thedrifter
10-25-05, 02:22 PM
October 31, 2005
‘A missed opportunity’
Marines see few voters in violent Ramadi
RAMADI, Iraq — With its bullet-pocked concrete walls, sandbags, camouflage netting and concertina wire, the target of insurgent bombs known as the Anbar provincial government center has a definite Fort Apache vibe.
Capt. Phillip Ash, crouching in a rooftop observation post protected by bulletproof glass, sees something else: the home of a fledgling Iraqi democracy.
“Come hell or high water, they will have a place to practice their government,” said Ash, commander of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines.
The building in downtown Ramadi says a lot about this provincial capital of more than 300,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates River, a city in which Marines and soldiers have been fighting for more than two years.
Marines and government workers must scurry inside for fear of sniper fire; the site takes small-arms, mortar or rocket attacks daily. The newly installed governor has survived at least one assassination attempt; one of his sons escaped a kidnapping.
Surrounding buildings are in various states of battle damage and dilapidation, long ago abandoned by residents and businesses escaping the crossfire, leaving rubble piles and hollowed-out shells watched by Marines from rooftop perches.
Despite the damage, and despite the frustrated hopes of a succession of Marine units hoping to tame Ramadi, there is, perhaps surprisingly, plenty of optimism that 3/7 Marines can turn back the insurgents and let democracy take hold here.
“I think a lot about the fact that this is one of the building blocks of their country we’re defending,” said Lance Cpl. Curtis Stiver, 21, of Oshkosh, Wis., as he peered into the twilight from a rooftop observation post.
In 2004, then-1st Marine Division commander Maj. Gen. James Mattis told Marines in the city, “Ramadi must hold.”
Maj. Gen. Stephen Johnson, commander of II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), calls the city “the key terrain in Anbar province,” and Anbar the key terrain to defeating Iraq’s insurgents.
But so far, recognizing Ramadi’s importance has made it no less dangerous for the Marines and soldiers who patrol its streets. And on Oct. 15, while Iraq’s Sunni minority voted in large numbers across the rest of the country, the Marines of 3/7 stood watch over empty streets in front of polling places with no voters.
A different mission
A poster in the chow hall at Camp Hurricane Point, 3/7 headquarters in Ramadi, gives Marines chilling advice: “You have to look at everyone here as if they’re trying to kill you, but you cannot treat them that way.”
The battalion — here for about six weeks on its third deployment to Iraq in less than three years — copes with that dichotomy daily. And Marines can’t help but compare the city to last year’s deployment to the desert near the Syrian border.
“There, [insurgents] limited their attacks to certain times,” said Lance Cpl. Francisco Villegas, 20, of Las Vegas, a member of Headquarters and Supply Company. “Here, they’ll hit you any time, day or night.”
“It was the wild, wild West in Husaybah,” said Cpl. Matt Haugan, a squad leader in Lima Company, referring to the desert town where 3/7 fought a 12-hour battle in April 2004 against scores of insurgents. “And this is five times Husaybah.”
Instead of the wide-open spaces of the border region, the Marines face a densely populated city of narrow streets, rooftops made for sniping and what Lt. Col. Roger Turner, 3/7’s commander, calls “free-fire zones” for the insurgents along major streets.
Just who those insurgents are is a complex question. In conversations with commanders and intelligence officers from Marine units and the Army’s 2nd Brigade, 28th Infantry Division, 3/7’s higher headquarters, a picture emerges of an enemy dominated numerically by disaffected local Sunnis, resisting the loss of power when Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime was overthrown.
But also active in the city are foreign elements, influenced or directly tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, al-Qaida in Iraq. The city’s local insurgents observe certain rules, Turner said — limiting attacks to wide-open streets where injury to residents is less likely. But Turner’s troops say foreigners regularly threaten and attack Ramadi’s residents, terrorizing neighborhoods and assassinating those believed to be working with U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Turner said violence has peaked during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; in a single week, the battalion lost four Humvees to improvised explosives. He said the unit’s up-armored Humvees — “awesome vehicles” — have saved many lives.
