By Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison
Ar Ramadi, capital city of al Anbar province, has long been known to the people who fight here as the worst place in the world. I remember seeing an old friend in the dining facility in Kuwait before we got here. He asked where we were going in Iraq. When I told him, he cringed and told me he was sorry. He had never been here, but he had heard enough about it during his two tours.
Ar Ramadi is different from many other places in Iraq. You get the package deal here. The improvised-explosive-device threat is severe and constant, everything from "tomato-can" IEDs targeting dismounted patrols to enormous subsurface IEDs that will disable an M1 Abrams tank and reduce an armored Humvee to several pieces of twisted wreckage. There are so many IED cells here that it's not unheard of for an explosive ordnance disposal team to arrive, blow an IED, and then find more along the same route they came on their way back. The enemy is also very fond of improvised rocket launchers and RPGs. On any given day here, there are more projectiles flying through the air than any given NFL Sunday in Veterans Stadium. You can tell when a new shipment comes in. They're not prone to saving them for a rainy day.
Winston Churchill once said there was nothing quite as invigorating as being shot at without result. I agree completely. There is nothing as exciting as a gunfight that we all survive, and unless you've been in similar situations, you would be amazed what you can go through and come out untouched. You can be pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire and RPGs for an hour, hurling grenades and praying for the tanks or Apaches to hurry up and bring some hell down on the enemy so you can live to see your family again, and laugh and joke about it later that night.
You also can have the quiet of a nice autumn day split with the crack of a sniper's rifle and know before a body hits the ground that it's happened again. That single shot can be more frightening than any cataclysmic barrage of lead. When that happens in the battalion, the laughing stops and the bravado dries up, and you think about killing a little more than usual for a while. Even if you didn't know the fallen soldier personally, it's hard to ignore the terrible potential of a sniper on the loose. I've spent too many hours in a deer stand not to think about how easy it is for someone to be watching from a rubbled building or an open window.
The enemy is varied. Predictably, there are plenty of amateurs filling the ranks. In a city with very few jobs, very little income and a whole lot of time, young men go where the action is. Money, excitement, ideology - it doesn't matter. If they pick up a weapon, they make their decision and live or die by it.
There is a disproportionate population of al-Qaeda here. Many are foreigners from the usual places. They are relatively well-funded and equipped, which is not surprising. A little more surprising is how organized and well-trained they can be. I heard numerous times before deploying how bad Iraqi marksmanship was, how their favorite method is to "spray and pray" around a street corner before breaking contact. There is plenty of that going on, but there have also been many coordinated attacks, often staged by a combined arms team, with direct fire, indirect fire, rocket attacks and IED cells. They have attacked multiple targets simultaneously, and often target follow-on forces and first responders, such as medical personnel trying to evacuate casualties. Some of their snipers are deadly and elusive. I've taken almost as much accurate machine-gun fire as inaccurate.
What they're best at is intimidating the local population. Through murder, assault and threats, they force the complicity of any locals who don't support them already. They have no compunction about engaging U.S. forces from some random civilian's house, sometimes bringing a hail of ordnance down on people who are just trying to raise their families in the worst possible place. Ordinary people may not get it, but when experienced firsthand it's the easiest thing in the world to understand.
It's too late to say I'm going to bring all my soldiers home, which was my naive goal when we first arrived, but I'm bringing everyone home who I can, and I won't hesitate to rain hell on a house just because somebody inside might not be shooting at us.
These are not people you let escape if you can help it. They are not "freedom fighters" as some ridiculously stupid people have suggested. These people regularly kill whole Iraqi families, cut off the heads of Iraqi civilians, and show complete disregard for any life but their own. The only freedom they fight for is the freedom to maintain the law of the gun. Most Iraqis know this and will tell us enthusiastically that they wish we would hurry up and win, but they'll only tell us behind closed doors, usually in the absence of other Iraqis, for fear of informers. Many stop short of actually helping us. If they are found out, they're almost certain to be killed.
Earlier this year, we apparently lost our official title as "the most dangerous city in the world." I can't remember which publication awards this dubious honor, which this year went to some other Middle East vacation spot. Ar Ramadi has had the title for a few years. At the beginning of our tour, I would have said, "Don't worry, we'll get it back."
Now I'm not so sure.
A corner has been turned. Every soldier, sailor, airman and Marine in Ar Ramadi, along with a few hundred thousand Iraqi civilians, knows it and is better off for it.
