INSIDE THE FALLUJAH TAZ

New data (4.3 Mb PowerPoint) from the US military on global guerrilla operations in Fallujah provides fresh detail on how the bazaar of violence in Iraq operates.  Here's what the US forces found:

• 11 improvised explosive device (IED) "factories."
• 653 unexploded IEDs.
• 203 weapons caches (graphic of the amounts of large munitions found).
• 3 hostage holding areas.

The data (and the map) indicates a very dispersed operation in Fallujah.  One explanation for this is that US airstrikes on guerrilla facilities in the city forced decentralization.  However, a more likely explanation given the available data on how the city was run indicates that the insurgency in Fallujah TAZ was a highly decentralized organization at the outset -- the dispersion of the facilities merely reflects this organizational style.  For example: each group likely had their own caches of weapons and/or a factory.

One final note on the centrality (or more precisely, the lack of centrality) of Fallujah.  The data shows that very few IEDs and IED materials were found (less than a month at the current run rate).  Obviously, many of the devices were removed prior to the assault for use in the multi-city counter-assaults that occurred.  However, even if we assume that each IED "factory start-up" produced a device every day (a generous assumption), the total production rate would be less than 1/4 of the current usage rate of 772 IEDs a month (half of the production ended up in inventory or were rejects/duds). 

Comments

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

"Evidence of Foreign Fighter involvement - 2"

seems to be a significant detail, given the propaganda about the nature of the armed resistance to the presence of Coaltion forces.

[name]

you forgot two figures in your above article: 6000 estimated civilians dead, est. 210000 persons or 35000 families made permanently homeless. since the previous commenter mentions 'evidence of foreign fighter involvement', here's another one: about 10000 US troops fighting an illegal and illegitimate war. i suppose that this kind of statistics is less relevant to somebody who belongs to that exclusive club of people who bask in glory after bombing civilians for the hell of it.

the mountain of suave and nice sounding blablabla you post is IMHO somehow justified when taking in consideration that you do 'security consulting' or something along those lines for a living according to what you have to say about yourself. but i do somehow have a problem with supposedly adult people who believe their own marketing prospects. it is just not responsible. i'd have lots of doubt if hiring somebody to care of my security who i know confuses his own marketing koolaid with reality.

[Greg]

well "name", the validity of defeating the insurgency in Iraq is not necessarily related to the validity of being there in the first place. at this point options other than defeating the insurgency would cause many problems for America and American interests and wouldn't necessarily lead to improved quality of life for the Iraqis... though invading in the first place was definately a mistake in my opinion.

besides, John never really did endorse the extreme military solution that the US opted for in Fallujah... but why should that prevent him from reporting on it.

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

I was trying to point out that if the only "Evidence of Foreign Fighter Involvement" is one notebook listing the names or nicknames of a couple of dozen of foreigners and a handheld GPS with some stored waypoints apparently in Western Syria, then the amount of "foreign" support and influence on the Iraqui insurrection would seem to have been exaggerated.

The report that 60 out of the 100 mosques in Fallujah had been used to store weapons or as firing positions, in contravention of "the laws of war" is also interesting.

One statistic that does not seem to be available is how many prisoners have been captured ? Are they being treated as prisoners of war (especially if they are members of the previous Ba'athist military regime) or have they simply disappeared into the Camp Delta/X-ray concentration camp system somewhere ?

Perhaps "name" will remind me of any war in history which was "illegal and illegitimate" from the viewpoint of the winning side ?

[name]

ok.

@greg
- "at this point options other than defeating the insurgency would cause many problems for America and American interests and wouldn't necessarily lead to improved quality of life for the Iraqis..."

of course leaving would cause problems for 'american' interests: halliburton & friends wouldn't get their sweetheart non-bid contracts anymore. as for the irakis i'm not so sure. the recent pics made by some happy SEALs show that americans treat irakis like sheep to be dispatched to slaughter, never mind all the random kicking in doors plus destruction and theft of personal property, random shootings and internments in a whole gulag of abu-ghraibs, indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas ... in my very humble opinion to stop only this would already mean a HUGE improvement in life quality for average irakis.

as for who is losing in iraq i'll stick with the people who say that the resistence - 'insurgency' is somewhat inaccurate and gross on top of that - is whupping the US badly. inflicting 9% casualty rate to a far superior enemy is no mean feat. from all i've read on the subject, the US will do the somalia maneuver sooner or later, not merely because of the guerilla but because they have such a terrific ally in the bush administration, who are doing to the US economy what the guerilla are doing to the troops.

@ "Watching Them, Watching Us"

You ask
"Perhaps "name" will remind me of any war in history which was "illegal and illegitimate" from the viewpoint of the winning side ?"

i'll gladly oblige, twice:
a) Vietnam
b) Somalia

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

"name" seems to have a different view of history to me.

