Fallujah again in the line of US
fire By Dahr Jamail and Ali
al-Fadhily
FALLUJAH, Iraq - After enduring
two major assaults, Fallujah, a key city in the
western province al-Anbar, is under threat from US
forces again. This coincides with news of a
classified US intelligence report that the
Pentagon is taking "very seriously" - that US
forces are losing control of Anbar.
The
report, written by Colonel Pete Devlin, the chief
of intelligence for the Marine Corps in Iraq, and
cited in the US media, said a shortage of US and
Iraqi troops in Anbar and the collapse of local
governments had left a vacuum
that had been exploited by al-Qaeda in Iraq. It
painted a poor picture of security prospects in
Anbar, which includes Fallujah and Ramadi, Sunni
resistance strongholds. It said that the US had
been defeated politically, if not militarily, in
the province.
In Fallujah, 50 kilometers
west of Baghdad, residents are edgy. "They
destroyed our city twice and they are threatening
us a third time," said Ahmed Dhahy, 52. "They want
us to do their job for them and turn in those who
target them."
Dhahy, who lost 32 relatives
when his father's house was bombed by a US
aircraft during the April 2004 attack on Fallujah,
said the US military had threatened it would
destroy the city if resistance fighters were not
handed over to them.
"Last week, the
Americans used loudspeakers on the backs of their
tanks and Humvees to threaten us," Dhahy said.
Residents said the US forces warned of a "large
military operation" if fighters were not handed
over.
A US military spokesman in Baghdad
said he had no reports of such action.
Fallujah was heavily bombed in April 2004
and again in November that year. The attacks
destroyed 75% of the city's infrastructure and
left more than 5,000 dead, according to local
non-governmental groups.
But after the
heavy assaults, resistance fighters have continued
to launch attacks against US and official Iraqi
forces in the city. Fallujah remains under tight
security, with the US military using biometric
identification, full body searches and bar-coded
identification cards for residents to enter and
leave their city.
"The Iraqi resistance
has not stopped for a single day despite the huge
US Army activities," a city police captain said,
speaking on condition of anonymity. "The wise men
of the city explained to US officials that it is
impossible to stop the resistance by military
operations, but it seems the Americans prefer to
do it the hard way."
The police captain
said anti-occupation fighters had increased their
activities in the face of sectarian violence in
which Shi'ite death squads have killed thousands
of Sunnis in Baghdad. Many residents of Fallujah
have relatives in the capital city.
Lack
of reconstruction and the US military's failure to
pay due compensation to victims' families have
added to the unrest, the captain said. "There used
to be resistance attacks against the US and Iraqi
forces in Fallujah daily," said the captain. "But
now they have increased to several per day. Many
soldiers have been killed and their vehicles
destroyed. So it is clear that the security
measures they have taken in Fallujah have failed."
Several residents said all sorts of
killings had been taking place over the past eight
months. Religious leaders have been targeted
regularly, with no group claiming responsibility.
On Sunday, the former chief of traffic police,
Brigadier Ahmed Diraa, was shot dead in his car.
Residents in Fallujah said Diraa had quit his post
a month earlier.
In the face of killings,
and now threats of a new attack, residents remain
defiant of the occupation forces. The hardships
that people have endured seem to have strengthened
rather than weakened them.
"There are so
many arrests and killings, and collective
punishments, such as random shootings, violent
inspection raids, repeated curfews and deliberate
cutting of water and electricity," said Mohammed
al-Darraji, head of a human-rights group in
Fallujah called the Iraqi Center for Human Rights
Observation.
"What is going on in this
city requires international intervention to
protect civilians and to punish those who
seriously damaged Fallujah society and committed
serious crimes against humanity," Darraji said.
His group has been monitoring breaches of the
Geneva Conventions in the city since the April
2004 siege.
"There is a long list of
collective punishments that have turned the city
into a frightful detention camp," he said.
Another human-rights campaigner in
Fallujah, who asked to be referred to as Khalid,
said human-rights activists in Iraq felt betrayed
by the United Nations. The UN had played ignorant
"by leaving US troops to act alone in the city",
said Khalid, who works with Raya Human Rights, a
non-governmental organization in the city. "This
was after the media exposed the enormity of the
violence and human-rights violations during the
last three years."
