Like all nasty war zones, there develops a few areas that becomes a hotbed for resistance. It's in those areas that begins to claims many lives of those (usually American troops) who encroach upon such lands. The Anbar region seems to be taking that form in western Iraq.


http://www.jordantimes.com/thu/news/news6.htm
June 2, 2005

'Wild west' a constant thorn for US troops

By Luke Baker
Reuters

BAGHDAD — When it comes to peace and stability in Iraq, there may be no greater obstacle to success than Anbar province, a vast region of desert and scrubland stretching west from Baghdad.

A huge sandy expanse dissected by a major highway, an oil pipeline and the Euphrates River, Anbar has been the bane of US forces almost since they arrived, with its Sunni Arab people virulently opposed to the presence of foreign troops.

Despite a small, tribal population, the lawless province is the deadliest in Iraq and the heart of the insurgency hammering at the country.

Of the1 , 630US troops who have died since the war began, more than 500 have lost their lives in Anbar, a higher toll than in any other area of the country, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military deaths.

The province, which includes the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi, a stronghold of the Sunni Arab-led insurgency, is so dangerous that no journalists venture there unless escorted by US forces. Even many Iraqis are too scared to go. Masked insurgents frequently parade through the streets of Ramadi, and other towns in the Euphrates valley, showing off rocket-propelled grenade launchers and assault rifles.

Some have set up checkpoints on roads near the highway, which runs from Jordan to Baghdad, and ambushed convoys of trucks bringing in supplies. Scores of Jordanian truck drivers have been killed, including one who had his eyes ripped out.

For US forces, and the Iraqi troops they are training to take over security, Anbar has two major drawbacks: Its sheer size makes it incredibly difficult to police, and its population is notoriously hard to win over — a fact that presented problems even for Saddam Hussein when he was in power.

Geographically, the province is a huge challenge.

Covering a third of Iraq, an area the size of the US state of North Carolina, or three times the size of Belgium, Anbar reaches to Syria, Jordan and Saudia Arabia, where there are more than 800 kilometres of essentially open borders.

The vast majority of Anbar's one million people — a fraction of Iraq's 26 million population — lives in the Euphrates valley, whose islands, lakes and palm groves provide a good hideout for guerrillas but make military offensives hard.

The rest of the province is bedouin-populated desert, but US forces still have to patrol it to ensure weapons and people are not smuggled in, particularly across the Syrian frontier. “There's no doubt that Anbar presents a lot of problems,” said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a US military spokesman. “But it's just one of four provinces that are challenging.”

Most commentators trace Anbar's virulent anti-Americanism to April2003 , when US soldiers opened fire on a group of Iraqi protesters in Fallujah, killing more than a dozen people.

Witnesses said the protesters, who were demonstrating against the occupation of a school by US troops, were unarmed. Either way, the deaths sparked deep-seated outrage.

“Now, all preachers of Fallujah mosques and all youths... are organising martyr operations against the American occupiers,” one resident said that day, using a term to describe suicide attacks, a comment that has since become horribly prophetic.

In March2004 , Fallujah residents showed the depths of their animosity when they attacked a vehicle carrying four US bodyguards, dragged their burned and mutilated bodies through the streets and then strung one from a bridge.

Since then, US forces have conducted two major offensives against Fallujah, known as the city of mosques in Iraq, but still the population presents problems, even if it is less militant than it once was. Ramadi remains as rebellious as ever.

Two more large-scale anti-insurgent offensives were carried out in the Euphrates valley last month.

Yet throughout the province, which is 90 per cent Sunni Arab, there is little sign of any softening towards the US military.

I know this is north of the Anbar area but when it all boils down, the same same mess exists for how shakey BushForce is due to the poor plans for this corrupt illegal invasion on Iraq. I do acredit low new sign-ups holding down the agression by the BushCons further into this Middle East debacle. We do need to get these troops home asap and out of harms way. Thanks BushCo for nothing... AGAIN!!!



http://www.military.com/Content/Printer_Fr...305%2C00%2Ehtml

Not Enough Troops To Hold Ground
Charlotte Observer
June 3, 2005

U.S. Army officers in the deserts of northwest Iraq, near the Syrian border, say they don't have enough troops to hold the ground they take from insurgents in this transit point for weapons, money and foreign fighters.

