Reply #38: Serious Question: Do the insurgents control Fallujah?

[markses]

Is Fallujah, a city of 200,000, firmly in the control of the Iraqi "insurgency"? The question is worth asking today, after insurgents entered a local police station without much resistance, freeing over 100 prisoners, then attacked an Iraqi "Civil defense" compound in a dawn raid.

According to all accounts, the insurgents performed a team insertion with special tactics - suggesting that they have some military training in a formal setting; mopreover, they attacked in well over platoon strength numbers in daylight.

Here's the kicker: the compound they attacked was the very same visited by US Middle East Commander John Abizaid just days ago - a visit during which both he and Major General Charles Swanack (commander of the 82nd Airborne Division) came under RPG fire from insurgents, who may or may not have been tipped off. It seems that the insurgents are saying the following: In Fallujah, we make the policy, and we do what we want, when we want. In other words, we have the power here, and you come and go at our discretion.

What we are seeing now is reminiscent of NLF "semi-control" of governmental structures in rural Vietnam during the early 1960's (see, for example, Jeffrey Race's brilliant "War Comes to Long An: Revolutionary Conflict in a Vietnamese Province"). We've already seen that Samarrah is more or less "liberated," with insurgents operating at will. Is the whole of the so called "Sunni Triangle" semi-controlled by insurgent forces?