U.S. commanders are watching intently to see how the more than 5,000 Sunni tribal fighters perform in the Iraqi offensive to retake Fallujah, which has been under Islamic State control for two years.
So far the Iraqi assault, which includes elite counterterrorism troops, police and some Shiite militias, has met only light to moderate resistance as it works through mines, booby traps and physical obstacles on the outskirts of the city.
Working through the Iraqi government, the U.S.-trained-and-equipped force is doing the heavy-lifting in Fallujah, which is a Sunni city, in a Sunni province.
That’s in marked contrast to the liberation of Ramadi five months ago, where Sunni fighters came in only after the main fighting was over.
“In Ramadi, they were only the hold force,” U.S. military spokesman Col. Steve Warren told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. “The Sunni fighters didn’t do much of the actual assault. In this one, they are on the front lines.”
The performance of the Sunni forces is an important data point, Warren said, because the U.S. has an even more ambitious training program underway to support the eventual liberation of Mosul, another predominately Sunni city.
Those forces have been recruited from Iraq’s northern Ninawa Province, of which Mosul is the provincial capital.
How the Sunni fighters acquit themselves in Fallujah will inform Baghdad’s decision on the make-up of the forces that will eventually move to liberate Mosul.
“We are in the process of training 10,000 Ninawa Sunni,” Warren said. “This will certainly be a template we can use to help make that decision.”
The attacking Iraqi forces hold a more than 10-to-1 numerical superiority over the Islamic State fighters in Fallujah, estimated at upward of 500.
But whether Ramadi is an easy victory, wrapped up in a matter of weeks, or stretches into months depends on whether the Islamic State shows up, Warren said.
“We’ve seen two different models from ISIS. We’ve seen the Ramadi model, which is where they dug in and fought, and we’ve also seen the Hiit and Rubtah model, where they ran away.”
Fallujah is strategically important because of its proximity to Baghdad just 40 miles to its east.
It’s also suspected to be the base from which the embattled Islamic State has launched a series of deadly vehicle and suicide bomb attacks on the Iraqi capital.
Those bombings may have prompted the Iraqi prime minister to order the long-awaited offensive, said Warren. “With the recent bombings I think it has kind of brought the threat into sharper focus for the decision-makers in Baghdad.”
For Americans, Fallujah will always be synonymous with some of the toughest urban combat of the Iraq war — a city that was retaken from insurgents in 2004 in a campaign that left nearly 100 U.S. troops dead and more than 500 wounded.
To see it fall to the Islamic State in early 2014 was a huge psychological blow to the Marines who fought there and the families of those who died there.
