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Over 1360 Iraqis were killed in April during the latest escalation of US/UK repression and killing in Iraq (AP, 30 April). At the end of the first week of the siege of Fallujah the Washington Post reported that US marines were ‘eager to plunge back into the fray’ in the city. Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, who commands the 5th Marine Battalion there, told the paper that ‘Joe Jihadi’ would ‘get whipped up, come out fighting again and get mowed down ... Their only choices are to submit or die’ (11 April).

To be sure, the men, women and children of Fallujah did appear to have been ‘mowed down’ in large numbers. On 11 April the director of the town’s general hospital, Rafie al-Issawi, estimated – on the basis of figures gathered from four clinics around the city as well as the hospital itself - that more than 600 people had been killed and that ‘the vast majority of the dead were women, children and the elderly’ (Guardian, 12 April).

Snipers: ‘trained to be precise’
Byrne denied this, claiming that, ‘95% of those were military age males that were killed in the fighting.’ Indeed, according to Byrne, ‘the marines are trained to be precise in their firepower…[and are] very good at what they do’ (Guardian, 12 April).

Those who managed to flee the city were able to give some examples of this precision. For example, Mohammed Hadi, who told the Telegraph that US marines snipers had taken up position in the minarets of a local mosque and shot dead his neighbour (12 April). “He was just on his way to buy tomatoes,” he told the paper. And 17-year-old Hassan Monem, who claimed that two of his friends ‘were shot as they stood in my yard.’ Likewise, Ali, 28, who had managed to escape with part of his family, related how “one man in an Opel drove his wife and children to the bridge so they would walk over. As he drove back to town, an American sniper killed him” (Guardian, 12 April).

‘ Shoot any male’
Meanwhile US author Rahul Mahajan, who managed to get into Fallujah during the ‘ceasefire’, found ‘[a]n ambulance with two neat, precise bullet-holes in the windshield on the driver's side, pointing down at an angle that indicated they would have hit the driver's chest’ and ‘another ambulance again with a single, neat bullet-hole in the windshield’ (EmpireNotes.org, 12 April) whilst British activist Jo Wilding was present in a clearly marked ambulance that was shot at by US snipers (see www.wildfirejo.org. uk, 11 April).

At least one battalion had ‘orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not’ (NYT, 14 April) – orders which appear to have been carried out. Recounting how he shot dead ‘an Iraqi man … walking down the street in no-man’s land … [who had] his hands suspiciously in his pockets’, Corporal Ryan Long from Alpha Company explained: “I got one of my juniors to fire a warning shot, but the guy kept on walking, so I said: ‘Let me do it’ … Last year I’d have never shot a guy without a weapon. But I’m a demolition expert; you can hide a lot under your clothes’’ (Times, 15 April).

Judge, jury and executioner.

‘Cut in half’
A vast and sophisticated array of technology was used to attack the city, including warplanes, fighter bombers, helicopter gunships and remotely piloted ‘Predator’ reconnaissance aircraft. 1000- and 2000-pound bombs were dropped. The one-sided nature of the “combat” is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that during the period 5-9 April - during which US marines killed an estimated 280 Iraqis and wounded 400 in Fallujah, according to a doctor at the city’s hospital (Independent, 9 April) - there were only 8 US military deaths (see lunaville.org/warcasualties/ Summary.aspx). ‘Brent Bourgeois, a 20-year-old lance corporal from Kenner, La., said he had seen an American helicopter fire a missile at a man with a slingshot. “Crazy huh?”’, the corporal told the New York Times (14 April).

‘An airborne assault on a mosque killed at least 40 worshippers attending prayers’ on 7 April and ’16 children and eight women were reported to have been killed when US aircraft hit four houses’ the previous day (Independent, 8 April). Menem Latif Hussain recounts how a house at the end of his street suffered from a direct hit from a powerful bomb. “We ran to the house because they were my friends. In the garden I saw three men had been sitting on a bench. They were all dead, they had been cut in half by the bomb’ (Guardian, 24 April).

‘Change the channel’
The US has come up with a novel strategy for dealing with the PR problems associated with killing large numbers of Iraqi civilians. ‘Asked what he would tell Iraqis about televised images “of Americans and coalition soldiers killing innocent civilians,” Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the senior military spokesman in Iraq answered “Change the channel.”’ (NYT, 12 April). “[S]tations … showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources,” he asserted. Perhaps unsurprisingly the new strategy does not appear to be working.

‘Now everyone belongs to the resistance’
Johnathan Steele interviewed some of the ‘[h]undreds of families [that] have driven out of Falluja over the last two days … The stories they tell have a common theme: how the Americans used to be good when they first arrived in Falluja, how arrogance and insensitivity gradually alienated people, and how now under the pressure of so many deaths almost everyone supports the resistance, the mojahedin.’ (Guardian, 12 April). One such, Adnan Abid, a 35-year-old taxi driver from Fallujah, explained to the Telegraph that “I used to believe it was a good thing the Americans came to Iraq. Now I have lost all hope until the occupation ends” (12 April). His wife, Hakima, added “There was little resistance in Fallujah before this week …Now everyone belongs to the resistance.” Outside a Fallujah school 16-year-old Soran Karim told the New York Times that ‘killing Americans was not just a good thing’: “It is the best thing. They are infidels, they are aggressive, they are hunting our people” (11 April).