From October to the end of April, there were about 400 soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division patrolling the northwest region, which covers about 10,000 square miles.

"Resources are everything in combat ... there's no way 400 people can cover that much ground," said Maj. John Wilwerding, of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is responsible for the northwest tract that includes Tal Afar.

"Because there weren't enough troops on the ground ... the (insurgency) was able to get a toehold," said Wilwerding, 37, of Chaska, Minn.

During the past two months, Army commanders, trying to pacify the area, have had to move in some 4,000 Iraqi soldiers; about 2,000 more are on the way. About 3,500 troops from the 3rd ACR took control of the area this month, but officers said they were still understaffed for the mission.

"There's simply not enough forces here," said a high-ranking U.S. Army officer with knowledge of the 3rd ACR. "There are not enough to do anything right; everybody's got their finger in a dike." The officer spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concern that he'd be reprimanded for questioning American military policy in Iraq.

The Army has no difficulty in launching large-scale operations to catch fighters, the officer said. "But when we're done, what comes next?"

Iraqi forces in "triangle of death" talk tough


Mon June 6, 2005 10:00 PM GMT+05:30
By Diala Saadeh

MUSAYYIB, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi security forces said on Monday they had driven some insurgents out of Baghdad to towns south of the capital and now hoped to capture them there before they could regroup.

Security officials said Operation Lightning, described as the biggest offensive since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, had pushed guerrillas into an area known as the "triangle of death" because of its high rate of insurgent attacks.

"There's a security vacuum in this area, we must fill it to prevent terrorists from operating inside Baghdad. This must be done while the operation is continuing in the city," said Colonel Hamed Elwan, head of the police station in Musayyib, 60 km (40 miles) south of Baghdad.

Iraq's new government has come under mounting pressure to improve security since it was formed in late April. Insurgents have stepped up attacks, killing more than 800 members of the security forces, officials and civilians since then.

Operation Lightning, which officials say involves 40,000 police and troops, is designed to capture rebels in Baghdad or drive them out. Officials say 887 guerrillas have been detained so far.

But reporters and photographers touring the capital have seen no substantial new troop deployments or checkpoints. Ordinary Iraqis, desperate for stability, have mixed views on the operation's chances of success.
CRIMINALS AND MILITANTS

Capturing anyone who has fled to the triangle of death, home to some of Iraq's most ruthless insurgents, militants, Saddam Hussein loyalists and criminal gangs, could be a daunting task.

Guerrillas have already established strong networks in the area, and visitors are easy prey to kidnap or attack. "We have confirmed information that they are now operating in Jurf Sakher (in Babel province) and preparing for bombings in the capital, so we're tightening the siege on this town," said General Qais Mohammed, head of the Babel police station.

"We are launching a major offensive to capture terrorists fleeing from Baghdad to the southern areas with Operation Lightning going on," he told Reuters.

Iraqi forces are familiar with the risks of moving on the Sunni town of Jurf Sakher, where insurgents frequently detonate roadside bombs as U.S. army vehicles pass by and police stations have been blown up.

Security officials say there is a steady flow of insurgents into the area who have been trained in camps in neighbouring Syria.

"I have arrested four important terrorists who confessed they were trained in camps in Syria and said there were more who are still getting training in preparation to come to Iraq," Army Colonel Mohammed Salman Abbas told Reuters. He declined to give the names of the four.

Detainees have complained of beatings and other abuses by Iraqi security forces during interrogations.

The Damascus government has denied repeated Iraqi and American accusations that it allows insurgents to cross over its borders to carry out attacks in Iraq.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0100409_pf.html

washingtonpost.com
Iraqi Governor Found Dead After Clash

By Ellen Knickmeyer and Othman Mohammed
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 1, 2005; 12:03 PM

RAMADI, Iraq, May 31 -- The governor of the western province of Anbar apparently died when U.S. troops were drawn into an assault against a house where Saudis and other foreign Arab fighters were holding him captive, U.S. military and Iraqi government spokesmen said Tuesday.

