he transformed it into a political party,

and that’s when our relationship with him sort of changed. About

April, May, they registered the Awakening as a political party.[e

tank in front of his house and the daily U.S. military engagement

with him ceased. [e tank was taken away I think in October ’07,

just before we went to the U.S. We just can’t choose sides among

political parties, the U.S. government can’t, and certainly the U.S.

military ought to stay out of such kind of activities. By the spring

of ’08, they changed the Awakening into a political party, registered

it. He has offices in other provinces of dubious connection to his

own organization.*

A lot of groups around the country call themselves Awakenings,

and I tell visitors that there are a lot of awakenings in Iraq, but only

one Awakening with a capital “A,” and that’s the one in Ramadi.

[e others are sort of awakenings localized. If they want to use that

term, that’s up to them. But the press also falls into the trap, as I’ve

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Al-Anbar Awakening

* Since Satter Abu Risha’s death, especially since Ahmad Abu Risha turned the Awakening

into a political party, many of the original Awakening sheikhs have disengaged from the group.
written in my State Department reports, of characterizing Ahmad

Abu Risha as the leader of the Sunni Awakening, giving the false

impression that the Sunni Awakening is a monolithic thing.[ere’s

no such thing. And if there is such a thing, it’s under the leadership

of Ahmad Abu Risha, which there’s no such thing. It’s a double

fallacy. . . .

Colonel Gary W. Montgomery: Was the Awakening something that

had coordination, or was it just people being moved in the same

direction by the sweep of events?

Soriano: I think the latter is a good way of describing it, tribes

moving in the same direction because of the sweep of events, and

I think I mentioned some time ago that there was an earlier alliance

of tribes out of al-Qaim with the Coalition, but it was localized, as

I said. It didn’t go beyond al-Qaim. What made the Awakening of

Ramadi more distinct was it was really the turning. In al-Qaim, it

did not really turn the battlefield, as such.[e battle was still raging,

and the worst was yet to come in terms of fighting.

[e Awakening in Ramadi was somewhat different, and it had

different characteristics. In al-Qaim, I don’t think the youths of the

place moved forward to join the police force. Part of Sheikh Sattar’s

strategy was to encourage the youth of the place to join the police.

When I arrived in the middle of ‘06, police recruitment drives

would attract a dozen or so kids. By the spring of ’07, there were

more recruits than there were places at the academy to train them.

Much of that was due to the change of attitude by the tribal sheikhs

in the Ramadi area, which then spread. Youths of other tribes along

the river began to join the police force, perhaps by the sweep of

events that you just mentioned. But there was no monolithic

movement. [e Awakening was, is, and perhaps will be always a

localized Ramadi phenomenon.[e big tribe to the west is the Abu

Nimer, and they are definitely not Awakening.[ey have an agenda,

and they are our wartime allies as well. To the east of Fallujah, the

city is least tribal, in many respects, and it’s an area, as many people

would say, of IIP sympathy, rather than the Awakening.

Montgomery: Is that more in political terms?

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American Perspectives
Soriano: Political terms, sympathies, yeah, looking for leadership.

[e idea of pan-tribal politics really has to be examined. [e

dynamic of tribal politics implies that no one leader shall get too

strong. But I think that’s what’s going on. Ahmad Abu Risha has

reached that point.Tribal engagement is what the Marines did out

here and the Army did out here in Anbar, and it was certainly a

necessary tactic of the insurgency. And by tribal engagement, I

mean a day-to-day meeting on a face-to-face basis at the battalion

and the company level of localized sheikhs, using CERP

[Commander’s Emergency Relief Program] funds to lubricate a

more productive relationship with those sheikhs and getting the

sheikhs to get off the fence. Sheikhs are not leaders. Sheikhs are

followers. Some would say sheikhs are cowards. [ey follow

opinion. [ey do not lead opinion. Many of them fled to Jordan.

Some of them were asked to go to Jordan by their own people, for

their own safety.

It was a combination of four factors that led to the tipping of the

battlefield in our favor. [e first was a change of public opinion in

’06-’07 in which there was a redefinition of the enemy. We were

no longer seen as the enemy, but as a friend, and al-Qaeda was no

longer seen as a defender, but as an enemy. [[e second] was a tribal

engagement, the day-to-day tea drinking with a lot of local

notables to get them to come off the fence and onto our side. [e

third was police recruitment, which is perhaps the most important

factor of them all. [ere are now, what, 28,000 police in the

province? When I arrived here, there were fewer than 6,000 on the

rolls, but hardly any on the streets. And that filled the void. After

the downfall of Saddam [Hussein], a void was created, and the bad

guys floated in the void. And the fourth was the effectiveness of

our combined operations, in all of its aspects, combined ISF [Iraqi

security forces] and Coalition force operations, police operations,

army operations, special teams that went after the bad guys and

just eliminated them one by one. [ose were important.

Even population control measures were part of that. I think the

lesson learned there is the population in an insurgency will tolerate

a certain amount of inconvenience, of population control measures,

of barricades, entry points, and so forth, provided that the

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counterinsurgent also has to provide some measure of security at

the end of the struggle. So he has to keep up his end of the bargain.

