Even a perpetual optimist would have been hard pressed to believe the changes in the western Iraqi province of Al Anbar over the last year. Ralph Peters is no perpetual optimist.
But he’s impressed:
The Marines and the Iraqi police find they get along surprisingly well. The Americans realize that the Iraqis know the buttons to press to get things done, while the Iraqis learn from the Marines’ professionalism…
Some districts have ugly stretches of ruins, while others are largely intact. The population has returned. And there’s a construction boom. Meanwhile, the Marines have repaired generators, turned trash lots into parks and created hundreds of jobs. Suddenly, the city’s movers and shakers want to work with the Marines.
Oh, and the mullah of the city’s strictest mosque just sat down for the first time with Lt. DeLonga. They got along fine.
Had I been asked three years ago if we’d ever be welcome in Fallujah, I would’ve called it wrong. Not that the Iraqis want us to stay forever, but they’d rather cooperate than fight at this point. Given Fallujah’s past, that’s no small thing.
No, it’s not.
The open question of course is whether this is sustainable, whether the locals are only milking the coalition for money, arms and breathing space while preparing for whatever may come after. The worst assumptions of their motivations may well yet turn out to be true.
But for now at least, the shooting and bombing has stopped in a part of Iraq that had six short months ago been aflame, in a province that senior intel analysts had said a year ago might be “irretrievably lost.”
That’s not nothing.
It is absolutely something, but when we started very limited CMO in conjunction with constant patrolling in the same areas-dividing up the village by unit-the same dynamic began to happen at a more limited level. Basically they want a normal life, and we are the path to it. Also remember they are not usually as radicalized as their comfortable, middle class salafist visitors.
Bottom line: it works.
The central legacy of the American culture is that we embrace what works, and that is why we rub off on everyone we touch. Who can resist the siren call of hope?
lol, I just had a flashback to Teahouse of the August Moon. We’ll give them what they want, and some of ourselves.
Web Reconnaissance for 08/28/2007…
A short recon of whats out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often….
Mmm, it wasn’t a senior intel analyst who postulated al Anbar was lost, it was a Marine lieutenant colonel who stepped way out of his intel lane into making operational judgements. The press that got hold of them was incapable of recognizing either an intel or an operational assessment, and you know the rest.