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Falluja: A return to barbarity
"This is the 21st century and it is not acceptable that injured people be left lying in the street," Rana Sidani, spokesperson of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was speaking in an interview with Al- Jazeera on Monday, commenting on the situation in the city of Falluja, 60kms west of Baghdad, where 10,000 US marines and 2,000 Iraqi security forces have been conducting a major military onslaught since 8 November. Sidani's reminder predictably fell on deaf ears.
But the standards of the ongoing offensive seem far removed from the modern world's rules of war. The Iraqis are again faced with mediaeval images emerging from Fallujah of decomposing bodies floating in the river, children left to bleed to death in the wreckage of their homes and wounded and helpless prisoners summarily executed.
It is 10 days into the assault on the city and neither the Iraqi interim government nor the US forces spearheading the attack have succeeded in proving their claim that the city was occupied by foreign fighters who were terrorising its population and the rest of Iraq. In 10 days only 15 non-Iraqi fighters -including Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians- have been arrested in Falluja. In the meantime the world has seen what this onslaught has done to the people it had claimed to be liberating.
US military spokespersons argue that the "insurgents" fled the city before the US attacked. The claim holds little water given the ferocity of resistance in the city.
According to the US military the "successful" operation has killed 1,600 "insurgents" while another 1,052 have been captured. At least 51 US troops have been killed since the start of the offensive.
As the fighting grinds slowly to a halt occupation forces and the interim government are already looking at ways of controlling the rebel city, with plans of appointing a new mayor and installing thousands of Iraqi security and paramilitary forces.
The horrific accounts of destruction and unlawful killings lend greater urgency to calls for an investigation into what international rights groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch describe as "war crimes" in Iraq.
Their statements came in response to the screening of two separately filmed incidents showing US marines executing wounded Iraqis. On 13 November an NBC report showed a marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in the head. According to NBC US marines had left five wounded Iraqi men in the mosque on Friday. The following day a second group of marines entered the mosque. The NBC reporter then filmed one of the marines shooting a wounded Iraqi in the head. The fate of the four other Iraqis remains unclear.
The second video was aired on ABC television in Australia on 11 November. It shows a US marine standing on the roof of a building shooting at an Iraqi. The marine shouts "I've just injured one, he's between the two buildings." A second marine walks over to the gap between the two houses, climbs a 44- gallon drum and aims his gun at the injured Iraqi. The marine then climbs down saying, "he's done."
The soldier in the NBC footage is currently under investigation, though few expect the result to be anything other than a whitewash.
No Arab officials have condemned the Falluja offensive.
Though the US military was keen to seal off the city, turning back aid convoys and anyone else who tried to enter, news from Falluja continued to trickle out through the course of the onslaught. Survivors who managed to leave and reports by journalists embedded with US forces, reveal harrowing scenes with hundreds of bodies piled in the streets, many being eaten by stray dogs. One survivor told Al-Jazeera on Monday that he saw US bulldozers dragging dozens of corpses to be thrown in to the Euphrates.
On 15 November Al-Jazeera interviewed an Iraqi doctor who provided details of the looting by Iraqi forces, under US control, of Falluja General Hospital. The doctor, Asma Khamis Al-Muhannadi, said the hospital was targeted by bombs and rockets during the initial siege of Falluja. Troops dragged patients from their beds and pushed them against the wall. "I was with a woman in labour," she said, "and the umbilical cord had not yet been cut. A US soldier shouted at one of the (Iraqi) national guards to arrest me and tie my hands while I was helping the mother to deliver."
The US military continues to refuse the repeated pleas by aid groups to allow humanitarian relief convoys inside the city. Several Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) convoys remain waiting at the western entrance to the city, waiting to be allowed through. According to Ahmed Rawi of ICRC's Iraq office "residents have had no access to drinking water or electricity since 8 November and the only water station they can use is cordoned off by the US military."
The situation is so bad now that "our top priority is the safety of residents whose lives are threatened hourly," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview.
"We are urging the Iraqi Health Ministry to supply the wounded of Falluja, and the thousands who fled the city before the assault, with the medical care they need," he added.
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has repeatedly denied there is a humanitarian crisis in Falluja, a position echoed by the Iraqi health minister who insisted that most of the city's 300,0000 residents had left it before the offensive.
But according to the IRC spokesperson at least 157 families are still stuck inside Falluja. This evaluation was supported by ICRC's Rawi who said that many of the families who left Falluja said that the Marines prevented all male residents aged between 15 and 45 to exit the city.
