In a statement that directly echoed United States President George W Bush, Qasim Daoud, Iraq’s interim Minister of State for National Security, told a news conference last week: ”Mission accomplished … Fallujah has been liberated.” He proudly recited the list of the dead — 1 400 terrorists, foreigners and Saddamists. And what about civilians, the women and children trapped in the fighting zone. Any casualties? He avoided the question.
At the same time thousands of Iraqis demonstrated in Baghdad, Basra and Heet in support of the people of Fallujah. Many were arrested, some were beaten. The US-appointed Ayad Allawi regime responded by imposing new curfews. The US military is still struggling to contain a spreading wave of resistance, in Najaf and now Mosul.
Around Fallujah, camps have been erected to receive displaced women and children. Men aged 15 to 50 were not allowed to leave the city, so 150 000 wait in anguish for news of fathers, husbands and sons.
Will they survive the US military’s wrath? Many will not. The execution-style killing of the wounded Iraqi inside a mosque by a US marine, was one of many, according to an eyewitness interviewed by al-Jazeera television on Wednesday.
Yet all members of Allawi’s regime have greeted the suffering of Iraqi civilians with complete silence. The dignified voice of Firdus al-Abadi, spokeswoman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad, has haunted us for days.
Appealing for relief supplies, she said simply: ”Conditions in Fallujah are catastrophic.” The Red Crescent suggested this week that as many as 800 civilians had died during the bombardment.
The plight of the people of Fallujah is not unique. Since the nominal handover of sovereignty on June 30, we have witnessed an escalation of Israeli-style collective punishment of Iraqi cities. Civilian carnage, coupled with enormous damage to homes and infrastructure, has became our daily reality.
In Tall Afar, in the north, US troops cut off water for three days last month and blocked food supplies to 150 000 refugees. Then in Samarra residents cowered in their homes as tanks and warplanes pounded the city.
Bodies were strewn in the streets but could not be collected for fear of American snipers. Of the 130 Iraqis killed, most were civilians. Hospital access was denied to the injured. And Daoud hailed the massacre as a ”very clean” operation.
Every day of occupation brings fresh atrocities. But the architects of that occupation claim that it is Iraqis themselves who are beyond the reach of democracy.
They are ”militants” and ”insurgents”, bent on terrorising their own people and destroying hopes of reconstruction. Why can’t they get involved in the peaceful democratic political process? But they did, and they continue to do so. Over the past 19 months there have been protests, appeals, initiatives to set up a reasonable programme for elections, the opening of human rights centres, lecturing at universities, even poetry writing.
This torrent of activism is still being practised by a broad variety of political parties, groups and individuals who oppose the foreign occupation. And they have been ignored. Newspapers were closed. Editors were arrested. Demonstrators were shot at, arrested, abused and tortured.
On the fourth day of the ground attack on Fallujah, on November 12, joint Shia-Sunni prayers were held in the four mosques in Baghdad, and were massively well attended. Inter-communal prayers were the hallmark of the 1920 revolution, revived early this year by the Iraqi National Foundation Congress, a loose umbrella organisation of academics, cross-sectarian clerics and veteran political leaders.
Early on, Allawi set the tone for building democracy in the ”sovereign” Iraq by insisting: ”We will stand up to destroy the terrorists.” This language has become the daily currency of the interim ministers, who, like children in a school choir, echo their instructor, the US military spokesperson.
But time after time it has been shown to be false. Most fighters in Iraq are Iraqis who are outraged to see their country’s resources stolen while they live in slums, drink water mixed with sewage and have no say in the political process.
Nineteen months after ”liberation” they can see how little the liberators have done to ease their suffering. No wonder an increasing number of Iraqis are either joining or supporting the resistance, realising that, as in the past, they must fight on their own.
The overwhelming popular support for the people of Fallujah is a salute to young fighters wearing flip-flops, who carry ancient weapons, and yet continue to resist.
Western governments, led by the US and the United Kingdom, supported Saddam Hussein’s regime against the will of the Iraqi people for decades. They are committing a similar crime now. — Â