Falluja's Looming
Gendercide
By Adam Jones
09 November, 2004
Counterpunch
"U.S. Urges Civilians to Flee Targeted
Falluja," reads a headline (Reuters dispatch, November 5). Not
true, as the article subsequently indicates: "U.S. troops sealed
all roads to Falluja and urged women, children and non-fighting age
men to flee, but said they would arrest any man under 45 trying to enter
or leave the city."
We see here the
100-percent equation of "women, children and non-fighting age men"
with the "civilian" population, and the corresponding totalizing
depiction of males aged 18-45 as legitimate targets for arrest, detention
(perhaps in Abu Ghraib-like conditions) and destruction.
Can someone please
explain how to square this with the Geneva Conventions, Article 3? "Persons
taking no active part in the hostilities ... shall in all circumstances
be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race,
colour, religion or faith, *sex*, birth or wealth, or any other similar
criteria."
The blanket designation
of "battle-age" males as participants in military activity
is a standard prelude to the gendercidal (gender-selective) slaughter
of men of this age-group. Denial of the right of "battle-age"
men to flee a besieged city and find safe refuge occurred at Srebrenica
in Bosnia in 1993, paving the way for the massacre of Muslim males in
July 1995, Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War. U.S.
forces are already deeply complicit in one major act of gendercidal
killing in recent years, the murder by Northern Alliance forces of thousands
of Taliban prisoners-of-war in Afghanistan in 2001.
U.S. estimates of
the number of active rebels in Falluja range between 1,500 and 3,000.
Most observers claim that between 60,000 and 100,000 people remain in
the city, overwhelmingly, it seems, "battle-age" men. Let
us take the high-end estimate for the rebels, and the low end for the
population as a whole: 3,000 rebels, 60,000 people total. If this is
accepted, only about one in twenty -- five percent -- of those in the
city are combatants.
Of course, many
of the remaining (mostly adult male) civilians could be providing support
services for the rebels. But that could be no less true of women, children,
and old men, who are being allowed to leave the city unmolested. No-one
has suggested the resistance in Falluja is anything but popularly-based.
Anyone who is concerned
that all human and civilian rights be protected in conflict should be
outraged by the imposition of this gender-selective policy, which is
preparing thousands or tens of thousands of civilian men in Falluja
for a brutal death at U.S. hands.
Adam Jones
is executive director of Gendercide
Watch, a Web-based educational initiative that confronts gender-selective
atrocities worldwide. He is editor of "Genocide, War Crimes &
the West: History and Complicity" (Zed Books, 2004).