Another Massacre
In Tal Afar?
By James Cogan
08 September 2005
World
Socialist Web
The
largest US military offensive on an urban area since the attack on Fallujah
last year has been underway since September 2 in the city of Tal Afar,
an ancient metropolis with a predominantly Sunni Muslim, ethnic Turkish
population of some 300,000.
Situated in the
north of Iraq along the Euphrates River and just 40 kilometres from
the Syrian border, Tal Afar has been largely outside the control of
the occupation forces since the 2003 invasion. In September 2004, the
US military carried out a major operation to impose its authority over
Tal Afar, but was forced to withdraw by November in order to redeploy
troops to the heavy fighting in Fallujah and Mosul. In the 10 months
since, Tal Afar has become one of the centres for the anti-occupation
guerilla struggle in the north.
A US officer told
the Washington Post: The September operation basically made people
angry, which the insurgents were able to take advantage of. [It] had
the opposite effect than was intended. We created a power vacuum and
they filled it.
The details of what
is taking place in Tal Afar since last Friday are shrouded in secrecy.
The few available reports indicate, however, that at least 5,000 US
and Iraqi government troops have sealed off the old centre of the cityan
area known as Saraiand are preparing for an assault against an
estimated 400 to 500 resistance fighters who are said to be entrenched
in the narrow streets of the district.
The US push into
the city was preceded by airstrikes and artillery shelling, and spearheaded
by Abram battle tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. The Al Jazeerah
website reported on Monday that at least four mosques have been bombed.
F-16s destroyed alleged insurgent safe-houses with 500 and
1,000-pound bombs. The Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported: Eyewitnesses,
refusing to be named, spoke of scores of casualties due
to indiscriminate bombing.
The numbers of dead
and wounded are unknown. Colonel H.R. McMaster, the commander of the
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment that is leading the operation, told the
Washington Post on the weekend that as many as 200 insurgents
had been killed in the first three days of fighting.
The events unfolding
in Tal Afar have all the makings of another horrific crime against the
Iraqi masses, paralleling the atrocities committed in Fallujah last
year. In just nine days, thousands of Fallujans were killed and their
bodies left to rot in the streets or to be consumed by dogs. US snipers
murdered desperate civilians trying to get water for their families.
More than 60 percent
of the city was reduced to rubble and over half its famous mosques bombed
out. Nearly one year later, less than half of Fallujahs 250,000
residents have been able to return, with most still living in ruined
buildings and squalor.
As was the case
in Fallujah, a significant proportion of the people included in the
body count in Tal Afar will actually be civilians killed by bombing,
gunned down by the occupation forces or caught in crossfire. As US and
Iraqi troops passed through suburban areas this week, they smashed into
houses with sledge hammers or explosives, searching for guerillas. Buildings
where Iraqis fired back were laid waste by heavy machine-gun and tank
fire.
Thousands of civilians
have fled from the city and nearby towns and villages into the desert
toward Mosul, 70 kilometres to the east. Sunni political parties are
erecting camps to house the refugees, whose numbers may exceed 100,000.
Thousands more Tal
Afar residents, however, are trapped inside Sarai by the cordon of tanks
and barbed wire that has been flung up around the district to prevent
resistance fighters escaping. On the outskirts of the city, US forces
have constructed an 80-mile network of earth barriers, or berms, to
stop vehicles getting out across country. Colonel McMaster told the
Washington Post: The idea is to trap them in Sarai or force them
toward our checkpoints to the south. We dont want them to slip
out.
The operation against
the city is part of the broader offensive that has been waged by the
US military since the formation of the Iraqi government in April. Far
from the armed resistance to the occupation subsiding following the
formation of a US puppet regime, millions of Iraqis remain bitterly
opposed to the American presence in the country and are sympathetic
to the insurgency.
The US response
has been indiscriminate violence. Hundreds of civilians have been killed
or maimed in bombing raids or sweep-and-search operations through cities,
towns and villages over the past several months. Thousands of men have
been rounded up and thrown into US-run prison camps. In advance of the
October 15 referendum on a draft constitution that has been rejected
by Sunni, ethnic Turkomen and major Shiite organisations, the political
repression against areas under their influence is being stepped up.
All indications
are that the US military is preparing a full-scale assault on Tal Afar
in the next few days, regardless of how many civilians are killed as
a result. On Sunday night, helicopters dropped leaflets over the area,
giving all noncombatants until Tuesday afternoon to flee the area via
southern roads that lead into areas that are under the clear control
of the occupation forces. US troops are physically preventing any civilians
leaving via the north toward Mosul, where the majority of the population
is opposed to the Baghdad government.
In one of the few
on-the-spot accounts coming out of the area, the Washington Post reported
yesterday that many civilians have refused to leave to south due to
fear of what the Iraqi government forces will do to them. Many of the
government troops in the area are former militiamen for the Shiite fundamentalist
parties and Kurdish nationalist parties that dominate the Baghdad regime.
Sunni- and Turkomen-based political and religious organisations have
accused the US-backed security forces of sectarian killings, arbitrary
detentions and torture in cities such as Baghdad, Basra and Mosul.
An elderly man declared:
I would rather die from American bombs in my home with my family
than walk south. People are saying the Shiites will kill you or kidnap
you. That is a disgrace.
The Washington Post
recounted that about 1,000 men, women and children who had assembled
at a US checkpoint turned around and went back into Sarai on Tuesday
rather than risk getting on American trucks that might deliver them
into the hands of the government forces.
The chilling conclusion
of the article read: About 3 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Christopher
Hickey, the squadron commander, arrived to make a final plea. I
am trying to help you to get out of a very dangerous situation. You
are going to be in danger if you stay here, I am telling you. Please,
this is your last chance. As he turned away from the crowd, one
family emerged, with nine adults carrying baggage and eight children
in tow. Anyone else?, Hickey asked, beckoning. Okay,
then we will save these people, he said, and walked away.
Significant parts
of Tal Afar are already reported to be in ruin. Electricity and phone
services have been cut off and hospitals are breaking down. The Iraqi
Human Rights Centre has issued an urgent appeal to the Iraqi government
to stop the assault and allow rescue teams to access the area to deliver
food, water and medical supplies and evacuate the wounded.
As well as inflaming
northern Iraq, the attack on Tal Afar risks further destabilising the
surrounding region. Last September, the Turkish government, under pressure
from mass domestic opposition to the US invasion of Iraq, threatened
to break off all cooperation with the occupation of Iraq unless the
attack on ethnic Turks in Tal Afar was ended. This week, a Turkish government
spokesman declared that Ankara had reiterated our sensitivity
about the operation and asked US authorities to pay the
maximum attention to avoid civilian casualties.
Instead, with US
and Iraqi troops poised to storm into the old city, a massacre appears
to be looming.
At the same time,
the American military is intensifying its aerial bombardment of Qaim,
a city south of Tal Afar and also on the Euphrates River and close to
the Syrian border. Airstrikes last week, which killed at least 56 people,
have been justified with claims that the area has fallen under the control
of Islamic extremists linked to Al Qaeda. The organisation Doctors for
Iraq announced that a medical clinic was bombed and that electricity
had been cut to the main hospital.
US marine aircraft
have carried out more strikes over the past three days, bombing two
main bridges over the Euphrates and destroying houses allegedly occupied
by insurgents. With as many as 7,000 American and Iraqi government troops
reported to be in the vicinity, a bloodbath in Tal Afar may be followed
quickly by an offensive against Qaim.