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AFTER
FALLUJA
Unpunished US Killings Spark Iraqi Resistance
JNV Anti-War Briefing
47
REGIME UNCHANGED Update Number 2
6 August 2003 |
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‘THE WAR IS OVER’
‘George W Bush will spend nearly $300 million trying to get
re-elected in 2004, but nothing he buys will come close, in sheer
political capital, to what he deposited in his campaign bank last
week—the perfect presidential photo-op. The scene, of Bush
landing aboard an aircraft carrier in a Navy jet and then strutting
across the deck outfitted in a jump suit, “will be the moment
of George W. Bush’s presidency,” predicts Mike Deaver,
the master imagemaker to Ronald Reagan.’ The USS Abraham
Lincoln was positioned ‘to obscure any view of the coastline
and ensure a picture-perfect backdrop.’ (Time magazine, 12
May 2003, p. 13)
Mr Bush said, ‘Major combat operations
in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and
our allies have prevailed.’ He did not say the war was officially
over, because ‘under the Geneva Conventions, once war is
declared over, the victorious army must release prisoners-of-war
and halt operations targeting specific leaders.’ (BBC News
Online, 2 May 2003)
‘WAR IS NOT OVER’
‘Mr Rumsfeld cautioned yesterday that “we’re still
at war”, and it would not be possible to reduce the American
military presence any time soon.’ (Guardian, 14 July 2003)
However, the US Defense Secretary also said that characterizing
the attacks as a guerrilla war would be ‘a misunderstanding
and a miscommunication’. (CNN Online, 1 July 2003)
General John Abizaid, the commander of US
forces in Iraq, publicly disagreed a few weeks later, saying the
attacks on US soldiers ‘were part of an increasingly organised
“guerrilla-type campaign”. “It’s low-intensity
conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it’s war however you
describe it.” ’ (Guardian, 17 July 2003)
DEATH TOLL DISPARITIES
‘At least 52 US soldiers have been killed by hostile fire
since the war was declared over on 1 May.’ (‘Timeline:
US losses in Iraq’, BBC News Online, 31 July 2003)
It is difficult to estimate the Iraqi death
toll in this ‘guerrilla-type war’; one reason is that
no media outlet is keeping track of the cumulative total. To take
one suggestive indicator, however, in the second week of June
2003, US forces mounted their first major operation against the
Sunni resistance. Operation Peninsula Strike involved 4,000 troops
scouring an area around the Tigris river near the town of Balad.
In the first two months after the war, over 40 US soldiers had
been killed in attacks, or died in accidents. In the first two
days of Operation Peninsula Strike, US occupation forces reportedly
killed 97 Iraqis. (Guardian, 14 June 2003, p. 2)
DEATH TOLL UNCERTAINTIES
Another difficulty in compiling an accurate estimate of Iraqi
deaths is that, as in Vietnam, US ‘body counts’ are
unreliable. On 13 June, 27 Iraqis were reported killed after a
failed ambush on a group of US Abrams M1 tanks outside Balad city.
Four attackers were reportedly killed immediately, and a helicopter
gunship and armoured vehicles ‘pursued the enemy personnel’,
killing 23 more Iraqis according to the official US version of
events.
British journalist Patrick Cockburn reported,
‘It is not clear how many Iraqi casualties really were fighters.
In country areas, Iraqi civilians invariably own weapons, which
may include rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine-guns.
“A man in Iraq does not think he is really a man unless he
has a gun, the bigger the better,” said one Iraqi observer.’
Mr Cockburn remarks, ‘One explanation for American aggression
is that their commanders see the possession of arms as hostility
to the occupation. But Iraqi farmers are always armed, usually
with AK-47 machine guns.’ (Independent on Sunday, 15 June
2003, p. 19)
A few days later, it was admitted that actually
only seven men were killed in this incident, and five of those
were apparently innocent farmers. (Guardian, 16 June 2003, p.
10)
In summary: precise statistics are not available,
but it is clear firstly that Iraqi guerrillas are being killed
in much larger numbers than US occupation forces (generally in
the course of ambushes on US personnel), and secondly that armed
non-combatant civilians are also being killed by US soldiers.
RECENT DECLINE IN INTENSITY
‘[T]he frequency of attacks has declined in the area northwest
of Baghdad dominated by Iraq’s Sunni minority, long a base
of support for Hussein. In this triangle-shaped region—delineated
by Baghdad, Tikrit to the north and the towns of Fallujah and
Ramadi to the west—attacks on U.S. forces have dropped by
half since mid-June, military officers reported.’ (Washington
Post, 28 July 2003, p. A01) Earlier, insurgents were ‘carrying
out attacks on the US occupation forces at a rate of 12 a day.’
(Guardian, 17 July 2003)
FALLUJA
One major reason for the decline in attacks is that the US forces
have finally accepted some responsibility for the 28 April massacre
in Falluja. After the fall of the regime, local citizens took
over the running of this western town. US forces barged in and
occupied the local school as a military base, without consultation.
During a demonstration on the evening of 28 April, nearly three
weeks after the fall of the regime, US soldiers fired on the crowd
outside the school, killing 13 civilians immediately.
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 that 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, also appear 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
Falluja Hospital, ‘Medical crews were shot by [US] soldiers
when they tried to get to the injured people.’ (Mirror, 30
April 2003, p. 11)
BLOOD MONEY
The US failed to accept that those killed in the massacre were
unarmed; failed to pay compensation to the relatives of the dead
or to the injured; and failed to investigate the massacre and
punish those responsible. The result was predictable. After the
massacre, Falluja became the most dangerous place in Iraq for
US occupation forces. The headmaster of the school, who had lost
three teenage pupils in the massacre, 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)
The 28 April massacre was soon being airbrushed out of history.
Reporting from Falluja 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 introduction of a new US brigade in June
allowed the occupation forces to stage a climbdown. First: a withdrawal
of US forces from the town. (Washington Post, 12 July 2003, p.
A11) Secondly, US Army officers ‘delivered formal apologies
to local tribal sheiks and paid blood money for every dead and
injured person deemed not to be a combatant... $1,500 for a death
and $500 for an injury... Officers have [also] ordered soldiers
to knock on doors before conducting most residential searches.
They have also permitted the mayor to field a 75-member armed
militia and doled out nearly $2 million on municipal improvements
instead of waiting for private American contractors to arrive.’
(Washington Post, 29 July 2003, p. A01)
‘When the 2nd Brigade arrived, the prevailing
view among U.S. commanders was that the attacks were being conducted
almost exclusively by Hussein loyalists who had the support of
other residents... Over time, the brigade’s officers came
to realize Fallujah was more traditional than Baathist. Much of
the animosity toward U.S. forces was driven by perceived slights
of tribal and religious traditions. Several people here said attempts
to search women prompted so much humiliation for male relatives
that some of them joined the mobs throwing rocks and shooting
at U.S. convoys.’ (WP, 29 July)
It seems that much of the resistance is revenge
for unpunished and uncompensated US killings, not a Saddamist
conspiracy.
[For the full story of the Falluja massacre, and more on the Sunni
resistance, please see Regime Unchanged
by Milan Rai (Pluto, September 2003).]
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