U.S. forces again under fire in Falluja

The weekend of July 15-17 saw a marked increase in strikes by the Iraqi resistance. Reuters reports that 11 bombs struck U.S. and Iraqi military targets on July 15. Around the country the next day, 16 were killed in bombings, including three British soldiers and one U.S. soldier. On July 17, four bombs went off within a four-and-a-half-hour span in Baghdad.

Iraq Solidarity, based in Spain, transmits a report from Iraq that U.S. occupation forces put the city of Rawa, 200 miles west of Baghdad, under siege from July 15-19. An assault on the town with intensive bombing from the air has left numerous unarmed Iraqi civilians dead, according to Iraqis who have been able to flee the area.

Much as in Falluja last fall, the siege of Rawa is creating a critical humanitarian crisis inside the city, with serious shortages of food and medicines. U.S. troops are fighting street by street and house by house against the resistance, according to eyewitnesses.

Many dwellings have been totally or partly destroyed during the bombardments. Others have been occupied by U.S. troops who, after ousting their inhabitants, use them as points of attack for snipers. According to local sources, five car bombs exploded July 19 in the city. (www.nodo50.org/iraq)

These battles, along with a suicide bomb next to a gasoline tanker in Musayyib that killed at least 98 people, and whose origin is unexplained, show the continued instability inside occupied Iraq. Most fighting continues to be between resistance forces and occupation troops supplemented by troops and police of the puppet Iraqi regime.

A study by the Defense Intelligence Agency showed that throughout 2003 and 2004, more than 75 percent of the attacks in Iraq were against the occupation troops and puppets.

Once again, U.S. military claims that they have pacified the resistance have proven false. A report from Baghdad in the July 17 New York Times says that “the American command ... only a month ago claimed that military offensives had sharply undermined the ability of the insurgents to launch attacks and cut the number of suicide bombings in half.”

Instead, the article says, “the American and Iraqi military commands have been unable to figure out how to fight what appears to be a prolific industry producing car bombs” and “have found it equally difficult to stem the seemingly steady stream of bombers willing to sacrifice their lives.”

In the context of a report issued by the puppet Iraqi Interior Ministry on the death rate of Iraqi civilians and police officers—over 800 a month between August and May—the Times this week also repor ted on two civilian deaths by U.S. military hands. The first was Muhammad Sum maidai, a 21-year-old engineering stu dent who was murdered by Marines in his home. The second was Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi employee of the Knight Ridder newspaper chain, sniped on his way to a gas station.

Faced with a number of murders of journalists in Iraq, often by U.S. troops, the Times is now withholding the names of its Iraqi employees for security reasons.

Resistance returns to Falluja

Meanwhile, in Falluja, the city that has become synonymous with U.S. terror against Iraqis, the resistance has returned.

Last November, U.S. forces concluded a siege of Falluja, the “City of Mosques,” with an all-out assault that lasted eight days and killed some 1,500 Iraqis. Half of the city was destroyed and another quarter suffered structural damage. Since that time the city has remained a police state, with streets lined in barbed wire. There is a 10 p.m. curfew and checkpoints where every Iraqi entering the city must endure a search and show a badge.

Iraqi engineering teams have estimated the cost of reconstruction at $500 million; to date only a fifth of that has been paid out.

Despite all this, the New York Times reports that suicide bombs in the city have killed six U.S. troops, that two of the five police forts being built have been firebombed, and that three members of the city council have quit and another member has stopped attending meetings. Lt. Col. Rip Miles is reported as saying that U.S. Marines and allied Iraqi forces are either attacked with or find homemade bombs almost every day, despite house-to-house searches in November.

The Times also reports that in the face of the occupation, more and more Falluja residents are favoring the resistance. It quotes an auto repair shop owner as saying, “Some preferred the city quiet, purified of the gunmen and any militant aspect. But after the unfairness and injustice with which the city’s residents have been treated by the American and Iraqi forces, they now prefer the resistance, just so they won’t be humiliated.”

Col. Miles told the Times, “rightly or wrongly, Falluja means something.” No doubt the return of the resistance there means, for U.S. military planners, yet another sign of the tenacity of the Iraqi people—something that, in their arrogance, they are still scratch ing their heads over. For Iraqis throughout the country, it must mean yet another sign of hope.

And for U.S. troops and antiwar activists, it is yet another reason to demand, “Bring the troops home now!”