Doug Lorimer
On June 24, Iraqi resistance fighters forced US Army troops to withdraw to the outskirts of Baquba, a city with 250,000 residents located 56 kilometres north of Baghdad. The assault was part of coordinated attacks against US occupation forces and their Iraqi collaborators in and around Baghdad
The June 25 Washington Post reported: "The 1st Infantry Division soldiers ... had seen nothing like it in their three months here. In dawn-to-dusk fighting, more than 100 armed insurgents overran neighbourhoods and occupied downtown buildings, using techniques that US commanders said resembled those once employed by the Iraqi army. Well-equipped and highly coordinated, the insurgents demonstrated a new level of strength and tactical skill that alarmed the soldiers facing them."
According to the Post, while US commanders had claimed to have driven the insurgents back, they conceded that the "the battle for the city was far from over".
Dahr Jamail, Baghdad correspondent for the US NewStandard website, reported on June 25 that "Baquba today stood eerily reminiscent of Fallujah in April" when 4500 US marines set siege to the city after resistance fighters had driven US Army troops out two months earlier. "The freedom fighters took control of everything here and kicked the Americans out of the city", Abdel Humam, a resident of Baquba, told Jamail.
After a month-long siege of Fallujah that slaughtered at least 700 of the city's residents, the marines ceded control of the city to an Iraqi insurgent army commanded by former Iraqi army officers.
On June 19, however, the US military broke the fragile truce in Fallujah by launching an air strike that killed 22 residents. Since then, it has launched a further four air strikes against Fallujah, killing at least 40 unarmed residents.
US officials in Baghdad claim these air attacks are "precision strikes" against "safehouses" used by "Abu Musab al Zarqawi", an alleged Jordanian-born associate of al Qaeda whom they blame for most of the attacks on the US occupation forces.
While the US State Department has increased the reward for Zarqawi's capture from US$10 million to $25 million (equal to the price on Osama bin Laden's head), curiously, Zarqawi is not on the FBI's list of "most wanted terrorists".
"While it is commonplace to blame all the violence on the al Zarqawi network of jihadist fighters, it is a claim that does not stand up", Peter Beaumont, the British Observer's foreign affairs editor, wrote from Baghdad on June 27. "The majority of anti-coalition acts are still being committed by Iraqis, largely from the Sunni Triangle and Baghdad, whose agenda is shaped by a hatred of an occupation they believe is not really ending this week."
On June 28, New York Times Baghdad correspondent Edward Wong reported: "American commanders concede that they are far from quelling a stubborn and increasingly sophisticated insurgency. It has extended well beyond Saddam Hussein supporters and foreign fighters, spreading to ordinary Iraqis seething at the occupation and its failures. They act at the grassroots level, often with little training or direction, but with a zealousness born of anti-colonial ambitions."
From Green Left Weekly, July 7, 2004.
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