You have to have a vehicle curfew for many hours a day. At the end

of the day, if you want to put it that way, the security has to be

restored. So those are I think the four big ones, the change of public

opinion and the role of the mosque, by the way. It’s something you

don’t even understand in public opinion. In ’05, they were calling

for insurrection. By ’06, they were calling for moderation. By ’09,

they were telling the people to get out and vote. [e change in

public opinion, tribal engagement as a tool, police recruitment, and

effectiveness of military operations.

Montgomery: You said that the sheikhs don’t create public opinion,

they follow it. But you also said that Sheikh Sattar had a strategy

of getting the young men involved in the police force, which if it

was his strategy, they were following him to some degree. I always

had the impression that the tribes and the sheikhs were similar to

feudalism, sort of a mutual contract.[e sheikh helps gets jobs and

benefits for the people who follow him, and in return, they do

follow him, and it increases his influence. So it was sort of like

feudalism without coercion.

Soriano: You’re right. [e point I wanted to make is that, by and

large, tribal leaders are not leaders. [ey tend to be followers. I

guess what I was trying to capture in that sentence is that most

Iraqis hold tribal leaders in contempt, because of the feudal aspect

that you just mentioned. It just reminds them of a way of life that

is archaic in many respects. If you like a society where the destiny

of a woman is decided before the time she’s 14 years old, you’ll love

a tribal society like rural Iraq.

Montgomery: So is that why the rest of Iraq holds them out as the

Wild West Anbar Province?

Soriano: Obviously, all of Iraq has some aspects of tribalism left, and

the secret that is not said openly is that the people, when they go to

the polls, prefer government by technocrats and not by tribal leaders.

[at’s pretty clear. As a matter of fact, Ahmad Abu Risha, who did

well at the polls, also has a party yoked to him and his coalition that

is technocratic in nature and has links to the university.

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American Perspectives
[e issue of tribal engagement [is] something I don’t think the U.S.

forces understood in ’03 when we entered here, and perhaps we

mistreated tribal leaders and didn’t show them sufficient respect or

understand their role.Tribal engagement had a very important role

to play in turning the battle in our favor, by bringing [in] these

fence-sitters. “My God, the Americans are here. Let’s jump on the

bandwagon with them”—that didn’t happen. It took some

persuasion to get that to happen, and they—the tribal leaders—had

to see that the battlefield was tipping in our favor, Sattar Abu Risha

being the exception. And the reason why he stands out so much is

because he is an exception. He was a leader. I can’t take that away

from the guy. But others, where he stands, there’s 20, 30, 40 behind

him that are fence sitters. Once we Americans discovered the the

force multiplier effect of tribal engagement, we jumped all over it

and . . . tried to have other MNDs [multinational divisions] do what

was done in Anbar to replicate the success we have here.

All of that is true historically, and the reason we did tribal

engagement, as I said, is really to get the tribal leader to prevent his

teenagers from planting bombs against American teenagers. Basically,

that’s what it pointed down to. Get your kids to stop planting IEDs

for $200. Al-Qaeda pays them whatever, and then they blow our kids

up. [at’s true. We did get them to stop that, but tribal engagement

by itself never explained why the first teenager planted the first bomb.

If the counterinsurgent believes that the tribal leader is strong enough

to influence his teenagers, why did the first teenager plant the first

bomb? [e answer is that the tribal system has been under stress for

decades, for generations. [e tribal way of life is being pulled apart

by the forces of modernity and globalization, and even literacy.

Making a woman read and write is a threat to a tribal way of life, to

be quite honest with you. [at was being torn apart.

[e former regime runs into hiding, they’re thrown out, a vacuum

is created.We foolishly stand around with our hands in our pockets,

and into that vacuum flow Islamic radicals. After that, chaos breaks

out, and when you’re in a situation like that, people really fell back

on this primordial social structure of the tribe for protection. At

that point, we went to the tribal leaders, and they said, “We need,

first of all, security and protection.”

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Somebody has to write the study on the limits of tribal

engagement. Marines get a full chapter in the next manual on

counterinsurgency on tribal engagement.[eir experience in Anbar

Province is a textbook example of how to do it right.[ere’s a limit

to tribal engagement, and that is in the post-conflict period. [e

logic of continuing to engage tribal leaders is opposite of that of

capacity building for a legitimate structure of government, or a

modern structure of government, I should say.

We’ve got RCT [regimental combat team] commanders in the field

today who would love to get some CERP money and do a

sweetheart deal with this sheikh and that sheikh to buy off their

goodwill. CERP ought to be used by the commander for goodwill,

sweetheart deals favoring this sheikh or that sheikh. But that act

itself, the sweetheart deal, is an American version of the corruption

that Iraqis themselves are fed up with. . . . But it’s understandable.

We do it to save lives, our own kids, okay? And there’s nothing we

can do, just to get out of here as fast as we can, find a way of exiting,

spread around one last go-around of play money to the sheikhs, if

you will, say thank you very much, we’ve been here six, seven years,

it’s time for us to go home. . . .