On Tuesday nine international aid groups issued a joint statement expressing concern "for the safety of thousands of civilians caught up in the major offensive." The statement took issue with the recent 60-day state of emergency as well as the assault on Falluja which, it said, "indicate the failure of the Iraqi government to fulfil its legal obligations to guarantee an appropriate environment for the implementation of Resolution 1546 of the UN Security Council."
The interim government argues that the assault and emergency law are intended to secure Iraq for elections scheduled for 27 January. But in protest the Islamic Party, the country's most influential Sunni political group, announced its withdrawal from the government in response to the attack on Falluja. The Sunni Muslim Clerics Association went further, urging Iraqis to boycott the vote. Several of its leading members have been arrested as a result. It is not clear if this will provoke an even larger boycott of the elections, and there is no certainty that the Shia majority will act along clear-cut sectarian lines. Indeed, in light of the Falluja offensive, many commentators believe Allawi's position has been fatally compromised.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/717/fr1.htm
It is 10 days into the assault on the city and neither the Iraqi interim government nor the US forces spearheading the attack have succeeded in proving their claim that the city was occupied by foreign fighters who were terrorising its population and the rest of Iraq. In 10 days only 15 non-Iraqi fighters -including Syrians, Egyptians and Jordanians- have been arrested in Falluja. In the meantime the world has seen what this onslaught has done to the people it had claimed to be liberating.
US military spokespersons argue that the "insurgents" fled the city before the US attacked. The claim holds little water given the ferocity of resistance in the city.
According to the US military the "successful" operation has killed 1,600 "insurgents" while another 1,052 have been captured. At least 51 US troops have been killed since the start of the offensive.
As the fighting grinds slowly to a halt occupation forces and the interim government are already looking at ways of controlling the rebel city, with plans of appointing a new mayor and installing thousands of Iraqi security and paramilitary forces.
The horrific accounts of destruction and unlawful killings lend greater urgency to calls for an investigation into what international rights groups such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch describe as "war crimes" in Iraq.
Their statements came in response to the screening of two separately filmed incidents showing US marines executing wounded Iraqis. On 13 November an NBC report showed a marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in the head. According to NBC US marines had left five wounded Iraqi men in the mosque on Friday. The following day a second group of marines entered the mosque. The NBC reporter then filmed one of the marines shooting a wounded Iraqi in the head. The fate of the four other Iraqis remains unclear.
The second video was aired on ABC television in Australia on 11 November. It shows a US marine standing on the roof of a building shooting at an Iraqi. The marine shouts "I've just injured one, he's between the two buildings." A second marine walks over to the gap between the two houses, climbs a 44- gallon drum and aims his gun at the injured Iraqi. The marine then climbs down saying, "he's done."
The soldier in the NBC footage is currently under investigation, though few expect the result to be anything other than a whitewash.
No Arab officials have condemned the Falluja offensive.
Though the US military was keen to seal off the city, turning back aid convoys and anyone else who tried to enter, news from Falluja continued to trickle out through the course of the onslaught. Survivors who managed to leave and reports by journalists embedded with US forces, reveal harrowing scenes with hundreds of bodies piled in the streets, many being eaten by stray dogs. One survivor told Al-Jazeera on Monday that he saw US bulldozers dragging dozens of corpses to be thrown in to the Euphrates.
On 15 November Al-Jazeera interviewed an Iraqi doctor who provided details of the looting by Iraqi forces, under US control, of Falluja General Hospital. The doctor, Asma Khamis Al-Muhannadi, said the hospital was targeted by bombs and rockets during the initial siege of Falluja. Troops dragged patients from their beds and pushed them against the wall. "I was with a woman in labour," she said, "and the umbilical cord had not yet been cut. A US soldier shouted at one of the (Iraqi) national guards to arrest me and tie my hands while I was helping the mother to deliver."
The US military continues to refuse the repeated pleas by aid groups to allow humanitarian relief convoys inside the city. Several Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) convoys remain waiting at the western entrance to the city, waiting to be allowed through. According to Ahmed Rawi of ICRC's Iraq office "residents have had no access to drinking water or electricity since 8 November and the only water station they can use is cordoned off by the US military."
The situation is so bad now that "our top priority is the safety of residents whose lives are threatened hourly," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview.
"We are urging the Iraqi Health Ministry to supply the wounded of Falluja, and the thousands who fled the city before the assault, with the medical care they need," he added.
