What was done to Fallujah was done in the name of democracy and the war on terrorism. The Spanish conquistadors put millions of lives to the sword and flame in the name of Christianity. The British Empire declared civilisation from atop a mountain of corpses. In the names of democracy, Christianity and civilisation US military depravity in Fallujah compares with the Nazis extinguishing towns and villages for race and Fatherland. The British Army and the British Labour government were complicit in this murder of a city. Trevor Rayne reports.
On 15 October US forces established a ‘dynamic cordon’ around Fallujah. That same day they detained Fallujah’s chief negotiator. Fallujah was then subjected to aerial, heavy artillery and tank bombardment, missiles were fired from helicopter gun-ships and AC-130 aircraft, firing 1,800 rounds a minute, strafed the city. Before the 7 November ground assault Sergeant Major Carlton W Kent addressed his marines: ‘You’re all in the process of making history. This is another Hue City in the making. I have no doubt, if we do get the word, that each and every one of you is going to do what you have always done – kick some butt’. Vietnamese national liberation forces occupied Hue during the January 1968 Tet Offensive. It was re-captured by the US and their South Vietnam allies the following month. The Under Secretary of the US Air Force stated in a March 1968 memo, Hue is ‘a devastated and prostrate city. Eighty per cent of the buildings have been reduced to rubble, and in the smashed ruins lay 2,000 dead civilians…Three quarters of the city’s people were rendered homeless and looting was widespread, members of the ARVN (US-backed South Vietnamese troops) being the worst offenders.’ One US officer memorably explained, ‘In order to save the city we had to destroy it.’ This was the US agenda for Fallujah.
The existence of ‘no-go areas’ like Fallujah was a hole in the armour of US global domination. The myth of US invincibility is exposed to challenge in Iraq. With the rebellion against the US and British occupation gathering and coalition plans in tatters, a victory had to be demonstrated. In 1857 the British Empire was confronted with the Indian Mutiny. Earl Clarendon observed, ‘We have never before played for so great a stake, and the whole world is watching how we conduct the game upon which our national honour and our prestige and position among nations depend…a large proportion of the spectators devoutly hope that we may lose this game, and that England may henceforward take rank as a second or third-rate power, and it is therefore all the more incumbent upon us to win it.’
In the New York Post Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters (retired) recasts Clarendon’s message, ‘We need to demonstrate that the US military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means destruction, we must accept the price. Most of Fallujah’s residents – those who wish to live in peace – have already fled. Those who remain have made their choice. We need to pursue the terrorists remorselessly…That means killing…our goal should be to target the terrorists and insurgents so forcefully that few survive to raise their hands in surrender. We don’t need more complaints about our treatment of prisoners from the global forces of appeasement. We need terrorists dead in the dust. And the world needs to see their corpses. Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it. We need to demonstrate our strength of will to the world, to show that there is only one possible result when madmen take on America.’ (4 November 2004, cited by Kamran Shafi in Pakistan’s Daily Times).
US Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld said, ‘Innocent civilians…have all the guidance they need as to how they can avoid getting into trouble…civilians in Fallujah had been warned’. Between 60,000 and 100,000 civilians remained in Fallujah, approximately 200,000 others had fled. Days before the assault the US military reduced its estimate of ‘insurgents in Fallujah from over 5,000 to 1,200’.
Coinciding with the assault on Fallujah the interim government announced martial law across much of Iraq and put Baghdad under night curfew. US troops entering Fallujah first occupied a hospital on the grounds that it was ‘a centre of propaganda’. In April the hospital reported 600 civilians killed by the US attack on the city. Another hospital and three clinics were also destroyed. Twenty doctors were reported killed in one of the clinics. Operation Phantom Fury was launched at the height of Ramadan and mosques were shelled. The deliberate targeting of hospitals, clinics and mosques is intended to demoralise the population and the resistance, to demonstrate that the occupation forces will act without restraint and destroy the will to resist.
After 12 days the US claimed to have killed 1,200 resistance fighters and taken 1,052 prisoners. Broadcast film footage showed how wounded prisoners were shot – not allowed ‘to raise their hands in surrender’. It is estimated that 51 US soldiers were killed and 400 wounded. As yet there is no reliable estimate for civilian casualties. After 10 days one Red Cross official suggested up to 800 civilians were dead. Eye-witness accounts talk of there being ‘very little of the town now, everywhere there are buildings which have been destroyed’. ‘Mosques are in ruins…rubble and human remains litter the empty street.’ US troops arrest males aged 15 to 45 who attempt to leave the city. There is no power or water, little food and no medicine and no surgeons. Coalition film crews show food and medicine distribution centres but people are afraid of being killed by snipers if they venture out. People are forced to drink dirty water and children are dying.
