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GREENLEFT WEEKLY AUSTRALIA 17-NOV-2004
www.greenleft.org.au
IRAQ: US launches mass slaughter in Fallujah
Doug Lorimer
On November 8, the US military launched its long-anticipated second
attempt to recapture the rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah, located 55
kilometres west of Baghdad.
The assault conducted by some 10,000 US troops and 500 Iraqi troops
under their command, using tanks, artillery and attack helicopters was
preceded by weeks of nightly air strikes on residential buildings,
restaurants and mosques. The strikes were designed to terrorise the
city's population of 340,000, causing up to 200,000 of them to flee to
Baghdad.
Two days before the full-scale US assault began, US warplanes reduced
the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city to rubble. BBC
News reported that witnesses said only the hospital's facade remained.
The deliberate destruction of this hospital was a clear indication
that the US military wants to ensure that dead or injured Fallujah
residents are not brought to the city's hospitals so as to conceal the
scale of civilian casualties.
During the US military's previous attempt to recapture Fallujah in
April Iraqi doctors at the city's hospitals reported that hundreds of
residents, most of them women, children and elderly men, were being
killed by US air strikes, artillery shelling and sniper attacks.
Outrage from Iraqis at this casualty toll led to mass protests in
Baghdad, including a three-day general strike. The mass protests
forced Washington to call off its troops' siege of Fallujah at the end
of April.
Significantly, the first operation in the new US offensive to
recapture the city was the storming and seizure of the Fallujah
General Hospital by US troops in the early hours of November 8. This
hospital is located on the western edge of the Euphrates River,
separating it from the rest of the city.
During their assault on the city in April, the US marines prevented
ambulances and other vehicles from transporting dead or injured
residents to what was at that time and after the destruction of Nazzal
Emergency Hospital, is once again the city only trauma-capable medical
facility.
The day after the US military's seizure of Fallujah General, Dr Salih
al Issawi, the director of the hospital, told the South African Press
Association that US marines were again preventing ambulances from
delivering patients to emergency care.
Free-fire zone
That the intention of the US military is to turn Fallujah into a
free-fire zone was indicated by the rules of engagement given to the
invading US troops. On November 7, the puppet government of Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi declared that all Iraq except the Kurdish-run
areas in the country's north was under martial law, banning all
protest rallies and street demonstrations. He also announced that a
24-hour curfew applied in Fallujah, to be observed by everyone in the
city except the invading US and puppet Iraqi troops, thus making any
Fallujan who is not in a residential building a free-fire target.
On the eve of their offensive against Fallujah, US commanders were
openly making it clear to their troops that they were expected to
shoot unarmed civilians. Agence France Presse (AFP) reported that on
November 7 US Marine Corps Colonel Michael Shupp told his troops to
shoot any Iraqi civilian who approached them with raised hands because
he or she might be a "suicide bomber".
The homicidal mentality that US marine commanders have drummed into
their soldiers was illustrated by the comments made by 20-year-old
Lance Corporal Joseph Bowman on November 7. "I want to go and kill
people, so we can go home". He told an Associated Press reporter.
I'll them and go home that all we can do it now.
The US invasion of Fallujah began with intense air strikes and
artillery attacks on civilian targets. The November 9 New York Times
reported: Just before the marines began to push south into Falluja,
the American bombardment intensified, and heavy artillery could be
heard pounding positions in or near the city every few minutes. An
entire apartment complex was ground to rubble. A train station was
obliterated in a hail of 2000-pound bombs.
The NYT report quoted Marine Colonel Craig Tucker saying that
Fallujah's defenders would win if it's bloody; we'll win if we
minimise civilian casualties. Bombarding an entire apartment complex
with artillery shells and reducing it to rubble is how the US military
minimises civilian casualties!
An Agence France Presse reporter in the city told the Qatar-based
Aljazeera satellite TV station on November 9 that in the northwestern
Jolan district, one building in every 10 had been flattened by US air
strikes.
Associated Press reported that same day that Fallujah residents said
intense street clashes between US troops and armed Fallujah residents
were raging in the northern sectors of the city. Witnesses reported
seeing two US tanks engulfed in flames.
