The siege of Falluja

U.S. Marines line up for a joint prayer at their base outside Falluja. - ANJA NIEDRINGHAUS/AP

The attack on the Iraqi city by the American forces, perhaps the most concentrated military action against a populated area in recent times, has given rise to widespread revulsion which may jeopardise the general elections scheduled for January.

ALMOST immediately after President George W. Bush got re-elected in the United States the order was given to the American forces in Iraq to attack Falluja. Around 20,000 U.S. troops along with a token number of Iraqi soldiers, launched on November 8 a full-scale military offensive, "Operation Phantom Fury", on the small city that has been the epicentre of the resistance to the American occupation. The 3,000 or so Iraqi troops with the Americans consist mainly of fighters from the "Peshamarga", the Kurdish militia that has fought against the Iraqi central government for decades. Weeks ahead of the invasion, the city was flattened by "Daisy Cutters" and other heavy bombs weighing between 500 kg and 1,000 kg.

Before the American forces entered the city of 700,000, many residents had fled their homes. However, after the city was surrounded, male residents between the ages of 16 and 60 were not allowed to leave it. Around 100,000 civilians are still said to be in the city. Falluja was subjected to intensive aerial bombing for more than a month prior to the invasion. Among the 100,000 Iraqis killed since the start of the invasion, Falluja has accounted for a significant number.

More than 1,300 Iraqis were killed in the first American attack on the city in April last year. The Iraqi fighters had engaged the Americans in street-by-street, hand-to-hand fighting. The American Marines were forced to withdraw from the city. This time too, according to reports filtering out of Falluja through Iraqi sources and those embedded with the American forces, the remnants of the fighters holed up in the city are offering stiff resistance. The American officer commanding the forces in Falluja said in the second week of November that it would take some time to gain total control of the city. American commanders have said that the toughest military challenge for them in Falluja will come when they try to cross the Euphrates to its east bank, where the rebel stronghold of Jolan is located. In the first two days of the invasion, more than 14 American soldiers were killed in and around Falluja. Meanwhile, many of the insurgents active in Falluja seem to have shifted base to neighbouring towns such as Ramadi and Baquba.

The Bush administration continues to insist that the destruction of the city and the killing of the insurgents is a necessary step for the holding of fair and free elections in Iraq and the strengthening of democracy. The reason held out for invading Iraq was the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the country. The Bush administration now wants to bomb Falluja into submission because Al Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant, is supposed to be in the city. Citizens of Falluja, on the other hand, claim that they have never seen Zarqawi or his band of foreign militants.

American military officials compare the assault on Falluja with the American capture of the Vietnamese city of Hue in the late 1960s. Nobody doubts that the American forces will be able to subdue Falluja eventually. However, many observers are of the opinion that the Americans may win the battle and lose the war, as the Vietnam experience had shown. In fact, many American defence analysts believe that the situation in Iraq is far worse than it ever was in South Vietnam. They point out that it was only towards the end of the Vietnam War that the resistance forces gained control of major cities in the South. In Iraq, within a year of the American invasion, the resistance had many major cities under its control, especially in the so-called Sunni triangle.

One of the first targets of the American troops in Falluja was the main hospital. The American military is using the hospital to treat its wounded. Another hospital, in the centre of the city, was destroyed by American bombs a day after the attack started. According to reports in the Arab media, 16 surgeons working in the hospital died as a result of the assault. Residents of Falluja say that most of those killed and injured in the aerial bombardment were women and children. They say there is nobody in the city today to treat the wounded. "There is not a single surgeon in Falluja," an Iraqi doctor is quoted as saying. Military analysts say that the scale of the attack on Falluja is unprecedented in contemporary military history. The last such concentrated attacks on populated areas took place in the Second World War. The attack on Sarajevo by Yugoslav forces in the early 1990s pales into insignificance before the American use of overwhelming force against the residents of Falluja.

Significant sections of the international community are characterising the American attack as a "war crime" and a "crime against humanity". Conveniently, both the U.S. and the "interim" Iraqi government are not signatories to the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The United Nations Charter permits the use of armed force only in self-defence or if authorised by the U.N. Security Council. Iraq was never a threat to the U.S. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan had warned the Bush administration about the dangers of launching a new military assault on Falluja. Annan had said in a letter addressed to President Bush and British Premier Tony Blair that a full-scale attack on the city would fuel further divisions and instability in Iraq and undermine the electoral process. Annan had emphasised that an attack would cause high civilian casualties and further alienate the Iraqi people from the interim administration in Baghdad, making the prospects for smooth elections in January even more difficult.

As the American forces were preparing to launch a full-scale attack, the interim Iraqi government declared a nationwide "state of emergency", with the exception of the region of Kurdistan. Prime Minister Iyad Allawi announced that the emergency would initially last for 60 days. Iraqis now live officially under conditions equivalent to martial law. The draconian measure was imposed on November 6 in the wake of a massive guerilla attack on the Iraqi army and police stations, resulting in the death of more than 50 police officers. The incidents took place in the town of Samara, which the American forces had announced with fanfare that they had liberated in mid-October from rebel control.

The government had accorded itself "emergency powers" after the Americans handed over power in June but had not chosen to exercise them until now. The government in Baghdad insists that the most important reason for the decision to implement martial law was that security had to be ensured all over Iraq before the much-heralded general elections are held. But observers of the Arab scene are not clear why Allawi chose to declare a state of emergency at this juncture. They point out that the interim government and its American backers have not paid any particular heed to civil liberties in Iraq.

It is likely that the emergency laws will allow American troops once again to be deployed to enforce law and order on the streets of big cities such as Baghdad. American and Iraqi authorities hope that the "state of emergency" will help reinforce Allawi's image as a "strongman" cast in the mould of Saddam Hussein.

The present Constitution does not allow the Prime Minster to use the emergency law to postpone the elections. Iraqi political activists say the emergency law is very similar to the "Patriot Act", passed in the U.S, after the events of September 11, 2001. The American law has come in for severe criticism by civil rights activists in the U.S.

An immediate fallout of the American assault on Falluja is the withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni grouping, from the interim government. Its lone representative in the Cabinet has resigned. The Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni clerical association, has condemned the assault on Falluja, calling it "illegitimate and illegal action against civilian and innocent people". It said that the assault would have "grave consequences" on the situation in Iraq. Sunni clerics in neighbouring Arab countries have condemned the American action and defended the right of Iraqis to fight the occupation. The radical Shia cleric Moqtada Al Sadr had earlier expressed his solidarity with the beleaguered people of Falluja, saying that he was prepared to fight on their behalf. The Iraqi President, Ghazi al-Yawer, a Sunni, had publicly opposed the plans for an assault on Falluja.

After the assault on Falluja, there is likely to be an all-out Sunni boycott of the elections. Sunnis constitute around 20 per cent of the population.