BAGHDAD, 12 April 2004 — The US continues to pay a heavy political price in Iraq for its week-long attack on Fallujah, which Iraqis generally see as an assault on the civilian population. International relief groups say 470 Iraqis have been killed and 1,200 wounded, including 243 women and 200 children. Only five Marines have died in the fighting in the city.
While the Marines have not suffered significant losses in Fallujah, the 30-mile long road behind them has fallen into the hands of Iraqi fighters.
They have made repeated attacks on convoys and even succeeded in setting fire to an American tank with rocket-propelled grenade. Two US soldiers have gone missing in the area.
The US has only very limited control over the whole of Anbar province, a vast area with a population of 1.25 million, most of them living in towns and cities on the Euphrates. It was in this area that two German Embassy security specialists were killed when their vehicle was stopped on the road to Jordan last week.
Dr. Adnan Pachachi, a senior member of the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, to whom the coalition is to hand over power on June 30, told The Independent in an interview yesterday that the siege of Fallujah “makes clear that the council has no authority. We were never told about the attack.”
No Iraqi Arab politician, even those wholly dependent on the US, dare stand up in public and support the actions of the US Marines in Fallujah.
Dr. Pachachi, a softly spoken 80-year-old former Iraqi foreign minister, underlined the degree to which moderate Iraqis have been alienated, saying: “The whole thing smacks of an act of vengeance. It is collective punishment. Too much force was used.”
The US is demanding that those responsible for killing four American civilians whose death and mutilation precipitated the siege be arrested and handed over to them. Dr. Pachachi said: “I don’t believe the people responsible for the murders are still there.” He said that the cease-fire envisaged a phased withdrawal by the US Marines from the center of Fallujah.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit, who acts as US military spokesman, said that the fighters in Fallujah must “lay down their arms” and renounce membership of extremist groups, a highly unlikely outcome.
The Governing Council is trying to restore its battered credibility in the eyes of Iraqis, many of whom see it as an American puppet, by negotiating a solution to the crisis over Fallujah. But the long-term damage to the American position here will be impossible to repair. It is difficult to meet an Iraqi who approves of US tactics. A battalion of the newly raised US-trained Iraqi Army reportedly refused to go to Fallujah last week saying it would not fight fellow Iraqis.
Anger over Fallujah has reignited a sense of outraged Iraqi patriotism among Shiites as well as Sunni Arabs. Among the first trucks carrying food to Fallujah yesterday were 15 from the vast but impoverished Shiite district of Sadr city. Anti-American slogans have been inscribed on walls all over Baghdad.
The US Army’s trigger-happy use its massive fire power, regardless of how many civilians are killed, infuriates Iraqis. For instance last Friday night an official of the Iraqi National Congress, which is part of the Governing Council, had just cleared an American checkpoint in the district of Adhamiyah in Baghdad when a sniper opened up on the US troops. They fired back in all directions killing his driver, wounding his bodyguard and hitting him with four bullets. He says seven other civilians were killed in the incident. The US Army does not give figures for Iraqi civilian casualties and does not appear to collect them.
In southern Iraq hundreds of thousands of Shiites went to Kerbala yesterday for the Arbain ceremony, but their number was reduced by the uprising by the Army of the Mahdi of Muktada Sadr. His men control part of the city as well as most of Najaf and Kufa. The Governing Council is trying to negotiate an end to his confrontation with the Coalition, but Sadr still sounds confident. His aide Qays Al-Khazali said he was willing to start peace talks if foreign troops left Najaf, freed his followers who were imprisoned and ended the siege of Fallujah.
It is still unclear who in the US administration, either in Washington or Baghdad, decided to launch the siege of Fallujah, which has proved so politically disastrous.