A corner, not the corner. Unfortunately, this war is still very much in progress. If certain people in the legislative branch are bound and determined to lose it, I'm sure they'll be able to, but it won't be lost by us. While they point fingers and manipulate public opinion in our name, we are doing what we came here to do: fight and win.
Again, I don't want anyone to think that Ar Ramadi is a nice place to live now, or even that it will be anytime soon, but in the past six months there have been remarkable changes across vast areas of the city. With an intelligently aggressive strategy, Task Force Manchu has put boots on the ground all over the eastern half of the city and severely limited the insurgents' ability to move and operate freely. Clearing sectors first and then establishing joint security stations with the Iraqi army and Iraqi police, assets and troops are freed up to move on to the next sector without losing control of ground already taken. Places like (Observation Post) Eagle's Nest, OP Hotel and others that were extremely high-adventure in the beginning don't receive the almost-daily attacks of the recent past.
Responsibility is shifting to the Iraqi army and police. The Iraqi army's competence varies in each battalion, but I've fought alongside some very good units and officers who have seen combat throughout Iraq and learned valuable lessons the hard way. Some other units have learning to do but are making progress with the assistance of U.S. Army and Marine training teams. These small teams don't operate in some remote training facility; they walk the streets day and night on combat patrols, often far from other U.S. forces.
Until recently, it was next to impossible to get the local population to join the Iraqi police. Signing on was a sure way to become a target and put your family in harm's way. With the help of local sheiks and support from U.S. forces, a legitimate Iraqi police force has been established and trained and now operates stations throughout Ar Ramadi. As security is established, jobs are created, and the basic needs of civilization are restored. The life and death of being an insurgent thug should become less attractive to the next generation.
Maybe the biggest challenge that lies ahead for Ar Ramadi is the corruption that almost seems bred into these people. It's surprising how unsurprised Iraqis are when they get shafted by people who are supposed to be on their side. After conducting a four-day clearing operation, one of the new Iraqi policemen informed me that he hadn't been paid for a while because he wasn't related to the sheik. It wasn't the first time I'd heard that story. As more government jobs become available, it's almost guaranteed to get worse unless those who profit from it decide to stop. Not likely. We'll see.
How do you succeed in a lawless town like Ramadi? The day I signed the papers to join the Army 12 years ago, a crusty old NCO at the processing station told me, "Just remember, there are only two kinds of people in the Army: the infantry, and support for the infantry."
First, you get out of your armored vehicle once in a while and operate as the light infantry battalion that you are. The insurgents aren't afraid of our Humvee gun trucks. They know how to attack them and slip away before effective fire is returned. A Humvee can't hunt down the enemy in many places because of our own obstacles. On the other hand, seeing several companies of infantry on the ground seems to scare the hell out of them. They will fight just long enough to figure out that we aren't playing around, and then they try to blend in to the population. Then it falls to us to try to distinguish the bad from the good. It gets easier the more support the locals give us.
I have plenty of respect for the other branches and specialties in all the services. Tanks, aviation and indirect fire have all saved lives here - my own a few times - and contributed greatly to the task force's success. Without all the support personnel, we wouldn't be able to shoot, move, communicate or sustain ourselves. But in the end, as it always has been, the infantry holds the ground that the Army takes. In today's war, holding ground goes beyond planting your feet in the bottom of a foxhole. It means retaining control of any given area against a slippery urban enemy who, to American eyes, blends in well against the population. You need Iraqi eyes and ears to be willing to participate in their own liberation. The infantry is the face of that liberation to the locals. The best units do their best not to alienate or unnecessarily aggravate the people who can help us. It's not unusual, once security has been established, to sit down and have chai - hot strong sweet tea - and hubbus - kind of like a half-inch-thick bread/tortilla - with a family you just scared the crap out of.
Kicking in doors and raiding random houses can be exciting and sometimes productive, but it doesn't really endear you to the population. There are times it's necessary, and the Iraqis generally understand that, but it's just as necessary to find out who might know a name or a house that will pay bigger dividends to hit. During our last sector clearance, an Iraqi man I had just questioned in broken Arabic about an IED placed while we were there actually left his house in broad daylight and walked up several streets to our location so he could let us know about some vehicles the insurgents had parked at another house when they scattered. While the guy might have shortened his life expectancy considerably, this is the kind of thing that wins against an insurgency. The insurgents can succeed without the active support of most of the population, as long as the people don't actively support us either. Once Iraqis start to participate significantly in cleaning up their own city, the insurgents are finished, whether they know it or not.
Sgt. 1st Class Jack Robison is a U.S. Army infantry platoon sergeant with D Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, deployed to Ar Ramadi, Iraq, in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
