Securing Falluja
From Brian Todd
CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Those insurgents left standing in Falluja are fighting hard and inflicting coalition casualties, as their leader exhorts them to battle on.
"The enemy is weak and cannot expand its control because it is heavy with wounds ... You should attack them and get them out of their hideouts. Hit them with rockets and cut off their official and unofficial supply lines. This is easy for you to do and will uncover their backs," says a voice on a new audiotape purportedly from fugitive terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Coalition forces, for their part, have fought inch-by-inch, corner-by-corner, taking heavy casualties and inflicting even more.
Now, even if the battle for Falluja is winding down, military intelligence experts caution against thinking of this as a city that can be captured in the traditional sense.
"I don't think you're ever going to completely secure Falluja, nor could you ever secure Detroit, or Washington, D.C., or Des Moines, Iowa," says retired Army Brig. Gen. James Marks, who ran prewar intelligence operations on the ground.
Marks tells CNN coalition forces will more likely try to establish security in sections, and in degrees that may shift by the day. And the force that conducts those operations, he says, will have to include Iraqis -- who may or may not be up to the job.
"You might put an Iraqi face on it -- where the primary effort is being conducted by the Iraqi forces -- yet the forces that execute the very tactical missions at the lowest level will be a mix of Iraqis and coalition forces," Marks says.
Marks and other experts with close ties to the U.S. military tell CNN even if hardcore insurgents like al-Zarqawi have left Falluja to fight another day -- overall that's a setback for the resistance.
"That is when they become most vulnerable -- when they are on the run -- because they can't plan, they can't coordinate, they can't rehearse, and if you constantly keep them on the run, you can whittle them down instead of them whittling you down," says CNN military analyst Ken Robinson.
The experts acknowledge that al-Zarqawi may eventually make his way back to Falluja. They key, they say, is to not let him stay there for long.
Another key for the coalition is to win over the local population in Falluja -- a very difficult task and one that the Iraqis who are part of the coalition force have to play a crucial role in.
Many commanders on the ground and elsewhere are anxious to see how they do.