So has the fact that more than 100 of the battalion’s Marines received emergency medical technician certification before the battalion left its base at Twentynine Palms, Calif. Perhaps nothing says as much about Ramadi as the fact that the Marines sent a battalion full of EMTs here.
An eerie calm
In the hours before the Oct. 15 referendum, soldiers and Marines here embarked on a massive rush job, placing hundreds of concrete barriers and thousands of sandbags, moving hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and poll workers to their sites in armored trucks, then moving into observation positions outside but overlooking the polling sites.
No one came. At 3/7’s eight election stations, 2,000 people voted; perhaps half of those were Iraqi soldiers and poll workers. At one site, a single neighborhood resident walked in all day; Marines joked he was the spotter for mortar rounds that fell close by in the afternoon.
There were nearly as many theories to explain the poor turnout as there were voters. Voters didn’t know enough about the draft constitution or were disgusted with what they knew. Violence in the morning scared them away — even though Ramadians regularly brave explosions to pursue their daily lives. Perhaps voters knew their fellow Sunnis in the rest of Anbar province would defeat the document so thoroughly that their votes weren’t needed, weren’t worth the risk.
“It was hard,” said Maj. Dan Wagner, a Marine civil affairs officer attached to 3/7. “It felt like a missed opportunity.”
The day after the voting, Wagner interviewed dozens of residents, most of whom told him they just didn’t see how casting a ballot was worth the risk.
Still, amid all the lost opportunities, little things happen that make the Marines and soldiers here think the city might move in their direction, even just a few inches.
A few days before the referendum, Ash’s Marine company helped level a building near the government center that the Marines believed held several insurgents. The next day, he said, as their Humvees rolled through the neighborhood, they were greeted not by icy stares and children running indoors but by flowers.
“Some of the Marines freaked out at first — they didn’t know what it meant,” Ash said. “But the people were smiling. Adult males ... normally don’t engage us at all, but they were smiling, holding their children up to us. They knew we’d gotten rid of somebody bad.
“I don’t want to say we’re making progress,” Ash said, afraid that just saying it would bring bad luck. “But I think we are. Hey, at least for that day, they weren’t shooting at us.”
Ellie
‘A missed opportunity’
Marines see few voters in violent Ramadi
RAMADI, Iraq — With its bullet-pocked concrete walls, sandbags, camouflage netting and concertina wire, the target of insurgent bombs known as the Anbar provincial government center has a definite Fort Apache vibe.
Capt. Phillip Ash, crouching in a rooftop observation post protected by bulletproof glass, sees something else: the home of a fledgling Iraqi democracy.
“Come hell or high water, they will have a place to practice their government,” said Ash, commander of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines.
The building in downtown Ramadi says a lot about this provincial capital of more than 300,000 people on the banks of the Euphrates River, a city in which Marines and soldiers have been fighting for more than two years.
Marines and government workers must scurry inside for fear of sniper fire; the site takes small-arms, mortar or rocket attacks daily. The newly installed governor has survived at least one assassination attempt; one of his sons escaped a kidnapping.
Surrounding buildings are in various states of battle damage and dilapidation, long ago abandoned by residents and businesses escaping the crossfire, leaving rubble piles and hollowed-out shells watched by Marines from rooftop perches.
Despite the damage, and despite the frustrated hopes of a succession of Marine units hoping to tame Ramadi, there is, perhaps surprisingly, plenty of optimism that 3/7 Marines can turn back the insurgents and let democracy take hold here.
“I think a lot about the fact that this is one of the building blocks of their country we’re defending,” said Lance Cpl. Curtis Stiver, 21, of Oshkosh, Wis., as he peered into the twilight from a rooftop observation post.
In 2004, then-1st Marine Division commander Maj. Gen. James Mattis told Marines in the city, “Ramadi must hold.”
Maj. Gen. Stephen Johnson, commander of II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), calls the city “the key terrain in Anbar province,” and Anbar the key terrain to defeating Iraq’s insurgents.
But so far, recognizing Ramadi’s importance has made it no less dangerous for the Marines and soldiers who patrol its streets. And on Oct. 15, while Iraq’s Sunni minority voted in large numbers across the rest of the country, the Marines of 3/7 stood watch over empty streets in front of polling places with no voters.