[e Marines got it. I mean, General [ John F.] Kelly knew. He

understood, he saw what had to be done, when it had to be done.

You engage tribes, you beat the enemy. When the enemy is beaten,

then you’ve got to do civil capacity.[e tribes are still there.You still

have to have some sort of engagement with them, but they’re not

necessarily the future. . . .What I saw in ’06 was very impressive and

was the model for other MNDs to follow. You guys found the key.

You had a key, a force multiplier, with a little CERP money on that.

[ere’s nothing wrong with it. I’m not condemning that.[at’s fine,

at a certain stage, when you’re fighting a war. But, as time goes on,

you’ve got to make adjustments.

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Interview 20

Transition to Iraqi Control, Part IV
Ms. Carol J. Wilson

Al-Anbar Provincial Representative

United States Agency for International Development

August 2008 to August 2009

Ms. Carol J.Wilson arrived in al-Anbar Province as the provincial

representative for the United States Agency for International

Development [USAID] in August 2008. After growing up on a farm

in Iowa, she earned degrees from Iowa State University and the

University of Virginia. She participated in international development

as a Peace Corps volunteer before joining the U.S. Department of

Agriculture, managing projects in India,[ailand, and Europe during

her 10 years with that department. After serving more than 10 years

with USAID, Ms. Wilson first went to Iraq in July 2006, working in

the agency’s Baghdad office to provide technical support and to design

an agricultural program that would support the provincial

reconstruction teams and help Iraqi farmers gain better access to

overseas markets. Following that assignment, she went to Afghanistan

for a year before returning to Iraq.

In this interview, Ms. Wilson describes the economic and

agriculture programs that USAID has been providing to Iraqis to help

revitalize their economic and agricultural sectors.

Ms. Wilson was interviewed by Colonel Gary W. Montgomery

and Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams on 13 February

2009 at Camp Ramadi, Iraq.

Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S. McWilliams: Since last August

[2008] when you arrived, can you give us an idea of the scope of

work that you’re doing?

Ms. Carol J. Wilson: As the USAID [United States Agency for

International Development] rep, I started out at the embedded

PRT [provincial reconstruction team]. . . . We have four projects

here in Ramadi. One is the Community Stabilization Program.We

have a micro-plans institution here called al-Taqaddum, which is

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part of a [Tejar] program. We have the Inma* program that is

stimulating the mushroom factory and a little bit of other technical

assistance here, and then we have what we call the Iraq Program,

the Iraq Rapid Assistance Program [IRAP], which is designed to

be a flexible grant program, similar to CERP [Commander’s

Emergency Response Project] funds, and we have access to funding

on what we do, I guess immediate-term type of assistance.

So it’s my job just to oversee them, make sure that they do some

oversight, just make sure that the project is going in the right way,

provide some guidance to the team members on what type of

programs or proposals they may develop, try to shape it so you don’t

have a negative impact. You may do a short-term fix but have a

negative impact on the long term, so we’re trying to make sure that

we don’t do that inadvertently.[ere are times when we may make

a decision that’s strategic, and you say, “Well, we really do need to

fix this right now.” But I think that if you do that, you still need to

know if there’s going to be adverse effects in the long term, so you

can take action to correct that.

Colonel Gary W. Montgomery: How do you determine that—if it

will have an adverse impact in the long term?

Wilson: Some things we just know. Like, for example, giving out

grant money to people, if you go in and it’s right after a battle, and

you want to get people back on their feet, it’s a good thing. But if

you keep continuing to give out that money, then you completely

disrupt any financial system. Nobody will be looking at taking loans

and looking at making longer-term investments and making a

business so they can pay it back, give back a loan. Instead, what

you’ll see now is people just coming to us, asking for money, just

constantly wanting the money and thinking that we’re just going

to fix whatever it is that gets broken because we’ve been here fixing

things for so long that they’re just completely used to that, and

probably thinking, “Why spend my own money, why take a loan,

when I can get the Americans to pay for it?”

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Al-Anbar Awakening

* Inma is an Arabic word that means growth.
So that’s the sort of thing where we know that’s what’s going to

happen. We’ve had experiences in other countries. We know that

that’s what’s going to happen, but it’s the amount of time that you

do it. So that’s where we’re at now, trying to stop the grant

programs and get it into more of a normal development-assistance

type of program, working with banking systems, working with

financial institutions.

Getting people to pay for services, that’s another example. People

were wanting as part of the stabilization program, offering training

programs to people, whether it be English, computer training,

sewing, business training, whatever it may be. It may be well

intentioned to provide the people with a stipend, transportation

costs, etc., but what that does is then ruin any efforts of trying to

make a business center or a training center sustainable by charging

fees, because nobody’s going to want to pay the fee, because they’ve

always gotten that paid for. So that’s the sort of thing we’re trying

to grapple with right now. [ey’re just so used to getting things

paid for that if we offer a class and just say you have to pay your

own transportation, we have people who say, “No thank you. If

you’re not going to pay my transportation, I don’t want to go.” So

then you have to say, “Well, then, why should we offer the class? If

you’re not willing to come and even bring yourself to it, let alone

pay a fee for it, then why should we offer that class?”

