The results of the Anbar Awakening and the surge are plain to see. Since the Fifth Marine Regiment’s Third Battalion rotated into Fallujah in September 2007, not a single American has been wounded there, let alone killed. Hardly anyone even tries to start a fight now. A handful of people have taken potshots at Marines; one man threw a hand grenade in the neighborhood of Dubat; some fool blew himself up when the Iraqi police caught him planting an IED outside their station. Every attack has been ineffective. Of all Iraq’s cities, only nearby Ramadi has experienced so many dramatic changes in so short a time.
What is currently lauded as ‘stability’ is in fact a harsh despotism run by former Republican Guards who round up suspects arbitrarily, then beat and torture them. It is a city riddled with blast walls and checkpoints, and any imam who preaches against the occupation is ordered to shut down. It is a place where the mere suspicion of insurgency can result in your fingernails being pulled out as you are beaten up. A city in tatters, a “big jail” still under biometric lockdown, still without regular electricity or clean water (which one reason is why malaria is spreading). And you can do all this to a city and call it progress because of the success of the preparatory propaganda.