CAMP VICTORY, Iraq, 10 August 2004 — Early in the evening on the second day of fighting in Najaf last week, Gen. George W. Casey, the top US military officer in Iraq, brought his subordinate commanders throughout Iraq together in a secure video teleconference to discuss the escalating violence.
US Marines were gaining ground against Moqtada Al-Sadr’s forces during a pitched battle in Iraq’s holiest city, yet the fighting had begun spreading into key Shiite cities in the south, and US commanders feared that the violence could escalate to the bloody levels of April’s uprisings.
Midway through the teleconference, a British officer giving a situation report from Nassiryah — a southern town that has been the location of insurgent attacks throughout the day — reported that his biggest worry was that the Iraqi governor of the city had lost some of his resolve and was trying to negotiate a truce with the insurgents to get Italian troops out of the city center.
The governor, the British officer reported, had ‘’gone slightly wobbly.”
Sitting in leather chairs inside the high-tech Joint Operations Center, or JOC, at Camp Victory adjacent to Baghdad International Airport, where US and coalition officers run the daily operations of the 138,000 foreign troops in Iraq, the commanders considered the British officer’s report. Then, Maj. Gen. Andrew Graham, deputy commander of Multinational Corps-Iraq and the top British officer in the country, leaned into his microphone. ‘’Our job is to support the governor,” said Graham, a cerebral, soft-spoken commander who has the look of an Oxford don in combat fatigues. ‘’But,” he added, ‘’not to give any ground and not to let him wobble too much.”
Graham’s comment about the situation in Nassiryah encapsulated the complexities of the entire mission US-led forces in Iraq face more than a month after transferring sovereignty to a fragile Iraqi interim government.
As fighting continues in Najaf, a military force eager to fade into the background and give the Iraqis the starring role securing their own country has been forced to remain on center stage by the bloody and stubborn insurgency. For US commanders, it is a difficult and dangerous balance. On one hand, they must coax Iraqi officials and Iraqi security forces into the lead to take on the insurgents. Yet on the other hand, the dicey security situation demands that they use the vastly superior forces and weaponry at their disposal to try to keep the violence from spiraling out of control. And, top officers say, the events in Najaf are a critical test of the post-June 28 security environment, where US troops in Iraq remain strangers in a strange land.
‘’It’s important that the Iraqis know they can count on us to assist them in these challenges,” said Brig. Gen. William Troy, chief of staff for Multinational Corp-Iraq, or MNC-I. ‘’Because this is not going to be the last one.” Throughout the fighting in Najaf, what had been a low hum of activity at the command center at Camp Victory has been replaced by frenetic briefings and constant communication with commanders both in the holy city and throughout southern Iraq. Within the JOC, housed inside the gold and marble encrusted Al-Faw Palace at Camp Victory, officers on the amphitheater’s nine elevated platforms tap away on laptops, watch live video of insurgent formations beamed from a Predator drone aircraft, and anxiously monitor radio traffic among front line units.
From a bank of computers in the center of the room, Army Col. Bob Pricone, the MNC-I’s chief of operations, conducts an orchestra of millions of dollars of communication technology. Rarely without at least one telephone pressed against his ear, Pricone relays a stream of information from far-flung combat areas to other officers inside the JOC.
And, on a giant video screen at the front of the JOC, a grim reminder of the perils that remain in Iraq for foreign troops: A running chronicle of the day’s mortar, rocket and roadside bomb attacks, and the casualties they have caused.
The continued death toll for US troops in Iraq is a paradox of modern conflict: The power of expensive and high tech weapons are too often neutralized by fighters using the most rudimentary tactics — such as an artillery round hidden inside the carcass of a dead animal, triggered to explode as a US convoy passes.
And, although US military forces now train extensively for urban combat, the insurgents hidden in Iraq’s crowded streets have a built-in advantage. Even more reason, US commanders say, to get larger number of Iraqi forces on the street.
During periodic secure video teleconferences (VTCs) with Gen. Casey’s headquarters in Baghdad’s Green Zone, the officers in the JOC give operational updates to the four star commander.
At a VTC on Aug. 6, Gen. Troy gave Casey his report on the Najaf fighting after just returning from the city on a US Army helicopter. The Marines were making good progress pushing Al-Sadr’s forces back toward the holy sites, Troy said, yet the insurgent defenses inside the cemetery adjacent to the Imam Ali Mosque make it difficult for US forces to launch strikes against the bulk of Al-Sadr’s army. ‘’That cemetery is a tough nut to crack,” Troy told Casey. ‘’There are all sorts of caves and other places to hide.”
Complicating matters, intelligence officers reported that insurgent forces from Baghdad, Fallujah and Amarah had been able to skirt US military roadblocks encircling Najaf and reinforce Al-Sadr’s Mahdi army.
In response, Casey expressed concern that the small Marine unit fighting in Najaf might not have enough reinforcements at its disposal, yet officers inside the JOC responded to the general that the tank battalion of the US Army’s 1st Calvary recently dispatched south from Baghdad toward Najaf should be enough to bolster the firepower to the US forces fighting in the city center.
The decision about Al-Sadr’s fate remains one of the most complex for Allawi’s government, as Iraqi officials must weigh their desires to deal with a thorn in their side while not alienating the legions of his supporters in the Shiite community.
US officers in Iraq sometimes bristle at the glacial pace at which decisions among politicians are often made. And, commanders who once had carte blanche to run operations throughout the country now have to build the wishes and sensitivities of Iraqi politicians into their battle plans.
Metz expresses confidence that despite its limitations and uncertainties, this arrangement is the only way that Iraq will be able to govern itself — allowing US troops to eventually depart the country.
‘’As much as I would love the Iraqis to love me, and my doctrine tells me I want to win the hearts and minds, I know I’m not going to do that,” he said. ‘’What I’m looking for is Iraqis that will step up to the plate and be leaders. And we’re beginning to find them.”