McWilliams: You listed four programs. Could you describe those?

Wilson: Yes, the Community Stabilization Program, CSP, a lot of

people here refer to it as IRD. IRD is our implementing program,

International Relief and Development. [e Community

Stabilization Program was designed back in 2006. It got underway

in 2007, and it was done in collaboration with the military as part

of the counterinsurgency program. CSP has three areas they work

on: infrastructure; economic growth and youth; and business

development services. As part of the economic growth and youth

program, they have some vocational training programs. All of it

was really oriented toward employment generation, so it was

getting people back to work. Even the infrastructure programs were

about getting people back to work, and then the vocational training

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American Perspectives
was to teach them the skills they may need for the infrastructure

projects—masonry or bricklaying, masonry stuff, carpentry, other

types of skills.

And then the business development services, what we did with our

grants program, AID did support a grants program, but along with

that, we included business development training. So the person

would go through a training program on how to run a business, get

the grant, and then three months later, they’d come back for a

refresher course—after running the business for three months—on

marketing and other ways to make your accounting practices, make

your business more profitable. And so then they would do followup visits and checks on the business. We would also do direct

procurement, rather than just giving them the money directly, where

if they had whatever type of store, then we would buy the product

for them that they would then sell as part of the grant. So we tried

not to just give away the money, in order to track where it went.

Montgomery: When you said community stabilization, what do

you mean by that?

Wilson:[e Community Stabilization Program was a civilian effort

to come right along with the military [after violence or combat],

often in collaboration with the civil affairs program. And

oftentimes they would work together and divide up different areas,

based on expertise, to work with that community to get it back on

its feet again. So they were here in Ramadi working. [ey started

here in I think it was early-to-mid-2007, and at first, the

implementing, we had American staff that lived here on the base,

and then as soon as it got secure enough, then they moved outside.

I think they’ve said they’ve been out there a little over a year now,

so that would have been actually probably late 2007 when they

moved off the base and into town, into one of the villas. And then

they established their office. I think they said it was 150

employees—Iraqi staff—they had working directly for them

managing these different types of infrastructure and training

programs. Overall, that program has been fairly large throughout

the whole country. I think it’s like $850 million. So I’m not talking

about a small project when they’re doing these sort of things.

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Al-Anbar Awakening
[ey’re reaching out to a lot of people. So, for example, one of the

buildings we’re doing here in Ramadi right now is the library, and

that’s a $2 million project.

To give you an idea of the scale of it, when I look at our IRD staff,

I think they’re very brave, because these were Americans that were

working here, following directly after a military action, working

with the communities, trying to get them back on their feet. And

we’re working, and they have their bodyguards and stuff, but they’re

unarmed. [ey’re civilians. And to me, that’s part of the success

story. Right now, they’re living in Ramadi, and they’re moving

around in armored vehicles, and they’re guarded, but they’re still

moving around . . . they’re living in the city. We have five cities here

in Anbar, so they were in Ramadi, Haditha, Habbaniyah, and alQaim. So we’ve had Americans living in these cities probably the

same amount of time as here in Ramadi. We have American staff

out there. In some cases, I think like in Habbaniyah, though, they

did live with the Marines on their base there, FOB [forward

operating base].

Montgomery: I think the very fact that they’re out in town now

says a whole lot.

Wilson: I think so. . . . And they move around pretty freely.[ey’re

not wearing their vest and helmets [inaudible], and they’re moving

around, not having any problems.[eir biggest concern is if the IP

[Iraqi police] are just shooting off in the air, shooting their weapons

around. So to me, that’s where I look at it, as it definitely seems to

me the time for the regular USAID-type of programs to begin.

You agree with our decision makers that the stabilization program

needs to come to an end. It’s now time for the next generation of

programs, because our folks are definitely out there moving around.

McWilliams: So it’s a building-block approach?

Wilson: Exactly, and that’s where we have other partners that have

been nervous about coming up here, but I keep pointing to our

IRD staffs and [say] look, they’re here, living here, no problems.

Montgomery: Are you getting many NGOs [nongovernmental

organizations] coming into the country?

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American Perspectives
Wilson: Well, IRD is an NGO.[ey’re an international NGO. We

have different types of whether they’re for profit or not for profit.

IRD is a not-for-profit institution.[ey’re a large NGO that does

a lot of implementation of USAID-funded programs.[ey’re here.

CHF [Cooperative Housing Foundation] is another one that’s an

NGO, a large international NGO, but they’re here, and they’ve

been working in Anbar for quite some time. [eir approach has

been more under the radar screen, so while IRD was working very

closely with the civil affairs units, CAP, Community Action

Program, which has been implemented by CHF, was trying to

work under the radar. So they would work with political staff,

working with the communities, have no connection to American

staff at all on the military. So they didn’t meet with USAID people.

