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THE INDEPENDENT<br>
World: Middle East<br>
14 November 2004<br>
<a href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582722" eudora="autourl">http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=582722<br>
</a>Kim Sengupta and Raymond Whitaker report<br><br>
As the Americans move street by bloody street towards control of
the<br>
insurgents' stronghold, aid agencies warn of a humanitarian
catastrophe.<br><br>
Victory was being declared yesterday in the battle of Fallujah, with
1,000<br>
rebels reported dead, hundreds more in custody and spectacular footage
from<br>
embedded television crews, showing Marines charging through
deserted<br>
neighbourhoods.<br><br>
"It's like those pictures from the advance into Baghdad," said
one watcher<br>
as the TV showed the view over a tank gunner's shoulder, with fire
pouring<br>
down an empty street. But that comment unconsciously identified the
real<br>
problem: more than a year and a half after George Bush declared
major<br>
combat operations in Iraq at an end, the US military, backed by British
and<br>
Iraqi forces, is having to fight the war all over again.<br><br>
Yesterday, as American forces embarked on what were described as<br>
"mopping-up" operations in Fallujah - though heavy shelling was
still being<br>
reported - relief organisations warned that there could be a
humanitarian<br>
disaster in the city. "Conditions in Fallujah are
catastrophic," said<br>
Fardous al-Ubaidi of the Iraqi Red Crescent. The Iraqi Health
Minister,<br>
Alaa Alwan, said ambulances had begun transferring "significant
numbers" of<br>
civilian wounded to Baghdad hospitals, but did not say how
many.<br><br>
Washington and the Iraqi interim government could argue that civilians
in<br>
Fallujah had ample warning of what was to come. More than 80 per cent
of<br>
the population of 200,000 to 300,000 were said to have fled before
the<br>
assault was launched on Monday. But enough reports trickled out of
the<br>
besieged city to show that many inhabitants still remained, despite
their<br>
invisibility in the television footage, and that their plight was
severe.<br><br>
Aamir Haidar Yusouf,a 39-year-old trader, sent his family out of
Fallujah,<br>
but stayed behind to look after his home, not just during the fighting,
but<br>
the looting which will invariably follow. "The Americans have been
firing<br>
at buildings if they see even small movements," he said. "They
are also<br>
destroying cars, because they think every car has a bomb in it. People
have<br>
moved from the edges of the city into the centre, and they are staying
on<br>
the ground floors of buildings.<br><br>
"There will be nothing left of Fallujah by the time they finish.
They have<br>
already destroyed so many homes with their bombings from the air, and
now<br>
we are having this from tanks and big guns."<br><br>
US commanders insist civilian casualties in Fallujah have been low, but
the<br>
Pentagon famously claims that it does not keep figures. Escaping
residents<br>
described incidents in which non-combatants, including women and
children,<br>
were killed by shrapnel or hit by bombs. In one case earlier in the week,
a<br>
nine-year-old boy was hit in the stomach by shrapnel. Unable to reach
a<br>
hospital, he died hours later of blood loss.<br><br>
"Anyone who gets injured is likely to die, because there's no
medicine and<br>
they can't get to doctors," said Abdul-Hameed Salim, a volunteer
with the<br>
Iraqi Red Crescent. "There are snipers everywhere. Go outside and
you're<br>
going to get shot."<br><br>
Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the main Fallujah hospital who escaped
arrest<br>
when it was taken, said the city was running out of medical supplies,
and<br>
only a few clinics remained open. "There is not a single surgeon
in<br>
Fallujah," he said. "We had one ambulance hit by US fire and a
doctor<br>
wounded. There are scores of injured civilians in their homes whom we
can't<br>
move. A 13-year-old child just died in my hands."<br><br>
Around 10,000 people took shelter in Habbaniya, 12 miles to the west of
the<br>
city, and many had tragic stories. "There have been a lot of
innocent<br>
people killed," said Suleiman Ali Hassan, who lost his brother.
