United States forces were on Friday night awaiting final orders to storm Fallujah, the resistance stronghold, in what is expected to be the bloodiest assault since the invasion of Iraq last year.
As the US stepped up air raids, blocked roads into the city, and issued loudspeaker warnings to the population to leave, the interim Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, indicated that time had almost run out.
Speaking in Brussels after a European Union meeting, he said: ”We intend to liberate the people and to bring the rule of law to Fallujah. The window really is closing for a peaceful settlement.”
But concern is growing that a bombardment of Fallujah from the air and ground will result in a high civilian death toll. Although most of the population has already fled, there are estimated to be still tens of thousands of civilians left.
The United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan, expressed reservations in a leaked letter dated Sunday, saying that the assault could create a Sunni Muslim backlash that will delay Iraqi elections now scheduled for January 27.
The expected Fallujah onslaught also threatened to put transatlantic ties under further strain at a time when European leaders are taking stock of President George Bush’s re-election. Tony Blair has urged Europe to open up to Bush, but the French president, Jacques Chirac, called instead for a broad front to counter US domination.
Chirac also pointedly snubbed the visiting Iraqi prime minister at a Brussels EU summit, further polarising positions around the central issue of Iraq.
The looming battle for Fallujah promises to be a decisive moment for post-Saddam Iraq, a litmus test for whether US troops and the new Iraq forces can overwhelm insurgents in time for the January polls without the kind of civil ian casualties that will alienate broad swathes of the population.
The Americans, whose marines withdrew from Fallujah earlier this year after international protests about a heavy civilian death toll, are determined this time round to pacify the city and about 20 other centres of unrest ahead of the election.
Warplanes attacked the city on Friday night in what residents said was some of the heaviest bombardment for months. At least one US soldier died in a rocket attack. As many as 10 000 are massed at the edge of the city, together with Iraqi forces braced for the operation against an estimated 5 000 insurgents.
Evidence that the US is readying itself for a heavy fight came with the disclosure that it has doubled the size of its medical team with the force outside Fallujah. Fifty extra beds have been brought in, along with more blood supplies and a mortuary services unit.
The US military source said marines were braced for all kinds of defensive tricks such as booby traps and mines.The source said: ”It will not be easy, but there is a job to do and we’ll see it to the end if that’s what the Iraqi government want.”
There are few, if any, independent journalists in Fallujah to bear witness to the assault.
Loyalists of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other foreign militants thought to be holed up in the city have said they will fight until US and other foreign forces leave Iraq.
Religious and community leaders in the brooding cities north and west of Baghdad have warned that an all-out attack could backfire, provoking a general uprising among Iraq’s once all-powerful Sunni Arab minority and threatening the elections.
Sheikh Mohammed Bashar al-Faidhi, of the Association of Muslim Clerics, one of the most prominent Sunni Arab organisations to have emerged since the war, said: ”If the US invades the city of Fallujah or any other city in Iraq, all the [Sunni Arab] clerics in Iraq will call for a boycott of the election.”
It is such a scenario that Annan fears. In his letter, the UN chief told American, British and Iraqi leaders that he wanted the UN to help prepare for the elections in January, but feared that a rise in violence could disrupt the process.
Annan said: ”I have in mind not only the risk of increased insurgent violence, but also reports of major military offensives being planned by the multinational force in key localities such as Fallujah.”
Europe also betrayed signs of queasiness at the Fallujah onslaught.
Chirac chose to avoid an EU summit lunch with Allawi, and brusquely rejected Blair’s calls for greater rapprochement with the re-elected US president.
”It is clear that Europe, now more than ever, has the need, the necessity, to strengthen its dynamism and unity when faced with this great world power,” he said.
Other European leaders, such as Gerhard Schröder of Germany and José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of Spain, were more conciliatory, both offering congratulations to the victorious Republican and offers to start afresh.
But they were less happy at comments by the Iraqi prime minister, who had referred to those who opposed the Iraq war as ”spectator states”.
Allawi was contrite on Friday at his meeting with EU leaders.
”Today my government is trying to build a new Iraq and we need your help,” he said.
He said the two sides, including opponents of the war, had turned the page.
Allawi thanked the EU for â,¬330-million in aid over the past two years and urged it to use its influence in Iran and Syria to stop fuelling violence in his country.
Zarqawi’s al-Qaeda in Iraq group called on Friday night for the release of the charity worker Margaret Hassan, and promised to free her if she fell into their hands. – Guardian Unlimited Â