Masters Of War

[Deen]

Masters of war


By Pepe Escobar


In "Masters of War", Bob Dylan sang, "Hide behind desks" but "we can see


through your masks". Now, applying their version of grassroots democracy,


the US has declared that Fallujah has been "liberated". But the virtual


ghost town is celebrating with no cries of joy - with no cries at all: only


with the stench of tons of explosives, and the stench of decomposing bodies.


Baghdad sources close to the resistance tell Asia Times Online that in


essence the Americans control only northern Fallujah and the main


boulevards; the resistance controls the narrow alleys, and the southern part


of the city. At night, anyone is a target - either to the resistance or to


American snipers. What the resistance is stressing is the Mesopotamian


version of a rapper in urban black America: "The man control the day; we


control the night."


A hard rain's gonna fall


What the US has achieved with Fallujah reduced to a pile of rubble and


hundreds of thousands of new refugees is unprecedented Sunni anger. A slow


stream of residents who managed to escape from Fallujah to Baghdad tell of


women and children killed by shrapnel or hit by US bombs. According to


trader Aamir Yusouf, who remains in town after smuggling his family out,


"there will be nothing left of Fallujah by the time they finish".


Baghdad is swirling with rumors and conspiracy theories and many people do


not know the extent of the horror in Fallujah - some blame the Arab media


for talking obsessively about Yasser Arafat and forgetting about Iraq.


Baghdad airport remains closed. A lot of anger exploded at last Friday's


prayers. At the al-Jilani mosque, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Isawi said that "the


start of this war during the holiest nights of the month of Ramadan proves


how much they hate Islam and Muslims". At the Umm al-Qura mosque, the


headquarters of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars, Sheikh Mohammed


Bashar al-Faidi told a crowd of thousands that "all of Iraq will turn in the


next few days into one Fallujah whether America likes it or not", adding


that any election under the occupation would be illegitimate.


Mosul remains under control of the resistance, which is protecting banks,


shops, hospitals, schools and fire stations from looters. The US base in


Mosul - a former Saddam Hussein presidential palace - was looted this


weekend by local citizens, not by the resistance. Now, apart from the Sunni


triangle, even the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf is also under martial law.


An assistant cleric to Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi, the head of the Fallujah


mujahideen shura (council) that controlled the city before Operation Phantom


Fury, said that "maybe [the Americans] will take it [Fallujah]. But it is


not the end. There are 18 provinces in Iraq and the resistance will continue


to grow tougher ... America has taken its last breath." This is something


that will never be reported in mainstream US media - which keeps hammering


the "humanitarian" approach of the US onslaught. And it won't be reported in


the Iraqi press either, because under martial law everybody has to parrot


the interim government's position - this operation is a major success - or


else go to jail.


There were unconfirmed reports last week that al-Janabi was killed by US


bombing, but the shura's cleric insisted that "the sheikh is still in


Fallujah leading the resistance".


Qasim Dawud, interim Premier Iyad Allawi's version of US National Security


Adviser Condoleezza Rice, said for his part that more than 1,000 "Saddamists


and terrorists" had been killed, and 200 captured. Of those 200 only 14 are


believed to be "foreign fighters", most of them Iranians. The notion that


Shi'ite Iranians would be defending Sunni Fallujah is ludicrous - one more


crude neo-conservative plot to implicate Tehran. Later Allawi talked of 400


captured - and a non-specified number of foreigners being mostly Syrians,


Saudis, Afghans and Moroccans. As for the elusive, perhaps non-existent, Abu


Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged main reason for the US razing Fallujah, Dawud


said "he has escaped".


Dawud said that only "malignant pockets" remain in Fallujah. That's not what


the resistance and independent observers are saying. Abu Saad al-Dlimi, the


spokesman of the Fallujah mujahideen shura, told al-Jazeera that "US forces


are still outside the [northwestern] Julan neighborhood. US forces were not


able to gain one meter of this district." Haza al-Afify, an Iraqi journalist


inside Fallujah, confirmed to al-Jazeera that "fighting is also raging in


the southern and southeastern neighborhoods, particularly al-Shuhada and the


industrial quarter". Al-Afify added that "if these neighborhoods are mere


pockets, Fallujah will be harboring so many pockets".


