"Iraq in the mirror of Fallujah" – commentary by Paul Rogers, in www.opendemocracy.net , 21 July 2005

TK:

As we mourn the dead and maimed from the terrorist attacks on London public transport, who still remembers the destruction of Fallujah ? Not many Westerners, because those who set and spin our news agenda were determined that we should forget the coalition’s major war crime that happened in Fallujah as quickly as possible. But clearly, people in the Muslim world did not forget Fallujah. One does not make an atrocity disappear by pretending it did not happen.

We need now to recall what happened eight months ago in Fallujah, and Australia’s level of military involvement in it. It is one of the reasons why responsible Australian police chiefs like Mick Keelty and Joe Scipione are right to warn that terrorist attacks against innocent Australian civilians are possible at any time. As I wrote about Fallujah in The Sydney Morning Herald on 9 November 2004, "We reap what we sow".

I take no pleasure in recalling this unhappy prediction now. But when our political leaders spout the sort of mendacious nonsense that they have done lately, claiming that the horror in London has nothing to do with the ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people - suffering for which the coalition’s continuing armed occupation is the main cause - it has to be recalled.

Because these leaders will be guilty of whatever may befall us. The Spanish people understood that after the Madrid train bombings. I pray Australians may escape some similar tragedy happening here, but like Keelty and Scipione I am not hopeful that we will. And we do not have the option to vote out this irresponsible warmongering government for another two years.

There is a wisdom in ordinary British and Australian people that eludes politicians and most of the people who earn their living commenting on our politics. If only our stubborn and irresponsible "leaders" would listen to the judgements their own citizens are making about the obvious connections between the cruelties we are inflicting on the Iraqi people – people like us - and what is starting to happen to us in our Western cities. Instead of spinning lies about our people’s "bulldog spirit" in standing up to terrorism.

The only solution is to give Iraq genuine self-determination and leave the country to define its own future and to control its own resources. We all know why the US is determined to maintain puppet regimes in power in Iraq by armed force – it’s about oil. That is why people are going on suffering and dying in Iraq, in order that the cheap oil can remain under US government control and keep flowing to Western economies. It is nonsense and divisive to try to hang all this on the bogeyman of "Islamist terror". The issue feeding this global violence is global injustice – the ongoing abuse of the human rights of Middle Eastern people, who happen to be Muslims and happen to be sitting on a lot of oil.

For an authoritative update on Fallujah and on how the coalition’s war in Iraq is faring, see this article in the well-regarded liberal British website "Open Democracy":

 

Iraq in the mirror of Fallujah , by Paul Rogers, 21 July 2005

www.opendemocracy.net

 

After two sieges and under an intense security regime, armed resistance to United States forces continues in Fallujah.

How is the Iraq war related to the wider "war on terror"? The question is of acute political saliency to George W Bush and Tony Blair, though the pressures of domestic politics are currently pulling their answers in opposite directions.

The British prime minister and his government clearly see the London bombings as part of the broader struggle, but cannot admit any connection with the Iraq insurgency. The United States president and his administration, by contrast, is obliged by ideology and the sharp decline in domestic support for the Iraq war to see Iraq as integral to the "war on terror" begun on 11 September 2001.

The problem for both leaders is that events in Iraq itself are answering the question, and in ways that put the respective rhetoric of the two leaders under close scrutiny.

The core issue facing the United States and its dwindling band of coalition partners in Iraq is whether the insurgency there is being or can be brought under control. Many areas in the south and east of the country remain relatively untouched by violence, while the Kurdish northeast operates as a quasi-independent political entity. But in the Sunni-majority areas north and west of Baghdad – including cities like Mosul and Kirkuk where Kurdish-Arab tensions are high – the security problems appear endemic.

The past month has seen a high level of attacks in the area often referred to as the "Sunni triangle", with insurgents acting with increased impunity. Yet the pattern of events even over a short period is less important than the longer-term trends. In this respect three distinct sources of evidence or reporting indicate a marked deterioration in security in Iraq.

The first indicator is this week's dossier on the war's civilian casualties from IraqBodyCount and the Oxford Research Group. Their remarkably careful methodology, based on multiple sources, catalogues 24,865 civilian deaths and 42,500 civilian injuries in the first two years of the war.

The twenty-six page report's conclusion on the levels of civilian casualties since the end of the so-called "invasion phase" in April 2003 is revealing: 6,215 Iraqi civilians died in the first year after that "mission accomplished" event; 11,351 died in the second year.

The second indicator is a report from the BBC's experienced world affairs editor, John Simpson ("Iraq's Descent into Bombing Quagmire", BBC, 18 July 2005). He lists twenty-two car bombs in Baghdad alone last week; ten exploded in a single day, 15 July. Another car bomb that day in the nearby town of Musayyib killed almost 100 Shi’a Muslims.

Simpson comments that while similar peaks in the insurgency occurred in the summers of 2003 and 2004, 2005’s is higher: "the shadowy resistance movements seem to be operating on a new and much more ambitious level." This is Simpson’s eleventh visit to Iraq since May 2003 and his depressing conclusion is that "each time the security situation has been markedly worse than the time before."