[ey didn’t meet with our military colleagues. [ey just definitely

kept separate. And that’s changing, too.[at was another argument

that we made, that’s like Anbar is now secure enough, people are

not under threat. [ey come out openly to meet with us, so there

is no need for the CAP program to remain secret. We need to now

know more about what’s going on.[ey need to coordinate with us

in advance, collaborate with us.

Montgomery: Oh, I see, it’s a matter of how you calculate the

allocation of funds and what you would expect from it.

Wilson: Yeah. And for a for-profit contractor, usually the way we

would work with them is at the direction of the government. It’s in

the government’s interest, so if we’re doing a project with them, we

have more control over that. If we’re working with a not-for-profit

institution, we do what we would call a cooperative agreement, so

that we have less oversight. It’s more their program. It’s more their

implementation, more their decisions. We still have input into their

work plan. [ey still have to meet government regulations and

requirements, but we put more of the burden on the implementer to

make some of those day-to-day decisions. Some people would say

that there’s more buy in that way, that since it’s more their program,

it’s more in their interests to make sure that there’s good results. But

I’ve found that it also depends on the people. We have contractors

that are working for us that care just as much about the results as a

not-for-profit, so it just depends on the way we manage it, I guess.

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Montgomery: Since they have less self-interest in it, then would

you say they’re given more latitude?

Wilson: Yeah, I think that’s pretty fair. A contractor would tend to

go into a risky situation because they would take the risk because

they want to make the profit. . . . We have Al-Taqaddum, it’s been

three branches—there’s one in Fallujah, one in Ramadi, and one

in al-Qaim. And they provide small loans to people, say between

$3,000 and $4,000 is the average size of the loan. And then people

repay that, and they pay a small fee. [ey try to avoid the interest

rates here to try to make them more fitting in with the Islamic

banking type of practices, but they’ll charge a fee, and it’s a sliding

fee. So in some ways, it’s almost similar to interest. You just pay it

up front.

McWilliams: So that’s available for anybody who needs to grow a

business or start a business?

Wilson: Right. And then some of the issues are what types of

collateral do people have? Do they always have access to collateral?

What do they provide? And especially if it’s a small business, then

there are ways if they do have a legitimate business, and it makes

it a lot easier to make the loan. [ey’ve given several loans for cars

because people want to start driving taxis, so they turn that into a

business. And that’s if they have a good-looking business plan, then

a lot of times they’ll take the risk. We have a really good repayment

rate here. I think it’s really high; it’s like 90 percent for repayment.

Some could argue in that case that they’re not taking enough risks,

they need to branch out and support more small businesses.

McWilliams: What other types of businesses are there?

Wilson:[ey’ve got taxis. I guess there have been a few women that

have taken loans out for hairstyling, hairdressing types of businesses.

Sewing seems to be popular. I’m not sure how many sewing centers

there are that are profitable, but it sure seems to be popular. People

talk about it a lot and want to set up sewing shops. I know of a

couple of women that are running some larger ones, and they sew

curtains for the hospitals and stuff like that, but they’ve gotten some

loans from us, loans and grants actually, in a couple of cases. We’ve

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American Perspectives
supported some agricultural type of loans, helping people buy

equipment. We keep experimenting with seeds and fertilizer. [at

one’s typically much more risky and harder to do. Even in the U.S.,

it’s harder to do, but we’re encouraging [that]. . . .

We’ve been trying to get the agriculture program, Inma, working

more in Anbar. We’ve had a slow start in getting that program up

and going and really reaching out into the provinces. [ey came

out last year and reestablished a mushroom factory. [Mantha Kirbit

had] a functioning mushroom factory before the war, and there’s

supposedly a good market for mushrooms, [but] part of the

problem is transportation. Because of the heat and everything, they

have to sell them daily. So he’s working on cold storage facilities

and trying to improve, get some cold storage trucks. . . . Once they

get that, then they can actually reach the Baghdad market. . . . So

it was helping him rehabilitate his facilities. [ey’re pretty much

just old and beat up. I don’t think anything was really bombed out,

but it was just pretty much neglected. And part of it was he wanted

to get a larger-sized business up and going because, again, it’s

employment generation that we’re looking at. In addition, it just

helps with the local market as well, which is very important.

McWilliams: And then your fourth program was the IRAP?

Wilson: Yeah. [e IRAP program is a small grants program pretty

much designed to assist the PRT technical officers in getting access

to funding. I think the maximum was $200,000.[ey’re going out

with their civil affairs counterparts, and they see something that

needs to be done. [ey didn’t have access to the CERP funds so

they could make a more immediate response. So it was a way for

USAID [and the] State Department to be able to have access to

that funding and be able to make a quick response.

We’ve used that to work along with the civil affairs units in some

cases. If they’re rehabilitating a school, maybe we’ll buy furniture

and books and outfit the school. In rehabilitating the library, we’re

also purchasing some furniture and some books for the library. In

order to support the elections, we funded three NGOs that were

then trained.[ey received all the training and got the certification,

the cards and everything, and then they became trainers who went

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out and reached out to other NGOs, who then went and started

letting people know this is—once we got the official ballots—here’s

the ballots, here’s how to understand them, here’s how you would

go and vote. Not crossing the line, of course, and telling them who

to vote for, but following the procedures. I think they said it was

30,000 people that were able to go and conduct their training or do

the outreach programs. . . . So that was pretty successful.

