War by Fits and Starts

Why Fallujah won't be the last bloody battle in the race to pacify Iraq in time for its elections

By Bill Powell Monday, Nov. 22, 2004

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    Critical to that plan is making sure Fallujah stays secure once the insurgents are routed. Toward that end, the Pentagon says money will start to flow into the city as soon as the military operation is over. The Pentagon says it has some $100 million ready to pour into a variety of civil works in Fallujah, including improvements in water, sewage and electrical systems as well as the construction of schools and health clinics. Army Lieut. General Thomas Metz, U.S. ground-forces commander in Iraq, says it will take "weeks, maybe months, to get the city to a normal operating level."

    Once Fallujah is pacified, the U.S. plans to rely on the newly trained Iraqi police and national guard forces to perform the bulk of security tasks required to begin the delivery of reconstruction aid. That transition won't be easy. Among ordinary citizens, there is almost no confidence that the Iraqis will be up to the task, and they are almost certain to face fresh attacks. "Let the Americans think they are winning," a fighter in Fallujah told TIME. "We are not going anywhere."

    The whack-a-mole strategy may already be getting its first test in Mosul. The city is home to a heterogenous population of 1 million--Sunni, Kurd and Turkoman--and for months after the invasion was viewed as one of the occupation's few success stories. But locals warn that the city is slipping out of control. Foreign terrorists streaming across the border from Syria have joined forces with a Baathist resistance stocked with unemployed ex-soldiers. Insurgent attacks have grown significantly in number and lethality in recent months, and at least two or three assassination victims arrive each day at al-Salaam Hospital, the city's largest, doctors say. After insurgents staged attacks against six police stations in the city last week, a unit involved in the U.S. assault on Fallujah had to peel off and head to Mosul to help put down the unrest there. Local political leaders fear that the violence may make it impossible to organize elections in Mosul by January.

    The risk for the U.S. is that, rather than make the Sunni triangle secure for democracy, the assault on Fallujah may instead inflame Sunnis and scatter insurgents across a wider area, which could scuttle hopes of broad Sunni participation in the voting. The Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political party in Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's interim government withdrew last week, saying it could not abide the attack on Fallujah. Meanwhile, the influential Association of Muslim Scholars, a Sunni group, has called for a total boycott of the elections. The association's leader, Harith al-Dhari, told TIME he was "very close to calling for jihad" against the Americans and the Allawi government.

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