Iraqi journalist Abu Bakr al Dulaimi told Aljazeera on November 9 that
almost half Fallujah's 120 mosques had been destroyed by US air
strikes and tank attacks. Violent clashes are now going on in the
western areas of the city" he added. Clashes have also erupted in
Jolan neighbourhood. Resistance in these areas is fierce. The city's
defenders are responding to the US attacks with everything at their
disposal.
On November 10, the US Knight Ridders Newspapers chain reported that
US commanders claimed they had taken control of most of Fallujah and
were encountering only light and unco-ordinated resistance. However,
it also reported that Insurgents showed no sign of
surrendering. Rebels attacked sporadically throughout the day, using
rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and mortar strikes, said a
Knight Ridder reporter embedded with the [US] Army's 1st Infantry
Division.
Intense fighting
The November 10 London Evening Standard reported that, Fresh fighting
erupted today in areas of Fallujah declared cleared' by US forces,
adding: After battling to the centre of the city yesterday, American
commanders had thought they controlled at least its northern third
with rebel fighters fleeing to southern districts to regroup. But at
first light intense machinegun, mortar and rocket exchanges opened up
in the north-western district of Jolan.
The US military responded with air strikes at a rate of six every 15
minutes. Explosions again rocked an area already said to have had half
its buildings flattened in two days of solid shelling.
The Reuters news agency reported on November 10 that American tanks
pushing into central Fallujah are meeting fierce resistance from
well-organised insurgents who show no signs of giving up.
Marine tank platoon commander Lieutenant Joe Cash told the Reuters
reporter the city's resistance fighters were unleashing coordinated
attacks on the US invaders. They hit us from one area and then another
right afterwards. There is in-depth organisation.
There are lots of them. We took heavy fire, Gunnery Sergeant Ishmail
Castillo told the Reuters reporter. They don't look like they are
going to cave in.
On November 8, Time magazine reported that in a a pep talk to US
troops ahead their invasion of Fallujah on Sunday, the senior enlisted
marine in Iraq, Sgt. Major Carlton Kent drew inspiration from great
Marine triumphs of the past. You're all in the process of making
history', he told them. This is another Hue city in the making.'
Kent's analogy to the 25-day battle in 1968 to wrest control of the
old Vietnamese colonial capital from guerrilla insurgents may be
somewhat unfortunate, however... To be sure, the enemy the Marines are
facing in the fierce fighting for Fallujah that began overnight Monday
may be not dissimilar from the one they encountered at Hue. Both are
fiercely determined guerrilla fighters motivated by a combination of
nationalism and ideology, capable of great cruelty and dug in so deep
in the urban landscape that they had to be rooted out building by
building. But while Hue was an heroic triumph, at the cost of some 580
fatalities for the Marines and other US and South Vietnamese units who
went in to recapture a city audaciously seized by insurgents, winning
the battle did not help the American side win the war. And it's far
from clear that victory in Fallujah, rendered somewhat inevitable by
the massive advantage in men and firepower of the US-led operation,
will prove more successful than Hue in turning the tide of the
conflict.
Political blow
US officials claim that the capture of Fallujah is necessary to
establish order in Iraq so that they can proceed with their plans to
legitimise Allawi's US-appointed government through national elections
next January. However, the US invasion of Fallujah may already have
dealt a fatal political blow to these plans, with prominent Sunni
Muslim clerics and politicians condemning the invasion and urging
Sunnis who make up 40% of Iraq's population of 25 million to boycott
the elections.
On November 8, the Iraqi Islamic Party, described by the Western news
media as Iraq's most influential Sunni political party, announced its
withdrawal from Allawi's government. From today, we have nothing to do
with this government, said Iyad al Samurraie, the party's deputy
secretary general. We don't want to take the responsibility of
shedding Iraqi blood without any legal excuse.
The next day, the Association of Muslim Scholars, a group of leading
Sunni clerics that claims to represent 3000 mosques, called for Iraqis
to boycott the January elections which they described as being held
over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah.
The scholars of Iraq place full legal responsibility on Iyad Allawi
for the genocide Fallujah is exposed to at the hands of occupation
forces and a bunch of Iraqi National Guardsmen who cooperate with
them, association director Sheik Hareth al Dhari said in a statement
broadcast throughout the Arab world on satellite television.
From Green Left Weekly, November 17, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
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