BREAKING NEWS DA FALLUJA TRADUZIONE PARZIALE E RIASSUNTIVA -dura resistenza si combatte - sono riusciti a ad evitare lo scontro frontale - è una guerriglia urbana casa per casa -gli usa controllano solo il 45% di falluja. i mujahideen si spostano in continuazione per evitare i bombardamenti. contrattaccano l' aerea nord è sigillata dagli americani, vengono fermati (anche con le armi) i convogli di aiuti e medicine che tentano di entrare in città. persone che sono riuscite a fuggire confermano l' uso di gas e armi chimiche da parte degli americani.

Breaking News from Fallujah
Ewa Jasiewicz, Infoshop


Saturday November 27 2004 - This is news gathered from a UK contact working for a small relief organisation based in Baghdad. He has been in regular contact with relief staff on the ground in Iraq who for the past two weeks – since November 10th - have been trying to get convoys of aid into Fallujah but have been prevented from doing so by Occupation Forces. The first time they tried to get a convoy in was June. The convoy was halted and in effect stolen, confiscated, by Iraqi soldiers under the command of Occupation Forces. The Iraqi soldiers confiscated medical supplies – penicillin, syringes, consumables, bandages, plastic gloves, and sanitary equipment. No reason given by individual Iraqi soldiers was ‘We need it more than they do’ – these are the exact words used. The soldier then announced that the goods would be taken in the name of the Ministry of Health. The incident happened on the road between Baghdad and Fallujah.

The most recent Convoy was attacked by Occupation Forces on Wednesday 24th November. It was part of 3 trucks laden with aid. It contained blankets, water, medical supplies, cooking gas, and basic foodstuffs such as rice, flour, sugar, salt etc. Troops fired on the truck hitting it 6 times. Noone was injured but the convoy was forced to turn back. There was no dialogue with the soldiers.

The NGO trying to carry out this work cannot be named for security reasons. Staff report a climate of fear where speaking out about occupation violations can result in targeting, censorship and possible shut-down of operations by the neo-Baathist Alawi government. Staff have been processing and supporting families fleeing Fallujah and have been listening to their stories.

There is a need for these stories and testimonies to be heard but those involved do not want their names revealed for fear of retaliation. Such constraints make journalistic reporting difficult. Confirmation of sources is hampered by a lack of personal access to Fallujah and Baghdad and the situation on the ground. Reliance on testimonies through third parties is also problematic yet this is the best that can be done under the circumstances. The news below is corroborated by similar reports in the Arabic and mainstream media.

Here are examples of reports from Fallujah as conveyed to Iraqi relief staff in Baghdad:

Hay Julan – residents of the Hay Julan area who were able to flee Fallujah described an apple smelling chemical with which they were exposed to before the main onslaught into Fallujah. There was a break of about half a day between the presence of the gas/chemical and when the main assault started. The chemical created open wounds on the skin which were very hard to treat. After a while all exposed areas on the skin were cracked and bleeding. People came out of Fallujah with these injuries. They described smoke, a sweet smell and when they were exposed to the smoke, they coughed up blood and had cracked bleeding skin. Most of these families were hiding. When they smelled the gas they thought this was a gas attack and fled their homes and made their way through small backroads unoccupied by Occupation Forces. This happened at the beginning of the attack on Fallujah – around 2 weeks ago.

There were many families who left young people to guard their homes – 18 years old and younger, teenagers, people of not fighting age who they thought would be too young to be targeted by troops. A common theme running through each family grouping which fled Fallujah is that they elected one or two people to stay behind and look after their houses.

One woman said she wanted to commit suicide as she’d left her son there and her home was no longer there. A lot of families said they could not understand the figure of 170 families being put forward by the Red Crescent Society (Arabic medical relief agency). Their estimation was 3-4 times larger. They were aware of a significant number of families left behind. The explanation offered by them was that they must have fled to another part of Fallujah or been killed.

The families said they were prevented from returning to Fallujah to pick up dead bodies of relatives. One family which had had their home shelled went to Saqlaawiya which is a village just outside of Fallujah. Saqlaawiya and Ameriyaht Fallujah (1700 families from Fallujah are living there in tents, provided by aid organisations) are under siege by Occupation Forces. This is where families are able to go. In the beginning of the invasion of Fallujah, there was a missile attack on Saqlaawiya. Noone knows what happened in the aftermath of this. A group of Saqlaawiya families have been trying to return to pick up their dead but have been prevented.

