The American-backed Iraqi effort to oust Islamic State militants from their stronghold in Fallujah turned out to be far easier than many U.S. officials initially feared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Once they got through the hard-candy shell and into the chewy center, things went much more quickly,” Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said Monday.\u00a0“It was really a heavy fight along the front line. But once they penetrated that, it seemed to go very quickly.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was really a heavy fight along the front line. But once they penetrated that, it seemed to go very quickly,” Davis said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The five-week operation officially ended Sunday when top Iraqi commanders declared the city to be <\/span>“fully liberated” from ISIS the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n Retaking Fallujah was not the grinding block-by-block street fight that the Iraqis faced in Ramadi last year, an operation which took almost four months to complete.\u00a0Yet by comparison, the Iraqi operation in Fallujah took far longer than a similar battle the U.S. Marines fought there in November 2004, known as Operation Phantom Fury, when American U.S. <\/span>military officials declared the city cleared after nine days.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Iraqi army\u2019s primary offensive in Fallujah\u00a0came from the south and the Iraqi <\/span>military installation once known to Americans as Camp Fallujah. And the\u00a0The Iraqi\u2019s <\/span>victory came despite relatively limited support from the U.S. forces military<\/span>. While the U.S launched more than 100 air strikes in support of Iraqi ground troops forces<\/span>, the Americans did not provide attack helicopters or ground-level combat advisers, an offer which the U.S. has repeatedly offered but <\/span>the Iraqis have repeatedly declined.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n For months, U.S. military officials had urged the Iraqi government to focus on Mosul, the ISIS stronghold in northern Iraq. But the Iraqis shifted their there <\/span>attention to Fallujah this spring after a spate of terrorist attacks in Baghdad that many blamed on the ISIS presence in the city just 40 miles west of the capital. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n VThe v<\/span>ictory in Fallujah highlights the progress of the <\/span>Iraqis’ progress forces<\/span>, said British Maj. Gen. Doug Chalmers, a deputy commander with the American-led coalition effort known as Operation Inherent Resolve.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The Iraqi security forces have learned how to deal with some of these [ISIS] obstacles and how they fight. They have adapted as well,” Chalmers told reporters last week\u00a0on June 23<\/span>.\u00a0And, he added, “I think the confidence of those involved was better.” Chalmers said.<\/span>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fallujah was the ISIS\u2019s <\/span>last major ISIS stronghold in Iraq\u2019s al Anbar Province. It\u00a0Fallujah <\/span>was a key <\/span>staging ground for ISIS’s <\/span>car-bomb attacks on Iraq’s capital, making the\u00a0victory\u00a0uniquely important for the Baghdad government\u2019s effort to protect itself capital<\/span>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n “It was the last significant piece of territory with proximity to Baghdad,” Davis said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. commanders had hoped to keep the Iraqis focused on Mosul, but Baghdad had other plans. Here’s why:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":91514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":10,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[10,15,88],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3125],"class_list":["post-88643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-your-military"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"H2FMVLXRDFEY5OGZZEKNXAWHXE","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2016\/06\/27\/the-iraqis-win-over-isis-in-fallujah-was-considerably-easier-than-expected\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n