Fallujah’s failed lockdown

The third indicator is recent developments in Fallujah, the "city of mosques" west of Baghdad that has endured two large-scale assaults by United States forces (in April and November 2004) in an attempt to subdue insurgency there.

The November operation – against a city seen as the heart of the insurgency, and designed to inflict irreparable damage on it – was the largest undertaken by the US in Iraq since April 2003.

A substantial assault by the US marine corps backed by heavy air power did take control of Fallujah. It was a costly "victory". Many Iraqis were killed (the IraqBodyCount report estimates 1,874 over the two-year period); most of the 137 US troops killed and 1,400 injured across Iraq in November died in Fallujah. By the assault’s end, half the houses in the city had been destroyed and another quarter were damaged; almost every mosque, school or public building had been destroyed or damaged; the great majority of the 300,000 inhabitants had been forced to become refugees. [TK italics].

The Fallujah operation had very little effect on the Iraqi insurgency – within days there was an upsurge in violence elsewhere in the country, particularly Mosul (see an earlier column in this series, "No direction home", 25 November 2004). But what is really significant is what has happened in Fallujah since November.

Fallujah should be the most secure city in Iraq. The United States has assigned a force of 4,300 marines to the Fallujah area; they are supplemented by 800 Iraqi paramilitary troops, 2,800 Iraqi army soldiers, and the regular Iraqi police. There is a nightly curfew, and six carefully controlled entry and exit routes to and from the city, where citizens must show identity papers and undergo a search.

In these circumstances, it is extraordinary that the insurgents are staging a comeback (Edward Wong, "8 Months after US-Led Siege, Insurgents Rise Again in Fallujah", New York Times, 15 July 2005). Car bombs are actually being assembled within the city; of the four detonated in the area in recent weeks, one killed six US troops, and another narrowly missed assassinating the Iraqi paramilitary force commander, Mehdi Sabeeh Hashim. Of the five police forts built in Fallujah, two have already been firebombed.

The violence has also impacted at the local political level. Three of the twenty-one members of the new city council have resigned, and a fourth has stopped attending meetings after a car-bomb attack on his house. Even permanent "lockdown" – with one police officer, Iraqi soldier or US marine for every twelve inhabitants – cannot, it seems, contain the Fallujah insurgency.

The combination of the Fallujah experience and the longer-term evidence from IraqBodyCount and the BBC is sobering. The Iraqi insurgency is not under control, nearly two and a half years after the start of the war. A significant shift of language, even in official circles, reflects this: few now talk about a "three-week war" followed by "a period of disorder". Iraq is now widely seen as an ongoing war, begun in March 2003, whose end is not in sight. Whether domestic political calculations see it as integral to (Bush) or separate from (Blair) the "war on terror", Iraq is an issue that will not go away.

 

Some further reading and reference sources about Fallujah :

http://www.tonykevin.com/WarCrime1.html " All the makings of a war crime", opinion piece by Tony Kevin, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 2004

http://www.tonykevin.com/FallujahBattle.html – "How the Fallujah battle played in the media", commentary by Tony Kevin, 15 November 2004

http://www.tonykevin.com/CNN-interview.html – "Tony Kevin’s failed CNN interview on Fallujah – the documentary record", commentary by Tony Kevin, 16 November 2004

http://www.tonykevin.com/MargaretHassan.html – "Media Release: In Mourning for Margaret Hassan and for the dead of Fallujah" - by Tony Kevin , 17 November 2004

http://www.tonykevin.com/SydneyRally.html – "Sydney Rally against the Fallujah slaughter, 20 November 2004, Martin Place Sydney" , text of public address by Tony Kevin

http://www.tonykevin.com/MediaReleaseFallujah.html - Media Release: "Fallujah and The Australian - another shameful day for a once great Australian newspaper", by Tony Kevin, Canberra 25 November 2004 .

 

Regarding Australian involvement in the November 2004 destruction of Fallujah, I said at the Martin Place rally on 20 November 2004:

"For me as an Australian, the most shaming thing about this week was Defence Minister Robert Hill’s casual admission in the Senate on Thursday, that Australian troops may have been involved in the planning and execution of the attack on Fallujah.

In reply to a question from Senator Kerry Nettle, Hill said he was not aware of exact numbers but believed a small number of troops may have been assigned to Australia's allies in the battle. He said "Australians certainly had some personnel within the multinational force headquarters, and it's reasonable to assume therefore some role in relation to planning or incidental support of the operations,". He said "There may well have been a small number of Australian forces who were assigned to forces of our allies."

In making those statements, Hill is admitting that Australian soldiers serving in Iraq may be implicated in the war crime that is Fallujah. I don’t know how Hill, or Defence Secretary Ric Smith, or Chief of the Defence Force General Peter Cosgrove, or Army Commander General Peter Leahy, can honourably stay in their jobs after the past 12 days in Fallujah. The honourable thing would be to set up an enquiry into the Australian role in Fallujah, and take leave from their posts until it is over.

Failing that, these may all be guilty commanders, because they may have authorised Australian military participation in the planning and execution of a major war crime. "

Tony Kevin, Canberra 22 July 2005.