‘Its Flames Will Blaze’: The Battle for Fallujah, 7–13 November 2004

Abstract

This chapter will set the struggle for Fallujah in the context of the Iraq War before explaining how the city became a centre of Baathist and Islamist resistance to American forces, whom they regarded as conquerors rather than liberators. It describes and analyses the ways in which the various elements of the resistance, including Chechen volunteers who had defeated Russian armoured forces in Grozny a decade earlier, transformed the city into a fortress, removing the great majority of the civilian population, and turning whole areas into killing grounds. The chapter then examines the American preparations for and conduct of the assault, in which one of the best trained, most highly motivated, well-led, and superbly well-armed military forces the world has ever seen nevertheless took seven days and more than 800 casualties to take a small city of only six square miles. The US military drew many lessons from their operation to take Fallujah; a concerted effort will be made to highlight these.