[Media-watch] Falluja's defiance of the new empire - Guardian - 10/11/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1347540,00.html

Falluja's defiance of the new empire

It is Bush and Blair, not the Iraqi resistance, who fear free elections

Sami Ramadani
Wednesday November 10, 2004
The Guardian

George Bush and Tony Blair have apparently concluded that they can crush
the Iraqi people's will to resist occupation and legitimise a puppet
regime next January by occupying Falluja. Maybe they imagine they can
emulate the British forces that terrorised Iraqi Kurdistan in the 1920s
by obliterating recalcitrant villages.

The US generals will no doubt deliver Falluja to Bush and Blair after
bombarding its neighbourhoods with artillery and rockets. But they are
doomed to deliver neither the Fallujans nor the people of Iraq. Perhaps
they are unaware that Fallujans defied Saddam's rule during his last
years in power. Falluja - known as the city of a thousand mosques -
attracted Saddam's wrath in 1998 when its imams refused to hail the
tyrant in their Friday sermons. Many were imprisoned, and the city
punished as a result.

But the generals certainly do know how resistance began in Falluja. On
April 28 2003 US soldiers opened fire on parents and children
demonstrating against the continued military occupation of their primary
school - killing 18 of them in cold blood and injuring about 60 others.
Until the killing of those demonstrators, not a single bullet had been
fired at US soldiers in Falluja or any of the cities north of Baghdad.
But, remorselessly, little-known Falluja became a world-renowned centre
of defiance, where a poor and poorly armed people has courageously faced
the military wing of the new empire.

The way Falluja's 300,000 people reacted to the April 28 massacre has
made them a prime target for savage bombardment and conquest. Najaf was
bombed into a ceasefire in August. Samarra was conquered in September.
Sadr City in Baghdad was bombarded and negotiated into temporary silence
in October. Now they want to crush the symbol of Falluja, to teach the
rest of Iraq a bloody lesson. Another pyrrhic victory is likely to be
added to an already long list.

Blair once again misled parliament this week by branding the resistance
in Falluja as Zarqawi-style terrorists out to destroy the prospects for
democracy. It was he and Bush who last year rejected the calls for early
free and fair elections from those who rejected the occupation,
including Ayatollah Sistani, Moqtada al-Sadr, the resistance and the
widely supported Iraqi National Foundation Congress. Bush and Blair are
terrified of the Iraqi people voting for anti-occupation leaders. They
will accept nothing short of the legitimisation, through sham elections
supervised by the occupation authorities, of an Allawi-style puppet
regime.

More than 100,000 Iraqis are estimated to have been been killed since
the US-led invasion; the country's infrastructure has all but been
destroyed; people are exposed to the danger of US and British
depleted-uranium shells; hospitals have been reduced to impotence in the
face of mounting injuries and disease; the centre of Najaf and entire
neighbourhoods of several cities have been razed. How much more should
the Iraqi people be subjected to for Bush and Blair to have their
"democratically" chosen puppets installed in Baghdad?

These are war crimes of Saddamist proportions, and there is evidently
more to come. Bush's latest pronouncements and Blair's declaration of a
"second war" have made clear that the occupation governments are ready
to kill (as "collateral damage", no doubt) even more Iraqis to enforce a
pro-US order. Without a shred of evidence, Bush, Blair and Ayad Allawi's
quisling regime shamelessly declare that they are only pursuing the
Jordanian kidnapper Zarqawi and other "foreign terrorists". The people
of Falluja, their leaders, negotiators and resistance fighters have
always denounced Zarqawi and argued that such gangs have been encouraged
to undermine the resistance.

The occupation forces have now reverted to their initial ploy of
attacking cities north of Baghdad, while reaching ceasefires with some
Baghdad districts and southern cities. Presumably, they see this as an
effective divide-and-rule tactic, but it is likely to prove as futile as
the rest of their plans for post-invasion Iraq. It is, in reality,
merely a battle postponed. Iraq's history, reaffirmed by events since
the US-led occupation, shows that its people's unity is stronger than
differences based on religion, sect, ethnicity or national identity.
That was demonstrated on Sunday when a senior Kurdish officer with the
token US-commanded Iraqi force besieging Falluja deserted within half an
hour of being shown the plans to occupy the city.

The US and British governments could do worse than digest the old
Chinese proverb: "They lift a stone to drop it on their own feet." For
they might have occupied Iraq and succeeded in lifting some of its heavy
stones, but the stones will inevitably come crashing down on their feet.

Sami Ramadani was a political refugee from Saddam Hussein's regime and
is a senior lecturer at London Metropolitan University

sami.ramadani at londonmet.ac.uk