Before the assault all attempts by Fallujah’s representatives to reach a settlement were rejected by the interim government who insisted that Fallujah hand over Abu Musab Al Zarqawi. The representatives repeated that Al Zarqawi was not in Fallujah. With US troops claiming victory they admitted that Al Zarqawi was not in Fallujah. This was the pre-meditated murder of a city before the eyes of the world.
Rivals manoeuvre
The purpose of the Iraq war is geo-strategic: a war for global domination by the US ruling class with its British ruling class allies. Control over territory, oil and oil transhipment routes is essential for the US ruling class to retain domination over potential rivals Europe, Russia, Japan and China. This is in a context of diminishing oil and gas resources and increasing and competing demand for those resources by the rival powers. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and a perceived weakening of US control over the Middle East, the US ruling class has mobilised militarily and ideologically to be the main beneficiary of the disintegration of the Soviet state and to reinforce its power in the Middle East. The US presidential election was a victory for US nationalism, which in an oppressor state is necessarily predatory and racist. For the US ruling class it has no choice other than to mobilise because international capitalism is in crisis and it must fight to survive.
This October the energy consultant group Wood Mackenzie reported that in the past three years the ten biggest oil companies spent more on exploration than the value of the reserves they discovered. In 2003 they spent a combined $8 billion to yield discoveries worth less than $4 billion. Exploration spending fell from $11 billion in 1998 to $8 billion in 2003. However, spending on developing existing reserves rose from $34.6 billion in 1998 to a record $49.5 billion in 2003. New resources are proving harder to find, while existing resources are being more rapidly exhausted.
Also in October the International Energy Agency forecasts the world’s greater dependency on Middle Eastern oil. Global demand for oil will rise from 82.4 million barrels per day in 2004 to 121 million barrels per day in 2030, a 50% increase. The Oil Producing and Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) share of world oil supplies will rise from 35% to over 50% by 2030. Oil trade between producer and consumer countries will double, ‘Most of that additional trade will have to pass through vital choke-points, sharply increasing the possibilities of supply disruption.’ With oil prices between $40-50 a barrel the scramble for oil is accelerating and with it the fight for territory and power. Imperialism is a struggle between the great powers to divide and redivide the world.
Between them Iraq and Saudi Arabia hold close to one third of known oil reserves. The US and British ruling classes cannot renounce control over this resource. In August this year Royal Dutch Shell and BP bid for the right to advise the Iraqi interim government on how to develop the Kirkuk and Rumail oil fields. Approximately 60 British companies are currently working in Iraq with business worth $2.6 billion. 1,850 UK citizens are registered as working there.
In January Libya will launch a ‘road-show’ offering up its oil reserves to bids from multinational corporations. In the Caspian Basin it is said of David Woodward, head of BP Amoco in Azerbaijan, that he is as powerful as the ruling Aliyev family; ‘If we pull out of Baku, the country would collapse overnight,’ according to a BP spokesperson.
BP has recently announced that together with its Russian partner Rosneft it has found oil near Sakhalin, an island north of Japan. China is competing with Japan for Siberian oil. This November Japan identified a Chinese nuclear submarine in Japanese waters, leading the Japanese foreign minister to demand an apology from the Chinese government. China has begun a gas project in the sea close to Japan and the Japanese government fears that China might take reserves claimed by Japan. With the Afghanistan war the US has established military bases from the Caucasus through Central Asia up to China’s western border. China, Europe and Russia have no intention of allowing themselves to be made dependent on the US ruling class.
The China National Petroleum Corporation has invested an estimated $40 billion in overseas energy development since 2000. China has opposed UN sanctions on Sudan. For the past six years China has been the Sudanese government’s main backer, bought 70% of Sudan’s exports, serviced its $20 billion debt and supplied the government with many of its weapons. China’s oil imports have grown 35% this year; between them Sudan and Iran supply 20% of China’s oil imports. China is building a 600 mile $2 billion oil pipeline across Burma, thereby avoiding the choke-point of the Malacca Straits. China is developing Gwadar Port in Pakistan from which it hopes to bring oil and gas from the Gulf through a pipeline over the Karakoran Pass to Xinjiang Province. In September 2003 China tested a prototype new jet fighter, the Xiao Long FC1, jointly produced with Pakistan and intended to rival the US F-16. Seeking Saudi Arabian oil, China has provided Saudi Arabia with access to China’s market and supplies of weapons, including ballistic missiles that the US and Europe have refused to sell to Saudi Arabia.
