TURNING
POINT FALLUJAH
How US Atrocities
Sparked The Iraqi Resistance
30 April 2005
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Posted: 30 April
2005
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IGNITION POINT FOR THE RESISTANCE
Two years ago today (30 April 2005), reports appeared in Western
newspapers of a major incident in the Western Iraqi city of
Fallujah. On the very day that these reports were published,
more shootings by US soldiers occurred, cementing the hatred
of local people for the occupation forces, and marking the beginning
of a spriral of violence which made Fallujah the epicentre of
the growing Iraqi insurgency.
THE GROZNY OPTION
Fallujah, a city of 300,000 citizens, has been the scene of
several major turning points in the post-invasion period. The
last crisis was in November 2004, with a full-scale invasion
by Marines and others, which left much of Fallujah looking like
the Chechen city of Grozny.
Dr Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of Fallujah's compensation commission,
reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed, along with 8,400 shops.
Quoting this estimate, Jonathan Steele and Dhar Jamail draw
comparisons with Guernica and Grozny: 'This decade's unforgettable
monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a textbook case
of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular
occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.'
(Guardian, 27 April 2005, p. 25)
THE NONVIOLENT ALTERNATIVE
One justification offered for the November assault was the need
to break the hold of ‘the terrorists’ in Fallujah,
and restore the authority of the interim Iraqi government.
However, in October 2004, ‘local insurgent leaders voted
overwhelmingly to accept broad conditions set by the Iraqi government,
including demands that they eject foreign fighters from the
city, turn over all heavy weapons, dismantle illegal checkpoints
and allow the Iraqi National Guard to enter the city. In turn,
the insurgents set their own conditions, which included a halt
to U.S. attacks on the city and acknowledgment by the military
that women and children have been among the casualties in U.S.
strikes.’ (Washington Post, 28 Oct. 2004, p. A21)
A later offer was put forward by a (mainly
Sunni) coalition, including the Muslim Clerics’ Association,
for ‘a plan to establish the rule of law in those areas
through peaceful means’, on the basis of six measures,
‘including a demand that U.S. forces remain confined to
bases in the month before balloting’. This was described
as ‘a dramatic shift’ by Sunni groups which had
previously insisted that no election would be legitimate until
Western troops left Iraq.
“This initiative is very significant,” said an official
involved in establishing the transitional government. “They’re
no longer saying, <We’re not participating because
the country is occupied.> They’re saying, <The government
is not right. The only way we can make it right is by elections.>
If you look at their demands, they’re not impossible.
They are things that can be discussed.”
Larry Diamond, who served in the U.S.-led occupation authority,
said “If there’s a chance that this could be the
beginning of political transformation that could change the
situation on the ground, I think we’ve got to take it.”
(Washington Post, 6 Nov. 2004, p. A01)
These offers were brushed aside and erased from the record.
They might not have worked, but they were not tried, and they
were not even part of the mainstream debate over the invasion.
The US was not prepared to accept a non-military solution that
would have hampered its operational freedom in Iraq.
It was better that tens of thousands of homes be destroyed,
thousands of families be driven out as refugees, and an unknown
number of civilians be killed by artillery fire, phosphorus
shells, and explosive charges in the US onslaught.
ORIGINS: 28 APRIL 2003
But how did Fallujah become the heart of the Iraqi insurgency?
For the answer we must turn back to the events of April 2003,
when US troops entered the peaceful city of Fallujah and occupied
the local secondary school.
Local people angry about the US occupation, and demanding the
re-opening of the school, demonstrated outside the school on
the evening of 28 April, nearly three weeks after the fall of
the regime. US soldiers fired on the crowd, killing 13 civilians
immediately.
This is the same number of civilians as was killed by British
soldiers in Derry in Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972.
The Fallujah massacre was Iraq's Bloody Sunday, a similarly
potent injustice sparking armed resistance.
THE FIRST MASSACRE
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 hat 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, are also 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 Fallujah Hospital,
‘Medical crews were shot by [US] soldiers when they tried
to get to the injured people.’ (Mirror, 30 April 2003,
p. 11)
THE SECOND MASSACRE
Despite the atrocity that had been visited on them, the people
of Fallujah continued to protest nonviolently. A demonstration
was held on 30 April, two days after the school massacre.
During the protest, US troops shot dead
two more unarmed demonstrators.
No US soldiers were injured or killed, despite claims that they
had been fired on first.
Reporters from the British Daily Mirror were six feet from the
US soldier who opened fire on the demonstrators. A young boy
‘hurled a sandal at the US jeep—with a M2 heavy
machine gun post on the back—as it drove past in a convoy
of other vehicles.’ The soldier in charge of the machine
gun ducked down, ‘then pressed his thumb on the trigger’
to unleash a 20-second burst of automatic fire at ‘a crowd
of 1,000 unarmed people.’