"The<br>
Americans say they are just aiming their tanks and aircraft at the<br>
mujaheddin, but I know of at least eight other people who have died
beside<br>
my brother."<br><br>
Samira Sabbah arrived at the refugee centre yesterday with her
three<br>
children, but her husband stayed behind in Fallujah. "People have
been<br>
living like animals," she said. "There has been no electricity,
no food and<br>
no water. We were very afraid to move out because there were so
much<br>
shooting everywhere. I do not know how we will live now."<br><br>
Rasoul Ibrahim, a father of three, fled Fallujah on foot with his wife
and<br>
children. "There's no water," he said. "People are
drinking dirty water.<br>
Children are dying. People are eating flour because there's no
proper<br>
food."<br><br>
Mohammed Younis, a former policeman, said: "The Americans and Allawi
[Iyad<br>
Allawi, Iraq's interim Prime Minister] have been saying that Fallujah
is<br>
full of foreign fighters. That is not true, they left a long time ago.
You<br>
will find them in other places, in Baghdad."<br><br>
The truth of his words were confirmed by no less than Mr Allawi's
national<br>
security adviser, Qassem Daoud, who said more than 1,000 "Saddamists
and<br>
terrorists" had been killed in the battle for Fallujah, and 200
captured.<br>
Of those 200, however, only 14 are believed to be non-Iraqis,
mostly<br>
Iranians. What of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Washington's top bogeyman in
Iraq,<br>
the al-Qa'ida arch-terrorist whose supposed presence in Fallujah was one
of<br>
the main justifications for the assault? "He has escaped," said
Mr Daoud.<br><br>
This was the first official admission of what virtually everyone else
in<br>
Iraq had realised long ago: that Zarqawi, even if he had ever been
in<br>
Fallujah, was not going to stay put to await arrest by the Americans.
Every<br>
time the interim government demanded of the city's clerical leadership
that<br>
they hand him over, they insisted they did not have the power to hand
over<br>
foreign extremists, and did not even know where the Jordanian
was.<br><br>
They repeated this after a final ultimatum last weekend from Mr
Allawi<br>
himself. The assault went ahead anyway, just as everyone knew it
would,<br>
even though a senior American officer said as it was beginning that it
was<br>
likely that most of the "foreign fighters" had already melted
away. So who<br>
were the Americans fighting? In Mr Daoud's parlance, nearly all appeared
to<br>
be "Saddamists" - in other words, Iraqis whose main motive is
to fight<br>
against the occupation, rather than "terrorists", who
presumably come from<br>
outside to force local people into acts of resistance against their
will.<br><br>
Despite the Iraqi interim government officially having ordered the
attack,<br>
military strategy is still being driven by a White House obsessed
with<br>
"smoking terrorists out of their holes". Fallujah has been the
victim of<br>
this misconception of what is happening in Iraq, but other places
will<br>
follow - perhaps Mosul, which was reported yesterday to be partly
under<br>
insurgent control, or Ramadi, where many of the hardliners fled
from<br>
Fallujah.<br><br>
The US simply does not have enough forces to pacify the whole of the
Sunni<br>
centre of Iraq at once, which explains why Britain was asked to send
the<br>
Black Watch north. "As soon as we press down hard in one place, they
pop up<br>
somewhere else," complained one officer, and his words were borne
out by a<br>
rash of small-scale attacks yesterday in places where US troops had
been<br>
thinned out for the assault on Fallujah.<br><br>
The city was unquestionably the base for many of the car bombers
and<br>
fighters who have staged attacks across central Iraq in recent months,
but<br>
the main reason it became so was the resentment caused by the
previous<br>
attempt to win hearts and minds by military means - the botched US
assault<br>
in April. In military terms this operation has been more successful,
but<br>
politically it will be just as disastrous as its predecessor, which
fuelled<br>
the present insurgency.<br><br>
One of the main Sunni populist groups, the Iraqi Islamic Party, has<br>
resigned from the Iraqi government in protest against the Fallujah
battle.<br>
"The American attack on our people in Fallujah has led, and will
lead, to<br>
more killings and genocide without mercy from the Americans," said
its<br>
leader, Mohsen Abdel-Hamid.<br><br>
The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential group of Sunni clerics
,<br>
is calling for a boycott of January's planned elections, saying they
will<br>
be held "over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah and the blood
of the<br>
wounded".<br><br>
Even President Bush admits that violence is likely to increase rather
than<br>
decline as the election approaches. But as American forces contemplate
what<br>
is left of Fallujah, some might remember the words of a US officer
standing<br>
amid the ruins of Hue in Vietnam a generation ago. "In order to save
the<br>
city," he declared without a hint of irony, "we had to destroy
it."<br><br>
Copyright © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd<br><br>
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