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Saturday, Apr 30, 2005

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Opinion - News Analysis

Fallujah, Iraq's very own Guernica

Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail

Ruined, cordoned Fallujah is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality.

ROBERT ZOELLICK is the archetypal United States Government insider, a man with a brilliant technical mind but zero experience of any coalface or war front. Sliding effortlessly between Ivy League academia, the U.S. treasury and corporate boardrooms (including an advisory post with the scandalous Enron Corporation), his latest position is the number-two slot at the State Department.

Yet this ultimate "man of the suites" did something earlier this month that put the British Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary to shame. On their numerous visits to Iraq, neither has ever dared to go outside the heavily fortified green zones of Baghdad and Basra to see life as Iraqis have to live it. They come home after photo opportunities, briefings and pep talks with British troops and claim to know what is going on in the country they invaded, when in fact they have seen almost nothing.

Symbol of defiance

Mr. Zoellick, by contrast, on his first trip to Iraq, asked to see Fallujah. Remember Fallujah? A city of some 300,000, which was alleged to be the stronghold of armed resistance to the occupation. Two U.S. attempts were made to destroy this symbol of defiance last year. The first, in April, fizzled out after Iraqi politicians, including many who supported the invasion of their country, condemned the use of air strikes to terrorise an entire city. The Americans called off the attack, but not before hundreds of families had fled and more than 600 people had been killed.

Six months later the Americans tried again. This time Washington's allies had been talked to in advance. Consistent U.S. propaganda about the presence in Fallujah of a top Al Qaeda figure, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was used to create a climate of acquiescence in the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Government. Shia leaders were told that bringing Fallujah under control was the only way to prevent a Sunni-inspired civil war.

Tony Blair was invited to share responsibility by sending British troops to block escape routes from Fallujah and prevent supplies entering once the siege began. Warnings of the onslaught prompted the vast majority of Fallujah's 300,000 people to flee. The city was then declared a free-fire zone on the grounds that the only people left behind must be "terrorists."

Three weeks after the attack was launched last November, the Americans claimed victory. They say they killed about 1,300 people; one week into the siege, a BBC reporter put the unofficial death toll at 2,000. But details of what happened and who the dead were remain obscure. Were many unarmed civilians, as Baghdad-based human rights groups report? Even if they were trying to defend their homes by fighting the Americans, does that make them "terrorists"?

Tight restrictions

Journalists "embedded" with U.S. forces filmed atrocities, including the killing of a wounded prisoner, but no reporter could get anything like a full picture. Since the siege ended, tight U.S. restrictions — as well as the danger of hostage-taking that prevents reporters from travelling in most parts of Iraq — have put the devastated city virtually off limits.

In this context Mr. Zoellick's trip, which was covered by a small group of U.S. journalists, was illuminating. The Deputy Secretary of State had to travel to this "liberated" city in a Black Hawk helicopter flying low over palm trees to avoid being shot down. He wore a flak jacket under his suit even though Fallujah's streets were largely deserted.

Meeting hand-picked Iraqis in a U.S. base, Mr. Zoellick was bombarded with complaints about the pace of U.S. reconstruction aid and frequent intimidation of citizens by American soldiers. Although a State Department fact sheet claimed 95 per cent of residents had water in their homes, Fallujah's Mayor said it was contaminated by sewage and unsafe.

Schools ruined

Other glimpses of life in Fallujah come from Hafid al-Dulaimi, head of the city's compensation commission, who reports that 36,000 homes were destroyed in the U.S. onslaught, along with 8,400 shops. Sixty nurseries and schools were ruined, along with 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries.

Daud Salman, an Iraqi journalist with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on a visit to Fallujah two weeks ago, found that only a quarter of the city's residents had gone back. Thousands remain in tents on the outskirts. The Iraqi Red Crescent finds it hard to go in to help the sick because of the U.S. cordon around the city.

Burhan Fasa'a, a cameraman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Company, reported during the siege that dead family members were buried in their gardens because people could not leave their homes. Refugees told one of us that civilians carrying white flags were gunned down by American soldiers. Corpses were tied to U.S. tanks and paraded around like trophies.

Many complain that soldiers of the Iraqi National Guard, the fledgling new army, loot shops during the night-time curfew and detain people in order to take a bribe for their release. They are suspected of being members of the Badr Brigade, a Shia militia that wants revenge against Sunnis.

One thing is certain: the attack on Fallujah has done nothing to still the insurgency against the U.S.-British occupation nor produced the death of al-Zarqawi — any more than the invasion of Afghanistan achieved the capture or death of Osama bin Laden. Thousands of bereaved and homeless Fallujah families have a new reason to hate the U.S. and its allies.

At least Mr. Zoellick went to see. He gave no hint of the impression that the trip left him with, but is too smart not to have understood something of the reality. The lesson ought not to be lost on Mr. Blair and the present U.K. Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Every time Mr. Blair claims it is time to "move on" from the issue of the war's legality and rejoice at Iraq's transformation since Saddam Hussein was toppled, the answer must be: "Remember Fallujah."

The U.K. Government keeps hoping Iraq will go away as an election issue. It stubbornly refuses to do so. Voters are not only angry that the war was illegal, illegitimate and unnecessary. The treatment inflicted on Iraqis since the invasion by the U.S. and Britain is equally important.

In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Fallujah, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

- Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

(Jonathan Steele is senior foreign correspondent for the London-based Guardian newspaper and Dahr Jamail is a freelance American journalist.)

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