- LONDON - As the British government
prepares to send its soldiers north to free up the US Army to attack Fallujah,
it is necessary to focus on what this coming onslaught will mean for the
city and its people. Fallujah is already now being bombed daily, as it
is softened up for the long-awaited siege. It has been a grueling year
for its people. First, they were occupied by the US army's 82nd Airborne,
an incompetent group of louts whose idea of cultural sensitivity was kicking
a door down instead of blowing it up. Within eight months of the invasion,
the 82nd had killed about 100 civilians in the area and lost control of
Fallujah, leaving it to the US Marines to try and retake the city last
April. After killing about 600 civilians, the Marines retreated, leaving
the city in the hands of 18 armed groups, including tribesmen, Islamists,
Baathists, former criminals and an assortment of non-Iraqi Arab fighters
said to be led by the Jordanian, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.
-
- Fallujahns have now been offered a choice: Hand over
the outsiders they dislike (mostly Arabs) who are protecting them from
the outsiders they really hate (the Americans), or get blown apart by the
world's most lethal killing machine, the US Marines. Zarqawi's influence
on the resistance has been wildly exaggerated - indeed, many people in
Fallujah don't even believe he exists, and most find the non-Iraqi Arabs'
brand of fundamentalism at odds with their local traditions. Today, many
Fallujahns are tired even of their own mujahedeen, but trust the US Army
even less, and with good reason. Recently, a Bush administration official
told the New York Times the bombing was driving a wedge between the citizenry
and the non-Iraqi fighters. If, indeed, the civilian population is being
bombed for this end, this is a grave war crime.
-
- We have a blueprint for what will happen in the city
during the coming attack: Fallujah, part one. Like all sequels the next
time will be bloodier. Last April I found myself inching across a bridge
into Fallujah holding an old white T-shirt: In front of me, Marines blocking
the bridge, screaming at me to go back; behind me, a large group of Iraqis
yelling at me to go forward so that they could follow me through the roadblock
and rescue their families.
-
- After a while, the Marines opened the bridge allowing
hundreds of women and children to stream out, but stopped the boys older
than 16 and men younger than 60 from leaving the city. Preventing civilians
from leaving a battle is against the Geneva conventions - although battle
doesn't capture what a meat grinder the city had become in that first week
of the assault, when the majority of civilian casualties were killed, blown
apart by precision, and often inaccurate, air strikes. The dead were buried
in gardens or in mass graves in the city's soccer field. For three weeks
5,000 Marines surrounded the city of 340,000 - think an assault on Cardiff.
The Marines created a moving front line of humvees and tanks, cutting Fallujah
off. In the air, helicopters and fighter planes bombed a city without air
defenses, while unmanned drones circled continuously, looking for targets.
-
- During that first week, I was told by Iraqi fighters
that the Marines nearly took the city after capturing a lot of rebel ammunition:
Stockpiles of land mines and homemade rocket launchers that plugged into
car lighters. Oil barrels with distances painted on them lined the streets
so the rebels could register mortars. The mujahedeen were more than a few
foreign fighters and Baathists, as the US Army had been telling everybody.
-
- Initially, the majority of civilian casualties came from
bombing that caused "multiple blast wounds, lost limbs, abdomens blown
open," as Fallujah's doctors told me. According to the Geneva conventions,
force must be proportionate and when these images appeared on Arabic television
- dead families stacked on top of each other - it looked anything but proportionate;
it looked like mass murder. Against the advice of the Marine commanders,
the White House ordered a cease-fire. The resistance regrouped, re-supplied
itself and fought on.
-
- I made it back into Fallujah during the second week of
fighting by using fake Iraqi ID. I was accompanied by a translator who
told people I was a brother suffering a brain aneurysm. We left Baghdad
and drove down roads guarded by guerrilla fighters. The countryside from
Ramadi east to Fallujah and then to Baghdad was in revolt. We had to pass
through resistance lines to get to the Marines and then through insurgents
to get into the city. It was the Marines who were surrounded, not the rebels.
This is why the US Army needs British troops to free up their soldiers.
-
- The Americans have more than enough troops to attack
Fallujah, but as soon as they do the area will once more erupt, and it
will take everything the Americans have to control the surrounding villages
of Habbaniya, Khaldiya and Al-Kharma. According to Iraqi President Ghazi
Al-Yawar, there is a good chance that when the Marines hit Fallujah again,
even Mosul, home to three million Sunnis, will explode. Unlike the US Army,
Yawar knows what he is talking about and understands the way the tribes
are grouped in northern Iraq, an intricate web of families that runs through
the Sunni triangle. If Mosul is pushed over the edge, holding the north
will be like trying to keep the lid on a pressure cooker by hand.
-
- Once we got into Fallujah, we were taken at gunpoint
to a mosque where we were interrogated by a host of people - former Iraqi
secret police and Islamists - before being saved by a friend of my translator's
who told us later they were holding 18 hostages in another room. Both hostage-taking
and using a mosque as a military base are - like preventing the escape
of civilians - against the laws of war. You could hear the occasional shots
from snipers, the circling drones, tank fire and mortars. At a clinic,
the doctors rolled their eyes at the mention of the mujahedeen, but most
of their anger was directed at the Americans. The hospital, which lies
across the Euphrates, had been cut off from the rest of the city by the
Marines - another questionable act under the Geneva conventions.
-
- Worse still, the doctors said, several of their colleagues
had been shot by snipers along with ambulance drivers, both grave breaches
of the laws of war. At this point, most civilians being brought in had
head and upper body wounds, most likely from Marine snipers. Nothing I
saw during the bombing of Baghdad could have prepared me for Fallujah under
siege. It was as if the Marines had been able to cut the city off from
the idea of safety itself.
-
- The third time I went into Fallujah was during negotiations
to hand control of the city over to what became the Fallujah Brigade. Mujahedeen
were busy attaching wires to bombs on street corners, in case the negotiations
failed. Today the city is one giant improvised explosive device. But it
is the snipers the people of Fallujah fear more than anything else. I have
spent time with both resistance fighters and the US Army, and there is
no question the Marines can take the city. But the US has developed a habit
of winning engagements while losing the war - while breaking the laws of
war in the process. This is what Britain's redeployment will help to unleash.
-
- - Patrick Graham is a journalist who worked in Iraq from
November 2002 until August 2004 for the Observer, Harper's and the New
York Times magazines. He is writing a book about his experiences in Iraq.
|