Doug Lorimer
One day after sending 3000 US troops into the rebel city of Samarra in the early hours of October 1, General John Batiste, commander of the US Army's 1st Infantry Division, announced that US troops had "taken control" of the rebel city, located 95 kilometres north-west of Baghdad.
"This is great news for the people of Samarra, 200,000 people who have been held captive, hostage if you will, by just a couple of hundred thugs", Batiste declared, despite the fact that the journalists "embedded" with the US troops reported that the city's streets were deserted. Indeed, there was not a single report of anyone, other than the US troops themselves, celebrating the "great news".
Following the US Army's seizure of government buildings in the centre of Samarra on October 2, some 2000 puppet Iraqi National Guard soldiers and police were sent in to give the US re-occupation of the city an Iraqi face.
The October 3 Washington Post reported that US troops were still "engaged in sporadic clashes with insurgents who had dispersed into the narrowest of its closely packed streets to continue fighting in small bands ... One resident with ties to the resistance said fighters learned early in the battle not to gather in groups, which had made inviting targets for US combat aircraft circling over the city."
That same day's British Independent reported that Samarra residents said that most of the resistance fighters had fled early in the US assault and that civilians had borne the brunt of the casualties in the US re-occupation of the city centre.
This is not unusual. According to figures compiled by the Iraqi health ministry, operations by the US-led occupation forces are producing two-and-half times as many casualties as attacks by resistance fighters. The ministry reported that between June 10 and September 10, 1295 Iraqis had been killed by US and other foreign occupation forces, while 516 had been killed in resistance attacks.
"There were American snipers on rooftops who were shooting people trying to get to their homes", Samarra resident Mohammed Ali Amin told the Independent. "Even at the hospital, the Americans arrested injured boys of 15 saying they were insurgents."
"Dead bodies and injured people are everywhere in the city and when we tried to evacuate them, the Americans fired at us", one ambulance driver told Associated Press on October 3. "Later on they told us that we can evacuate only injured women and children and we are not allowed to pick up injured men."
On October 4, Reuters reported that US military commanders estimated there were between 500 and 1000 full-time resistance fighters in Samarra, mostly former Iraqi army officers and soldiers.
The same day's New York Times reported that "American and Iraqi officials said the most difficult challenge was ahead, in re-establishing governmental authority and holding off what is certain to be a new round of attacks from guerrillas who melted away before the surging armies". In fact, this is the third time that US troops have "captured" Samarra from Iraqi resistance forces over the last 18 months.
The October 1 attack on Samarra is being reported by the Western press as the opening shot of a huge offensive by the US military to retake control of "no-go zones" — areas of Iraq that resistance fighters have liberated from the US occupation forces, which include the cities of Samarra, Ramadi, Baquba and Fallujah, as well as the Sadr City slum in Baghdad.
"Samarra was the least difficult of the rebel cities" for the US military to reoccupy, Toby Dodge, Iraq watcher at London University's Queen Mary College, told the BBC World News on October 4. "The US military has been in and out before. It has now gone in to seize it. The bigger question is how you hold it.
"Fallujah is also being softened up in readiness for an attack. But there are a lot of angry people there and it is a big town. It will take a lot of troops and will be a violent struggle."
In the early hours of October 3, US warplanes made bombing raids on residential neighbourhoods in Fallujah, 55km west of Baghdad — the third time in 24 hours that they had bombed the 250,000-strong rebel city.
In an October 4 press statement, the US military said its warplanes had conducted "another precision strike" in a weeks-long campaign of air strikes on Fallujah targeted at alleged Jordanian Islamist Abu Musab al Zarqawi and his followers. However, even US-appointed Iraqi President Ghazi Yawar denounced US air strikes on Iraqi cities as "collective punishment" in an interview broadcast on October 3 by the Arabiya satellite news channel.
Fallujah's armed residents forced US troops out of the city in February, and in April fought off a three-week attempt by 4500 US marines to recapture the city. In recent weeks, US commanders have described Fallujah as a "cancer" because it has provided an inspiring example for the residents of other Iraqi cities to drive out the hated US occupation forces.
Iraqi attacks on US troops are now averaging nearly 90 a day, four times last year's level. While attacks on the occupation forces are most intense in the so-called Sunni Triangle to the west and north of Baghdad, they extend right across the country. The October 3 London Sunday Herald reported that the "British-occupied city of Basra [in southern Iraq] is often held up as a shining example of what can be done when the army takes control of the security situation, but the reality is very different.
"Older soldiers with experience of Northern Ireland are shocked by the intensity of the violence directed against them. During their last tour of duty, the 1st Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders reported that there were few days when their positions did not come under fire and patrols were forced to wear helmets instead of soft caps."
For several weeks now, US troops have engaged in almost daily battles on the outskirts of Baghdad's Sadr City slum with resistance fighters loyal to rebel Shiite leader Moqtada al Sadr. AP reported on October 4 that local residents said US AC-130 gunships had pounded parts of the slum with heavy cannon fire. Twelve Iraqis were killed and 11 wounded in the attacks, Sadr General Hospital director Abdel-Jabar Solag told reporters.
The October 4 New York Times reported that loyalty to Sadr "burns fierce here in northeastern Baghdad, and especially in Sadr City, a vast slum of 2.2 million people, despite frequent American raids and almost nightly air strikes.
"A reporter, photographer and interpreter with the New York Times recently spent nearly 24 hours being guided through the battleground streets — and even to a guerrilla bachelor party — by one of Mr Sadr's midlevel aides. It became apparent that the Mahdi Army here is less a discrete military organization than a populist movement that includes everyone from doctors to policemen to tribal sheiks, and whose ranks swell with impoverished men willing to die."
Agence France Presse reported on October 6 that up to 3000 US troops had begun an assault on rebel-held towns in Babil province, south-west of Baghdad. "Centred on the mainly Shiite town of Hilla, Babil province includes a series of Sunni towns immediately south of the capital that have been bastions of the insurgency plaguing US-led troops virtually since last year's invasion."
AFP also reported a US military statement claiming US troops had taken control of the Jurf al Skhar bridge. It said the bridge, which spans the Euphrates River south-west of Baghdad, "is believed to be a favored corridor for insurgents moving into and out of key cities, including the capital hub and the current AIF sanctuary of Fallujah".
US officials now routinely refer to those fighting their troops in Iraq as AIF ("anti-Iraqi forces") in an attempt to portray Iraqi anti-occupation fighters as "foreigners". However, in a television interview on September 26, General John Abizaid, head of the US Central Command, estimated that the number of foreign anti-occupation fighters in Iraq was below 1000, i.e., less than 5% of the estimated 20,000 full-time resistance fighters.
AP reported on October 5 that US commanders privately acknowledged that the "largest insurgent bloc is composed of Iraqi nationalists fighting to reclaim secular power lost when Saddam Hussein was deposed in April 2003".
Of course, there are large numbers of foreign fighters in Iraq — 160,000 US and other foreign troops and 20,000 foreign mercenaries ("private security contractors" in Pentagonese). But since, in the Orwellian Newspeak promoted by US officials and the Western corporate media, these foreign fighters are there at the "invitation" of the US-installed Interim Government of Iraq, they are not violating Iraq's national sovereignty, whereas the tiny number of non-Iraqi Arabs who have entered the country to help its people throw out the US-led invaders are.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 13, 2004.
Visit the