Anas Al-Tikriti* on how Falluja inadvertently became a symbol of resistance Few would have imagined that the name of a small and previously obscure city in Iraq would echo around the world. Falluja, with a population of 350,000, has become a by-word for resistance to the United States' occupation of Iraq. The people of the city are known throughout Iraq for their conservatism and puritanical lifestyles. In some places Falluja is mentioned with anger and rage; in others the name conjures pride, solidarity and empathy. The fact that Falluja has become a popular girls' name among Muslim families in Asia, Europe and beyond says it all. Falluja has become the embodiment of the spectacular failure of the American project in Iraq, and to many this can only mean good news. However, while many around the world rejoice at the continued bewilderment of the coalition forces, the fact that a full-scale humanitarian tragedy is steadily unfolding cannot be ignored. The siege imposed around the city by more than 18,000 American troops forced the vast majority of its residents to flee. Some reports described an exodus of almost 300,000 people trying to escape what they knew would be a brutal assault on their home town. Many took shelter in cattle-sheds, chicken pens and rubbish dumps. Others, though, were less fortunate. The 50,000 remaining inside the city are the ones who usually get left behind in such tragic circumstances: they are the elderly, the sick, the young, the deprived and those who have nowhere else to go and no one to look after them. The circumstances they now face are desperate. There is no electricity, no water or sanitary facilities, no medical care. Food and potable water had become dangerously scarce by the time Muslims around the world were celebrating Eid Al-Fitr, and the most lethal means of transportation inside Falluja was officially declared to be the ambulance. Yet incredibly, when the Muslim Association of Britain issued a press release on 12 November drawing attention to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Falluja it had been given next to no coverage in the British or American media. As one American general put it: "This was going to be a clean operation." No one outside Falluja was going to see or smell the stench. What followed has been one of the most fierce street battles of recent times, fought between heavily armed, highly-trained and professional American soldiers and street-fighters who possess little beyond resolve, self-belief and convictions. Who they were, how many, where they were from, what their strategy and battle-plan was and what they aimed to do if they were to triumph, no one was told. Or maybe no one actually knew. The only thing that we were told was that they were insurgents and foreign fighters and that they were led by the brutal and gruesome Abu Mossab Al-Zarqawi. A few months ago Al-Zarqawi was reported to be a one-legged fighter with a grudge against anything American. More recently he appeared -- or so we are told -- on video, able-bodied and fully capable of decapitating civilian hostages. The interim Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi claimed, almost absurdly, that foreign insurgents had taken the city of Falluja hostage and that this operation was a "to free it and its people". One of the most pervasive features of this war is the stacking up of evidence condemning the occupiers, their methods and techniques. The world was shaken by the sickening images of torture and physical and sexual abuse that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison a few months ago. And now film has been made public showing the cold-blooded execution of an injured man lying helpless in the ruins of a Falluja mosque. Such images will hardly endear US troops to the Iraqis who are growing ever more restless in areas previously perceived as stable. There will be another whitewash. Perhaps the soldier in question will be disciplined. He may even be sentenced to a prison term. Few people, though, are foolish enough to think that such inhumane practices are the isolated cases the Pentagon insists they are, or that they do not reach far higher up the chain of command than we are constantly told. Falluja will be recaptured by the American forces with the blessings of Iraq's interim government. Mosul, and other areas causing immense embarrassment to the occupation, may also be re-classified as under control. This does not alter the fact that day after day the coalition forces and the government they helped install are steadily losing grip on whatever meagre support and sympathy they managed to accumulate in March and April 2003. They are also facing an ever- growing band they foolishly insist on labelling as foreign fighters and insurgents. One might have expected the much vaunted January elections to be the talk of a nation deprived of any such expression of freedom and democracy for decades. It is telling that very few Iraqis take the elections seriously. Until there is a genuine admission of fault and failure by those who launched this belligerent war against Iraq and a clear statement to fully withdraw their military forces, allowing the people of Iraq to form their own administration within their own time, through the means they decide best able to build their own future, then Falluja will not be the final chapter of this tragic story. * The writer is the former president and spokesman of the Muslim Association of Britain.
