[Mb-civic] A Thousand Fallujahs

[Michael Butler]

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  A Thousand Fallujahs
  By Pepe Escobar
  Asia Times

  Thursday 11 November 2004

"The bombs being dropped on Fallujah don't contain explosives, depleted
uranium or anything harmful - they contain laughing gas - that would, of
course, explain [Pentagon chief Donald] Rumsfeld's misplaced optimism about
not killing civilians in Fallujah. Also, being a 'civilian' is a relative
thing in a country occupied by Americans. You're only a civilian if you're
on their side. If you translate for them, or serve them food in the Green
Zone, or wipe their floors - you're an innocent civilian. Just about
everyone else is an insurgent, unless they can get a job as a 'civilian'."

    - Riverbend, an Iraqi civilian girl, author of the blog Baghdad Burning

  Once again the US has been caught in a giant spider's web. Fallujah now is
a network: it's Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Latifiyah, Kirkuk, Mosul. Streets
on fire, everywhere: Hundreds, thousands of Fallujahs - the Mesopotamian
echo of a thousand Vietnams. The Iraqi resistance has even regained control
of a few Baghdad neighborhoods.

  Baghdad residents say there are practically no US troops around, even as
regular explosions can be heard all over the city. Baghdad sources confirm
to Asia Times Online that the mujahideen now control parts of the southern
suburb of ad-Durha, as well as Hur Rajab, Abu Ghraib, al-Abidi, as-Suwayrah,
Salman Bak, Latifiyah and Yusufiyah - all in the Greater Baghdad area. This
would be the first time since the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003, that the
resistance has been able to control these neighborhoods.

  Massive US military might is useless against a mosque network in full
gear. In a major development not reported by US corporate media, for the
first time different factions of the resistance have released a joint
statement, signed among others by Ansar as-Sunnah, al-Jaysh al-Islami,
al-Jaysh as-Siri (known as the Secret Army), ar-Rayat as-Sawda (known as the
Black Banners), the Lions of the Two Rivers, the Abu Baqr as-Siddiq
Brigades, and crucially al-Tawhid wal-Jihad (Unity and Holy War) - the
movement allegedly controlled by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The statement is
being relayed all over the Sunni triangle through a network of mosques. The
message is clear: the resistance is united.

  The Mobile Mujahideen

  Fallujah civilians have told families and friends in Baghdad that the US
bombing has been worse than Baghdad suffered in March 2003.

  The Fallujah resistance for its part seems to have made the crucial
tactical decision of clearing two main roads - called Nisan 7 and Tharthar
Street - thus drawing the Americans to a battle in the center of town.
Baghdad sources close to the resistance say that now the Americans seem to
be positioned exactly where the mujahideen want them. This is leading the
resistance to insist they - and not the Americans, according to the current
Pentagon spin - now control 70% of the city.

  There are at least 120 mosques in Fallujah. A consensus is emerging that
almost half of them have been smashed by air strikes and shelling by US
tanks - something that will haunt the United States for ages. The mosques
stopped broadcasting the five daily calls for prayer, but Fadhil Badrani, an
Iraqi reporter for BBC World Service in Arabic and one of the very few media
witnesses in Fallujah, writes that "every time a big bomb lands nearby, the
cry rises from the minarets: 'Allahu Akbar' [God is Great]".

  Badrani also disputes the Pentagon spin: "It is misleading to say the US
controls 70% of the city because the fighters are constantly on the move.
They go from street to street, attacking the army in some places, letting
them through elsewhere so that they can attack them later. They say they are
fighting not just for Fallujah, but for all Iraq." The mujahideen tactics
are a rotating web - Ho Chi Minh's and Che Guevara's tactics applied to
urban warfare by the desert: snipers on rooftops, snipers escaping on
bicycles, mortar fire from behind abandoned houses, rocket-propelled-grenade
attacks on tanks, Bradleys being ambushed, barrages of as many as 200
rockets, instant dispersal, "invisible" regrouping.

  Iraq's borders with Syria and Jordan, all highways except a secondary road
leading to the borders, plus Baghdad's airport, all remain closed. Baghdad
in theory has become an island sealed off from the Sunni triangle - but not
for the resistance, which keeps slipping inside. Hundreds of Iraqis are
stuck on the Syrian border trying to go back home.