The main areas housing recent refugees (many of the initial refugees went to Baghdad) are: Saqlaawiya, Baquba, Ameriat Fallujah, and Heed and this is where the information is coming from.


Latest News

Conveyed today through the NGO contact in the UK:

There are systematic arrests by Occupation Troops of boys aged 14-years and upwards are taking place in Heed, Baquba, Ahmeriyat Fallujah, Saqlaawiya and Ramadi. House to house searches.

Ahdemeeya in Baghdad is a no-go zone. Pitched battles are taking place between the resistance and occupation forces. British troops are carrying out house-to-house searches in properties along the Euphrates River edging towards Baghdad.

Statement from NGO co-ordinator in UK after contact with Baghdad office:

‘The situation is more volatile than previously assessed. An Iraqi journalist was trying to take pictures of our convoy. A car pulled up, a civilian car from Fallujah, and accused the journalist of being a spy. The driver pulled out a gun and pointed it at the journalist and accused him of working for the Iraqi Mokhabarat (Intelligence services) and threatened to shoot him dead. This happened in the vicinity of Fallujah. Had it not been for intervention from those accompanying the aid agency, the situation could have escalated.

Every day we are trying to send convoys into Fallujah but we are being blocked by occupation troops. The psychology of the situation is very dangerous. There is a ruthlessness and blind reaction by people to perceived threats, as the incident with the journalist shows us. People have lost their familes, their loved ones, their homes. There is a lot of psychological damage and instability.

Our co-ordinator has said that it is not safe to talk to the media about what is happening. (People are afraid of being accused of scaremongering and fomenting or inciting violence against the government or ‘coalition troops’ which is an offence under Bremer’s Order on prohibited media activity http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20030610_20030610_C
PAPNOTICE_Responsible_Media.html.pdf)

The number of families which got out in the last few days is 2-3 times greater than previously estimated from all areas. At first we had 150 families come out from Fallujah to Heed. Now we have seen over 1000 families come to the Heed and Ameriyaht area. Now they cannot leave these areas. Americans control the whole area. Aid has definitely been let into Ameriyaht. But it has been limited in Baquba and Ramadi. The situation is a crisis.

The Americans have been allowing families out of Fallujah. But there are 170 families remaining in the area controlled by the Americans which is only about 45% of Fallujah. This means that most of Fallujah is still in the hands of the resistance. Under US control are the Al Wahde, Julan and Hay Sina’i areas in the North of Fallujah. But there is still sporadic fighting in these areas and all over the place. The fighting never stops. Guerilla fighters move from house to house, they never stop. And there are areas within these areas which are still changing hands. There was fighting in the Julan area today this morning. All the main roads are not safe. Water and electricity in the city is still cut. It is a bonus if people can move and survive. Resistance fighters are moving in and out quickly of areas as they know that if the military identifies those areas it will bomb them from the air. They keep moving. They can escape as they know every inch of the city. This is the tactic. Almost every house in Al Wahde, Julan and Hay Sina’I has been searched.

There are families trapped in the desert close to Fallujah without anything. They have no tents, nothing, they are just in the bare desert, these families are seen from Convoys trying to deliver aid. If you stop or leave roads already known then there is fear of being targeted by US snipers. The situation is not secure for vehicles to break away from Convoys to come out and deal with them as they are too close to Fallujah and this means people coming to them are perceived as a security threat to the Americans. There are 10s of families there but there are no specific numbers. We have managed to help families in other parts of the desert, further away from Fallujah itself.

This was put together by Ewa Jasiewicz, activist journalist who spent 9 months in Occupied Iraq






:: The address of this page is : http://www.uruknet.info?p=7650
:: The original address of this article is :
   http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/11/27/9391671
:: Article nr. 7650 sent on 29-nov-2004 02:58 ECT

Fallujah: America’s Halabja
Nov 29, 2004
By Yamin Zakaria, Published by Jihad Unspun

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."
(Otto Von Bismarck - Prussian Prime Minister 1815-1898)

Indeed corporate-driven wars of Capitalist nations and elections share the trait of ‘deception’. This is expected as elections are the usual means to get into the driving seat to prosecute wars. Wars are primarily driven by corporate interests diluted with chauvinistic nationalism concealed by lofty slogans. However, why the need to conceal the true motives and deceive the masses when it is the ordinary citizens that always pays the price by getting used as cannon codder?