McWilliams: What are some of the cultural challenges that you

face here that you might not experience somewhere else? Are there

unique challenges here?

Wilson: Yes. I think the biggest one, and frustration that we have, is

being so disconnected from the community. Most places where we

would work, and where we would have [US]AID programs, it’s not

as dangerous, usually. We’re working in—crime notwithstanding;

we do work in places like South Africa that have pretty high crime

rates—but Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, any of

our Eastern European countries, we would be living, our officers

would be living in the community in town. You’d get to know the

neighbors. You’re going to the restaurants. You essentially become

a part of the community, so you’re interacting with them, and you

have a much closer understanding for the culture, for the language,

because you’d be out there living and working in that, and you would

have I guess an easier time of learning a language. [en also, [you

are] just much closer to the project implementation as well because

then you can see it first hand.

Here there’s all kinds of rumors that go around, and I’ll hear a

variety of stories about whether people really think IRD was

helpful or not. And some of that comes from the community that

didn’t get a project, so then they dislike IRD because they didn’t get

any—the contractor who didn’t get the contract, so that he’s going

to complain about the work. Or they supported what they call the

illegal councils, the councils that stayed versus the people that were

part of the provincial council that left, or the city councils that left,

and then they came back. So then you’ve got those divides in the

political parties and so, “Oh, you’re supporting that party, or that

party.” So if we were out there [as] a part of the community, then

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we would be interacting and seeing first hand, and we could talk

about it, and we could talk to people.

Here, we’re just so disconnected that we just hear the stories on

occasion, and we don’t really know where they’re coming from. You

kind of guess, but you don’t really know. And then from a USAID

perspective, we’re really reliant on our implementing partner—for

example, IRD—because they’re out there.[ey’re living out there.

So I’m really reliant on getting information from them. Usually,

it’s part of my job to provide some oversight, monitoring of their

work. Here I can do a little bit of it, but I can’t do it the way we

would normally do it.

McWilliams: Iraq was once referred to as a grain belt of the Middle

East. Is there a possibility of returning to that?

Wilson: I think maybe in some very specific ways. I think it could

be. I think they need to look harder at their irrigation systems and

what they want to do, and sustainability of those irrigation systems.

But putting up higher-value crops, similar to in California, the high

value—the broccoli, the tomatoes, cabbage, that sort of thing—

versus wheat. If you look at it from that perspective, [wheat is] not

economically supportable, in my opinion, for production here. So

at the higher value, I think they could do better.

Montgomery: What’s the shortcoming in irrigation systems?

Wilson: Some of that is looking at the recharge rates. In the U.S.,

with the [overall lock], for instance, we’re depleting it. I don’t know

what the recharge rate is and whatnot, but the scientists will look at

that.[ey would evaluate that.When I was in Afghanistan, that was

definitely an issue, and what the geologists would tell me is it

depends on if you’re pulling out what they call “old water,”or “ancient

water,” then you know it doesn’t recharge quickly, and so you

probably shouldn’t be using that to irrigate. You have to be careful.

Montgomery: I thought it all just came right out of the river.

Wilson: Some of it. I think they are using probably some to irrigate,

but usually they use a deep-water well, and so then you’re tapping

down into those aquifers, the underground rivers. And that’s where

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I think they do need to take a look at that. USAID has been asked

to rehabilitate some of the irrigation systems. So it was one of our

requirements to do an environmental impact assessment.[at’s one

of the things you check.

Because of the Oil for Food Program, it’s been a long time since

anybody’s really undertaken real scientific studies here. [at was

one of the reasons for the significant decrease in agricultural

production here was during the Oil for Food Program times, then

they didn’t get the inputs that they were used to getting as part of

what Saddam [Hussein] used to give out, [which] was free seeds,

and fertilizer, and tractors. It just got neglected, and during that

time period, my understanding was that they lost some of their

markets, and so it’s just over a 10-year period of time, it’s really

hard to get that back.

McWilliams: Right. Now, are you talking al-Anbar, or Iraq-wide?

Wilson: I believe that’s Iraqi-wide. I know definitely it’s had a

significant impact here in Anbar, especially if you look at the

markets. [e farmers have lost those markets to other traders, and

then once they get those traders that are used to working with

them, and they know them, it’s really hard to break back in. But I

know it did impact all of Iraq.

Montgomery: What do you deal with in governance?

Wilson: In governance, we have a lot of different areas we’re working

on. Specifically, we’re going to be working on training programs for

the new provincial council and the new governor, and we will tailormake those programs to whatever the needs of the council members

or the governor are, depending on who it is. If it’s somebody who

has no experience, we’ll be able to give them the type of programs

they need to get them up to speed. If it’s somebody who we’ve been

working with, and he’s pretty well educated and understands it, then

we can tailor-make some programs if they have specific questions

on some of the finer points.