A different mission
A poster in the chow hall at Camp Hurricane Point, 3/7 headquarters in Ramadi, gives Marines chilling advice: “You have to look at everyone here as if they’re trying to kill you, but you cannot treat them that way.”
The battalion — here for about six weeks on its third deployment to Iraq in less than three years — copes with that dichotomy daily. And Marines can’t help but compare the city to last year’s deployment to the desert near the Syrian border.
“There, [insurgents] limited their attacks to certain times,” said Lance Cpl. Francisco Villegas, 20, of Las Vegas, a member of Headquarters and Supply Company. “Here, they’ll hit you any time, day or night.”
“It was the wild, wild West in Husaybah,” said Cpl. Matt Haugan, a squad leader in Lima Company, referring to the desert town where 3/7 fought a 12-hour battle in April 2004 against scores of insurgents. “And this is five times Husaybah.”
Instead of the wide-open spaces of the border region, the Marines face a densely populated city of narrow streets, rooftops made for sniping and what Lt. Col. Roger Turner, 3/7’s commander, calls “free-fire zones” for the insurgents along major streets.
Just who those insurgents are is a complex question. In conversations with commanders and intelligence officers from Marine units and the Army’s 2nd Brigade, 28th Infantry Division, 3/7’s higher headquarters, a picture emerges of an enemy dominated numerically by disaffected local Sunnis, resisting the loss of power when Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-dominated regime was overthrown.
But also active in the city are foreign elements, influenced or directly tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s group, al-Qaida in Iraq. The city’s local insurgents observe certain rules, Turner said — limiting attacks to wide-open streets where injury to residents is less likely. But Turner’s troops say foreigners regularly threaten and attack Ramadi’s residents, terrorizing neighborhoods and assassinating those believed to be working with U.S. and Iraqi troops.
Turner said violence has peaked during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan; in a single week, the battalion lost four Humvees to improvised explosives. He said the unit’s up-armored Humvees — “awesome vehicles” — have saved many lives.
So has the fact that more than 100 of the battalion’s Marines received emergency medical technician certification before the battalion left its base at Twentynine Palms, Calif. Perhaps nothing says as much about Ramadi as the fact that the Marines sent a battalion full of EMTs here.
An eerie calm
In the hours before the Oct. 15 referendum, soldiers and Marines here embarked on a massive rush job, placing hundreds of concrete barriers and thousands of sandbags, moving hundreds of Iraqi soldiers and poll workers to their sites in armored trucks, then moving into observation positions outside but overlooking the polling sites.
No one came. At 3/7’s eight election stations, 2,000 people voted; perhaps half of those were Iraqi soldiers and poll workers. At one site, a single neighborhood resident walked in all day; Marines joked he was the spotter for mortar rounds that fell close by in the afternoon.
There were nearly as many theories to explain the poor turnout as there were voters. Voters didn’t know enough about the draft constitution or were disgusted with what they knew. Violence in the morning scared them away — even though Ramadians regularly brave explosions to pursue their daily lives. Perhaps voters knew their fellow Sunnis in the rest of Anbar province would defeat the document so thoroughly that their votes weren’t needed, weren’t worth the risk.
“It was hard,” said Maj. Dan Wagner, a Marine civil affairs officer attached to 3/7. “It felt like a missed opportunity.”
The day after the voting, Wagner interviewed dozens of residents, most of whom told him they just didn’t see how casting a ballot was worth the risk.
Still, amid all the lost opportunities, little things happen that make the Marines and soldiers here think the city might move in their direction, even just a few inches.
A few days before the referendum, Ash’s Marine company helped level a building near the government center that the Marines believed held several insurgents. The next day, he said, as their Humvees rolled through the neighborhood, they were greeted not by icy stares and children running indoors but by flowers.
“Some of the Marines freaked out at first — they didn’t know what it meant,” Ash said. “But the people were smiling. Adult males ... normally don’t engage us at all, but they were smiling, holding their children up to us. They knew we’d gotten rid of somebody bad.
“I don’t want to say we’re making progress,” Ash said, afraid that just saying it would bring bad luck. “But I think we are. Hey, at least for that day, they weren’t shooting at us.”
Ellie