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has repeatedly denied there is a humanitarian crisis in Falluja, a position echoed by the Iraqi health minister who insisted that most of the city's 300,0000 residents had left it before the offensive.
But according to the IRC spokesperson at least 157 families are still stuck inside Falluja. This evaluation was supported by ICRC's Rawi who said that many of the families who left Falluja said that the Marines prevented all male residents aged between 15 and 45 to exit the city.
On Tuesday nine international aid groups issued a joint statement expressing concern "for the safety of thousands of civilians caught up in the major offensive." The statement took issue with the recent 60-day state of emergency as well as the assault on Falluja which, it said, "indicate the failure of the Iraqi government to fulfil its legal obligations to guarantee an appropriate environment for the implementation of Resolution 1546 of the UN Security Council."
The interim government argues that the assault and emergency law are intended to secure Iraq for elections scheduled for 27 January. But in protest the Islamic Party, the country's most influential Sunni political group, announced its withdrawal from the government in response to the attack on Falluja. The Sunni Muslim Clerics Association went further, urging Iraqis to boycott the vote. Several of its leading members have been arrested as a result. It is not clear if this will provoke an even larger boycott of the elections, and there is no certainty that the Shia majority will act along clear-cut sectarian lines. Indeed, in light of the Falluja offensive, many commentators believe Allawi's position has been fatally compromised.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/717/fr1.htm
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Anas Al-Tikriti* on how Falluja inadvertently became a symbol of resistance
Few would have imagined that the name of a small and previously obscure city in Iraq would echo around the world. Falluja, with a population of 350,000, has become a by-word for resistance to the United States' occupation of Iraq. The people of the city are known throughout Iraq for their conservatism and puritanical lifestyles.
In some places Falluja is mentioned with anger and rage; in others the name conjures pride, solidarity and empathy. The fact that Falluja has become a popular girls' name among Muslim families in Asia, Europe and beyond says it all.
Falluja has become the embodiment of the spectacular failure of the American project in Iraq, and to many this can only mean good news. However, while many around the world rejoice at the continued bewilderment of the coalition forces, the fact that a full-scale humanitarian tragedy is steadily unfolding cannot be ignored.
The siege imposed around the city by more than 18,000 American troops forced the vast majority of its residents to flee. Some reports described an exodus of almost 300,000 people trying to escape what they knew would be a brutal assault on their home town. Many took shelter in cattle-sheds, chicken pens and rubbish dumps. Others, though, were less fortunate. The 50,000 remaining inside the city are the ones who usually get left behind in such tragic circumstances: they are the elderly, the sick, the young, the deprived and those who have nowhere else to go and no one to look after them.
The circumstances they now face are desperate. There is no electricity, no water or sanitary facilities, no medical care. Food and potable water had become dangerously scarce by the time Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid Al-Fitr, and the most lethal means of transportation inside Falluja was officially declared to be the ambulance. Yet incredibly, when the Muslim Association of Britain issued a press release on 12 November drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Falluja it had been given next to no coverage in the British or American media. As one American general put it: "This was going to be a clean operation."
No one outside Falluja was going to see or smell the stench.
What followed has been one of the most fierce street battles of recent times, fought between heavily armed, highly-trained and professional American soldiers and street-fighters who possess little beyond resolve, self-belief and convictions. Who they were, how many, where they were from, what their strategy and battle-plan was and what they aimed to do if they were to triumph, no one was told. Or maybe no one actually knew. The only thing that we were told was that they were insurgents and foreign fighters and that they were led by the brutal and gruesome Abu Mossab Al-Zarqawi. A few months ago Al-Zarqawi was reported to be a one-legged fighter with a grudge against anything American. More recently he appeared -- or so we are told -- on video, able-bodied and fully capable of decapitating civilian hostages. The interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi claimed, almost absurdly, that foreign insurgents had taken the city of Falluja hostage and that this operation was a "to free it and its people".
One of the most pervasive features of this war is the stacking up of evidence condemning the occupiers, their methods and techniques. The world was shaken by the sickening images of torture and physical and sexual abuse that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison a few months ago. And now film has been made public showing the cold-blooded execution of an injured man lying helpless in the ruins of a Falluja mosque. Such images will hardly endear US troops to the Iraqis who are growing ever more restless in areas previously perceived as stable.