In response the US, Israel and India are forming a military axis. In September 2003 Sharon’s visit to India was the first by an Israeli Prime Minister to that country. The US government gave permission for Israel to sell its Phalcon early warning radar system to India. Israel intends to sell India its Arrow ballistic missile system. October 2003 saw the largest ever Indo-US naval exercise. India and Sri Lanka have recently signed a defence pact; the US Navy has designs on Trincomalee, a deep-water port in the Tamil region. India is competing with China for oil resources. It has invested $1.5 billion in Sudan and is considering building a pipeline across Burma and another from Iran to India via Pakistan. On 17 November the US government announced the biggest arms sale to Pakistan in over 14 years, worth $1.2 billion, including surveillance aircraft and missiles.
Across Africa the French state is sparring with the US. This July the French government announced a new military pact with Algeria involving weapons, training and intelligence. In October the European Union (EU) and Syria signed an association agreement giving Syria greater access to European markets. However, the US state imposed a trade embargo on Syria earlier this year, calling the country an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ citing the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. France is edging Syria to remove its troops from Lebanon and seeks to re-establish the Middle East role it lost after the Second World War.
The US threatened to use a 25 November meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the UN Security Council. US bellicosity was thwarted a week before the meeting when France, Germany and Britain (EU3) reached an agreement with the Iranian government for Iran to voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment. The US State Department said ‘verification and sustainability’ were key. US Secretary of State Powell accused Iran of developing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear bomb.
A dwindling coalition
This is the context of growing inter-imperialist rivalry in which the ‘coalition of the willing’ is dwindling and the British Labour government volunteered the Black Watch regiment to help with the attack on Fallujah. In September President Bush asked the United Nations to help the coalition forces in Iraq. His request was rejected and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said the war was illegal. In November the Netherlands and Hungary announced they were pulling their troops out of Iraq by March 2005. Ten states have either already pulled their forces out or announced their intention to do so. Prime Minister Blair rang the leader of Hungary’s centre-right opposition party to ask them to vote to keep Hungary’s forces in Iraq. His plea was rejected. US General James Jones, Nato’s top military commander, said that ten Nato member countries were refusing to send troops to Iraq for a training mission and that this threatened the mission and the ‘cohesion of the alliance’. The US has complained that France and Germany have forbidden staff stationed at Nato headquarters to participate in Iraq missions, breaching the Nato treaty requiring officers assigned to it to be subordinate to Nato and not national government command.
It is entirely in keeping with the Labour government’s willingness to deploy British forces on dangerous missions that the Black Watch regiment was sent to central Iraq. Prime Minister Blair proposed sending ground troops in to Serbia in 1999 and dispatched British soldiers in to Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains when the US asked for help in 2001. British military commanders twice refused US requests to send troops to the Baghdad area. The current commander of the Black Watch sent an e-mail in which he said, ‘I hope the government knows what it has got itself into. I’m not sure they fully appreciate the risks.’ The Black Watch arrived at Camp Dogwood on 28 October and came under mortar attack the following day. The attacks continue. Five British soldiers have been killed as a result of the posting so far, including a Fijian soldier serving with the Black Watch, one of over 2,000 Fijians in British regiments.
A British military report on the incidence of mental health problems among the troops records that in the year from March 2003 460 soldiers were treated for problems and 52 diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. A reason given for the high incidence of illness is a lack of belief in the justice of the war. Seventeen US soldiers are under investigation for refusing to undertake a convoy; they called it a ‘suicide mission’. Five hundred Iraqi recruits are reported to have refused to take part in the attack on Fallujah. The fighting in Iraq is now more intense than at any time since the March 2003 invasion. During the first three days of the ground attack on Fallujah more US soldiers were reported killed across Iraq than in Fallujah. The US military suffered 77 deaths in September. On 2 October total US dead in Iraq was 1,056, by 21 November this had risen to 1,227 dead.
The US and British states need every ally they can get. All the more disgraceful then that the British Trade Union Congress and Labour Party voted this Autumn for extending the military occupation and thereby offered the murder of Fallujah a shred of legitimacy.
