Second Battle of Fallujah

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Operation Phantom Fury
Part of the Iraq War

A building in Fallujah destroyed by air strike during the battle.
Date November 7 - December 23, 2004
Location Fallujah, Iraq
Result Decisive U.S. and Iraqi victory
Combatants
Flag of the United States United States
Iraqi Security Forces		 Mujahideen Shura of al-Falluja
Al-Qaeda in Iraq
Commanders
Flag of the United States Richard F. Natonski Abdullah al-Janabi
Omar Hussein Hadid
Strength
8,000 (including 5,000 non-combat troops) 4,000 - 5,000 (combatants)
Casualties
(December 23, 2004)
U.S.:
95 killed, 560 wounded[1][2]
Iraqi:
18 killed, 62 wounded		 (December 23, 2004)
1,350+ killed (U.S. est.)
1,500 captured[3][4][5]
Iraq War
Invasion – Post-invasion (Insurgency – Civil war) Battles & operations – Bombings and terrorist attacks

The Second Battle of Fallujah (code-named Operation Al-Fajr - "The Dawn" in Arabic, and Operation Phantom Fury) was a joint U.S.-Iraqi offensive led by the U.S. Marine Corps against the Iraqi insurgency stronghold in the city of Fallujah, authorized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Government. The U.S. military called it "the heaviest urban combat since the Battle of Hue City in Vietnam."[6]

This operation was the second major operation in Fallujah. Earlier, in April 2004, Coalition Forces began Operation Vigilant Resolve in order to capture or kill insurgent elements considered responsible for the deaths of a Blackwater Security team. When Coalition Forces (a majority being US Marines) fought into the center of the city, the Iraqi government requested for control of the city be turned over to an Iraqi-run local security force (which then began stockpiling weapons and building complex defenses across the city during Summer 2004).

Contents

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Fallujah was one of the most peaceful areas of the country just after the fall of Saddam. There was very little looting, and the new mayor of the city, Taha Bidaywi Hamed, selected by local tribal leaders, was staunchly pro-American. Pre-operation timeline leading is as follows:

  • 28 April 2003. A crowd of 200 people defied the curfew and gathered outside a local school to protest the presence of foreign forces in the city. This escalated as gunmen allegedly fired upon US troops from the protesting crowd and U.S. Army soldiers, from the 3rd Battalion of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division returned fire. There were no Army or Coalition casualties in the incident.
  • 1 May 2003: President Bush proclaims the end of "major combat operations in Iraq."
  • 28 April 2004: Operation Vigilant Resolve ends with an agreement that the local population would keep resistance fighters out of the city. The Fallujah Brigade under the command of a former Baathist general and composed of local Iraqis is set up by the U.S. forces to take over the city.
  • 24 September 2004: A senior U.S. official tells ABC News that catching Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is of the highest priority. The military discloses his location as "Fallujah, a town about 40 miles west of Baghdad," and estimates his troops at 5,000 men, mostly non-Iraqis.[7]

  • 6 November 2004: U.S. Marines stage just north of Fallujah. The city, having now been under complete insurgent control with no American presence since April, there are a large numbers of booby traps and IEDs constructed and set in place. Additionally, elevated sniper positions were created along with heavily fortified defensive positions throughout the city, in preparation for a major offensive.
  • 23 December 2004: Last pockets of resistance are neutralized, three Marines are killed in the last skirmish, along with 24 insurgents. Operation Phantom Fury ends having been the bloodiest battle in the Iraq War to date.
  • January, 2005: American Marines begin leaving the city.
Marines from Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 14th Marines an activated reserve unit, operate the 155 mm M198 howitzer in November 2004. The battery was based at Camp Fallujah, Iraq and was supporting Operation Phantom Fury. Photo credit: USMC photo by LCpl Samantha Jones.
Marines from Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 14th Marines an activated reserve unit, operate the 155 mm M198 howitzer in November 2004. The battery was based at Camp Fallujah, Iraq and was supporting Operation Phantom Fury. Photo credit: USMC photo by LCpl Samantha Jones.

Before beginning their attack, American and Iraqi forces had established checkpoints around the city to prevent anyone from entering the city and intercept insurgents attempting to flee.

In addition, overhead imagery was used to prepare maps of the city for use by the attackers. American units were augmented with Iraqi translators to assist them in the planned fight. After weeks of withstanding scarce air strikes and artillery bombardment, the militants holed up in the city appeared somewhat vulnerable to a direct attack, and the U.S. Marines were ready to finish the job they had been forced to abort the prior spring.

Ground operations began on the night of November 7, 2004 with Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion and one U.S. Marine Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion attacking from the west and south, capturing Fallujah General Hospital and villages opposite the Euphrates River along Fallujah's western edge. The capture and closure of the hospital caused much controversy, concerning whether or not it was a contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The same unit, operating under the command of the U.S. Army III Armored Corps, then moved on the western approaches to the city securing the Jurf Kas Sukr Bridge. These initial attacks, however, were little more than a diversion, intended to distract and confuse the rebels defending the city.

