IRAQ 2004
Success of US military operations in 2003 have lead to disappointment that support by the majority Shia in the overthrow of the ruling Sunny never became manifest. Rival groups sought dominance and have yet to united behind a coalition government. The allies place great expectation in an election to take place January 30, 2005.
Most of the year saw US paid contractors rebuilding the infrastructure of Iraq ; followed by the destruction of many projects by a rebellous minority. US troops maintaining a show of forceful presences to encourage order. A British force handled the southern portions of Iraq. A large number of allies with small numbers of troops of construction an service sorts. Britian and Spain provided both troops and a naval group.
Coalition Partner Troops in Iraq -- Some of these sound like a construction group and their cooks and armed guards to build a schoolhouse or such.
1 . United States: 130,000 2 . Britain: 9,000 3 . Italy : 3,000 4 . Poland : 2,460 5 . Ukraine: 1,600 6 . Spain : 1,300 7 . Netherlands: 1,100 8 . Australia: 800 9 . Romania: 700 10. Bulgaria: 480 11. Thailand: 440 12. Denmark : 420 13. Honduras: 368 14. El Salvador: 361 15. Dominican Republic: 302 16. Hungary : 300 17. Japan : 240 (to 550 by end of March) | 18. Norway : 179 19. Mongolia: 160 20. Azerbaijan: 150 21. Portugal: 128 22. Latvia : 120 23. Lithuania: 118 24. Nicaragua: 113 25. Slovakia : 102 26. Czech Republic: 80 27. Philippines: 80 28. Albania : 70 29. Georgia : 70 30. New Zealand: 61 31. Moldova : 50 32. Macedonia: 37 33. Estonia : 31 34. Kazakhstan: 25 |
Bombs.The year 2004 is marked by "roadside" bombs - typically artillery shells triggered to blowup passing unarmored vehicles (typically Humvees) carrying convoy guards providing convoy security for supplies.
Car bombs remain another favorite attacking lines at recruiting stations and elsewhere.
Striker battalion -- a troop carrying armored car, more maneuverable than the current boxy troop carrier, whose aluminum sides were designed to resist fragments and small arms fire, cannot stand up to roadside bombs or a direct hit with an RPG.
UAV. Other new technology with promise is unmanned aeroal surveillance craft. The technology is very much developmental with trials ranging from model airplanes with a wireless video camera, characterize by short range and not much airborne time, to Predators which can linger at hight altitudes with telephoto lens and missiles to carry out a strike where a target is found.
Mar 11 . Terrorist bombings of three commuter trains in Spain days before the national elections. New government announces that Spanish forces will pull out of Iraq.
American contractors hung from a bridge in Fallajuh.
Homeland security gradually expands across much of American life. Traditional freedom and openness ends. Delays and expense in travel is specially noticed. Monitoring of domestic activies makes it seem as if the terrorists are succeeding just by their existence (Naval analogy, a "force in being") with just a few overt acts .
Apr 9 . The US army said 3,000 of its troops backed by 2,000 Iraqis dislodged around 1,000 insurgents from Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in the "Sunni triangle".
Fallajuh, earlier in year, a rebel stronghold of the fiery young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, make the area untenable by US or Iraqi government administration. Several attacks are started and stopped with promises of disarmament. This goes on at least several times between March and October.
Nov 2. US elections assure continuity of efforts in Iraq.
Fallajuh, November. The rebellious forces in the city are deemed uncontrollable by the Iraqi provisional government and the US forces are released to quell the armed insurgency. Iraqi National Guard forces are to secure the city as US fighting forces move thru the city. Estimates are that 1,200-3,000 insurgents occupy the city.
Possibly 200,000 people leave the city.
Nov 7. Troops secure the two bridges across the Euphrates River entering the city from the west and surround the city with road blocks.
Nov 8 . Assault on Fallujah, once a city of a quarter million people.
Nov 9 . It is known that typical insurgent behavior is to fire their weapons, hid the remainder, set booby traps, and escape among the evacuees. Then be feed and housed until the fighting is over and come back into the city, possibly paid to rebuild the damage they have caused, dig up their arms and snipe again. To thwart this the US army has tightened the perimeter allowing only women, girls, and boys under 15 and men over 65 to pass out of the city.
