Humanitarian
Disaster In Falluja
By James Cogan
13 November 2004
World Socialist Website
The
collective punishment of the people of Fallujah by the Bush administration
has entered its sixth day. What is taking place is not so much a battle
as a homicidal rampage by the US military against every Iraqi male trapped
inside the city. Since the assault began on Sunday, Fallujah men aged
between 15 and 55 have been prevented from leaving. As American bombs
and shells rained down, they were left little choice but to fight for
their lives against the advancing US troops.
An Iraqi journalist
in Fallujah told Associated Press: The Americans are shooting
anything that moves.
The US forces have
carried out a massive and indiscriminate bombardment from the air, making
no attempt to avoid casualties among the estimated 100,000 civilians
still in Fallujah. The city, a Los Angeles Times reporter wrote, is
a tableau of destroyed buildings, burned-out cars, battered mosques
and piles of rubble.
While US armour
and infantry waited several blocks back, the air power was used to pound
office complexes, mosques, schools and homes being used by Iraqi fighters
to try and hold off the attackers. The concentration of US aircraft
in the skies over Fallujah has been christened the wedding cake
by American officers, as it consisted of multiple layers, from low altitude
helicopter gunships, to AC-130 gunships, to jet bombers, to high altitude
unmanned spy planes.
Our air superiority
is incredible, a marine sergeant told Associated Press. All
we can do now is clear through the city and look for survivors. Air
power is our best friend.
Iraqi fighters,
armed with little more than AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG)
launchers, have fought a heroic defence against the overwhelming American
firepower. To dislodge just one Iraqi sniper holding up US marines on
Wednesday, an embedded New York Times journalist reported that a three-storey
complex was hit with two 500-pound bombs, 35 155mm artillery shells,
10 120mm shells from Abram tanks and some 30,000 rounds from machine
guns and small arms. The building, the journalist noted, was left a
smoking ruin.
According to American
military spokesmen, US troops have captured more than 80 percent of
Fallujah, with heavy fighting still taking place in the southern suburbs
and flaring again in the citys north. The US military claims to
have killed at least 600 Iraqis. At least 22 American troops have been
killed and several hundred wounded.
Every building in
the captured areas of the city is being searched by US or interim government
Iraqi troops. From the footage coming out of Fallujah, the method of
searching by the American troops is to hurl grenades and
pour machine gun fire into houses before entering. Every male found
alive is being dragged away, bound and hooded, to detention centres.
There is every reason
to believe that the number of Iraqi dead in Fallujahwhen the toll
is finally able to be countedwill be in the thousands. Hundreds
of fighters and civilians are likely buried beneath collapsed buildings.
Embedded journalists have noted the stench of decomposing bodies that
hangs over the city. A crime of immense proportions has been perpetrated
and it will be neither forgotten nor forgiven.
There have been
virtually no medical personnel to treat Iraqis injured by the relentless
American onslaught. A number of Iraqi doctors and nurses were killed
on Monday in a US airstrike on one of the few functioning clinics in
the city. A second clinic was destroyed later in the week.
Abbas Ali, a doctor
in the city, told Al Jazeerah on Friday: Im one of the few
medical cadres that survived last Monday from the massacre. We are in
a very tragic situation. Hundreds of dead bodies are spread in the streets.
Even the injured are still there. We cannot transfer them. We cannot
do anything to save them.
We call on
all organisations and the whole world to help us. The US forces have
told us through loudspeakers to get out and raise white flags. But all
the citys areas are under fierce bombing. We dont know what
to do. Stay in our place, which is under bombardment, or get out and
get shot?
The Iraqi Red Crescent
Society has been denied entry into the city. Fardous al-Ubaidi, a spokeswoman
for the organisation, told Associated Press: There is no water,
no food, no medicine, no electricity and no fuel and when we asked for
permission, we were only allowed to approach the Fallujah outskirts
but had no access to Fallujah itself. Thousands of elderly, women
and children who have escaped since the assault began remain in refugee
camps on the citys fringes, without access to clean water or sanitation.
George Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday hailed the atrocity in Fallujah
as showing the determination of the US and Britain to help Iraqis
achieve their liberty and to defend the security of the world.
The reality is that
Fallujah is being destroyed precisely because the resistance fighters
in the city had demanded libertyfrom the US occupation of Iraq.
The citys council refused to recognise the legitimacy of the US-installed
puppet interim government headed by CIA asset Iyad Allawi, and had upheld
the moral and political right of Iraqis to conduct an armed struggle
against the American invasion.
The US military
has not been able to produce any credible evidence supporting the months
of propagandawhich was consistently denied by Fallujahs
leadersthat hundreds of foreign terrorists, led by Jordanian extremist
Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, were holding the city hostage. The
people who have fought and died in Fallujah have been overwhelmingly
Iraqis defending their homes.
On Thursday, US
troops claimed to have found the body of Abdullah Janabi, the elderly
and courageous Sunni cleric who has acted as one of the main spokesmen
for the people of Fallujah and their defiance of the US invasion of
their country. In August, Janabi declared in an interview: Honest
resistance is a legitimate right against the occupation all over the
world... During Saddams time I was tortured and prevented from
preaching. If you say the truth you will become an outlaw and wanted.
Saddam was unjust and the Americans are also unjust... The corpse
was so badly disfigured that a positive identification could not be
made.
Over the next two
months, the US military has been ordered to slaughter or drive underground
all opposition to the occupation and to Allawis regime, and to
ensure that the only participants in sham elections planned for late
January are pro-US parties and groups. Attacks are being prepared against
21 cities and towns where resistance is widespread.
The assault on Fallujah,
however, has inflamed the Sunni regions of central and northern Iraq
and is presenting the US occupation with the most serious military challenge
since it began. Fighting or increased attacks on occupation troops are
being reported in Ramadi, Samarra, Tikrit, Kirkuk, Baquaba and Baghdad,
where a US helicopter was shot down overnight.
In the biggest blow
to the occupation, the centre of Mosul, with a population approaching
three million, has been taken over in the last several days by hundreds
of Iraqi resistance fighters. US air strikes are now being carried out
against the city, and hundreds of extra troops rushed to the area. A
resistance leader, Saif al-Deen al-Baghdadi, declared in an interview:
We chose the path of armed jihad and say clearly that ridding
Iraq of the occupation will not be done by ballots. Iyad Allawis
government ... represents the fundamentalist right-wing of the White
House and not the Iraqi people.
American troops
arrested leading Sunni cleric Mahdi al-Sumaydai in Baghdad yesterday
after he made a call for Iraqis to rise up against the occupation. US
forces also raided the home of Harith al-Dhari, the head of the Sunni
Association of Muslim Scholars, which is calling for a boycott of the
elections over the atrocities being committed in Fallujah.
The main Shiite
religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has remained silent
throughout the bloodbath in Fallujah, is coming under pressure to condemn
it. Before his arrest, al-Sumaydai stated: We reproach Sistani
for not officially taking a position on the offensive and we call on
him to do so.
Shiite cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr is also under pressure to issue a call for his supporters to
resume fighting against the occupation. Sumaydais statement reminded
Shiites that the Sunni groups had spoken out in solidarity with Sadrs
Mahdi Army fighters during the US assaults on the cities of Karbala
and Najaf.
The US mass killings
in Fallujah will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. They have served only
to broaden the resistance of the Iraqi people and deepen the revulsion
and opposition internationally to the criminal war on Iraq.