Falluja - All
the Makings
Of A War Crime
By Tony Kevin
09
November, 2004 by the
Sydney
Morning Herald
We
need to be clear on what is about to happen in the Iraqi city of Falluja,
about 64 kilometers west of Baghdad and a key center of Sunni population
in Iraq. This city has for many months held out as a center of Sunni-based
political-military resistance, refusing to accept the authority either
of the former US-led occupying authority nor, since July, of the interim
Iraqi administration led by the Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi.
Falluja is now to be brought to heel by overwhelming military power.
As I write this, the US attack on the city has begun. The message to
Falluja from the US armed forces in Iraq and from Allawi was brutally
simple: submit now to Baghdad's authority or face attack.
It is still possible
that resistance in Falluja will melt away in the face of US attack.
While this would be a more optimistic scenario, I think it more likely
at this point that the insurgents will fight, because too much is at
stake politically for them to accept a bloodless Allawi victory. I look
here at the - in my judgment, now more likely - scenario that Falluja
insurgents will dig in and defy the invasion force.
What I believe is
then likely to be done to Falluja will be a war crime and crime against
humanity, morally indefensible by any civilized standard or for that
matter, by the Statute of the International Criminal Court (to which,
conveniently, neither the US nor Iraqi Government adheres).
This will be no
neat, surgical strike. To get the measure of this, think of the Warsaw
rising in 1944, or the Russian Army's destruction of the Chechen capital,
Grozny. In 1999 this already battered city (of originally 400,000 people)
was finally destroyed by massive Russian bombardment. Today, insurgents
still fight it out with Russian troops among the ruins.
Eighteen months
ago, before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Falluja was a living city of
300,000 people. Now - depopulated of most of its civilians by intimidation
and fear - what is left looks like it is about to be blasted out of
existence, simply as a demonstration of overwhelming US power in Iraq.
Of course, the US
Army has been for weeks "humanely" encouraging women and children
to leave the encircled city through checkpoints while there is still
time to save their lives.
The Russians did
the same before and during the destruction of Grozny. In a few days,
as the battle and the flight of civilians expands, there may be tens
of thousands of new refugees in tent cities, and tens of thousands of
women left without husbands, and children left without fathers.
If this attack goes
ahead as appears inevitable, it will obviously breach the laws of war
and the Geneva conventions. First, it will grossly exceed proportionality
in terms of ends and means. What intended political or military objective
could justify so much death, the creation of so many new refugees, and
wholesale destruction of homes?
What threat does
the city of Falluja pose to the Iraqi state at this point? Allawi has
claimed that free elections cannot take place unless Falluja is subdued.
What a spurious argument.
The truth is that
this city, which has become a symbol of Sunni-Iraqi political resistance
to the occupiers, is to be made an example of, to deter others. The
message the siege of Falluja sends is brutally simple: resist us and
we will destroy you. It is the same message that the Wehrmacht sent
in Warsaw in 1944, and the Russian Army in Grozny in 1999.
This attack will
also violate the rules of war and the Geneva conventions in having grossly
indiscriminate effects on civilians and civilian homes and infrastructure.
America's largely untrained in battle but over-armed forces will start
their attack "humanely", but as they inevitably take numbers
of lethal casualties, their tactics will quickly escalate to indiscriminate
bombing and shelling of the city using their WMD armories.
Eventually, the
attackers will flatten the city and kill everyone that still resists
in it. Falluja will be the Iraqi people's Masada, and it will sow seeds
of deep anti-Western hatred in the Middle East for decades to come.
The UN Secretary-General,
Kofi Annan, understands all this, in pleading for a negotiated solution.
And as usual, Washington is summarily ignoring his pleas.
As a military ally
with our troops in Iraq, Australia is morally implicated in this. While
Australian former SAS commanders, the Governor-General, Major-General
Michael Jeffery, and the Australian Christian Lobby's executive chairman,
Brigadier Jim Wallace, moralize about abortions and gay marriages, Australia's
military ally is about to destroy a living city and its families.
An unnamed US military
commander in the tightening military ring around Falluja proudly boasted
(as heard on ABC Radio yesterday) that this battle will go down in US
military history as another Hue. Indeed it will - who can forget the
wholesale artillery destruction of that sacred, historic Vietnamese
city? "We had to destroy it in order to save it" was the line
at the time. Now it looks like our military ally in Iraq is about to
do it all over again in Falluja.
What are Australian
political leaders - Government or Opposition - saying to Washington
at this point? Are they saying anything at all? We reap what we sow.
Tony Kevin,
a former Australian diplomat, is a visiting fellow at the Research School
of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.
© 2004 The
Sydney Morning Herald