Dispatches: The Ghosts of Anbar

Michael Yon Online Magazine ^ | August 22, 2007 | Michael Yon

[Kaslin]

Part One: The Paradox of Counterinsurgency

The principles and imperatives discussed above reveal that COIN presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander. In many ways, the conduct of counterinsurgency is counterintuitive to the traditional American view of war—although it has actually formed a substantial part of America’s actual experience.

Counterinsurgency December 2006 FM 3-24
MCWP 3-33.5

To know a man, follow his tracks.

Anbar Province
June, 2007
Iraq and this part of the world are complicated in the way, and by the way, that dysfunction always is “complicated.” Worse, in this labyrinth of history, where recent rumors have as much cache as ancient myths, facts fade quickly into mirage, granting mistakes and missteps a kind of perverse permanence. Fertile ground for paradoxes.

British Cemetery at Habbaniya, near Fallujah.

Our Anbar-war can be said to have begun after the invasion in 2003, and for most of its duration, Fallujah has been the crucible Anbar city. In the beginning, in this city of mosques, the people of Fallujah had not resisted. But friction bred of perceived injustices seethed steadily, until the light fighting of 2003 exploded early in 2004, when on the final day of March in that year, four contractors were murdered and mutilated in Fallujah. The spokesmen for the killers called it an act of revenge, justice even. They called the murdered contractors mercenaries; their charred corpses dangling from what soldiers and Marines now call “Blackwater Bridge.”

[Lurker]

Back later.

L