U.S. soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, prepare to enter a secured building during fighting in Fallujah.
U.S. soldiers from 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, prepare to enter a secured building during fighting in Fallujah.

Two Marine Regimental Combat Teams, RCT 1 and RCT 7, comprising the 1st and 7th Marine Regiments, launched their attack along the northern edge of the city. They were spear-headed by two Army mechanized Infantry battalions, 2-7(Mechanized) and 2-2(Mechanized). The force committed to the assault totaled four Marine battalions with the US Army mechanized battalions in support.

The assault began in the early hours of November 8, 2004 with an intense bombing followed by an attack on the main train station that the Marines used as a staging point for follow-on forces. By that afternoon, under the protection of intense air cover, Marines had entered the Hay Naib al-Dubat and al-Naziza districts. Shortly after nightfall on November 9, 2004, Marines were reportedly along Highway 10 in the center of the city. While most of the fighting subsided by November 13, 2004, Marines continued to face determined resistance from the enemy in and around the city.

By November 16, 2004, after nine days of fighting, the Marine command described the action as mopping up pockets of resistance. Sporadic fighting continued, nevertheless, until December 23, 2004.

After the assault elements returned to Camp Fallujah, the Army and the Marines shared a joint celebration of a hard fought victory and the Marine Corps (November 10th) Birthday.

Despite its success, the battle was not without controversy. On November 16, 2004, NBC News aired footage that showed an American Marine, with 3rd Battalion 1st Marines, shooting dead a wounded Iraqi fighter. In this video, the Marine was heard claiming that the Iraqi was "playing possum". U. S. Navy investigators NCIS later determined that the Marine was acting in self-defense.[9] The AP reported that military-age males attempting to flee the city were turned back by the U.S. military.[10]

By late January 2005, news reports indicated American combat units were leaving the area, and were assisting the local population in returning to the now heavily-destroyed city.

Fallujah suffered extensive damage to residences, mosques, city services, and businesses. The city, once referred to as the "City of Mosques", had 200+ pre-battle mosques of which 60 or so were destroyed in the fighting. Perhaps half the homes suffered at least some damage. Of the roughly 50,000 buildings in Fallujah, 7,000-10,000 were estimated to have been destroyed in the offensive and from half to two-thirds of the remaining buildings had notable damage.[11][12]

While pre-offensive inhabitant figures are unreliable, the nominal population was assumed to have been 200,000–350,000. One report claims that both offensives, Operation Vigilant Resolve and Operation Phantom Fury, created 200,000 internally displaced persons who are still living elsewhere in Iraq.[13] While damage to mosques was heavy, Coalition forces reported that 66 out of the city's 133 mosques had been found to be holding significant amounts of insurgent weapons.[citation needed]

In mid-December, residents were allowed to return after undergoing biometric identification, provided they wear their ID cards all the time. Reconstruction is progressing slowly and mainly consists of clearing rubble from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utilities. Only 10% of the pre-offensive inhabitants had returned as of mid-January, and only 30% as of the end of March 2005.[14]

The recapture of the city itself proved to be largely a success, with a large number of local insurgent fighters being killed, and the momentum the Sunni rebellion had gained from controlling the city being dashed in the face of overwhelming U.S. firepower. Furthermore, al-Qaeda's foothold in Iraq had been seriously degraded, even though its leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi managed to escape. Insurgent elements almost immediately began to attempt to re-group their power base in the city, with limited results.

Nevertheless the battle proved to be less than the decisive engagement that the U.S. military had hoped for, some of the nonlocal insurgents were believed to have fled before the military assault along with Zarqawi, leaving mostly local militants behind. Subsequent U.S. military operations against insurgent positions were ineffective at drawing out insurgents into another open battle, and by September 2006 the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Al-Anbar province that contained Falluja was reported to be in total insurgent control by the U. S. Marine Corps, with the exception of only pacified Fallujah, but now with an insurgent-plagued Ramadi[15][16]

Since the US military operation of November 2004, the number of insurgent attacks has gradually increased in and around the city, and although news reports are often few and far between, several reports of IED attacks on Iraqi troops have been reported in the press. Most notable of these attacks was a suicide car bomb attack on 23 June 2005 on a convoy that killed 6 Marines. Thirteen other Marines were injured in the attack. However, insurgents are no longer able to operate in the city in any significant numbers.

