Marines assault rebel border town

US marines began the latest in a series of operations Saturday to root out insurgents who have infiltrated remote towns along the Syrian border. But if past offenses in the region are any lesson, the hardest part may be keeping insurgents from returning once the fighting has stopped.

In the first days of Operation Iron Fist, US troops killed at least eight insurgents in gun battles that broke out as they scoured the small town of Sadah, located near Qaim in Anbar Province. The remote border town was abandoned by most of its 2,000 residents as they were forewarned of the battle by the Americans.

Some 1,000 marines, soldiers, and sailors engaged in the operation that is a smaller part of Operation Hunter meant to stabilize the troubled Euphrates River Valley before the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum, which Sunni insurgents have vowed to disrupt.

The operation in Sadah, comes on the heels of similar battles in Qaim and, farther north, Tal Afar. The towns run along the Syrian border that is seen as a gateway for fighters and funds supporting the insurgency. The Marines said Sadah and the surrounding area is a "known terrorist sanctuary."

According to one senior US marine commander, insurgents connected to militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have overrun at least five towns along the border of Syria, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last week. They have taken over the towns, caused residents to flee, and established strict Islamic law there, the Chronicle reported.

Mr. Zarqawi, who leads Al Qaeda in Iraq, has controlled the towns for about a month, the commander said.

The operation in Sadah comes just four months after two sieges on neighboring Qaim were meant to rid the area of insurgents. In Tal Afar, after a siege involving thousands of US and Iraqi troops in which the military said it killed some 150 insurgents in September, a female suicide bomber blew herself up there near Iraqi Army recruits last week.

"In the case of Iraq they must maintain a ground presence," says Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism expert at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies in Singapore. "Otherwise they are only killing a few insurgents."

The nearly 150,000 US troops in Iraq are not enough to maintain security in the towns they wrest from insurgent control, says Mr. Gunaratna.

"I think if they are going to maintain a ground presence they will have to bring in more troops. But these should be from the UN, Muslim countries, and European countries," Gunaratna says. "If they were just American troops they will be killed because they are not liked by the Iraqis."

Convincing other countries to contribute more troops to Iraq would be an uphill battle for the Bush administration as the number of countries participating in the coalition in Iraq has already grown steadily smaller since the US-led invasion in 2003.

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