Divide and rule
Key to the US and British strategy is the proposed 30 January 2005 election. It is being used to try and divide and buy off potential opponents. In Sadr City in Baghdad, scene of fierce resistance to the occupation forces at the time of the April attack on Fallujah, a US spokesperson explains their tactics as ‘engagement with community leaders along with precision targeted strikes.’ They seek to engage as many political forces as possible with the electoral process and attack those that refuse. On 7 November, as the ground attack on Fallujah began, it was announced that some followers of Muqtada Al Sadr would join a Shia list of candidates sponsored by Ayatollah Al Sistani. Al Sadr’s supporters had been apportioned a minimum of 12% of the 275 parliamentary seats. This 12% is part of 52% of seats allocated to religious-based political movements. Of these, two thirds are set aside for three Shia parties. These are divide and rule elections. With the guerrilla war escalating, the Coalition forces are trying to confine combat to Sunni areas. Some of Al Sadr’s supporters denounced any elections held under US occupation and conducted armed resistance.
The occupation forces’ most reliable ally has been the Kurds, who have proved to be the most willing fighters alongside the US troops. The Kurds retain relative autonomy in northern Iraq. Delegates of the oil-rich Shia southern provinces met in the summer to discuss setting up an autonomous region. Imperialism may calculate that partition of Iraq offers a way for them to dominate the country and control its resources.
This year’s US military spending of $437 billion is 50% higher than in 2001. It is exacerbating already soaring government and trade debts. For the US there will come a day of reckoning. Military force is no mere act of will, but depends upon the production of weapons, and this depends upon production in general (Engels). US manufacturing output in the 1960s at the time of the Vietnam War constituted 27% of the economy and provided 24% of employment. In 2003 manufacturing amounted to 13.8% of gross domestic product and 10.5% of employment. The US industrial base is shrinking and with it the manufacturing and engineering capacity to achieve military domination of the world. New rivals will emerge. ‘Some new (European Union) states are large arms producers and exporters. The EU is now home to more than 400 companies in 23 countries manufacturing small arms and light weapons – hardly less than the US.’ Le Monde Diplomatique, November 2004.
The tragedy of Iraq
On 29 October the scientific journal the Lancet estimated that 100,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the US and British invasion. 84% of the deaths were attributed to the occupation forces, of which 95% were due to air attacks and artillery, the majority of the victims being women and children. The British Labour government moved quickly to cast doubt on the report and received the support of much of the media. On 18 November the Lloyd Inquiry confirmed the existence of Gulf War Syndrome among British troops and acknowledged the use of Depleted Uranium (DU) as a likely cause. 340 tons of DU were dropped on Iraq in 1991 and even more has been used in the current war. Incidences of malignancy in children in the Basra area have more than trebled since 1990 and leukaemia follows the same trend. ‘In 2003 The Christian Science Monitor measured radiation levels in Baghdad 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal, adding that in this year’s war on Iraq, the Pentagon used its radioactive arsenal mainly in the urban centres, rather than in desert battlefields as in “91”.’ (CND Press Release). CND calls the use of DU ‘nuclear war by the back door.’
But part of the tragedy of Iraq and the horror of Fallujah is the feeble opposition to the war in Britain and the US. All those who remain in the Labour Party sustain this government and are thereby complicit in the slaughter in Iraq.
‘We are in Vietnam to fulfil one of the most solemn pledges of the American nation. We will stand in Vietnam.’ Less than a decade after US President Johnson uttered these words US forces withdrew from Vietnam. They never lost a major military battle but received a terrific political defeat. The savagery of the US colossus will not destroy the will of the Iraqi people to resist. Somewhere in the ruins of Fallujah, in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra they are fashioning the weapons and devising the tactics that will drive the invaders from Iraq.
Afghanistan – an imperialist democracy
The US and British governments proclaimed another victory for democracy with the election of their man Hamid Karzai as President in October. Recently visiting Afghanistan the writer Charles Glass reports that more districts are falling to the Taliban each month. ‘US forces controlled only three of the eleven districts of Zabul…In Uruzgan province…the Taliban ran four of the 14 districts. All the southern provinces near Pakistan – Hillmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Paktika and Paktya – have become Taliban havens.’ Osama bin Laden’s number two, Ayman Al Zawahiri, said of the US in Iraq and Afghanistan that if they continue to fight ‘they will bleed to death’ but ‘if they withdraw they will lose everything’. (Charles Glass, The London Review of Books, 18 November 2004)
In the north of Afghanistan the US allows the warlords to rule through extortion, customs’ duties on borders and opium sales. The US State Department admits that opium cultivation is now at an all-time record. In 2001 Prime Minister Blair said that the invasion of Afghanistan would remove both the Taliban and the opium trade. The British government has provided £70 million over three years to fight a trade worth $2.8 billion a year to Afghanistan. This November the British Home Office said that 95% of heroin in Britain comes from Afghanistan.
FRFI 182 December 2004 / January 2005