Reporter Chris Hughes said, ‘We heard
no warning to disperse and saw no guns or knives among the Iraqis
whose religious and tribal leaders kept shouting through loudhailers
to remain peaceful.’ After the shooting, those in the
crowd still standing, ‘now apparently insane with anger—ran
at the fortress battering its walls with their fists. Many had
tears pouring down their faces.’ (1 May 2003, p. 4)
TURNING TO VIOLENCE
After two Bloody Sundays in three days, the people of Fallujah
turned decisively to violence. Khalaf Abed Shebib, a tribal
leader in Falluja, said a few days later, ‘People are
ready to die in this battle.’ Two days after 30 April
massacre a local imam had had to call off a demonstration after
seeing protesters stuffing hand grenades into their pockets.
Three teenagers were killed in the 28
April massacre. They were students at the school. The headmaster
of Al-Ka’at school 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)
Hend Majid, a 29-year-old housewife living opposite the US-occupied
school, told a Western reporter she was glad Saddam Hussein
was gone, but the US occupation which had led to her neighbors’
deaths made her feel like a Palestinian under Israeli rule.
Sitting in her living room where two bullets had pierced the
window and flown above the cot of her 7-day-old niece, she vowed
to become a suicide bomber: 'I will strap explosives to my chest
to get rid of them.' (‘Iraqis Warn US Killings Will Breed
Terror Recruits,’ Reuters, 1 May 2003)
‘Everyone
here was happy at first that the Americans threw out Saddam,’
Ibrahim Hamad a retired soldier said. ‘But these killings
will make all our children go off with bin Laden.’
(Reuters, 1 May 2003)
ERASED FROM HISTORY
The 28 April massacre was soon being erased from history. Reporting
from Fallujah 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 NEED FOR REVENGE
Officially, US commanders in Baghdad attributed the problems
in Falluja to remnants of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party
and his armed militia, Saddam’s Fedayeen. Colonel Vaught,
a local US officer, noted, ‘There are lots of Baathists,
there are some Fedayeen around.’ However, he appeared
to agree with residents of Falluja that there was a more complex
picture of accumulated grievances: ‘disappointment with
the U.S. occupation, an avalanche of hardship and a lust for
revenge.’
In some attacks, militants were stirring up religious hostility.
In other cases, hooliganism appears to be at the root. ‘In
any event, they said, loyalty to Hussein is far from the driving
force here.’
Riad, a lawyer who declined to provide his last name, said that
the killings of local people had prompted relatives to plan
revenge attacks against American soldiers: ‘This is our
culture. Clans are strong here and it is the duty to avenge
a wrongful death. People do not forget.’ (Washington Post,
4 June 2003, p. A14.)
There were two problems: the fact that US forces killed civilians
recklessly; and the fact that they killed with impunity. Many
more such killings took place in Fallujah, though on a smaller
scale, and similar incidents took place throughout what later
came to be known as the 'Sunni triangle'. (More details are
given in Milan Rai, Regime Unchanged, 2003)
The reaction among Iraqis was predictable. ‘Why can the
U.S. Army come here, kill us, destroy our property and we are
not allowed to kill them?’ asked Yehia al-Motashari, an
auto mechanic and son of a tribal leader in Samarra. ‘We
don’t plan to surrender our arms. With every passing day
we have more guns.’
‘We are hurting,’ said Jassim Mohammed Sultan, a
70-year-old laborer in Ramadi. ‘You cannot blame us for
what we do.’
THE FUTURE
IS JIHAD
‘The future is jihad,’ said Sheik Mohammed Ali Abbas,
a cleric in Ramadi, 65 miles west of Baghdad. ‘Do you
know of anyone who can accept this humiliation? Do you just
let them occupy your land while you sit and do nothing?’
(‘Iraq Sunnis Seethe Over Loss of Prestige,’ Associated
Press, 6 June 2003.)
According to Sheikh Jamil Ibrahim Mohammed of Fallujah, the
attacks in they city were a simple matter of a blood feud, revenge
for the deaths caused at the end April, and the lack of action
by the US military authorities: ‘What can you do if a
man sees American troops kill his son, and then you see these
same men on our streets every day? Of course he will seek revenge,
especially if he sees there is no justice from the Americans.’
(‘US troops fall foul of honour and feuding,’ Times,
12 June 2003, p. 16)
There followed a string of attacks on
US forces. The younger generation was apparently proud of Fallujah’s
violent resistance. A group of teenagers outside a kebab restaurant
said in early May, ‘Of all of Iraq, only Fallujah is resisting
the Americans. The Americans have these big tanks. We show everybody
that they are just toys.’ Lawyer Riad added, ‘I’m
afraid taking shots at Americans will become a sport for these
types.’ (Washington Post, 4 June 2003, p. A14)
A US army spokesperson in Baghdad admitted on 11 June that it
was not easy to pin down any one group for responsibility for
the attacks: ‘It would be hard to discount revenge.’
(Times, 12 June 2003, p. 16)
This is how Fallujah became the most dangerous place in Iraq
for US occupation forces.
This is how the 'Sunni triangle' became a hotbed of insurgency.
The insurgency has evolved since April 2003, and reports stress
the growing Islamist leadership of much of the Iraqi resistance.
Nevertheless, it is clear from the November 2004 crisis that
massive violence is not needed to deal with the insurgency -
but US restraint is.
The faster US-led troops return to barracks
and then to their home countries, the greater the possibility
that political violence in Iraq can be reduced.