[e provincial powers law is pretty broad, and we definitely don’t want

to interpret it for anybody, but if somebody had questions on types of

interpretation, then we could guide them to ways maybe in their own

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government where they could seek those types of clarifications, or give

them examples of how we’ve tried to clarify them in the U.S. or even

in another country, so that sort of thing. We’re doing some work with

civil society, trying to work with community groups since they’re not

used to working with their government and getting their needs

supported, working with the community groups on how to advocate

for changes in their community to the local government, to the

municipal-level government.

And then [we are] trying to train the municipal-level government

and the provincial government on how to listen to the constituents.

What does that mean? Because working in a top-down

environment, they’re just simply not used to taking that into account.

Why ask? So we have to educate them [that] this is the way people

will ask for things, and these are the appropriate ways that you can

respond. . . . So somebody’s just coming to—for example—coming

to complain that the schools are dirty. Yes, you’ll hire a cleaner, but

then how do you impact the overall problem? Do you give more

budget to the individual school? Are they going to be more topdown? Are they going to just hire the cleaners and then go out and

say, “Okay, you’re going to clean the whole school.” [We’re] just

giving them the type of options of the way they can respond.

Montgomery: Are they generally receptive to this, or do you have to

overcome a sense of they’ve already got an idea of how things are

going to work, in a way? Or “I’ll go to the sheikh,”that sort of thing?

Wilson: We hear a variety of things. I think that mostly what we’re

hearing is that the people want to be able to come to the

government and have a representative government, rather than just

relying on the sheikh, that they would like to have that. What’s

interesting is that we’ve been working with the ePRT [embedded

provincial reconstruction team], working with the municipal

government here. Mayor Latif [Obaid Ayada of Ramadi] and some

of his advisers, especially at first, his adviser would come and say,

“I’ve been to the schools. [e schools are dirty. Coalition forces

hired widows to clean the schools. We want you to hire more

widows.” Well, that’s a good example of something that you need

to start pushing the mayor and the DGs [director generals] of

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education on how to respond, rather than just asking us for the

funding to do that. “[at’s something you need to do. [at’s how

it works in America. Well, you’ve got to try it here, too.” And so

then, actually, they go off, and they’ll make a report, and they’ll

come back and say, “Well, we were able to do this. We were able to

get this fixed, we were able to do it.”

So I think it’s one of those things that I think they have it in their

mind, “It can’t be done,” then they’ll go do it, and it’ll work. But

then you have to keep reminding them, “Yes, it can be done,”

because then they’ll come back to you again and say,“No, no, no, you

can’t do it.”“Yeah, you can.” So I think that is a bright spot. I think

it is working by and large, but you’ve got to keep reminding them.

I’ve heard that story even on the larger scale with one of our budget

guys who said that when they did go to Baghdad, when they did

get the governor to go to Baghdad to fix a particular problem, it got

fixed. But then if you’re talking to the governor, he said,“Well, they

don’t listen to me. [ey won’t do it.” Well, that’s where you pick

your battles and you go push it. “Look, you had success before.”

Confidence-building, I guess, hand-holding [is what we’re doing].

Some people would say maybe that’s an example of it’s time for us

to back away—don’t do it.

Everything I’ve heard from my USAID supervisors, I think they

would agree with General [John F.] Kelly that it’s been a very good

and positive working relationship. I know that USAID has very

much enjoyed also working with the Marines, and I guess feeling,

I think in some ways it’s sort of a [compatible] relationship. I know

that the Marines are very action-oriented and practical. USAID

tends to try to be that way. We have our bureaucracy, but we’re also

project implementers.We go out, and we run programs.We may do

it a little differently, but we’re still program-oriented.

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Appendix

Acronyms and Abbreviations

I MEF I Marine Expeditionary Force

II MEF II Marine Expeditionary Force

ACE Air Combat Element

ANGLICO Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company

AO Area of Operation

AOR Area of Responsibility

APC Anbar People’s Committee

AQI/AQIZ Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Arty LnO Artillery Liaison Officer

ASR Alternative Supply Route

BAT Biometric Assessment Tool

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BIAP Baghdad International Airport

BCT Brigade Combat Team

BTT Border Transition Team

CA Civil Affairs

CAG Civil Affairs Group

CAP Combined Action Platoon

Casevac Casualty Evacuation

CBN Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear

Weapons

CentCom U.S. Central Command, Tampa, FL

CERP Commander’s Emergency Relief Program

CFLCC Coalition Forces Land Component

Command

CG Commanding General

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CHF Cooperative Housing Foundation

