A Return To
Barbarity
By Amira Howeidy
20 November, 2004
Al-Ahram
"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.