[Mb-civic] (no subject)

[Hawaiipolo at cs.com]

For a Non US Media perspective on the battle in Fallujah...sobering.....MD
 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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Jump to TO Features for Friday November 12, 2004                              
      
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