Violence near Iraq border ‘off the chart’
By Elliot Blair Smith
USA Today
HUSAYBAH, Iraq — Uprooting the criminal gangs that control this violent border town and defeating a small but well-trained insurgent force here may be left to new Iraqi security forces when they begin moving into the western desert this year, Marine Maj. John Reed says.
Until Iraqi forces can be deployed to this remote outpost, a small contingent of Marines is focused on stopping foreign religious warriors, or jihadis, from entering Iraq, and rounding up insurgents that launch attacks here.
Untamed even by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the area has been a haven for insurgents, smugglers and thieves who wage daily battles among themselves in the city, Reed says.
Almost as frequently, he says, the combatants turn their automatic weapons, grenades and mortar blasts on Marines camped at the town’s edge.
“We’re facing a well-developed, mature insurgency with the support of the local population” of about 100,000 townspeople, Reed says. “There is no Iraqi security force here. They are not effective. There are no police. They are dead or doing something else.”
In stark contrast to the inroads multinational forces have made in such hot spots as Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul, Marines in Husaybah have been forced to hunker down in defensive positions. Their base, Camp Gannon, is named for Capt. Rick Gannon who died April 17, 2004, while leading an effort to rescue two sniper squads trapped on a rooftop in the city. Five Marines died that day in a fight against about 100 insurgents.
Unable for safety reasons to patrol the city on foot and in vehicles, troops are limited in their ability to gain important street-level intelligence. So the Marines primarily mount counterattacks on insurgents and criminals who fire into the camp. Last week, the Marines averted disaster when three car bombers backed by 30 insurgents assaulted the camp.
Marine Lt. Col. Tim Mundy, commander of the Third Battalion, Second Marine Regiment, who oversees Husaybah from his base in Al-Qaim, about 10 miles away, says he believes many insurgents recently pushed out of Fallujah and Ramadi by coalition forces regrouped here even as foreign fighters continued to flow in from Syria.
Mundy, 40, says, “This is about as complex a situation as I can imagine any battalion facing.”
The insurgents face not only the Marines but also resistance from two Sunni Muslim tribes. The Mahalowis and Salmanis historically controlled the town’s cross-border trade. Reed says those tribes dominate the local criminal gangs, police and politicians. They feud with each other but unite to oppose the U.S. presence. “There was always violence here, and now it’s much higher. It’s off the chart. They’re killing each other every day, and we’re killing them,” Reed says.
Saddam once talked of converting the area’s smuggler trails into a major trade route from Syria through Baghdad to Kuwait. That ended with the Gulf War in 1991. In April 2003, U.S. forces entered Baghdad and toppled Saddam, but they didn’t reach Husaybah until three months later.
Violence became routine here last fall after U.S. financial aid to the area dried up in anticipation of Iraq’s provisional government taking over the local administration. That still hasn’t happened.
In October, U.S. forces closed a border gate to constrict the flow into Iraq of foreign jihadis. But with trade shut down, merchants began to convert their shops into bomb making studios, Reed says. Insurgents hired local youths to set the bombs and mines and fire on U.S. troops, and they terrorized families to get them to cooperate, he says. “When they go into a house, decapitate the men, rape the women and disappear with a few children, I guarantee you the rest are doing what they’re told,” Reed says.
New Iraqi security forces might help stabilize the situation when they are trained and arrive in the late summer or fall, Reed says. He adds, “If we go it alone, we will have a flash point like Fallujah. We’re near that point now.”
Reed says he has doubts about this border town’s future.
“When the multinational force leaves, maybe the insurgency does,” he says. “I don’t think so. I think it has a higher goal: to make the new Iraq fail. What the future here is, it’s kill them all. It really is. Or make them run somewhere else.”
Something about Iraq that I have not heard about so far in the U.S. media
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Originally Posted by Gawain of Orkeny
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