Fallujah: Guernica Redux... or Stalingrad II ?

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Fallujah will be your Stalingrad, Americans told

by Toby Harnden, The Telegraph
April 26th, 2004


On the dusty road to the Jordanian Hospital on the edge of besieged Fallujah
a skull and crossbones flew defiantly from the bonnet of a US military
Humvee yesterday as preparations were made for a renewed offensive.

America's senior general described the city as a "huge rats' nest", while
Col John Coleman, a US marine commander in Fallujah, suggested that it was a
"centre of gravity" in the war against terrorism.

"As Fallujah goes, so goes central Iraq," he said. "As central Iraq goes, so
goes the nation."

More American soldiers have died in Fallujah than anywhere else in post-war
Iraq and the Sunni city, a Saddam Hussein stronghold to which foreign
fighters have flocked, is Iraq's main battleground.

But for Amar Abbas, a 35-year-old electrical engineer, Fallujah is simply
home. He fled with many members of his extended family when the fighting in
the city erupted and took refuge in the nearby village of Na'amiya.

At the weekend, his relatives said, an American missile strike there killed
a dozen people and injured many more. Mr Abbas lay in a temporary hospital
yesterday preparing for an operation to remove shrapnel from his jaw.

Opposite him was his son Othman, eight, whose face had been horribly
disfigured and left hand rendered useless by the blast.

"We thought we would be safe in Na'amiya," said Mr Abbas. "We were sleeping
outside on the ground when the planes and helicopters came. It was 2am. My
son wanted to become a surgeon, but now that can never be. They even
prevented us evacuating the wounded. It was hours before we could get Othman
out."

The only words his son had spoken since he was so badly injured, he said,
were "I hate the Americans". As Othman stared blankly at the ceiling, his
father said he wanted the Americans to pay for what they had done.

"Fallujah will be their Stalingrad. The Euphrates will be a river of their
blood. Now the resistance is spreading all over Iraq and everyone is coming
to Fallujah to help us. It will not be conquered."

The official estimate of civilian deaths in Fallujah since US forces entered
the city three weeks ago is 271.

The trigger for the offensive came when four defence contractors were killed
and their charred bodies were dragged through the streets and hung from a
bridge.

Two of the Iraqi dead were unidentified and buried in makeshift graves in
the grounds of the hospital. "One body was brought here in a blanket by
American troops," said Major Moneeb Zurikat, the hospital's security
officer.

"They dumped it at the gate and shouted, 'Now you can bury your Muslim
brother'. What can I say? There is nothing to say about this."

With the Pentagon determined to break the will of the insurgents and avenge
the lives of the many Americans they have killed, a peaceful resolution with
the diehard Iraqi fighters is unlikely.

Another US soldier was killed in Baghdad yesterday and a US Coast Guard
officer died of wounds sustained on Saturday in an audacious suicide attack
on a Gulf oil facility. Two American sailors died and oil exports stopped
for at least two days.

With the expertise of the insurgents improving all the time and the defiance
in Fallujah acting as an inspiration nationally, commanders believe that
only an American victory in the city can break the will of their enemies.

At the checkpoint outside the hospital an American military policeman
shrugged when asked about the dead and injured of Na'amiya.

"We received some mortar and small arms fire from there and so we said, 'to
hell with it' and just went in.

"We were supposed to wait until today, but we got pissed off and decided to
draw a line. We pretty much took out anyone who was in there being stupid."
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your Stalingrad, ...

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