Al-Dlimi insisted that "if the US forces mean by calling the neighborhoods


of al-Askari, al-Shuhada, al-Sina'i, al-Jughayfi, al-Wihdah and


al-Jumhuriyah ... pockets [of resistance] which they do not control thus


far, I tell you that Fallujah consists only of all these neighborhoods". The


resistance story contradicts the United States' spin. Al-Dlimi said no more


than 100 "martyrs" were killed: with most victims "defenseless civilians,


including those who were run over by the US forces' tanks".


The US won't be pleased by his suggestion that "if [the Americans] say they


have wrapped up operations in Fallujah, we are telling them to allow all


satellite networks to enter the city ... so the world can see what is really


happening in the streets of Fallujah".


On Saturday the Iraqi Red Crescent sent seven trucks and ambulances, 53


volunteers and three doctors to Fallujah to distribute food, blankets,


water-purification tablets and medicine to hundreds if not thousands of


families caught in the crossfire. But the US has prevented them from


entering the city: the Red Crescent was held at Fallujah's general hospital,


"captured" by the Americans early last week, on the left bank of the


Euphrates River. Abu Fahd, one of the volunteers, said that "none of the


injured residents is being allowed to come to the hospital, while those


outside are not allowed to go into town".


The Iraqi Red Crescent knows as much as anyone in contact with Fallujah that


the city has no medicine, no ambulances, no shelters, no power, no water,


practically no food, and that the wounded are left to die while the streets


are already littered with the dead. But although the Americans now insist


they control 80% of the city, they have blocked the Iraqi Red Crescent


because for them there are no Iraqi civilians trapped inside. The Iraqi


resistance is a shadow army: the US military machine bombs it to oblivion,


but rarely sees it. The thousands of civilians caught in the crossfire in


Fallujah are also invisible - but they have even been denied their


existence.


The horror faced by Fallujah's civilians has hardly begun to emerge,


although precision-strike democracy has started to be denounced by some who


managed to escape Fallujah in these past few days.


Blood on the tracks


Not only "invisible" civilians are dead and buried in Fallujah - but the


Geneva Convention as well. "Capturing" a major hospital and turning it into


a military target; preventing civilians and noncombatants from escaping


from, and forcefully returning them to, a war zone: these are war crimes,


according, among others, to James Ross, senior legal advisor to Human Rights


Watch.


Add to these rules of engagement the bombing of three small clinics - in one


of them the medical staff and the patients were killed; highly-trained


American snipers "shooting anything that moves", according to eyewitness


accounts in Fallujah to families and friends in Baghdad; entire Fallujah


neighborhoods reduced to rubble by at least two weeks of air strikes -


killing residents even before Operation Phantom Fury began; the bombing of


the only telecom center linking Fallujah to the rest of the world; and the


scandal of water to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah being cut off during US


attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians - a case


fully documented by the Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq and a serious


contravention of international humanitarian law.


The .50-caliber machine-gun has became a free-for-all (its use on human


targets is specifically forbidden by the Geneva Convention). Most private


cars in Fallujah have been destroyed (they could be used for suicide


bombings). And ambulances have been grounded.


Tangled up in war


Dr Zafir al-Ani, an Iraqi political scientist, in an extensive interview


with al-Jazeera, has laid out the extent of Sunni anger: "There is now a


general Iraqi agreement that resistance is the only way ... I say that the


Iraqi government is pushing towards a real civil war in Iraq against the


Sunni and the pan-Arab current ... There are many exclamation marks


lingering over the stance of the authority of holy Najaf regarding what is


happening in Iraq, at a time when the Association of Muslim Scholars - and


everyone remembers this - condemned and renounced what happened to our


brethren in Najaf, Karbala and Sadr City. This authority is now also trying


to quell the Shi'ite pan-Arab current. Ayatollah al-Hasani was detained


because he called for boycotting the elections [in January]. There have also


been preparations for some time to oppress the [Muqtada] al-Sadr current and


to contain dealings with the government through a few known parties. The


Iraqi government is oppressing the Shi'ite pan-Arab current and the national


Sunni current."