A US M-109A6 self-propelled howitzer fires at insurgent positions in Fallujah
A US M-109A6 self-propelled howitzer fires at insurgent positions in Fallujah

On 26 November 2004, independent journalist Dahr Jamail was perhaps the first to report on the use of "unusual weapons" used in the November 2004 Battle of Fallujah.[2] US media watchdog group Project Censored awarded Jamail's story as contributing to the #2 under-reported story of the year, "Media Coverage Fails on Iraq".[3] On 9 November, 2005 the Italian state-run broadcaster RAI ran a documentary titled "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre" depicting what it alleges was the United States' use of white phosphorus (WP) in the attack causing insurgents and civilians to be killed or injured by chemical burns. The effects of WP are very characteristic. The resulting bodies were partially turned into what appears to be ash, but sometimes the hands of the bodies had skin or skin layers peeled off and hanging like gloves instead. The documentary further claims that the United States used incendiary MK-77 bombs (similar to napalm). While the use of incendiary weapons against civilians is illegal by Protocol III of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (1980), this is not binding on the United States because it not a signatory. Moreover, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (signed by the US) prohibit the use of the chemical properties of white phosphorus against personnel. The documentary stated:

"WP proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out. .. We used improved WP for screening missions when HC smoke would have been more effective and saved our WP for lethal missions."[4]

The US State Department initially denied using white phosphorus as a munition, a claim later contradicted by the Department of Defense when bloggers discovered a US Army magazine had run a story detailing its use in Fallujah. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, quoted by the RAI documentary, WP is allowed as an illumination device, not as an offensive weapon, for which its chemical properties are put to use. The US government maintains its denial of WP use against civilians, but has admitted its use as an offensive weapon against enemy combatants.[17] But the Chemical Weapons Convention bans its use, regardless of whether it is only used on enemy combatants or not.[18] An article in Washington Post exactly a year before also pointed out the use of White Phosphorus in the battle, but attracted little attention. (The US Army Fort Sill Artillery Magazine article above was actually early posted in this article by a wikipedia editor, who, himself was a US Marine Corps artillery officer. - See article history for verification.)

At least one prominently-placed person within the U.S. military establishment, an unnamed USAF Colonel in charge of planning urban bombing operations, has expressed grave doubts about the necessity and appropriateness of the degree of force used at Fallujah, drawing a comparison to the Wehrmacht's debacle at Stalingrad during World War II, and explicitly indicating that the U.S. public is not being presented with a forthright assessment of what happened when U.S. forces besieged the city.

Journalist Seymour Hersh has recounted a phone conversation he had with his unnamed source, during several interviews and public appearances in the last two years, for example at the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York in early 2005:

We're not told. We know nothing about the extent of bombing. So if they're going to carry out an election and if they're going to succeed, bombing is going to be key to it, which means that what happened in Fallujah, essentially Iraq -- some of you remember Vietnam -- Iraq is being turn into a "free-fire zone" right in front of us. Hit everything, kill everything. I have a friend in the Air Force, a Colonel, who had the awful task of being an urban bombing planner, planning urban bombing, to make urban bombing be as unobtrusive as possible. I think it was three weeks ago today, three weeks ago Sunday after Fallujah I called him at home. I'm one of the people -- I don't call people at work. I call them at home, and he has one of those caller I.D.'s, and he picked up the phone and he said, "Welcome to Stalingrad." We know what we're doing. This is deliberate. It's being done. They're not telling us. They're not talking about it.[19]

Regimental Combat Team 1 (RCT-1) built around the 1st Marine Regiment:

Regimental Combat Team 7 (RCT-7) built around the 7th Marine Regiment:

2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division

3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division

  • F Troop, [4th Cavalry] (Brigade Reconnaissance Troop)
  • 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry

1/124 CAV, 36th Infantry Division (Texas Army National Guard)

  • CROWS Team One

US Army Special Operations Command(embedded)

USAF 379th Air Expeditionary Wing.

  • 745 Expeditionary Airlift Squadron

  • 1st Specialized Special Forces Battalion (Iraqi National Guard), Companies D and B
  • Iraqi 36th Commando Battalion
  • Iraqi Counterterrorism Force
  • Emergency Response Unit (Iraqi-Ministry of Interior)
  • 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force (ICDC)
  • 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force (ICDC)
  • 4th Battalion, 1st Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force (ICDC)
  • 5th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, Iraqi Intervention Force (ICDC)

  1. ^ http://icasualties.org/oif/Details.aspx
  2. ^ http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/news/armed_force/us/us_and_war.html
  3. ^ http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=24798
  4. ^ http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600099888,00.html
  5. ^ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec04/fallujah_12-23.html
  6. ^ ScanEagle Proves Worth in Fallujah Fight, DefenseLINK News
  7. ^ Tracking Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi
  8. ^ [1]
  9. ^ Marine cleared in videotaped shooting
  10. ^ U.S. Won't Let Men Flee Fallujah
  11. ^ [http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7503610/ Still locked down, Fallujah slow to rebuild]
  12. ^ Increased Security In Fallujah Slows Efforts to Rebuild
  13. ^ The legacy of Fallujah
  14. ^ Fallujah Four Months Later
  15. ^ .Situation Called Dire in West Iraq
  16. ^ US lost control of al-Anbar province
  17. ^ U.S. official admits phosphorus used as weapon in Iraq
  18. ^ Behind the phosphorus clouds are war crimes within war crimes
  19. ^ Seymour Hersh (January 27, 2005). We've Been Taken Over By a Cult. CounterPunch.

Roman O. Reyhani, "The Legality of the Use of White Phosphorus by the United States Military during the 2004 Fallujah Assaults" (January 24, 2007). Berkeley Electronic Presss Preprint Series. Working Paper 1959.

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