Gov. Raja Nawaf Farhan Mahalawi, 51, found blindfolded and handcuffed to a gas canister with his head crushed, died as he lived, a family member said -- caught between the foreign guerrillas he was trying to fight and the American forces he was trying to help.

"I advised him a lot to leave this job, but he told me, 'the Anbar people expect good from me, and I have a way to convince the Americans to stop the attacks and raids on the homes,' " said his brother, Dahham Nawaf Farhan Mahalawi.

" 'We will not tolerate the terrorists, and if the Americans are unable to get rid of them, we will do what the Americans were not able to,' " the brother quoted the slain governor as saying.

Two thousand mourners turned out for Mahalawi's funeral procession Tuesday from Ramadi, the provincial capital.

Anbar, a province of tens of thousands of square miles, serves as a refuge and way station for foreign fighters who cross from Syria to join Iraq's insurgency, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.

It was unclear Tuesday exactly how Mahalawi died in Sunday's clash near the village of Rawah, about 175 miles northwest of Baghdad. Two Saudis, an Algerian and a Jordanian in the house were killed, a U.S. military spokesman said in Baghdad. U.S. soldiers detained two other Saudis and a Moroccan who were wounded in the fight, said the spokesman, Lt. Col. Steve Boylan.

Mahalawi appears to have died of blunt-force trauma to the head, just before or during the clash, Boylan said. He said the governor's body had no bullet wounds.

A spokesman for the Iraqi government, Laith Kubba, said authorities believe the governor was hit by rubble from the assault.

Mahalawi's brother, who said he had seen the body, said he believed the governor was killed by foreign Arabs just before they died in the battle.

The governor's death highlighted the vulnerability of Iraqi officials who take part in the new government and cooperate with U.S. forces despite insurgent threats. Hundreds of local or national officials and security force members have died in insurgent attacks, which occur daily.

The threat is particularly great in Anbar's countryside, from which many Iraqi officials and all but a few dozen Iraqi troops have fled.

Mahalawi, son of a top sheik of Anbar's leading Albu Mahal tribe, had been elected to his post by a local council on May 3. The foreign Arabs who kidnapped him on May 10 said they would release him only when U.S. Marines halted an offensive in Anbar -- the first of two in May.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry reported May 15 that Mahalawi had been freed by his captors, who were said to have left him behind in a village near Qaim. But a U.S. military official said the report was erroneous and that the governor was never out of the kidnappers' custody. There might have been some confusion because Mahalawi was being moved from place to place, the official said.

Boylan said Sunday's clash began when a U.S. Army force on an unrelated mission near Rawah came under fire from a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms.

Soldiers fired back, sending bullets and at least one antitank round into the house, Boylan said. Troops also saw explosions inside the house during the battle, he said.

Afterward, Americans found the dead and injured foreign Arabs and Mahalawi's body, Boylan said. A U.S. military statement said the troops also found bombmaking material.

"It was not a rescue attempt," Boylan said of the clash. "We had no way to know he was in that house."

U.S. forces made no mention of the governor's death until Tuesday, when Kubba, spokesman for Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari, announced it at a news conference.

After the killing, the governor's family had asked U.S. military officials not to intervene if tribe members attacked hideouts of Arab fighters they believed were somehow involved, said one relative, Omar Farhan.

Under the tribe's custom, deaths must be avenged before the victims can be buried, local officials said. An Iraqi army officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the bodies of four suspected foreign Arabs were found Tuesday afternoon near a burned car in Rawah.

Late Tuesday, U.S. Marines took up positions along the governor's funeral route and around homes of his family, apparently guarding the mourners, witnesses said. Marine spokesmen could not immediately be reached for comment on that point.

A statement that was circulated Tuesday in Anbar in the name of the militant group al Qaeda in Iraq, led by Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, threatened retaliation against "young and old" of the tribe as "collaborators with the occupier."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireSt...d=744707&page=2
June 9, 2005

Insurgents Fight Back in Western Iraq

"This is an area which we believe has been pretty heavy with foreign insurgents from many different areas Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine," Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a spokesman for U.S. forces in Iraq, told The Associated Press late Monday. "That's a fairly porous area of the border because of the terrain. It is very difficult."

