Fallujah - Off the Front Pages but Hell Rages On

Falluja is off the front pages. Of course, Bush declared it a victory remember? He has a bad habit of that - declaring victory and the real ugliness is only starting. Yesterday, Sunday, the US bombed Fallujah and Mosul -- again. If you have seen pictures of Fallujah, you might wonder what remains standing to be bombed.

But there is even worse ahead for Fallujah and its residents who are supposed to be allowed to return on Christmas Eve.

Fallujah: The homecoming and the homeless (Independent, 12/11/04)

Yesterday, the first independent reports began to emerge from a flattened city which is facing an unprecedented, permanent security crackdown, and an uncertain future.

The assault by 10,000 US troops began on 8 November, just after the US presidential elections: its aim, to clear a city regarded by the Americans as a hotbed of insurgency.

More than 70 marines died, and 1,600 rebels. But no one knows the civilian casualty toll ­ this in a city which once numbered 300,000. Indeed, there are no estimates of how many people are still there, or how many escaped to neighbouring towns and to Baghdad before the assault got under way.

Ahmed Rawi, a Red Cross spokesman, said yesterday: "No one knows how many families are inside the city." The Red Cross team ­ which entered without escort and left before curfew ­ met no residents, apart from engineers and technicians. The Red Cross reported that hundreds of dead bodies remain stacked inside a potato chip warehouse on the outskirts. Some of the bodies were too badly decomposed to be identified. Raw sewage runs through the streets.

The homecoming will be no homecoming at all as the returnees

funnelled through five checkpoints. Each will have their fingerprints taken, along with DNA samples and retina scans. Residents will be issued with badges with their home addresses on them, and it will be an offence not to wear it at all times. No civilian vehicles will be allowed in the city in an effort to thwart suicide bombers. One idea floated by the US is for all males in Fallujah be compelled to join work battalions in which they will be paid to clear rubble and rebuild houses.

There are other reports of plans to ferry people into Fallujah on buses and to ban cars to eliminate car bombs. ( Fallujah as a 'Model City', Anti-War.com, 12/07/04)

This presents a frightening scenario in a purported push for a "democratic" Iraq. Supposedly, there were "foreign fighters" and "insurgents" in Fallujah and they were purportedly eliminated in the crushing of the city. However, descriptions from reporters, and the few humanitarian aid personnel who have gotten in, clearly describe a "kill zone" if it moves kill it). Nobody knows how many died (and continue to die) in Fallujah. When residents return, they will return to a fully functional police state.

While the depiction of a "few bad apple" led to the total destruction of Fallujah, now the entire population is to be treated as criminals. Work gangs? This doesn't sound like a voluntary effort, nor a paid one. Mandatory identification and DNA collection? On an entire population? What is being created in Fallujah? Will this be the model to be replicated across Iraq? Can anyone believe that this is going to create peace?

The reality is that the model being built in Fallujah sounds like the Israeli program for Palestinians on steroids. It is a model that has not brought either security or peace in Israel, and it is likely to not do it in Fallujah either (or Mosul, or Baghdad, or?).

If this is yet another attempt to win hearts and minds, then some strategist is nuts. It is a model of abusive power, not security or democracy. It is, in a way, typically American. If you exert control and it does not force conformity, then get tougher and tougher. Ultimately "they" will submit. Look at the US response to crime - even juvenile crime. "Get tough on crime." "Tough love." Mandatory sentences. Three strikes you're out. The death penalty. Blow that up to the "war on terrorism," and you get "enemy combatants, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and three more detainee deaths in an Afghanistan prison under US control. Blow it up a bit more and you get Fallujah and the mass, brutal control of an entire city. How many troops do you think it will take to control a city of 300,000 with these types of tactics?

Fallujah is off the front pages, thanks to a cooperative US corporate media that is willing to play the pretend game of the administration. However, that does not mean that all is well in that city of smoking rubble and unburied bodies. The nightmare is not over; a new one may just be beginning.

Posted by rowan at December 13, 2004 4:54 PM | TrackBack | [eMail this article!] |