Five Years On, Fallujah in Tatters
FALLUJAH - Fallujah remains a crippled city more than two years after the November 2004 U.S.-led assault.Unemployment, and lack of medical care and safe drinking water in the city 60 km west of Baghdad remain a continuous problem. Freedom of movement is still curtailed.
The city suffered two devastating U.S. military attacks during 2004. Many of the buildings were destroyed, or heavily damaged. Several collapsed under the heavy bombing, and were never rebuilt. The heaps of concrete slabs and piles of rubble remain where they were.
“We wonder why we have been targeted by Americans since the first days of the occupation,” Dr. Mohammad Abed from al-Anbar University told IPS. “This city sacrificed thousands of its citizens through five years of occupation just because they said ‘no’ to a project that threatens their country’s future.”
Now a less visible form of destruction is being spread, he said. “The new wave of destruction is represented by tearing the social tissue apart. The Americans are paying tremendous amounts of money to get people of Fallujah to fight each other.”
The road into Fallujah from the main Amman-Baghdad highway is safer today, but nobody is allowed into Fallujah who is not from the city and can prove it by providing elaborate identity documentation. That can only be obtained by undergoing biometric identification by the U.S. military — a process which includes retina scans, body searches and finger-printing before issuance of a bar-coded ID badge.
The city remains sealed. Many residents refer to it as a big jail.
“Being sealed for five years, Fallujah has lost all aspects of natural life,” Ahmad Hamid, a former member of the city council told IPS. “A man who has lived most of his life mixing with British and American people told us in 2003 that we could not reach any agreement because they (Americans) look at Fallujah as a centre of Iraqi people’s unity. He told us Iraq would be divided into regions, provinces and even tribes, but we in the council did not listen to him.”
The city remains tense in the face of power struggles and turf wars between tribal chiefs and Awakening group commanders, in Fallujah and in other areas of the volatile al-Anbar province. Disputes between the Iraqi Islamic Party and Awakening groups are also creating security tensions. The Awakening forces are former resistance fighters that the U.S. pays to be now on its side.
Beyond security, the health situation in the city is particularly difficult. A study conducted by two civil society organisations and the administration of Fallujah General Hospital over a two-year period was submitted to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on Mar. 4.
The hospital administration and the two groups, the Conservation Centre of Environment and Reserves in Fallujah and the Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq, say that in 2006 they found “5,928 new illness cases that were unknown before in Fallujah,” over 70 percent of which were “cancers and abnormalities” in children below 12 years of age.
“In the first six months of 2007 there were 2,447 cases, more than 50 percent of these cases were children. Simply, this means that most of the victims are children, and this will threaten the new generation in this city.”
“Now we face death of all kinds,” said a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital. “In addition to all known diseases, new ones are invading us. Blackwater fever for instance was an unknown disease in our area, but now it is spreading like fire in a forest. We have no medicines to give our patients, and the black market is flourishing.
“Our best doctors fled the city for fear of being detained by American and police forces just because they helped civilians during the two sieges of 2004. They are now considered terrorists or at least terrorist supporters, when they should have been decorated with medals for their heroic work in helping their people.”
Medically speaking, “the siege is total,” a doctor who gave his name as Dr. Kamal told the press recently, speaking of the lack of drugs, oxygen, electricity and clean water at Fallujah General hospital.
U.S. military officials say reconstruction is under way, and that aid is being provided to hospitals. People see little of that.
“The brutal destruction of Fallujah by the American army was not followed by any reconstruction, as if the city is being punished for its attitude against the occupation,” said an engineer in Fallujah, Kaltan Fadhil.
Water and electricity supply, health facilities and roads were provided “in a way that only made some people who collaborated with Americans richer,” he said. “It was no more than repainting some buildings to make them look nicer for a while, and then new contracts were announced to rehabilitate what was already rehabilitated.”
© 2008 Inter Press Service
The destruction of Fallujah was an act of punishment and retribution that is directly tracable to the desk of the President of the United States.
What the U.S. military was ordered to do to Fallujah was, and continues to be, a WAR CRIME.
War crimes are defined in the statute that established the International Criminal Court, which includes:
Hanging of suspects unlawfully. Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, such as:
Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health
Torture or inhumane treatment
Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property
Forcing a prisoner of war to serve in the forces of a hostile power
Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial
Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer
Taking hostages
The following acts as part of an international conflict:
Directing attacks against civilians
Directing attacks against humanitarian workers or UN peacekeepers
Killing a surrendered combatant
Misusing a flag of truce
Settlement of occupied territory
Deportation of inhabitants of occupied territory
Using poison weapons
Using civilians as shields
Using child soldiers
The following acts as part of a non-international conflict:
Murder, cruel or degrading treatment and torture
Directing attacks against civilians, humanitarian workers or UN peacekeepers
Taking hostages
Summary execution
Pillage
Rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution or forced pregnancy
America can be trully proud [sic] of the Handiwork done in Falluja done by the military but ordered by Bu$hCo
PS: reference
http://www.answers.com/%20WAR%20CRIME
America has no businesss of any kind treating peole living in their own homeland this way. This is positively disgraceful. Will Iraq ever recover from the bush years? Will the US ever recover from the bush years?