Residents reported fighting Tuesday in Obeidi, 185 miles west of Baghdad, and the two nearby towns of Rommana and Karabilah. Speaking by telephone, they said frightened residents were fleeing the Qaim area.

"It's truly horrific, there are snipers everywhere, rockets, no food, no electricity," Abu Omar al-Ani, a father of three, said from Qaim on Monday night. "Today five rockets fell in front of my house. … We are mentally exhausted."

Pool said insurgents had tried to launch a counterattack Monday night 4 1/2 miles from U.S. Camp Gannon in Qaim. They attacked a Marine convoy with small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, roadside bombs and two suicide car bombers, Pool said.

This area of fighting in western Iraq will go down in Iraq War history as being one of the nastiest to engage. This may parallel with the Quang Tri Province of Vietnam. Even when we felt like we had control of it.... we didn't. I think the Anbar Province will represent the same.

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStor...nternational.na

UPDATE: US Troops Launch Big Offensive In Western Iraq

BAGHDAD (AP)--U.S. fighter jets carried out airstrikes as hundreds of U.S. Marines backed by tanks battled insurgents in an assault Friday on a dusty frontier town near the Syrian border, the third major campaign in seven weeks to dislodge militants using the western desert region to sneak foreign suicide attackers into Iraq.

Three such attacks around Iraq, including one in the capital, killed four people as insurgents seeking to lead Iraq into a sectarian conflict intensified the pace and scope of suicide missions targeting Iraq's burgeoning but still weak security forces. More than 60 people have died in suicide attacks over the past two days.

Clashes broke out between Iraqi forces and insurgents in Ramadi, the capital of restive Anbar province west of Baghdad, and also in nearby Fallujah -where a suicide bomber killed two people as he tried to blow up a senior Iraqi security official.

About 1,000 Marines and Iraqi forces, backed up by main battle tanks, fought their way into Karabilah, a frontier town in Anbar province where U.S. forces said they killed 40 militants in airstrikes on June 11. The Marines were all from Regimental Combat Team 2 of the 2nd Marine Division. There were no reports on American or Iraqi military casualties.

"Throughout the day Iraqi soldiers and Marines battled insurgents holed up in buildings within the city. Coalition aircraft using precision-guided munitions destroyed these targets. Only buildings occupied by insurgents firing on Marines and Iraqi soldiers were bombed. Three buildings were confirmed destroyed," Marine Captain Jeffrey Pool said in an announcement from Ramadi, capital of restive Anbar province.

The tenacity militants have show in Iraq's western desert -two major Marine operations have so far failed to weed them out -has highlighted the difficulty faced by the U.S. military and the Iraqi security forces to quash the insurgency's more extreme elements.

Marines carried out two major operations in the area last month, killing 125 insurgents in the first campaign, Operation Matador, and 14 in the second, Operation New Market. Eleven Marines were killed in those two actions, designed to scatter and eradicate insurgents using the road from Damascus to Baghdad.

Codenamed Romhe, Arabic for spear, the new campaign began just before dawn in the desert wastes around karabilah and nearby Qaim, a lawless Iraqi border town about 320 kilometers (200 miles) west of Baghdad that squats at the crossroads of an insurgent smuggling route leading into the country from neighboring Syria.

"Operation Romhe began in the early morning hours to root out insurgents and foreign terrorists and disrupt insurgent support systems in and around Karabilah," Pool said.

The military said two Marines assigned to 2nd Marine Division were killed in action Thursday when their vehicle hit a bomb. The military said Friday that the incident took place during combat operations near Ramadi, which is 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad.

The deaths raised to 13 the number of Marines killed in separate attacks around Anbar during the past week. Two sailors also have died.

At least 1,716 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

A suicide car bomber targeting a senior police commander killed two civilians and wounded 11 others including seven more civilians and four traffic officers in Fallujah, police officer Samir Ali said.

Maj. Gen. Mahdi Sabih, police brigade commander for the Interior Ministry's new public order unit, escaped unharmed. Sabih, also Fallujah's mayor, had just attended a ceremony and was leaving when the attacker rammed a white sedan into the crowd, Ali said.

In Baghdad, a suicide car bomber slammed into a loaded fuel tanker as it drove through Baghdad's eastern suburbs Friday, killing two people and injuring another six, police said. The car hit the tanker after it missed an Iraqi army patrol in the Kamaliyah suburb.

