Posted on: Monday, May 3, 2004

EDITORIAL
Fallujah predicament: no attractive choices

Putting the best face possible on a decision to give responsibility for pacifying the defiant Iraqi city of Fallujah to former Baathist commanders and their troops, U.S. Marines prepared to pull back from their siege. It's no magic bullet, but it's by far the best of a host of decidedly unattractive options for Fallujah.

American commanders have found out the hard way that Fallujah is the center of the Jumaila tribe, which was as good at resisting domination by the Ottomans and the British as it has been with five U.S. occupation forces.

The assumption that all Sunni Muslims are alike was costly. Saddam Hussein was a member of the Bu Nasir tribe. Fallujah was a city where even Saddam ventured cautiously, and no one from Fallujah was in Saddam's inner circle.

Thus the insurgents in Fallujah likely are neither Saddam loyalists nor al-Qaida-linked foreigners, but men bent on upholding a long tradition of defending their home turf.

U.S. Marines insist there's no suggestion of defeat in their retreat, but it's a clear step back from their threat to storm the city if the killers of four civilian contractors and all heavy weapons weren't quickly surrendered. This is not lost on Iraqi tribes that understand attempts at accommodation as signs of weakness.

Nevertheless, it was a far better choice than taking Fallujah by force. The cost in terms of Iraqi hearts and minds of hundreds of civilian Fallujah casualties would make such an operation counterproductive. And the Sunni tribes have a vicious tradition of revenge.

Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh, one of four former Iraqi generals to volunteer to lead the relief force, strode up to Fallujah checkpoints on Friday as if he owned the place. The way insurgent fighters saluted him, it appeared Saleh, a Fallujah native himself, might be the right man for the job.

Yet it was unclear how sure U.S. forces could be of the loyalties and abilities of Saleh's 1,100 troops. One fear is they might end up colluding with the city's insurgents. Another is that if they end up on the losing end of a firefight, U.S. Marines might have to rescue them and take the city after all.

Attempts to defuse the religious Shiite strongholds of Najaf and Kufa are even knottier. These dilemmas are a clear indication of how unprepared U.S. forces were for the post-invasion occupation of Iraq.