Fallujah, November 2004: Collective Punishment
People in Falloojeh are being murdered. The stories coming back are horrifying. People being shot in cold blood in the streets and being buried under tons of concrete and iron... where is the world? Bury Arafat and hurry up and pay attention to what's happening in Iraq.
River
There's a true story circulating through the Arab world that has dwarfed the many other horrors now taking place in Falluja. It's the tale of a nine year old boy who was wounded by shrapnel in the stomach when his house was hit by an errant bomb. Over the next ten hours his father Mohammed Abboud watched his son bleed to death in his living room because he was unable to venture out to go to the hospital. After the American bombing ceased, Abboud was forced to bury his son in his own garden.
The story of Abboud is particularly poignant because it takes one small event, one tiny part of the collective suffering, and crystallizes the entire Iraq conflict. If Americans want to understand why we will lose this war; they must understand Abboud's story. It explains why Iraqis will never accept the occupation and why anyone with even a drop of patriotic blood has already joined the resistance. The same would be true in America if the situation was reversed.
Mike Whitney | The Guernica of Iraq
Fallujah, November 2004: Regrettable Necessity
According to official Pentagon spin, "hundreds and hundreds" of "terrorists" have already been killed in Fallujah. There's no proof - and there's no way to independently confirm it. Also because of the news blackout, nobody knows how many Fallujah civilians are dead. Sat-phone calls to Baghdad by trapped Fallujah civilians tell of rows of decomposing bodies littering the streets. Firdoos al-Abadi, the lady who is the head of the Iraqi Red Crescent's emergency committee, sums it all up: "It is a disaster inside Fallujah. There is no water, no electricity, no food. They [the Americans] are forbidding doctors from helping the people." The Red Crescent sent a convoy of four trucks to the city on Thursday with some first aid kits, food, blankets and tents. But a makeshift hospital set up in a mosque is helpless because the doctors are severely under-equipped.
[ABC News Online reports: "United States troops have prevented a Red Crescent convoy of emergency aid from reaching residents inside the Iraqi city of Fallujah, after allowing it as far as the main hospital."]
Dahr Jamail, blogging from Baghdad, as well as girl blogger Riverbend confirm what Asia Times Online has already posted: the resistance now controls parts of Baghdad neighborhoods, such as al-Dora, Abu Ghraib and Amiriyah. Jamail says there's no electricity in the Aadhamiyah neighborhood - one of the key centers of the resistance, as well as in most of Baghdad. The lines outside gas stations stretch for as long as four kilometers. Water has been cut off. Many shops are closed. And significantly, "...the Green Zone continues to be bombed by mortars every day, sometimes for extended periods of time"; and "...the US base in the old Saddam palace in Aadhamiyah has been mortared every single night now for at least a week straight". Baghdadis are furious with US soldiers in Fallujah bombing mosques - at least half of the city's 120 - and using the ones still standing as lounges.
Pepe Escobar | Collective Punishment: Regrettable Necessity
Further Reading
Pepe Escobar | Satan Hides in a Hospital
Syed Saleem Shahzad | Resistance Blueprint
Iraqis will never forgive this—never. It's outrageous—it's genocide and America, with the help and support of Allawi, is responsible. May whoever contributes to this see the sorrow, terror and misery of the people suffering in Falloojeh.
River