The Karabilah operation came one day after U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Don Alston called the Syrian border the "worst problem" in terms of stemming the influx of foreign fighters to Iraq. Syria is under intense pressure from Washington and Baghdad to tighten control of its porous 380-mile (611-kilometer) border with Iraq.

During the assault of Karabilah, Marines said they evacuated four Iraqi civilians -including two women -who were injured in the fighting.

"The civilians were wounded after insurgents seized their home and fired at Marines and soldiers. There are no other reports of civilian casualties," Pool said.

He added that it was "not known how many of the insurgents fighting in Karabilah are foreign terrorists."

The area around Qaim has been flush with insurgents in recent weeks, forcing the Marines on June 11 to carrying out airstrikes that killed about 40 militants after a nearly five-hour gunfight on the outskirts of Karabilah.

That battle was also where insurgents had killed 21 people after beheading three of them. Those bodies, found on June 10, were believed to belong to a group of missing Iraqi soldiers.

U.S. military intelligence officials believe the Qaim area is the main entry point used by extremist groups such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq to smuggle foreign fighters into the country.

U.S. Intelligence officials say foreign Islamic extremists are recruited in Gulf states and undergo rigorous religious indoctrination before being brought to Iraq. They are then placed into cars rigged with explosives -often with their hands and feet taped to the steering wheel and gas pedal -and sent on suicide missions.

There have been at least 1,095 people killed since Prime Minister Ibrahim al- Jaafari's Shiite-led government was announced in late April.

According to an Associated Press count, from April 26 through June 16, there have been at least 136 vehicle bombings that have killed at least 492 people and injured at least 1,409.

In addition, there have been at least 10 suicide bombers, wearing explosives, who have killed at least 188 people and injured at least 493.

It is unclear how many insurgents have also died in that period, but they are thought to number more than 290.

Dow Jones Newswires
06-17-051439ET

Unfortunately, along with the normal turmoil of what war brings, we also have to deal with the thrill kills that draws more attention to an occupiers presence.

What's the right wingers answer to facts discovered? "Get over it!" Correct? Is that before or after their so so 'collateral damage' ho hums?




http://www.adelphia.net/news/read.php?id=12019953&ps=1012

U.S. Marines Accused of Killing Iraq Man
Friday, July 1, 2005 9:17 PM EDT

The Associated Press
By EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Iraq's U.N. ambassador accused U.S. Marines of killing his unarmed young cousin in what appeared to be "cold blood" and demanded an investigation and punishment for the perpetrators.

In an e-mail to friends obtained Friday by The Associated Press, Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie said the killing took place in his ancestral village in western Anbar province, where U.S.-led forces have been conducting a counterinsurgency sweep aimed at disrupting the flow of foreign militants into Iraq.

His cousin Mohammed Al-Sumaidaie, 21, a university student, was killed June 25 when he took Marines doing house-to-house searches to a bedroom to show them where a rifle which had no live ammuntion was kept, the ambassador said. When the Marines left, he was found in the bedroom with a bullet in his neck.

A short time later, his mother, brothers and sisters who were kept in the living room heard a thud but they were generally relaxed because they had nothing to hide, and "they thought, nothing to fear," he said.

But later a younger brother, Ali, was dragged by the hair into the corridor by a Marine and was beaten. The mother started sobbing. A Marine then went out and returned with a camera and went into the bedroom. After a while, the family went outside and waited on the porch as they were ordered, the ambassador said.

More than an hour later, as the soldiers were leaving, the interpreter asked the mother in Arabic if that was her son inside. When she replied "yes," the interpreter said, "they killed him!," Sumaidaie said.

"The mother let off a deafening cry of anguish, but the Marines were smiling at each other as they were leaving," he said. "In the bedroom, Mohammed was found dead and laying in a clotted pool of his blood. A single bullet had penetrated his neck," the ambassador said.

The ambassador wrote that he believed "a serious crime has been commited — a crime that may be repeated up and down Al-Anbar" and demanded an investigation into what he said appeared to be the "killing of an unarmed innocent civilian — a cold blood murder."