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September 2004, displacing an estimated 150,000 people, and pushing “reconstruction . .
. back to square one.” Hoping to resuscitate the city’s reconstruction following BLACK
TYPHOON, Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, requested $3
million in emergency funding to rebuild Tall ‘Afar’s infrastructure, expressing his belief
to Mayor Mohammed Rashid Hamid that Tall ‘Afar would “‘once again be a great city.’”
Ham believed, for good reason, that “‘Having us stay there [in great strength] is exactly
the wrong thing.’” Citing the few American forces available for reoccupying the city,
Ham believed that a prolonged American presence conveyed to undecided Iraqis an image
of the US as an occupying power. Moreover, Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post,
citing American officers, reported that the poorly disciplined Wolf Brigade, a Shiite police
commando outfit, “shot up the [largely Sunni] city,” an act the Sunnis perceived as an
assault on them. 11
Ham’s estimate of forces and of a prolonged or substantial American presence was
correct, but the timing proved precipitate. Indeed, it was part of the larger phenomenon
of seizure, clearance, and rapid handover to smaller American forces or to undertrained
or ill-prepared Iraqi forces, part of a “cycle that has been repeated in rebellious cities
throughout Iraq.” According to Maj. Christopher Kennedy, the 3d ACR’s executive officer,
the impermanence of the American presence and the resulting instability were “‘what our
lack of combat power has done to us throughout the country… The problem has been we
haven’t been able to leave sufficient forces in towns where we’ve cleared the insurgents
out.’” 12
BlaCK tYPHooN’s success notwithstanding, within a month insurgents reclaimed
Tall ‘Afar in even greater strength than before. They besieged police stations, severely
damaging or destroying some with bombs, forcing terrified residents out of the city, even
to the point of the people clearing out of the Sarai neighborhood. The resurgent insurgents’
attacks began shortly after dawn prayers on 14 November 2004, the beginning of the
Id al-Fitr celebration marking the conclusion of Ramadan. They launched a raid on a
city prison, freeing the prisoners before bombing it. Continuing their assault, insurgents
attacked the police station in the Hassan Qoi district. Interestingly, the sustained assaults
started shortly after Operation PHANTOM FURY began on 8 November. At nearly the
same time that US and Iraqi forces began the “pacification of Fallujah,” Tall ‘Afar was
replacing Fallujah as a center of the insurgency. Instead of reversing Tall ‘Afar’s “slide
into bedlam,” BLACK TYPHOON may have inadvertently hastened it. 13

11 Packer, 1; Pratt, “Streets of Tal Afar”; GlobalSecurity.Com, “Operation Black Typhoon,” online at <http://
www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/oif-black-typhoon.htm>, accessed August 2006; Fainaru, “Rebuilding
Starts From Scratch”; id., “U.S.-Led Forces Retake Northern Iraqi City,” Washington Post, 13 September
2004; Ann Scott Tyson, “Ten Days in Tall Afar; An Exception, Not a Model that is Easily Replicated,” Wash-
ington Post, 26 March 2006; Yingling interview.
12 Packer, “Letter from Iraq,” 1; Pratt, “Streets of Tal Afar”; GlobalSecurity.Com, “Operation Black Typhoon”;
Fainaru, “Rebuilding Starts From Scratch”; id., “Forces Retake Northern Iraqi City”; Jonathan Finer, “5,000
U.S. and Iraqi Troops Sweep into City of Tall Afar; Urban Assault is Largest Since Last Year,” Washington
Post, 3 September 2005; Oppel, “Magnet for Iraq Insurgents.”
13 Finer, “Troops Sweep into City of Tall Afar”; Edward Wong, “Raids in Mosul Region Undermine Value of
Victories,” New York Times, 15 November 2004; Knights, “Increased Instability,” 31; Tyson, “Ten Days in
Tall Afar”; Simmering, 2/3 ACR Actions, 3.