Doug Lorimer
Iraqi resistance fighters are steadily rolling back the US-led occupation of their country, turning one city after another into a "no-go" zone for the occupation troops.
Over the past eight months, US troops have been driven out of Fallujah and then Ramadi, cities to the west of Baghdad, with populations of 250,000 and 500,000 respectively. Samarra, 100 kilometres north of Baghdad, has become the latest Iraqi city that US troops have been forced out of.
Associated Press reported on September 3 that "Samarra, an ancient city of 250,000 known for its 9th Century spiral minaret, is controlled by about 500 fighters from three well-known Sunni Muslim rebel groups, according to city residents and the US military".
"These guys are well-trained and they're motivated. They'll stand up and fight", Captain Scott Synowiez, an intelligence officer at the US Army's 1st Infantry Division based on the outskirts of the city, told AP. For example, on August 14 resistance fighters fought on the city's edges for seven hours against US armoured units, which were supported by repeated US warplane drops of 500kg bombs on the rebels' positions.
The September 5 Washington Post reported that "about 1100 US soldiers were wounded in Iraq in August, by far the highest combat injury toll for any month since the war began and an indication of the intensity of battles flaring in urban areas.
"US medical commanders say the sharp rise in battlefield injuries reflects more than three weeks of fighting by two army and one marine battalion in the southern city of Najaf. At the same time, US units frequently faced combat in a sprawling Shiite Muslim slum in Baghdad and in the Sunni cities of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra, all of which remain under the control of insurgents two months after the transfer of political authority" to Washington's puppet Interim Government of Iraq (IGI).
In an article headlined "One by One, Iraqi Cities Become No-Go Zones", the September 5 New York Times reported that "Samarra is the most recent place where the American military has decided that pulling out and standing back may be the better part of valor, even if insurgents take over... The pullback began in the west, in Fallujah, which the marines surrounded and attacked in April..."
In fact, US Army troops withdrew from Fallujah, 55km west of Baghdad, in early February. In mid-March, they were replaced by US marines, whose commanders vowed to reconquer the city. However, after a bloody three-week siege in which at least 700 Fallujah residents were killed, US marine commanders called off their assault when it provoked massive demonstrations in Baghdad in solidarity with Fallujah's resistance fighters.
"In recent months, much of the rest of the surrounding area, Anbar Province, has slipped away from American control", the NYT added. "Insurgents roam freely in the provincial capital, Ramadi, and the Americans appear to have abandoned a permanent presence inside the city...
"There is a huge difference, of course, between the pullbacks in Fallujah and Samarra and the ones in the Shiite cities. In Karbala and Najaf, the Americans cleared the way for Iraqi police officers... In places like Fallujah, Samarra and Ramadi, on the other hand, the Americans and the [puppet] Iraqi government appear to have forfeited their influence. Residents of all three places say insurgents are in charge."
US commanders agreed to pull their troops out of the centre of Najaf, 150km south of Baghdad, and the nearby Shiite holy city of Kufa after a deal brokered in late August by representatives of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's most respected Shiite cleric.
Once the formal cease-fire went into effect in Najaf, rebel Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr announced that his Mahdi Army militia, which had fought pitched battles against US troops for three weeks in Najaf, would cease attacks on US and other occupation forces. Sadr's representatives then sought to negotiate a mutual and permanent cease-fire with US military officials.
On August 30, spokespersons for Sadr said his movement would participate in the planned January 2 national parliamentary elections on a platform calling for the withdrawal of US occupation forces.
"We did what you asked us to do, to make peace. Don't make us go and fight again", Sadr spokesperson Sheik Nasser al Saadi warned in his September 3 sermon at the main mosque in the heart of Sadr City, the huge Shiite slum neighbourhood in Baghdad named after Moqtada al Sadr's father, a respected ayatollah who was killed by Saddam Hussein's regime. Sadr City is inhabited by around 2.5 million people and is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.
However, US military commanders remain determined to crush Sadr's movement. Associated Press reported on September 2 that Major General Peter Chiarelli, commander of the US Army's 1st Cavalry Division, said that the US military must retake Sadr City and disarm the Mahdi Army.
"We feel very strongly that Sadr City is not Najaf", Chiarelli told AP. "You have a totally different set of parameters in Sadr City", he added, presumably meaning that there are no Shiite shrines in the giant slum district.
"Avoiding civilian casualties in the crowded neighborhood, however, poses a difficulty", the AP report warned, adding: "Some observers contend that US assaults on al Sadr's forces have only increased his popularity, particularly because he has twice emerged with his militia intact."
On September 6, AP reported that Lieutenant-General Thomas Metz, the US Army's second in command in Iraq, told reporters that a US assault on one or more of Iraq's three main "no-go" areas — including Fallujah — is likely in the next four months.
"Metz's announcement came after a month that saw attacks on US forces reach an average of almost 100 per day — the highest level since the end of major combat last year", AP reported. "The rebel-held western city of Fallujah is the biggest obstacle, he said. The next biggest problem, in US military terms, is Samarra...
"Besides these centers of rebellion, large sections of Iraq remain beyond government control... These include Sunni Muslim areas north and west of Baghdad and, perhaps, southern Shiite cities such as Basra, where sections resist US or British troops."
US commanders now acknowledge that their previous estimate of the number of full-time Iraqi resistance fighters — 5000 — was much too low. AP reported on September 5 that a US military spokesperson said that there were "up to 12,000 full-time insurgents, a number that swells when part-timers are active".
This figure does not include the 3000 regular soldiers in the Fallujah Protective Army — the rebel force commanded by former Iraqi Army officers that US marine commanders formally handed over control of the city to on May 1.
On September 3, the US marines launched their first direct attack on the FPA, which US commanders call the "Fallujah Brigade" in an attempt to give the impression that it is part of Washington's puppet Iraqi security forces.
Captain Majid Ahmad Salim, the FPA's commander in the southern part of the city, said an FPA checkpoint on the outskirts of Fallujah came under fire from US tanks outside the city. Two FPA soldiers were killed and two were wounded. Two civilians were also killed and four wounded in the shelling, Dr Adel Khamees of the Fallujah General Hospital, told reporters.
A day earlier, US air strikes on two alleged "terrorist safe houses" in Fallujah killed 17 people, including three children, one woman and one elderly man, local doctors told the Reuters news agency. The US military began weekly air attacks on Fallujah in late June after the FPA refused to carry out US commanders' orders to disarm the city's residents.
According to a September 6 US Knight Ridder Newspapers report, Fallujah is being used by a resurgent Baath (Arab Renaissance) Party as "the model to recruit new members or woo former Baathists back into the fold". KRN reported that the revived Baath Party is "going strong with sophisticated computer technology, high-level infiltration of the new government and plenty of recruits in thousands of disenchanted, impoverished Sunni Muslim Iraqis, according to interviews with current and former members, Iraqi government officials and groups trying to root out former Baathists".
"The political party", KRN added, "has morphed into a catchall resistance movement that poses a serious challenge to" the IGI. "There are two governments in Iraq", Mithal al Alusi, director general of the IGI's Supreme National Commission for De-Baathification, told KRN. The neo-Baathists, he said, "are stealing the power of the new government. Their work is organised and strong."
From Green Left Weekly, September 15, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.