THE ROVING EYE Satan hides in a
hospital By Pepe Escobar
Everything
one needed to know about the true, unspinnable
foreign policy of the second George W Bush administration
is represented by the "capture" of the first
strategic target in the assault on Fallujah: the general
hospital, on the left bank of the Euphrates, now totally
cut off from the city. According to the Bush administration
world view, this is the house where Satan
lives.
Bush-installed interim Iraqi Prime
Minster Iyad Allawi announced with a smile of victory
that he personally ordered the capture of the hospital.
So maybe it was not the Pentagon: it was an unelected
politician asking a foreign occupation army to attack a
hospital in his own country and preventing doctors and
ambulances from entering a city under siege.
The
assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely
started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy
night of the year for the Islamic world.
In
terms of the information war, the hospital was indeed
the most strategic of targets. During the first siege of
Fallujah in April, doctors told independent media the
real story about the suffering of civilian victims. So
this time the Pentagon took no chances: no gory,
disturbing photos of the elderly, women and children -
the thousands unable to leave Fallujah in advance of
this week's offensive, the civilian victims of the
relentless bombing.
But this did not
prevent the world from seeing doctors and patients at
the hospital handcuffed to the floor - as if they
were terrorists. Hospital director Dr Salih al-Issawi told
Agence France-Presse that the Americans blocked him and other
doctors from going to the center of Fallujah to help
another clinic in distress; he also said an ambulance that
tried to leave the hospital was shot at by the Americans
- just like in April, when all ambulances were targeted.
The Geneva Convention is explicit: in a war situation,
hospitals and ambulances are neutral.
The
Pentagon does not do "collateral damage" body counts.
But as its relationship with the people of Fallujah now
consists of a non-stop barrage of heavy metal, the
Pentagon is certainly in a much better position than
Fallujah's doctors to estimate the amount of civilian
victims of its own bombing.
The marines are not
only occupying a hospital; they even turned it into a
military position, as they were using positions around
it to attack the resistance.
Cluster-bomb
democracy The Pentagon's key primary target in
Fallujah has been information: doctors in hospitals,
telephone lines that people use to tell the world about
the civilians' plight. Most of the world is interpreting
Fallujah through embedded, Pentagon-censored reporters
and Arab television. The Pentagon line is American
"heroes" on the way to "liberate" the people of
Fallujah. Iraqis, Arabs, 1.3 billion Muslims, the
majority of European public opinion and decent Americans
won't be fooled - again.
Asia Times
Online sources close to the resistance say the talk in the
streets of Baghdad is that the bulk of the estimated
2,500 mujahideen in Fallujah have already left to
Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Haditha, Khaldiya, and even
Mosul in the north. Even before the assault on Fallujah,
there were more than 100 resistance attacks a day all
over the country. The main story playing in the Arab
world in the past 24 hours is that of Mohammed Abboud -
who saw his nine-year-old son bleed to death of shrapnel
wounds when his house in Fallujah was hit because he
could not venture out to go to a hospital. Abboud had to
bury his son in his own garden.
Terrified Fallujans calling Baghdad tell of A-10 jets
raining cluster bombs on the city's streets. Iraqi (very)
black humor qualifies unexploded cluster bombs as the
Iraqi version of Toys "R" Us: children get injured or
killed because they think cluster bombs are toys.
Everyone is talking of "scores of bodies" in streets
destroyed by US bombing. There is no power, no water,
shops are closed, food is scarce and practically no
medical supplies remain, according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili,
speaking to al-Jazeera. No more clinics are open
throughout the city - and there is no possible way to
estimate how many civilians are dead, blown up, burned or
injured, although al-Jumaili tells of "scores of injured
civilians". A brand-new clinic funded by a Saudi Islamic
relief non-governmental agency was bombed by the
Americans during the weekend, as well as a medical
dispensary in the city center: this was apparently the
last place where anybody could get any medical
attention.
Fadhil Badrani, a reporter for the British Broadcasting
Corp (BBC) World Service in Arabic, is one of the very few
journalists inside Fallujah. He writes that "a lot of
the mosques have also been bombed. For the first time in
Fallujah, a city of 150 mosques, I did not hear a single
call to prayer this morning. I broke my Ramadan fast
yesterday with the last of our food - two potatoes and
two tomatoes. The tomatoes were rotten because we have
no electricity to run the fridge. My neighbors - a woman
and her children - came to see me yesterday. They asked
me to tell the world what is happening here. I look at
the devastation around me and ask - why?"
The
mujahideen battle plan Apart from a maximum of
1,500 "Arab brothers" - as the Iraqis call them - from
Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, most of
the remaining mujahideen in Fallujah are nationalist
Iraqis whose tribal code mandates that they defend at
any cost their homes, their families and their city
under foreign attack.
They have been preparing
for this onslaught for months. And they do have a battle
plan - as it was relayed to Asia Times Online by sources
in Baghdad. Former or retired Iraqi army officials have
always been serious students of Viet Minh tactics and
Che Guevara's theory of the guerrilla foco
(center of guerrilla operations). Now they are applying
this to urban warfare. This, in a smaller version, is
what the Battle of Baghdad would have been like in April
2003.
The Americans are closing in toward
the city center, under fire from mujahideen equipped
with only Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades
hidden in clusters of low-roof houses. The Americans are
firing back at the houses and at anything that moves. They
have been prevented - at least for now - by the resistance from
storming any buildings. Their priority is to control the
main bombed-out roads.
The mujahideen are
operating with small mobile units of five or six or a
maximum of 20 fighters, changing positions all the time.
As a counter-measure, American snipers are trying to
control the rooftops. The mujahideen are trying to
attract as many American troops to the city center as
possible - so they can unleash what seems to be hundreds
of coordinated car bombs and improvised explosive
devices.
People in Baghdad are also telling
of US$3,000 being offered for any battered old car to be
used as part of a counter-offensive coming in behind the
US positions once the house-to-house battle in the
city center is fully engaged.
Boycotting the
election The US
approach in Iraq appears to be a rehashing of the
British imperial dictum of "divide and rule". Dr Harith
al-Dhari, secretary general of the powerful Association
of Muslim Scholars, says the scheduled January election
would be held "over the corpses of those killed in
Fallujah and the blood of the wounded", and has called
on all Iraqis to boycott it. The association sides with
the people of Fallujah - not Allawi: "We have said we
support the resistance since the occupation of this
country began. This is our right as Iraqis. Therefore,
we don't need a fatwa
on this
issue as this matter is clear."
As yet another
measure - if any were needed - of the illegitimacy of
the Allawi government, Secretary of Defense Hassim
al-Sha'alan recognized on al-Arabiya TV that the
resistance won't be finished, even when the Americans
finally take Fallujah, because "they have already
prepared to fight in other places". This only confirms
the above-mentioned that the bulk of the mujahideen have
already left Fallujah - and are now launching dozens of
daily attacks in Baghdad itself, Ramadi, Baquba,
Latifiyah, Samarra, Khaldiya, Kirkuk ...
Hospitals "captured", showers of cluster bombs,
Fallujah burning, civilians dying, not to mention the
more than 100,000 Iraqis killed since the beginning of
the invasion-occupation, the country's infrastructure in
tatters, the center of Najaf and a great deal of Sadr
City razed to the ground. This is the way Phantom Fury
will end: not with terrified Iraqis voting for an
Allawi-modeled puppet regime in a sham election, but
with a Bush administration forced to deal with Iraqis
who are ready to die to achieve real democracy.
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