Turning Fallujah

by Colonel William F. Mullen III

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Fallujah is a city that has taken on a tremendous amount of significance because of what happened there from April to December of 2004. It has become one of the touchstone battles of the Marine Corps involvement in Operation Iraqi Freedom because of the intensity of the fighting and the number of Marines and Sailors killed or wounded there. It is not a large city in either the space it occupies, or the amount of people that claim it as home. It is a compact, dirty, beat up town that always had a sinister reputation under the Saddam Hussein regime as a smuggling and black market center. This went very nicely with its additional claim to fame as the "city of Mosques" due to the large number of Mosques located within its' boundaries. Its people have been known to be, and still very much are, very xenophobic as their general attitude seems to be "it is us Fallujans against the world." This was directed not only at coalition forces, but also at any Iraqis who were not specifically from Fallujah. It is certainly not a place that will show up as a vacation hot spot any time soon. My personal involvement there started in December 2004 when I went out to Iraq on a Pre-Deployment Site Survey (PDSS). I was the Operations Officer for Regimental Combat Team (RCT) 8 and we would be replacing RCT 1 in February, 2005. It finished, at least for now, when I departed the area in October, 2007 as the commander of 2nd Battalion, 6th Marines (2/6) having just spent the previous 7 months in control of the city.

This paper is not an attempt to tell how we did everything right and solved the riddle of "turning Fallujah" from being a constant source of trouble and anxiety, to an example of what could be accomplished in Iraq given the proper COIN techniques. We did not do everything right and our success there, such as it was, could only be described as the culmination of years of dedicated struggle and effort on the part of thousands of Marines, Soldiers and Sailors, as well as members of the Iraqi security forces, many of whom were wounded or killed there. It was also a result of the fortunate coming together of several different events, all happening around the same time, which also happened to coincide with my battalion's arrival in March, 2007. This paper will briefly provide what I know of the history of Fallujah from 2004-2007, the techniques we used as an RCT to try and maintain control of both the town and the surrounding area during 2005 and early 2006, some lessons learned that I took away from observing the units that operated underneath RCT 8 during that year (one of which was 2/6, but under a different commander), the preparations we made in 2/6 after I took over to be ready to return to Fallujah, and finally the specific steps we took to capitalize on the conditions we found when we arrived there in late March, 2007. I firmly believe that it was the preparations we made while training prior to the deployment that enabled us to recognize what was happening in Fallujah and turn it to our advantage. We also developed an approach to turning Fallujah that resonated with the citizens of Fallujah to a degree and generated a level of success that well surpassed what we expected. It was an amazing experience and I feel privileged to have been a part of it.

Download the full article: Turning Fallujah

Colonel William F. Mullen III, USMC, is the Director of the Marine Corps Tactics and Operations Group of the Marine Corps Air Ground Task Force Training Command. In July 2002 he reported to the J-3 Directorate of the Joint Staff in the Pentagon for duty as an Action Officer in the PACOM and then the CENTCOM sections of the Joint Operations Division. In May 2003, he was assigned as the Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director for Regional Operations until he returned to Camp Lejeune in June 2004 as the Plans Officer for the 2nd Marine Division. In October, 2004 he was assigned as the Operations Officer for the 8th Marine Regiment and deployed with them to Fallujah, Iraq from February 2005 to February 2006. In June, 2006, he assumed command of 2d Battalion, 6th Marines and returned to Fallujah, Iraq from March to October, 2007. He was promoted to Colonel on 1 Oct, 2007 and reported to the Naval War College as a student in March, 2008 and graduated in March, 2009.