Michael Moore vividly demonstrated this point in his documentary (Fahrenheit 9/11) when he tried to get the members of Congress to enlist their sons and daughters in the war; none showed any interest in their children being used as cannon fodder. To date only one member of Congress has a child serving in Iraq. Instead, the corporate machinery happily recruit and send the underprivileged Afro-Americans and Hispanics kids along with Green Card applicants as was done during the Vietnam war. Iraq is no different - governed by a handful of self-serving elites with the Western inspired secular Bathist ideology. The leading Generals and the elites either betrayed or simply capitulated leaving the ordinary soldiers and the defenseless civilians to face the American onslaught.

The lies generated to deceive the masses can be subtle like some of the media spins that are regularly generated, often with help from the pro-Zionists camps. They can also be stark and stupid, as for example George W. Bush said:

“Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction." (George W. Bush)

I am sure many are laughing while others are scratching their heads, asking, what is this man really saying? This type of idiotic claim is not uncommon. Recently one right-wing Christian fundamentalist alleged that most of the college professors are communists; her reasons for coming to such conclusion is based on their anti-War stance. The most educated sections of the American society are perhaps facing an uphill struggle to enlighten these close-minded and brainwashed citizens. Instead, they prefer to listen to the ‘wisdom’ of George W. Bush, who talks to God and frequently claims that God is on his side. This all sounds like the mindset of medieval Europe operating in the heart of the free world.

Bush has already implied many times that nations that are not approved by the US are not ‘free’, therefore, was it Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria that invented nuclear, biological and chemical weapons? On the contrary, it was the free nations that have invented these weapons of mass destruction and are constantly enhancing them. The US military budget for research and development is larger than many nations GDP put together. The so-called ‘free’ nations are the ones who have used them against civilians, have the largest stockpile and make the most profit through their lucrative arms industry in the business of genocide and destruction.

In the case of Iraq, what is so unusual is that the lies used to prosecute the war and deceive the masses have turned out to be self-incriminating as the following points will demonstrate and jog some memory.

• WMD - Iraq was invaded under the pretext of removing its alleged WMDs, but now we know for certain that the only WMD found in Iraq was that used by the Americans, literally or its equivalent; for example when we witnessed the initial “Shock and Awe” campaign reported by the Fox-TV crew with big smiles on their faces. Furthermore, many independent reports are emerging from Fallujah pointing to the use of chemical weapons by the US forces.

• Human Rights Violation – The propaganda machine amplified Saddam’s violation of human rights after failing to find WMDs. However, the US was already complicit with Saddam Hussein back in the 80s. Then the shameless treatment and incarcerations of the captives in Camp-X-Ray surfaced. Eventually, the US was caught red-handed softening up prisoners like Saddam Hussein’s regime in Abu-Ghraib. There are also video clips showing US soldiers killing civilians on the streets and executing wounded Iraqis. Such examples are clear violations of basic human rights that the US constantly preaches about and these certainly dwarf Saddam Hussein’s track record.

• Mass Graves – Saddam’s mass graves have so far turned out to be around 5,000 from the prewar hype of hundreds of thousands to millions. This has been easily surpassed by the US made mass graves in Fallujah alone; the total number of victims estimated for the entire war is somewhere bewteen 40,000 to 100,000. This is excluding the mass graves generated by the US led sanctions and its wanton massacre of the Iraqis retreating on the road to Basra in 1991.

• Executions – The prewar propaganda of Saddam’s evil executioners was replaced with the corporate style grotesque monsters called ‘civilian’ contractors. They were behaving worse than animals, and led to the just Iraqi retribution by killing and mutilating the four contractors back in April 2004. The result was unsatisfactory as those ‘contractors’ should have been tortured to death slowly as they were doing to the Iraqis inside Abu-Ghraib and other US-run prisons.

• Foreign Fighters – Iraqi masses had no problems with the fellow Arabs and Muslims coming to their aid, sharing the same language, culture and religion and it seems the only foreigners in that region were the Anglo-Saxon war criminals and their mercenaries. Most certainly the porn-culture and the porn-torture of Abu-Ghraib are definitely foreign to the Iraqi masses.

• Terrorism – If terrorism is the indiscriminate killing and terrorizing of civilians then who has a better track record by the facts on the grounds, Musab Al-Zarqawi or George Bush? Let’s not forget that the former is a freedom fighter retaliating and the latter is an illegal criminal invader as the General Secretary of the UN, Kofi Annan clearly spelt out after acknowledging the war was illegal. Hence, one cannot even make the comparison.