‘Mini-Fallujahs for months’
‘Falluja captured the world’s headlines,’ Steele notes ‘but all over the Sunni areas there have been mini-Fallujas for months. US troops respond to attacks with artillery fire and air strikes, clumsy house-to-house searches, and mass arrests. In the process they create more enemies and provoke a desire for revenge.’

“We have even lost our right to get undressed for bed”, a businessman in the town of Muqdadiya told him, ‘recount[ing] how American troops had burst into his home after dark, handcuffed him in his night clothes in front of his terrified wife and children, and taken him away … His ordeal was short compared with the torture he suffered … under Saddam … but he said it left a deeper wound. “Under Saddam they summoned you to the security police headquarters, and that was where the torture began. They didn't humiliate you in sight of your family,” he explained.’ (Guardian, 12 April). Abdul Razak al-Muaimy, a 32-year-old labourer , told the New York Times that American soldiers had humiliated him in front of his children: “They searched my house. They kicked my Koran. They speak to me so poorly in front of my children. It's not that I encourage my son to hate Americans. It's not that I make him want to join the resistance. Americans do that for me.” (11 April).

Men in black
Similar stories abound. Thus David Blair notes the ‘gleams of loathing’ lighting up the eyes of two Iraqis, who had been found, unarmed in Central Baghdad and were now ‘squatting in the dust their hands tied by plastic restraints’ (Telegraph, 10 April). “We picked up these guys for wearing black,” explained one soldier from the 1st Armoured Division. “All of Sadr's guys wear black. It's like a Viet Cong thing.” ‘Gunmen loyal to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi'ite leader, do indeed wear black,’ Blair notes. ‘But so do Shi'ite pilgrims - and hundreds of thousands are now converging on … Najaf and Karbala for the Shi'ite festival of Arba'een. Saddam Hussein's regime … rounded up pilgrims around the time of Arba'een by the simple expedient of arresting men in black.’

Plus ca change.

‘Not concerned about … Iraqi loss of life’
In an e-mail quoted in the New York Times, Maj Gen James N. Hattis, commander of the First Marine Division, states that “We will always be humanitarian in our efforts. We will fight him on our terms. May God help them when we’re done with them” (11 April). Others are less sanguine about the US approach. For example, a senior UK army officer, who has told the Sunday Telegraph that “when US troops are attacked with mortars in Baghdad they use mortar-locating radar to find the firing point and then attack the general area with artillery, even though the area they are attacking may be in the middle of a densely populated residential area … They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are’, ‘they view [Iraqis] as untermenschen [the Nazi expression for “sub-humans”]. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful’ (11 April). Marines on the ground in Fallujah told Time that ‘[i]n some neighborhoods … anyone they spot in the streets is considered a “bad guy”’ – a new category of sub-human it seems. A Marine Major told the magazine: “It is hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians. You just have to go with your gut feeling.” (Time, 11 April).

Beyond Fallujah.
According to the New York Times, ‘Pentagon policy makers and military officers … are worried that without a successful political process … the current military operations to restore order [sic] throughout restive Sunni and Shiite cities may have to be repeated in months to come’ (12 April). “[U]nless the political side keeps up, we’ll have to do it again after July 1 [when ‘sovereignty’ is nominally being transferred to an Iraqi Interim Government] and maybe in September and again next year and again and again,” a military officer told the paper.

Since the US continues to pursue what the FT’s Middle East editor identifies as its ‘desire to control Iraq’s political transition while making it appear that it is driven by Iraqis’ (17 Jan) - whilst killing large numbers of Iraqis in the process - the prospects of ‘a successful political process’ are, to put it mildly, bleak.

The British Role
As other countries pull out, Britain appears determined to get more and more heavily involved in the occupation. The Commander of British forces in Basra recently suggested that troops might remain in Iraq ‘for up to 10 years’ (Guardian, 20 April) and according to the Sunday Telegraph, ‘thousands of additional troops are to be sent to Iraq [from the UK] to take control of Najaf’ following the withdrawal of Spanish troops – a move that senior officers warn ‘is likely to lead to extensive casualties’ (2 May). Meanwhile - whether accurately or not - the Sunday Times has reported that ‘the SAS has sent a squadron of 50 soldiers to Iraq to round up and arrest suspected hardliners … The elite troops, who have been provided with a blacklist of names, are understood to be carrying out raids on houses, often at night, throughout the country’ (25 April).

‘Enough support’
Last year Kofi Annan observed that ‘as long as there’s an occupation, the resistance will grow’ (IHT, 15 Oct) – an observation whose relevance seems to be growing by the day. Meanwhile, according to Iraqi journalist Abbas Ali Saki many Iraqis ‘are looking at the images of Fallujah, and wondering if they’re looking at the future of the rest of Iraq, should we ever anger the United States’ (Knight Ridder, 10 April).

‘[US] commanders say they have no doubt they can achieve [military success], given their force’s superior strength and enough support from Washington and the American people’ (NYT, 11 April, emphasis added). We can and must deprive the US and British governments of that support for without an end to the US/UK military occupation the future for Iraq’s people looks grim.


Voices UK has been campaigning on UK policy towards Iraq, in solidarity with the Iraqi people, since February 1998. For more information, to receive further updates or to join our free mailing list, contact: Voices in the Wilderness UK, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX. 0845 458 2564 (local rate call); voices@voicesuk.org; www.voicesuk.org