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Multi-National Force West

military unit

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 16, 2025
Entity authorityQ6934395
Source-derived summary

Multi-National Forces West (MNF-W) or United States Forces West (USF-W) was one of the coalition headquarters under Multi-National Force-Iraq. It was headquartered by either I or II U.S. Marine Expeditionary Force that rotated on a 12-month basis. Their area of operations was primarily the Al Anbar province which includes the cities of Ar Ramadi, Fallujah, Al-Qa'im, and Haditha. The force was the most important U.S. unit to take part in the Iraq War in Al Anbar Governorate.

Among the smaller multinational units operating within MNF-W was a platoon from the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.

Commanders

During the Iraq War, the Marine Corps regularly rotated command of MNF-W between the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces.

For convenience, these changes of command are listed below and the Marine command in MNF-W is simply referred to as "MEF":

As the Marine Corps withdrew from Al Anbar Governorate, by September 2009 they were replaced by a single brigade, the 1st Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division. The brigade was bolstered with an additional 16 advisers, though this did not reach the 48 assigned advisors that were supposed to be part of an 'Advise and Assist' brigade.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Multi-National Force West” is military unit. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Multi-National, Force and West, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2009—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Multi-National, Force and West is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “military unit” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q6934395. The first chronological checks are 2009.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Multi-National Force West”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Multi-National Force West primary sources, Multi-National Force West archive and Multi-National research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Multi-National Force West”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Multi-National Force West” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.