• Dictators – After having a convenient amnesia about Saddam’s American origin, as the CIA agent Geoffrey Kemp said “Saddam was a son of a bitch but he was our son of a bitch”, the US installed another Dictator who has already proven to be just as ruthless after failing with a Ahmed Chalabi who was known criminal. Iyad Alawi personally executed six prisoners by shooting them at close range. He then gave the recent ‘fatwa’ permitting his National Guards infested with Kurdish bandits from the Peshmergas (or Pesh-Muggers) tribe to take the women of Fallujah as booty, i.e. legalizing rape!

• Oil – Despite the early denials, the world saw through to the real reasons for the enthusiasm displayed by the US to ‘save’ the poor Iraqis from Saddam. No such enthusiasm was ever exhibited for the Rwandans, apartheid South Africa and the long suffering Palestinians. The oil ministries were never bombed unlike the other civilian facilities in Iraq. After the oil revenues were seized, contracts awarded without bid to the well-connected Cheney-Halliburton and billions of oil revenue went ‘missing’. Even the shameless theft from Iraqi household was taking place as one Iraqi old woman cried on TV, stating that the US soldiers stole her money, which she saved up to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca.

• Occupation – The primary pretexts of Saddam and WMDs are no longer there so what is the reason for the continuing occupation? Those lying pro-war prostitutes within are as silent as when they vociferously, cunningly and even naively urged the US to bomb Iraq to save it from Saddam! As if the US is a charitable institution! Have they not seen the language deployed by the US intelligentsia towards the Arabs? They are described as rag-heads, sand-niggers, camel-humpers, goat-humpers. This is expected from a xenophobic society.

• Democracy – Election and George Bush has always been controversial! It would have been nice to see genuine free elections inside the US that are not fixed in advance by the corporate lobbies. Many of the able leaders in Iraq that did not comply with the US interests are being systematically targeted. The calls for elections were resisted from the onset, Rumsfeld and Bremer stated that elections would be permitted as long as an Islamic government was not produced. So there you go ‘democracy’ i.e. “rule of the Iraqis by the Iraqis for the Corporate-Americans” Now the desperate attempts to hold elections in January under occupation will be no different to the elections held under Saddam; simultaneously it will provide a good exit opportunity for the US forces, giving pseudo independence to Iraq.

• Halabja Syndrome (War Crimes) – Another prewar hype was resurrecting the 15 year old event at Halabja at the time the US was the chief supplier to Saddam Hussein. The alleged gassing of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein is disputed by the CIA itself. But, even if we assume that Halabja was the work of Saddam and it was deliberate but that has been repeated by the US in Fallujah as many reports of chemical weapons used in the area are emerging. One doctor has already identified corpses without any external injury and discolored. Many corpses are burnt indicating the use of Napalm and phosphorus bombs: “Halabja in Fallujah”.

A leading lawmaker from Turkey's governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) on Thursday accused the United States of committing "genocide" in Fallujah. He went on to state that: "genocide of such proportions was committed neither under Mussolini, nor Hitler". This is why the US deliberately sealed the place from independent press coverage, prevented medical help by deliberately attacking hospitals and doctors who back in April gave independent verification of the casualty figures.

The US was not just trying to hide figures but how the operation was conducted. Multiple reports from many sources indicate that the US policy was to shoot indiscriminately at civilians, even old women with a white flags raised were shot, and ordinary people trying to cross the river fleeing away from Fallujah were shot at by the ‘brave’ Marines. Since Kofi Annan declared the war to be illegal along with most of the world all the direct and consequential killings resulted from the invasion constitutes clear war crimes committed by the US.

Now, why is the US denial of using chemical weapons not being verified by the UN or some independent body? Or is the UN only there to verify and support American allegations against other nations? Why the neighboring Arab/Muslim regimes are silent on this sheer barbarism. What happened to Arab and Islamic unity? Where are those moderates who are enthusiastic to label resistance fighters as terrorists but it seems they are perfectly comfortable to accept this type of savagery. Their ugly hypocritical lips were sealed after the Abu-Ghraib revelations, maybe the seal is permanent.

In the meantime, the Evangelical ‘Christians’ of America celebrated another Pagan festival of Thanksgiving on the 25th of November. The indulgent and obese American society gave little thought about the carnage in Fallujah. Their media is always reversing the burden of guilt by spinning the facts, making the victims the aggressors and the aggressors the victims, so that the American dream can live on another day to give the world another nightmare.

Copyright © 2004 by Yamin Zakaria. Published by Jihad Unspun. All rights reserved.