Nov 10. 70% of city occupied. Although the press makes out that US forces are indiscriminately destroying the city, this is warfare and building from which fire comes are destroyed. Slaughter rooms are found where hostages were videotaped while beheaded.
Nov 11. Six Iraqi battalions perform room by room search of the city.
Nov 12. Sympathetic or coordinated uprising occur in Musul, the northern city. Iraqi police are unable (unwilling?) to keep gunmen off the streets and the army Striker battalion stationed there, but in reserve for Fallujah has been recalled to restore order.
Nov 13. Two pockets of insurgents remain, one in north (150) and a larger on in the south (250).
Nov 18. Only snipers remain. Zarqawi HQ found.
Dec 2 . US will increase manning to 150,000 during the Iraqi election period.
Who is Who?
Osama bin Laden. Number one leader of international terrorism who planned initiated the 9/11/02 aircraft strikes in the USA. Now in hiding and reduced to a mythical leadership.
Oct. video tape released by him determined to be authentic, indicating that he is alive and believed to be living in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistan boarder region. al Qaida is becoming a force in sprite rather than fact. The US has $25MM reward on his head.
Abu Zubaydah. A top lieutenant of bin Laden.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is a leader of a separate group from al Qaida, who is clever enough to willing come under that umbrella and is likely future leader of terrorist movement.
Born 1966 and grew up in a mining town of Zarqa 17 miles north of Amman of Palestinian-Jordanian parents. Fought with the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan, 1990-91. Returned to Jordan and was a member of Egyptian Islamic Jihad devoted to Islamic rule. Spent five years in Jordanian prison for plotting the overthrow the monarch.
Released in 1997, he fled to Europe. Islamic Jihad merged with al Qaida in 1998, but Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 2000 and built his own network of training camps near Herat for his group, called al-Tawhid; teaching included chemical weapons and poisons. Tawhid is specially for Jordanians who did not want to join al Qaida and has special attentions against Jordan and Jews, rather than the mainland USA. He operated an alien-smuggling network into and from Europe. He is also anti-Shia. Moved headquarters to Iraq after US took out the Taliban in Afghanistan in Oct 2001 and was believed to be have fled Baghdad for Fallujah and was a target of operations in that city.
Convicted in absentia by Jordan of planning to bomb tourist hotels during millennium celebrations.
He is accused of:
- 2003 . bombings in Istanbul and bombing assassination of the Shia Ayatollah al-Hakim, at a shrine in the town of Najaf, over 50 Shia worshipers died.
Aug'03 . bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad.
Aug'03 . truck bombing of the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad.
Mar'04 . multiple truck bombings of a Shia religious festival which killed 143 worshipers.
Mar'04 . Madrid terror bombing of trains.
Apr'04. beheading of American Jews, Nick Berg (seeking contracts, May'04) and Daniel Pearl (Wall Street Journal). This brought Narqawi to prominence.
April'04. Jordanian police broke up a plot to detonated 20 tons of chemicals and released a cloud of poisonous gas into central Amman.
2004 . Capture and beheading of internationals in Iraq, demanding withdrawal of their contingents from Iraq. Assassination of various Iraqi officials. Ongoing, almost daily bombings.
Oct 26 . Zarqawi claimed responsibility for executing 49 Iraqi army recruits.
Amer el Aziz, a Zarqawi's lieutenant, a 36-year-old Moroccan, fled Spain in November 2001 as Spanish authorities dismantled his al Qaida logistics cell, for Afghanistan were keep tabs on his survivors in Spain and Morocco, with bombings in Casablanca and planned the Madrid pre-election bombings in Mar'04. Reflects a liaison between Zarqawi and bin Laden.
- About this page : HowWar04 - Record and comments on the war in Iraq throughout 2004.
- See Thoughts on How Gulf War II Might Be Fought. - March 14, 2003.
- And, How Phase I Actually Was Fought.
- And, How Phase II.
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