Foreign Correspondence

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Turning Point Fallujah: How US Atrocities Sparked The Iraqi Resistance

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1947.shtml


Milan Rai, Electronic Iraq, 4 May 2005


Guernica destroyed 1937


"In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja..." -This is our Guernica, Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail, The Guardian (27 April 2005)


Milan Rai's analysis brings us to the origins of this "unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill"; Fallujah.

IGNITION POINT FOR THE RESISTANCE
Two years ago today (30 April 2005), reports appeared in Western newspapers of a major incident in the Western Iraqi city of Fallujah. On the very day that these reports were published, more shootings by US soldiers occurred, cementing the hatred of local people for the occupation forces, and marking the beginning of a spriral of violence which made Fallujah the epicentre of the growing Iraqi insurgency.

THE GROZNY OPTION
Fallujah, a city of 300,000 citizens, has been the scene of several major turning points in the post-invasion period. The last crisis was in November 2004, with a full-scale invasion by Marines and others, which left much of Fallujah looking like the Chechen city of Grozny.

Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of Fallujah's compensation commission, reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed, along with 8,400 shops. Quoting this estimate, Jonathan Steele and Dhar Jamail draw comparisons with Guernica and Grozny: 'This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a textbook case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.' (Guardian, 27 April 2005, p. 25)

THE NONVIOLENT ALTERNATIVE
One justification offered for the November assault was the need to break the hold of 'the terrorists' in Fallujah, and restore the authority of the interim Iraqi government.

However, in October 2004, 'local insurgent leaders voted overwhelmingly to accept broad conditions set by the Iraqi government, including demands that they eject foreign fighters from the city, turn over all heavy weapons, dismantle illegal checkpoints and allow the Iraqi National Guard to enter the city. In turn, the insurgents set their own conditions, which included a halt to U.S. attacks on the city and acknowledgment by the military that women and children have been among the casualties in U.S. strikes.' (Washington Post, 28 Oct. 2004, p. A21)

A later offer was put forward by a (mainly Sunni) coalition, including the Muslim Clerics' Association, for 'a plan to establish the rule of law in those areas through peaceful means', on the basis of six measures, 'including a demand that U.S. forces remain confined to bases in the month before balloting'. This was described as 'a dramatic shift' by Sunni groups which had previously insisted that no election would be legitimate until Western troops left Iraq.

"This initiative is very significant," said an official involved in establishing the transitional government. "They're no longer saying, 'We're not participating because the country is occupied.' They're saying, 'The government is not right. The only way we can make it right is by elections.' If you look at their demands, they're not impossible. They are things that can be discussed."

Larry Diamond, who served in the U.S.-led occupation authority, said "If there's a chance that this could be the beginning of political transformation that could change the situation on the ground, I think we've got to take it." (Washington Post, 6 Nov. 2004, p. A01)

These offers were brushed aside and erased from the record. They might not have worked, but they were not tried, and they were not even part of the mainstream debate over the invasion. The US was not prepared to accept a non-military solution that would have hampered its operational freedom in Iraq.

It was better that tens of thousands of homes be destroyed, thousands of families be driven out as refugees, and an unknown number of civilians be killed by artillery fire, phosphorus shells, and explosive charges in the US onslaught.

ORIGINS: 28 APRIL 2003
But how did Fallujah become the heart of the Iraqi insurgency? For the answer we must turn back to the events of April 2003, when US troops entered the peaceful city of Fallujah and occupied the local secondary school.

Local people angry about the US occupation, and demanding the re-opening of the school, demonstrated outside the school on the evening of 28 April, nearly three weeks after the fall of the regime. US soldiers fired on the crowd, killing 13 civilians immediately.

This is the same number of civilians as was killed by British soldiers in Derry in Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972. The Fallujah massacre was Iraq's Bloody Sunday, a similarly potent injustice sparking armed resistance.

