The Fallujah Brigade How the Marines are pacifying an Iraqi hot spot.

BY BRENDAN MINITER Tuesday, June 1, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

In Iraq, apparently no news is good news. Two months ago everyone was talking about Fallujah. Four American citizens had been brutally murdered, and then a raging mob dragged their bodies through the streets and strung them up from a bridge. Every mosque in the city was calling for jihad, while the local police and fire departments ceased to exist. Then two days into offensive operations, the Marines suddenly seemed to halt their advance. Fallujah quickly became a metaphor for everything that was going wrong in Iraq.

Today, however, the city of 200,000 is relatively quiet, and there's little reporting on why. To find out how the Marines were able to pacify a city in the heart of the Sunni Triangle--despite accusations that they were shrinking from a fight for political reasons--I spoke with Col. John Coleman, who is in Fallujah and is chief of staff for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which is in charge of about one-third of the land mass of Iraq. What he said revealed a continuing battle in Iraq that appears neither hopeless nor without progress. In speaking with Col. Coleman it quickly became clear that many of the images of the war that trickle back through the media and reports of "cutting deals" with insurgents are often out of context. This is a sentiment Navy Secretary Gordon England also sounded last week in a speech over lunch at the National Press Club. Before taking over in Fallujah, the Marines identified 28 individuals who were leading the insurgency in and around Fallujah. To date the Marines have killed or captured 27 of them, he said. The coalition is clearly winning.


As they were battling through the city two months ago, the Marines realized they could easily crush the insurgency in Fallujah but in the process would "rubble the city." That would leave thousands of Marines patrolling the city, repairing infrastructure and trying to build working relationships with the inhabitants who remained. "That doesn't work us out of a job," Col. Coleman told me. Nor would it leave the Marines free to conduct other operations. What they needed to do was drive wedges into the enemy ranks--divide and conquer. From studying the enemy, the Marines realized the insurgents can be separated into five disparate groups with widely varying goals: foreign fighters (some of whom are very skilled bomb makers), religious extremists, violent criminals released from prison by Saddam and willing to kill for money, Saddam loyalists (those Col. Coleman described as "bloody up to their elbows" in the old regime) and former military personnel.

The Saddam-look-alike former general who turned up to help coalition forces in Fallujah notwithstanding, that last group offered the best opportunity. It turns out there are a lot of former military personnel in Fallujah. These are mostly Sunni men who were professional soldiers and are patriotic and proud of their military service. Many sat out the invasion last year believing the coalition's promise that if they abandoned Saddam, they would have a future in the new Iraq. But since the fall of the regime, the coalition hadn't provided them with any opportunity for meaningful work. As a consequence, many were joining the insurgency.

That's when a former Iraqi general stepped forward and promised the Marines that within 24 hours he could assemble 300 Iraqis ready to battle the insurgents. The next day he met his promise and within a few days the ranks of the brigade swelled to 900 men. Col. Coleman tells me there are so many former Iraq soldiers willing to fight insurgents that the "Fallujah Brigade" could easily grow to several thousand if the Marines would let it.

Among other things, this brigade became a liaison between the coalition and the local imams, sheiks and Fallujah city fathers. One by one these groups were peeled away from the insurgents. Now none of the mosques in Fallujah are calling for jihad, local politicians are coordinating with coalition forces in rebuilding city infrastructure--the Marines have approximately $500 million to spend in Iraq--and the Fallujah Brigade is patrolling the streets. Ninety percent of the intelligence the Marines get on insurgents comes from Iraqi sources.

The secret was to make "good hearted" Iraqis into stakeholders in a peaceful Fallujah. The unreported story in Iraq is that this insurgency would continue uninterrupted even if coalition forces withdrew tomorrow. It's not an anticoalition insurgency as much as it is a war against the establishment of a peaceful, stable society in Iraq.

The Fallujah Brigade, however, doesn't have free rein. The Marines constantly test it to make sure it is fulfilling the coalition's goals. These tests include submitting to civilian rule, taking large-caliber weapons off the streets, ensuring the rule of law is prevailing in the city, working with and positively influencing city fathers, and adhering to all the Geneva Conventions and rules of war that the Marines themselves must follow. So far the brigade is passing these tests. But one area in which it must do better is helping to investigate, capture and prosecute those responsible for killing and then mutilating the four Americans in March. If the brigade ever fails to meet these tests, Col. Coleman says it will be disbanded. And if it is to live on past the June 30 handover, it must also be sanctioned by the interim government.


After seeing American citizens dragged through the streets a few months ago, many likely expected to see the Marines drop the sledgehammer in Fallujah. But the truth is that all branches of the U.S. military are able to employ more surgical strikes when the situation calls for it. "The military is a pretty educated force," Col. Coleman told me. "What you may be witnessing is that our toolkit is fairly broad these days." Col. Coleman admits using the Fallujah Brigade wasn't necessarily the Marines' first preference and he's not yet convinced that it will ultimately prove to be a model worth replicating around the country. But, he said, coalition forces learn from their operations and if the coalition is to build a stable country, "everything we do here should endeavor to put an Iraqi lead up front." Mr. Miniter is assistant editor of OpinionJournal.com. His column appears Tuesdays.