The destruction of Falluja was an act of barbarism that ranks
alongside My Lai, Guernica and Halabja
By Mike Marqusee
11/10/05 "The Guardian" -- -- One year ago this week, US-led
occupying forces launched a devastating assault on the Iraqi city of
Falluja. The mood was set by Lt Col Gary Brandl: "The enemy has got
a face. He's called Satan. He's in Falluja. And we're going to
destroy him."
The assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US
troops cut off the city's water, power and food supplies, condemned
as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur,
who accused occupying forces of "using hunger and deprivation of
water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". Two-
thirds of the city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters'
camps without basic facilities.
As the siege tightened, the Red Cross, Red Crescent and the media
were kept out, while males between the ages of 15 and 55 were kept
in. US sources claimed between 600 and 6,000 insurgents were holed
up inside the city - which means that the vast majority of the
remaining inhabitants were non-combatants.
On November 8, 10,000 US troops, supported by 2,000 Iraqi recruits,
equipped with artillery and tanks, supported from the air by bombers
and helicopter gunships, blasted their way into a city the size of
Leicester. It took a week to establish control of the main roads;
another two before victory was claimed.
The city's main hospital was selected as the first target, the New
York Times reported, "because the US military believed it was the
source of rumours about heavy casualties". An AP photographer
described US helicopters killing a family of five trying to ford a
river to safety. "There were American snipers on top of the hospital
shooting everyone," said Burhan Fasa'am, a photographer with the
Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation. "With no medical supplies, people
died from their wounds. Everyone in the street was a target for the
Americans."
The US also deployed incendiary weapons, including white
phosphorous. "Usually we keep the gloves on," Captain Erik Krivda
said, but "for this operation, we took the gloves off". By the end
of operations, the city lay in ruins. Falluja's compensation
commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes
were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines.
The US claims that 2,000 died, most of them fighters. Other sources
disagree. When medical teams arrived in January they collected more
than 700 bodies in only one third of the city. Iraqi NGOs and
medical workers estimate between 4,000 and 6,000 dead, mostly
civilians - a proportionately higher death rate than in Coventry and
London during the blitz.
The collective punishment inflicted on Falluja - with logistical and
political support from Britain - was largely masked by the US and
British media, which relied on reporters embedded with US troops.
The BBC, in particular, offered a sanitised version of the assault:
civilian suffering was minimised and the ethics and strategic logic
of the attack largely unscrutinised.
Falluja proved to be yet another of the war's phantom turning
points. Violent resistance spread to other cities. In the last two
months, Tal-Afar, Haditha, Husaybah - all alleged terrorist havens
heavily populated by civilians - have come under the hammer. Falluja
is still so heavily patrolled that visitors have described it as "a
giant prison". Only a fraction of the promised reconstruction and
compensation has materialised.
Like Jallianwallah Bagh, Guernica, My Lai, Halabja and Grozny,
Falluja is a place name that has become a symbol of unconscionable
brutality. As the war in Iraq claims more lives, we need to ensure
that this atrocity - so recent, so easily erased from public memory -
is recognised as an example of the barbarism of nations that call
themselves civilised.
Mike Marqusee is a co-founder of Iraq Occupation Focus
www.iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
http://www.informationclearing
No comments:
Post a Comment