There will be another whitewash. Perhaps the soldier in question will be disciplined. He may even be sentenced to a prison term. Few people, though, are foolish enough to think that such inhumane practices are the isolated cases the Pentagon insists they are, or that they do not reach far higher up the chain of command than we are constantly told.
Falluja will be recaptured by the American forces with the blessings of Iraq's interim government. Mosul, and other areas causing immense embarrassment to the occupation, may also be re-classified as under control. This does not alter the fact that day after day the coalition forces and the government they helped install are steadily losing grip on whatever meagre support and sympathy they managed to accumulate in March and April 2003. They are also facing an ever- growing band they foolishly insist on labelling as foreign fighters and insurgents.
One might have expected the much vaunted January elections to be the talk of a nation deprived of any such expression of freedom and democracy for decades. It is telling that very few Iraqis take the elections seriously.
Until there is a genuine admission of fault and failure by those who launched this belligerent war against Iraq and a clear statement to fully withdraw their military forces, allowing the people of Iraq to form their own administration within their own time, through the means they decide best able to build their own future, then Falluja will not be the final chapter of this tragic story.
* The writer is the former president and spokesman of the Muslim Association of Britain.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/717/re3.htm
Few would have imagined that the name of a small and previously obscure city in Iraq would echo around the world. Falluja, with a population of 350,000, has become a by-word for resistance to the United States' occupation of Iraq. The people of the city are known throughout Iraq for their conservatism and puritanical lifestyles.
In some places Falluja is mentioned with anger and rage; in others the name conjures pride, solidarity and empathy. The fact that Falluja has become a popular girls' name among Muslim families in Asia, Europe and beyond says it all.
Falluja has become the embodiment of the spectacular failure of the American project in Iraq, and to many this can only mean good news. However, while many around the world rejoice at the continued bewilderment of the coalition forces, the fact that a full-scale humanitarian tragedy is steadily unfolding cannot be ignored.
The siege imposed around the city by more than 18,000 American troops forced the vast majority of its residents to flee. Some reports described an exodus of almost 300,000 people trying to escape what they knew would be a brutal assault on their home town. Many took shelter in cattle-sheds, chicken pens and rubbish dumps. Others, though, were less fortunate. The 50,000 remaining inside the city are the ones who usually get left behind in such tragic circumstances: they are the elderly, the sick, the young, the deprived and those who have nowhere else to go and no one to look after them.
The circumstances they now face are desperate. There is no electricity, no water or sanitary facilities, no medical care. Food and potable water had become dangerously scarce by the time Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid Al-Fitr, and the most lethal means of transportation inside Falluja was officially declared to be the ambulance. Yet incredibly, when the Muslim Association of Britain issued a press release on 12 November drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Falluja it had been given next to no coverage in the British or American media. As one American general put it: "This was going to be a clean operation."
No one outside Falluja was going to see or smell the stench.
What followed has been one of the most fierce street battles of recent times, fought between heavily armed, highly-trained and professional American soldiers and street-fighters who possess little beyond resolve, self-belief and convictions. Who they were, how many, where they were from, what their strategy and battle-plan was and what they aimed to do if they were to triumph, no one was told. Or maybe no one actually knew. The only thing that we were told was that they were insurgents and foreign fighters and that they were led by the brutal and gruesome Abu Mossab Al-Zarqawi. A few months ago Al-Zarqawi was reported to be a one-legged fighter with a grudge against anything American. More recently he appeared -- or so we are told -- on video, able-bodied and fully capable of decapitating civilian hostages. The interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi claimed, almost absurdly, that foreign insurgents had taken the city of Falluja hostage and that this operation was a "to free it and its people".
One of the most pervasive features of this war is the stacking up of evidence condemning the occupiers, their methods and techniques. The world was shaken by the sickening images of torture and physical and sexual abuse that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison a few months ago. And now film has been made public showing the cold-blooded execution of an injured man lying helpless in the ruins of a Falluja mosque. Such images will hardly endear US troops to the Iraqis who are growing ever more restless in areas previously perceived as stable.
There will be another whitewash. Perhaps the soldier in question will be disciplined. He may even be sentenced to a prison term. Few people, though, are foolish enough to think that such inhumane practices are the isolated cases the Pentagon insists they are, or that they do not reach far higher up the chain of command than we are constantly told.
Falluja will be recaptured by the American forces with the blessings of Iraq's interim government. Mosul, and other areas causing immense embarrassment to the occupation, may also be re-classified as under control. This does not alter the fact that day after day the coalition forces and the government they helped install are steadily losing grip on whatever meagre support and sympathy they managed to accumulate in March and April 2003. They are also facing an ever- growing band they foolishly insist on labelling as foreign fighters and insurgents.