It makes you so damned proud to be an American.
dam right ! i remember the battle of fallujah…..bush stopped the marines from taking the city in an much easier way…instead bush CHOSE TO TIME THE ATTACK JUST BEFORE THE 2004 ELECTIONS…AND GOT MORE MARINES AND IRAQIS KILLED …. REMEMBER FALLUJAH !!!!
Most of Fallujah was blanketed with “Chemical weapons” (white phosphorous) by the US military. An undisputable war crime, which was first denied, then admitted by the US.
Now, who do you think are the terrorists in Iraq?
I’ve read Dahr Jamail’s book, “Beyond the Green Zone” and urge all who want to know more about Fallujah during 2004 to read it also! It will ‘tear the heart out of you’, so to speak. I wish there was some way to make all Americans read it - including George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, AND their families and friends!!!!!!!
Thanks, Dahr (with a soft D, Ha!) for giving us this update because I’ve been wondering about Fallujah and it’s people!
Very excellent article and update!
What I recall having read several or more times, and not all of the same news sources, is that around 70% of Fallujah was very destroyed by the U.S. with these 2004 U.S. assaults there. Also, as someone posted on further above, the U.S. incredibly used a considerable amount of white phosphorous; in addition to a lot of DU-treated armaments. Some of the infrastructure was destroyed with the use of U.S. tanks, in addition to the aerial bombings, if I recall correctly. Some U.S. snipers sniped at unarmed people working as journalists, two who worked for Al-Jazeera, and maybe others. Etcetera.
Major war crime(s); and deliberately committed and worse! And repeated again by the U.S. in other locations of Iraq!
Bush-Cheney (et al) idea of ‘liberating’ Iraqis!
In reality, and like Saddam Hussein shouted or denounced, ‘unleashing Hell upon Iraq’, or ‘opening the gates of hell over Iraq’, words similar to either or both of these expressions anyway! I had also referred to it as launching hell upon Iraq. ‘Blood cult’ notion of ‘liberating’ Iraqis, former Pope John Paul II essentially said in warning-opposition, condemning the threat of war on Iraq.
Hence, and again, major war crime(s); and, deliberately committed and worse!
If only enough supporters of the war had instead [listened] to the many enough “voices of reason”!
And that includes the facts reported early enough and making it clear that the authorisation Congress had provided for recourse to war had been rendered obsolete, null, void, an uncashable, criminal-to-try-to-cash blank check; and all of this known well enough prior to March 19-20 2003.
*) The UN weapons inspections were working as well as, or better than the U.S. demands required, and for months working very successfully, favourably for Iraq!
*) It was known that it hadn’t been proven and that it was very improbable that Saddam Hussein or any of his govt were involved in the 9-11, 2001, attacks in the U.S.!
*) It was known that he had threatened NO states!
*) It was known that the UNSC refused to authorise the war and wasn’t budging from making this refusal.
Definitely rendered null or void was that Congressional authorisation; again, well enough [prior] to March 19-20 2003!
“Just” some things to not forget, I believe.
I know I’ve already posted here, but this cannot be stated often enough. What a profoundly white country America is. The Mainstream Media is up in arms over the physical and sexual abuse of children under a polygamist lifestyle. As they should be.
Yet, not one word about the neglect and the abuse of Iraqi children during this war.
There is-in existence-footage of American soldiers assaulting, raping, and sodomizing Iraqi children-and still from the Media; silence. Yes-sadly-we are a very “white” country. Very white.
Great Bear: (sorry a little long)
You have to remember a few things that have happened. First a record number of jouralist have been killed in Iraq. Do you remember the footage of the USA attacking the hotel that housed them? If you report the truth you will be killed. Another classic was the attack on john Simpson of the BBC ( we get BBC in Canada). While reporting in Afghanistan and even dressing in a Burka ( sp) he was able to get right at the action and record events on the ground from the front lines. He single handed walked into Kabul in Afghanistan and was greated with flowers over 24 hours before the americans showed up. This pissed off the US that had less troops in Afghanistan than Manhattan has cops.
During the Iraq invasion the americans openly attacked his party while they were in the north part pf Iraq. I remenber his camera man recording as his blood ran down the lens. Even their BBC radio/TV was attacked on film in Baghdad If for time to time you want some truth out of Iraq go to www.aljazeer.net They are the only network that has the nuts to report american crimes. You will never see any american lock step and run by outside forces report the truth.
I WILL BET BUCKS ( not american they are worth nothing outside the US) WITH ANYONE WE WILL STILL BE TALKING ABOUT US TROOPS IN IRAQ IN 2012
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…wherever the US goes, shit is sure to follow. As if this country didn’t have enough shit to clean up in its own backyard!
Notice on the subject of war crimes there are only 12 comments….
If the subject was “obama is right” there are 156 comments….
Maybe even common dreamers are iraq occupation [aka war] fatigued…
Why Americans Are Tuning out the Disaster in Iraq
By Frank Rich, The New York Times. Posted April 13, 2008.
Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/82200/