CJTF-7 Combined Joint Task Force 7

CLC Concerned Local Citizens

CMO Civil-Military Operations

CMOC Civil-Military Operations Center

CNN Cable News Network

CO Commanding Officer

COA Course of Action

COC Combat Operations Center

COIN Counterinsurgency

COP Combat Outpost

CPA Coalition Provisional Authority

CSP Community Stabilization Program

CSS Combat Service Support

DCG Deputy Commanding General

Det Detachment

DG Director General

DoD U.S. Department of Defense

DoS U.S. Department of State

ECP Entry Control Points

ECRA Emergency Council for the Rescue of alAnbar

EOD Explosive Ordnance Disposal

ePRT Embedded Provincial Reconstruction

Team

ERU Emergency Response Unit

EWS Expeditionary Warfare School, Quantico,

VA

FAO Foreign Area Officer

FLOT Forward Line of Troops

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FLT Fallujah Liason Team

FOB Forward Operating Base

FSSG Force Service Support Group

GCC Gulf Cooperation Council

GCE Ground Combat Element

GDP Gross Domestic Product

GOI Government of Iraq

H&S Headquarters & Support

HUMINT Human Intelligence

HVI High Value Individual

IA Iraqi Army

IC Intelligence Community

ICDC Iraqi Civil Defense Corps

ID Identification

IECI Independent Election Committee of Iraq

IED Improvised Explosive Device

IIP Islamic Iraqi Party

IO Information Operations

IP Iraqi Police

IRAP Iraq Rapid Assistance Program

IRD International Relief and Development

ISF Iraqi Security Forces

ISR Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance

ITAO Iraq Transition Assistance Office

IZ International Zone, Baghdad [“Green

Zone”]

JCC Joint Coordination Center

JMD Joint Manning Document

JSS Joint Security Stations

JTAC Joint Tactical Air Controller

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KIA Killed in Action

LAPD Los Angeles Police Department

LD Line of Departure

LNO Liaison Officer

LOC Line of Communication

LOO Line of Operation

LRAD Long Range Acoustic Device

MAGTF Marine Air-Ground Task Force

MARCENT Marine Corps Central Command, Tampa,

FL

MARDIV Marine Division

MarForPac Marine Forces Pacific

MCIA Marine Corps Intelligence Activity

MEU Marine Expeditionary Unit

MLG Marine Logistics Unit

MML Mohammed Mahmoud Latif

MNC-I Multi National Corps-Iraq

MND Multinational Division

MNF Multinational Force

MNF-I Multi National Force-Iraq

MNF-W Multi National Force-West

MNF-West Multi National Force-West

MOD Minister of Defense

MOS Military Occupational Specialty

MP Military Police

MSR Main Supply Route

MSI Mutamar Sahwa al-Iraq

MTT Military Transition Team

NCO Noncommissioned Officer

NGO Nongovernmental Organization

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NPR National Public Radio

O&M Operations and Maintenance

OGA Other Government Agency

OIF I Operation Iraqi Freedom I

OIF II Operation Iraqi Freedom II

OODA Observe, Orient, Decide, Act

OPA Office of Provincial Authority

OP Observation Posts

OpsO Operations Officer

OVR Operation Vigilant Resolve

P&R Programs and Resources

PA Public Address

PAO Public Affairs Officer

PDOP Provincial Director of Police

PFT Physical Fitness Test

PIC Provincial Iraqi Control

PGM Precision Guided Missile

PJCC Provisional Joint Coordination Center

PM Prime Minister

PPE Personal Protective Equipment

PRT Provincial Reconstruction Team

PSD Personal Security Detail

PsyOps Psychological Operations

PTT Police Transition Team

QRF Quick Reaction Force or Quick Reaction

Funds

R&S Reconnaissance and Surveillance

RCT Regimental Combat Team

RFF Request for Forces

RIP Relief in Place

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RIPTOA Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority

ROC Required Operation Capacity

ROE Rules of Engagement

RPG Rocket-Propelled Grenade

RTI Research Triangle Institute

SAA Sahwa al-Anbar

SAI Sahwa al-Iraq

SASO Stability and Support Operations

SeaBees Construction Battalions (CBs)

SIGINT Signals Intelligence

SecDef Secretary of Defense

SOFA Status of Forces Agreement

SOI Sons of Iraq

SPTT Special Police Transition Team

SVBIED Suicide Vehicle-Borne Improvised

Explosive Device

TACON Tactical Control

TECOM Training and Education Command

TO Table of Organization or Task

Organization

TOA Transfer of Authority

TPT Tactical PsyOps [Psychological

Operations] Team

TTP Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures

UN United Nations

USAID United States Agency for International

Development

VBIED Vehicle-Borne Improvised Explosive

Device

WMD Weapons of Mass Destuction

XO Executive Officer

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About the Editors

Chief Warrant Officer-4 Timothy S.

McWilliams, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve,

served in Fallujah in 2004 as a logistics

officer. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps

History Division in 2007 and has deployed

to both Iraq and Afghanistan as a field

historian. McWilliams has worked in the

marketing and communications field and

recently earned a master’s degree in history from California State

University, Chico.

Lieutenant Colonel Kurtis P.

Wheeler, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve,

deployed to Iraq during 2006-2007 as a

field historian for the U.S. Marine Corps

History Division and has also collected

for the History Division in the Republic

of Georgia. Commissioned in 1989, he

served with 10th Marines in Operation

Desert Storm and with the tank and civil affairs communities as a

reserve officer. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard

University and is the history department chairman and teacher in

Cazenovia, New York.

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