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U.S. general doubtful of quick Iraqi victory over ISIS in Fallujah

 
Iraqi federal police fight against ISIS militants Saturday outside Fallujah, Iraq. Residents are preparing for a long battle.
Iraqi federal police fight against ISIS militants Saturday outside Fallujah, Iraq. Residents are preparing for a long battle.
Published May 29, 2016

BAGHDAD — Iraqi forces' ability to deal a swift blow to the Islamic State in the city of Fallujah could be slowed by local support for militants, the U.S. commander in Iraq said, suggesting a key battle may be a longer, tougher fight than Iraqi leaders are predicting.

Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who commands U.S. and allied forces in Iraq, said it was too soon to know how the battle within Fallujah would unfold. But he struck a more cautious note than Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other senior officials have in rallying Iraqis around what they say will be a rapid, decisive campaign in the besieged city.

"We really haven't fought a battle like this," MacFarland said in an interview this past week. The general said that the western city is home to some of Iraq's "early adopters" of the Islamic State's radical cause and that others have been indoctrinated. "You could have a fairly large percentage of a fairly large city that's hostile to us," he said.

While Iraqi police and army forces, fighting alongside Shiite militias and Sunni tribesmen, have secured areas surrounding Fallujah since the operation was launched nearly a week ago, Abadi has not yet given the order to storm the city. But Iraqi officials are already setting the operation apart from the recent battle for nearby Ramadi, which took weeks to complete and left much of the city in ruins.

This past week, Abadi said the campaign, in its early days, was going better than expected. "Soon we will liberate the people of Fallujah," he said.

The United States is conducting airstrikes in support of the operation, and American advisers are providing guidance from headquarters far from the front lines. U.S. troops will not be taking part in combat operations in Fallujah, officials say.

For many Iraqis, conservative, deeply religious Fallujah symbolizes the support that the Islamic State and its precursor, al-Qaida in Iraq, has found with a small segment of Iraqis since 2003. In 2004, U.S. troops fought in two successive Fallujah offensives against Sunni insurgents, a mix of local and foreign fighters, in some of the fiercest street battles that followed the U.S. invasion against Saddam Hussein.

In recent years, resentment toward the Shiite-led government in Baghdad boiled over, as residents of largely Sunni Anbar province complained of being sidelined from political and economic power. In early 2014, Fallujah became the first Iraqi city to fall to the Islamic State.

MacFarland said Fallujah has become a "monster under the bed" for many Iraqis, many of whom see the city, only an hour's drive from Baghdad, as a source of threats to the capital. Speaking in his office in Baghdad's Green Zone, he said a "pretty sizable number of civilians" in Fallujah may retain sympathies for the Islamic State. "I don't know if they would resist necessarily the Iraqi security forces, but they may not be helpful," he said.

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U.S. military officials think there are 500 to 700 ISIS fighters in the city.