THE FIRST MASSACRE
The official US account was that 25 armed civilians, mixed in with the crowd and also positioned on nearby rooftops, fired on the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne, leading to a 'fire-fight'. (BBC News Online, 29 April 2003) Phil Reeves, a reporter for the Independent on Sunday, conducted a careful independent investigation and concluded that the official story was a 'highly implausible version of events'.

Witnesses interviewed by Mr Reeves 'stated that there was some shooting in the air in the general vicinity, but it was nowhere near the crowd.' US Lieutenant Colonel Eric Nantz admitted that the bloodshed occurred after 'celebratory firing', but he claimed hat the firing came from the crowd. (BBC News Online, 29 April 2003)

However, all the witnesses Phil Reeves could find agreed that there was no 'fire-fight' nor any shooting at the school, and that the crowd had no guns. The Independent journalist observed:

'The evidence at the scene overwhelmingly supports this. Al-Ka'at primary and secondary school is a yellow concrete building about the length and height of seven terraced houses located in a walled compound. The soldiers fired at people gathered below them. There are no bullet marks on the facade of the school or the perimeter wall in front of it. The top floors of the houses directly opposite, from where the troops say they were fired on, are also unmarked. Their upper windows are intact.' (Independent on Sunday, 4 May 2003, p. 17)

There were bullet holes in an upper window, 'but they were on another side of the school building.' (Independent, 30 April 2003, p. 2) The Telegraph's report of the bullet holes failed to mention this fact. (p. 10)

Dr Ahmed Ghanim al-Ali told reporters at Fallujah Hospital, 'Medical crews were shot by [US] soldiers when they tried to get to the injured people.' (Mirror, 30 April 2003, p. 11)

THE SECOND MASSACRE
Despite the atrocity that had been visited on them, the people of Fallujah continued to protest nonviolently. A demonstration was held on 30 April, two days after the school massacre.

During the protest, US troops shot dead two more unarmed demonstrators.

No US soldiers were injured or killed, despite claims that they had been fired on first.
Reporters from the British Daily Mirror were six feet from the US soldier who opened fire on the demonstrators. A young boy 'hurled a sandal at the US jeep—with a M2 heavy machine gun post on the back—as it drove past in a convoy of other vehicles.' The soldier in charge of the machine gun ducked down, 'then pressed his thumb on the trigger' to unleash a 20-second burst of automatic fire at 'a crowd of 1,000 unarmed people.'

Reporter Chris Hughes said, 'We heard no warning to disperse and saw no guns or knives among the Iraqis whose religious and tribal leaders kept shouting through loudhailers to remain peaceful.' After the shooting, those in the crowd still standing, 'now apparently insane with anger—ran at the fortress battering its walls with their fists. Many had tears pouring down their faces.' (1 May 2003, p. 4)

TURNING TO VIOLENCE
After two Bloody Sundays in three days, the people of Fallujah turned decisively to violence. Khalaf Abed Shebib, a tribal leader in Falluja, said a few days later, 'People are ready to die in this battle.' Two days after 30 April massacre a local imam had had to call off a demonstration after seeing protesters stuffing hand grenades into their pockets.

Three teenagers were killed in the 28 April massacre. They were students at the school. The headmaster of Al-Ka'at school told Phil Reeves calmly that he was willing to die as a 'martyr' to take his revenge against the US troops. (Independent, 30 April 2003, p. 2)

Hend Majid, a 29-year-old housewife living opposite the US-occupied school, told a Western reporter she was glad Saddam Hussein was gone, but the US occupation which had led to her neighbors' deaths made her feel like a Palestinian under Israeli rule. Sitting in her living room where two bullets had pierced the window and flown above the cot of her 7-day-old niece, she vowed to become a suicide bomber: 'I will strap explosives to my chest to get rid of them.' ('Iraqis Warn US Killings Will Breed Terror Recruits,' Reuters, 1 May 2003)

'Everyone here was happy at first that the Americans threw out Saddam,' Ibrahim Hamad a retired soldier said. 'But these killings will make all our children go off with bin Laden.' (Reuters, 1 May 2003)

ERASED FROM HISTORY
The 28 April massacre was soon being erased from history. Reporting from Fallujah on a US operation on 16 June 2003, the Telegraph (p. 10), the Guardian (p. 10), and the FT (p. 6) all referred to recent attacks on US soldiers in the town, and local hostility, without mentioning the massacre.