  Riverbend, the Iraqi girl blogger quoted above, writes of "rumors that
there are currently 100 cars ready to detonate in Mosul, being driven by
suicide bombers looking for American convoys. So what happens when Mosul
turns into another Fallujah? Will they also bomb it to the ground? I heard a
report where they mentioned that Zarqawi 'had probably escaped from
Fallujah' ... so where is he now? Mosul?"

  He could well be in Ramadi, where hundreds of heavily armed mujahideen now
control the city center - with no US troops in sight.

  Tough Tactics

  The Pentagon is pulling out all stops to "liberate" the people of
Fallujah. According to residents, the city is now littered with thousands of
cluster bombs. In an explosive accusation - and not substantiated - an Iraqi
doctor who requested anonymity has told al-Quds Press that "the US
occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with
internationally banned chemical weapons". The Washington Post has confirmed
that US troops are firing white-phosphorus rounds that create a screen of
fire impervious to water.

  Dr Muhammad Ismail, a member of the governing board of Fallujah's general
hospital "captured" by the Americans at the outset of Operation Phantom
Fury, has called all Iraqi doctors for urgent help. Ismail told Iraqi and
Arab press that the number of wounded civilians is growing exponentially -
and medical supplies are almost non-existent. He confirmed that US troops
had arrested many members of the hospital's medical staff and had sealed the
storage of medical supplies.

  The wounded in Fallujah are in essence left to die. There is not a single
surgeon in town. And practically no doctors as well, as the Pentagon decided
to bomb both the al-Hadar Hospital and the Zayid Mobile Hospital. So far,
the International Committee of the Red Cross has reacted with thunderous
apathy.

  The Sunni Revolution

  When a few snipers are capable of holding scores of marines for a day in
Fallujah - an eerie replay of the second part of Stanley Kubrick's Full
Metal Jacket - and when eight of 10 US divisions are bogged down by a few
thousand Iraqis with Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers, the fact is the US
does not control anything in Sunni Iraq. It does not control towns, cities,
roads, and it barely controls the Green Zone, the American fortress in
Baghdad that is the ultimate symbol of the occupation.

  In 1999, the Russians bombed and destroyed Grozny, the Chechen capital, a
city of originally 400,000 people. Five years later, Chechen guerrillas are
still trapping Russian troops in a living hell there. The same scenario will
be replayed in Fallujah - a city of originally 300,000 people. All this
destruction - which any self-respecting international lawyer can argue is a
war crime - for the Bush administration to send a brutal message: either
you're with us or we'll smash you to pieces.

  The Iraqi resistance does not care if thousands of mujahideen are smashed
to pieces: it is actually gearing up for a major strategic victory. The
strategy is twofold: half of the Fallujah resistance stayed behind, ready to
die like martyrs, increasing the already boiling-point hatred of Americans
in Iraq and the Middle East and boosting their urban support. The other half
left before Phantom Fury and is already setting fires in Baghdad, Tikrit,
Ramadi, Baquba, Balad, Kirkuk, Mosul and even Shi'ite Karbala.

  They may be decimated little by little. But the fact is Sunni Iraqis are
more than ever aware they are excluded from the Bush administration's
"democratic" plans for Iraq. The only Sunni political party in interim
premier Iyad Allawi's "government" is now out. And the powerful Association
of Muslim Scholars (AMS) - the foremost Sunni religious body - is now
officially boycotting the January elections. There are unconfirmed reports
that Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the head of the mujahideen shura (council)
in Fallujah and a very prominent AMS member, died when his mosque, Saad ibn
Abi Wakkas, was bombed.

  The Sunni Iraqi resistance is now configuring itself as a full-fledged
revolution. According to sources in Baghdad, the leaders of the resistance
believe there's no other way for them to expel the American invaders and
subsequently be restored to power - especially because if elections are held
in January, the Shi'ites are certain to win. Contemplating the dogs of civil
war barking in the distance, no wonder Baghdad's al-Zaman newspaper is so
somber: "Iraq will remain a sleeping volcano, even if the state of emergency
is extended forever."

 

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