Most countries have a long history of wars, so just considering the most recent major conflicts:

I must have missed the trial of Le Duc Tho and his Politbureau collegues, where he decided that , on reflection, having sucessfully invaded South Vietnam in 1975, they sentenced themselves to prison for the rest of their lives, because the war was "illegal and illegitimate" ?

Did anyone, even in the West actually condemn the 1978 Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia to oust the murderous Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge regime ? That was "illegal and illegitimate" if you define that as not having the backing of the UN Security Council.

Somalia in 1991 - 1993, by contrast was a UN backed humanitarian relief intervention and not even a guerrilla war, despite the media hype over the helicopter incident in Mogadishu in 1993. There is no "winning side" as there is still no government which controls the whole of the former state of Somalia.

I am also not sure where "name" gets any evidence of "indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas".

All airforces always exaggerate the accuracy of even their "smart weapons". I would suggest that even a 10 metre accuracy CEP claimed for GPS guided bombs is still way too innaccurate for the tasks of winkling out an enemy strongpoint in an urban area, without causing civilian casualties.

However, it is self evident from the photos, that Fallujah has not been damaged to anywhere near the same extent as what the Russians did to Grozny in Chechnya.

[name]

WtWu you sidestep the fact that the US ran away with their tail between their legs from both somalia and vietnam. those are the hard undeniable facts. lets see ...
vietnam: after killing p'haps 3M vietnamese, 58K dead troops and 100s of thousands wounded, the US ran away without having acomplished anything at all but massive destruction. lets not forget that because of vietnam the US had to unpeg the dollar from gold because the treasury was empty by 1972/3. going by your logic as i understand it, vietnam was, of course, not a war. i cant remember that an american president declared war on vietnam - please correct me.
somalia: of course it was not a war but a "humanitarian intervention" which was "legitimized" by a pliant UN. the locals - primitive brownskins too primitive to take care of themselves - were so full of joy and gratitude that they figured out a way for hollywood to make lots of cash - and thus was born "blackhawk down". of course somalia was not a guerilla war either, but the US decided to get out after intense negotiations. somebody who was there some years ago told me that the somalis are rather happy and doing well w/o a "government" who remits all their cash to the IMF.

and in the match of "fallujah vs. grozny" the reports coming out are that there is not a single building w/o damage left. one report compared what he saw to "the clash zone between two continental shelves", plus there are many reports of napalm, phosphor and poison gas by the US.

on a more personal level i dont think it is a good time for any american to start pointing fingers at cambodians, russians or whomever, because in comparison americans will look far worse every single time. the russians took years and two major incursions to raze grozny, the americans took 10 days to raze fallujah. guess who looks worse.

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

"WtWu you sidestep the fact that the US ran away with their tail between their legs from both somalia and vietnam"

Errr. No. You gave those as examples of "illegal and illegitimate" war from the viewpoint of the *winning* side.

"somebody who was there some years ago told me that the somalis are rather happy and doing well w/o a "government" who remits all their cash to the IMF"

If you are related to a warlord, then yes, you could be relatively happy with no Government. The hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees who have fled abroad have a different view.

There is a difference between "some damage to every building" in Fallujah and whole areas of a city demolished into rubble, which blocked the streets and formed effective barricades against the Russian armoured fighting vehicles, as in Grozny.

"plus there are many reports of napalm, phosphor and poison gas by the US."

Really ? I have only seen some reports about the use of standard white phosphurus "smoke" shells. It has always been debateable whether these are "better" or "worse" than high explosive shrapnel.

Can you point to any evidence showing the use of "poison gas" by the US or even by the Islamic fanatics ? There has been no footage or photos of US or Iraqui troops wearing the cumbersome NBC suits which one would expect if chemical weapons were in use. Chemical weapons are not really "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the same way as nuclear or biological weapons.

"on a more personal level i dont think it is a good time for any american to start pointing fingers at cambodians, russians or whomever, because in comparison americans will look far worse every single time"

I am not an American. I doubt if many relatives of the victims of Pol Pot's or Stalin's genocidal police states consider the Americans, despite their faults, to be in the same league of cruelty and evil.

[Valdis]

John blogged... One explanation for this is that US airstrikes on guerrilla facilities in the city forced decentralization. 

Attacking an insurgency by aiming for the center is like hitting a single puddle of Mercury[the liquid metal] with a sledge hammer [and we have the best sledges hammers, don't we?] One centralized, localized puddle, turns into hundreds of distributed puddles, each looking and acting like the original. Yes, they are smaller, but where did they all go?

[Watching Them, Watching Us]

Is this the way to control the Fallujah TAZ as the inhabitants return ?

"Returning Fallujans will face clampdown"

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown?mode=PF

"Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned."

[Rose]

I tried to dl the powerpoint but it didn't seem to work?