THE NEED FOR REVENGE
Officially, US commanders in Baghdad attributed the problems in Falluja to remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and his armed militia, Saddam's Fedayeen. Colonel Vaught, a local US officer, noted, 'There are lots of Baathists, there are some Fedayeen around.' However, he appeared to agree with residents of Falluja that there was a more complex picture of accumulated grievances: 'disappointment with the U.S. occupation, an avalanche of hardship and a lust for revenge.'

In some attacks, militants were stirring up religious hostility. In other cases, hooliganism appears to be at the root. 'In any event, they said, loyalty to Hussein is far from the driving force here.'

Riad, a lawyer who declined to provide his last name, said that the killings of local people had prompted relatives to plan revenge attacks against American soldiers: 'This is our culture. Clans are strong here and it is the duty to avenge a wrongful death. People do not forget.' (Washington Post, 4 June 2003, p. A14.)

There were two problems: the fact that US forces killed civilians recklessly; and the fact that they killed with impunity. Many more such killings took place in Fallujah, though on a smaller scale, and similar incidents took place throughout what later came to be known as the 'Sunni triangle'. (More details are given in Milan Rai, Regime Unchanged, 2003)

The reaction among Iraqis was predictable. 'Why can the U.S. Army come here, kill us, destroy our property and we are not allowed to kill them?' asked Yehia al-Motashari, an auto mechanic and son of a tribal leader in Samarra. 'We don't plan to surrender our arms. With every passing day we have more guns.'

'We are hurting,' said Jassim Mohammed Sultan, a 70-year-old laborer in Ramadi. 'You cannot blame us for what we do.'


THE FUTURE IS JIHAD
'The future is jihad,' said Sheik Mohammed Ali Abbas, a cleric in Ramadi, 65 miles west of Baghdad. 'Do you know of anyone who can accept this humiliation? Do you just let them occupy your land while you sit and do nothing?' ('Iraq Sunnis Seethe Over Loss of Prestige,' Associated Press, 6 June 2003.)

According to Sheikh Jamil Ibrahim Mohammed of Fallujah, the attacks in the city were a simple matter of a blood feud, revenge for the deaths caused at the end April, and the lack of action by the US military authorities: 'What can you do if a man sees American troops kill his son, and then you see these same men on our streets every day? Of course he will seek revenge, especially if he sees there is no justice from the Americans.' ('US troops fall foul of honour and feuding,' Times, 12 June 2003, p. 16)

There followed a string of attacks on US forces. The younger generation was apparently proud of Fallujah's violent resistance. A group of teenagers outside a kebab restaurant said in early May, 'Of all of Iraq, only Fallujah is resisting the Americans. The Americans have these big tanks. We show everybody that they are just toys.' Lawyer Riad added, 'I'm afraid taking shots at Americans will become a sport for these types.' (Washington Post, 4 June 2003, p. A14)

A US army spokesperson in Baghdad admitted on 11 June that it was not easy to pin down any one group for responsibility for the attacks: 'It would be hard to discount revenge.' (Times, 12 June 2003, p. 16)

This is how Fallujah became the most dangerous place in Iraq for US occupation forces.

This is how the 'Sunni triangle' became a hotbed of insurgency.

The insurgency has evolved since April 2003, and reports stress the growing Islamist leadership of much of the Iraqi resistance. Nevertheless, it is clear from the November 2004 crisis that massive violence is not needed to deal with the insurgency - but US restraint is.

The faster US-led troops return to barracks and then to their home countries, the greater the possibility that political violence in Iraq can be reduced.