Event Preview: June 15
A Chance in Hell: The Men who Triumphed over Iraq’s Deadliest City and Turned the Tide of War by Jim Michaels will be previewed by the OPC a few weeks before publication. Michaels covers military issues for USA Today and has made about 20 reporting trips to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as supervised the paper’s six embedded reporters. Michaels is a former Marine Corps infantry officer and he covered the Persian Gulf War for the San Diego Tribune.
Ramadi was one of Iraq’s most violent cities with al-Qaeda boldly declaring Ramadi its capital. Even the U.S. military acknowledged the province would be the last to be pacified.
In the spring of 2006 Colonel Sean MacFarland’s Army brigade arrived in Ramadi with simple instructions: pacify Ramadi without destroying it. While most of the American military was focused on taming Baghdad, MacFarland laid out a bold plan for Ramadi. His soldiers would take on the insurgents in their own backyard. He set up combat outposts in the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. U.S. tanks rumbled down the streets, firing point blank into buildings occupied by insurgents. MacFarland’s brigade engaged in some of the bloodiest street fighting of the war. The two sides were in a stalemate when a minor tribal leader, Sheik Abdul Sattar Bezia al-Rishawi entered the picture. The Sheik was a smuggler who carried a large six-shooter on his hip and had a taste for whiskey, but he hated al-Qaeda and was carefully watching the work of MacFarland’s soldiers and coming to the conclusion that this was a different group of Ameicans. Sattar approached MacFarland and said he was ready to join with the Americans and fight al-Qaeda. MacFarland didn’t hesitate promising Sattar his support.
What followed was one of history’s unlikeliest – and most successful – partnerships. Together, the Americans and Sattar’s growing band of fighters drove al-Qaeda from Ramadi. This collaboration was later called “the Awakening” and was key to progress in Iraq.
Jim Lehrer of the PBS Newshour said “Ramadi was the place where the Iraq war made its real turn toward success. A group of smart, courageous Americans, mostly Army and Marine officers on the ground, not in Washington – worked with Iraqi tribal leaders to make it happen. It is one helluva story that has been told brilliantly by Jim Michaels.”