Daily News (New York) April 16, 2004
Fierce Fallujah Streetfight Looms
By Corky Siemaszko
The Marines have the latest in weaponry, superior firepower, unlimited ammunition and complete domination of the Iraqi skies.
But none of this matters in Fallujah, where U.S. forces are in a gutter fight with an enemy that doesn't wear uniforms, uses the densely packed city as cover - and is operating from a playbook that urban guerrillas have been perfecting since World War II.
"We knew where to hide and escaped into the sewers, we stripped guns off of dead Germans and used them against them," said Boleslaw Stanczyk, who was a Polish underground fighter 60 years ago when the citizens of Warsaw rose up against the Nazis. "The Iraqis are not Poles and the Americans are not Germans, but many of the tactics are the same."
Tony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington agreed.
"Street fighting is a dirty, dangerous business," he said. "The enemy knows the grounds and the streets. And all the high-tech equipment won't tell you who is going to suddenly burst out of a house."
So most of the time the Americans don't know who the enemy is until they're fired upon.
"This is fighting at close quarters," said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington research group. "High-tech weapons are irrelevant in counterinsurgency."
Instead, said Pike, "one of the most useful weapons becomes the bolt-action sniper rifle because it enables you to pick people off, one at a time, without killing bystanders."
The Marines also have been using sledgehammers on Iraqi homes, creating holes big enough to poke a gun through without exposing the soldier.
"Otherwise, buildings are sealed boxes and potential traps," said Cordesman.
Reporters embedded with the Marines said soldiers also have been strewing about broken glass as a low-tech early warning system so they can hear the crunch of insurgents' steps and prevent a surprise attack.
Stanczyk said American soldiers in Fallujah also have to leash their inner beast if they want to keep the rebellion from spreading.
"They are in a very difficult situation," said Stanczyk, 85, who now lives in Chicago. "The Germans would order everybody out of a building and massacre men, women and children. The Americans can't do that because then all of Iraq would be against them."
But the Marines cannot ease up their offensive because the Iraqi insurgents will come at them with the same ferocity that the Poles went after the Nazis.
"When we had the chance, we fought hand to hand and we wanted to kill the Germans," he said.
GRAPHIC: AP CLOSING IN U.S. troops march in close formation to forward base near Najaf, Iraq, awaiting word to enter southern city in pursuit of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
© Copyright 2004, Daily News, L.P.