One might have expected the much vaunted January elections to be the talk of a nation deprived of any such expression of freedom and democracy for decades. It is telling that very few Iraqis take the elections seriously.
Until there is a genuine admission of fault and failure by those who launched this belligerent war against Iraq and a clear statement to fully withdraw their military forces, allowing the people of Iraq to form their own administration within their own time, through the means they decide best able to build their own future, then Falluja will not be the final chapter of this tragic story.
* The writer is the former president and spokesman of the Muslim Association of Britain.
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/717/re3.htm
What would you do if in the middle of the night a heavily armed and armored goon squad invaded your sanctuary called home and terrorized you and your family with threats and beatings, and maybe even raped the females, killed one of your family members or took them away never to be seen or heard from again?
What would you do if your child was in the backyard playing and suddenly you see his head explode from a psychopathic snipers' bullet?
What would you do if you saw a picture of your best friend lying dead in a partially wrapped body bag and a foreign soldier posing gleefully giving the thumbs up signal?
What would you do if a car full of neighbors drove by and suddenly their car was riddled to pieces by .50 caliber gunfire and the shooters then walked up to the mangled mass of metal and finished off those who managed to survive the unprovoked attack?
What would you do if newborns in your family and community were born with hideous defects as a result of the all the depleted uranium contamination left behind by the spent munitions that liberated you?
What would you do if you had to watch a loved one die a slow agonizing death due radiation poisoning from the same depleted uranium contamination?
What would you do if you had to recant your religious beliefs, or face the possibility of sick and perverted sexual humiliation or a tortuous death?
What would you do if your unwitting child curiously picked up an unexploded cluster bomb and was killed or maimed?
What would you do if you found out your daughter felt she had to become a prostitute in order to help the family afford the basic necessities of life?
What would you do if a local family was having a wedding party and they were torn to pieces by foreign troops firing bullets and bombs, and had no regard as to whether or not they killed innocent men, women or children?
What would you do if foreign corporations came into your country and plundered your natural resources?
What would you do if you were coming home only to find arrogant bullies had demolished it with bulldozers?
What would you do if those who act less than human treated you as if you were less than human?
What would you do if constant fear, suffering and death caused by foreigners, with no end in sight, came to visit your neighborhood and country?
Take a moment or two and try to imagine yourself in these conditions, and then ask yourself, what would you do? That is, if you dare.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/070604Becker/070604becker.html
Good luck to the people of Iraq in defending their homes and loved ones from the occupying army.
Viva la Fallujah!
What would you do if your child was in the backyard playing and suddenly you see his head explode from a psychopathic snipers' bullet?
What would you do if you saw a picture of your best friend lying dead in a partially wrapped body bag and a foreign soldier posing gleefully giving the thumbs up signal?
What would you do if a car full of neighbors drove by and suddenly their car was riddled to pieces by .50 caliber gunfire and the shooters then walked up to the mangled mass of metal and finished off those who managed to survive the unprovoked attack?
What would you do if newborns in your family and community were born with hideous defects as a result of the all the depleted uranium contamination left behind by the spent munitions that liberated you?
What would you do if you had to watch a loved one die a slow agonizing death due radiation poisoning from the same depleted uranium contamination?
What would you do if you had to recant your religious beliefs, or face the possibility of sick and perverted sexual humiliation or a tortuous death?
What would you do if your unwitting child curiously picked up an unexploded cluster bomb and was killed or maimed?
What would you do if you found out your daughter felt she had to become a prostitute in order to help the family afford the basic necessities of life?
What would you do if a local family was having a wedding party and they were torn to pieces by foreign troops firing bullets and bombs, and had no regard as to whether or not they killed innocent men, women or children?
What would you do if foreign corporations came into your country and plundered your natural resources?
What would you do if you were coming home only to find arrogant bullies had demolished it with bulldozers?
What would you do if those who act less than human treated you as if you were less than human?
What would you do if constant fear, suffering and death caused by foreigners, with no end in sight, came to visit your neighborhood and country?
Take a moment or two and try to imagine yourself in these conditions, and then ask yourself, what would you do? That is, if you dare.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/070604Becker/070604becker.html
Good luck to the people of Iraq in defending their homes and loved ones from the occupying army.
Viva la Fallujah!
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