Posted on 11/15/2004 9:29:10 AM PST by saquin
Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah's bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule.
As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week's offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured.
Flyposters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death. Amid the rubble of the main shopping street, one decree bearing the insurgents' insignia - two Kalashnikovs propped together - and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city's library or face execution.
The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the "Mujahidin Advisory Council" through which they ran the city.
Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.
Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head.
Just six metres away on the same street lay the decomposing corpse of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels.
It was initially thought to be either the body of Margaret Hassan, the Dublin-born aid worker with dual British and Iraqi nationality who was kidnapped last month, or a Polish woman kidnapped two weeks ago. A Polish official said today there was no evidence to suggest that the body was that of the kidnapped Pole.
Although the US military says it is now in control of the Sunni Muslim city, US forces were today attacking diehard rebel positions in the south of Fallujah, including an underground bunker complex of steel-reinforced tunnels containing weapons including an anti-aircraft artillery gun.
"What you’re seeing now are some of the hardliners, they seem to be better equipped than some of the earlier ones, we’ve seen flak jackets on some of them," Major General Richard Natonski, the Marine general who commanded the Fallujah offensive, told the BBC.
"I think they’re probably willing to lay down their lives in the fight. But we’re more determined and we’re going to wipe them out," he said.
The Iraqi Red Crescent today abandoned plans to take an aid convoy into the city after being refused entry by US forces who deny that there is any humanitarian emergency. The seven-truck convoy was instead heading to nearby villages, where tens of thousands of refugees from Fallujah are camped out.
Meanwhile International Red Cross spokesman today claimed that in the hours before the attack began, US troops had been preventing Iraqi males of military age from leaving Fallujah. Ahmed Ravi told the ITV News Channel: "There are still civilians inside Fallujah who are in serious need for any kind of help. Also, the water treatment plan, under control of Iraqi and American troops, is not functioning right now."
At least 38 US soldiers, five Iraqi soldiers and 1,200 insurgents are thought to have been killed during the week-long offensive, but civilian casualties are unclear - except for an implausible denial from Iyad Allawi, the acting Iraqi Prime Minister, that there are any.
Witness accounts appeared to contradict him. A member of an Iraqi relief committee told al-Jazeera television he saw 22 bodies buried in rubble in Fallujah’s northern Jolan district yesterday.
"Of the 22 bodies, five were found in one house as well as two children whose ages did not exceed 15 and a man with an artificial leg," Mohammed Farhan Awad said."Some of the bodies we found had been eaten by stray dogs and cats. It was a very painful sight."
A source close to Dr Allawi said this morning that two of the Prime Minister's female relatives abducted last week were freed last night. But Dr Allawi's 75-year-old cousin was still being held.
A previously unknown rebel group last week threatened to behead Dr Allawi's cousin, his wife and their heavily pregnant daughter-in-law unless the assault on Fallujah was stopped.
Such is the fear that the heavily armed militants held over Fallujah that many of the residents who emerged from the ruins welcomed the US marines, despite the massive destruction their firepower had inflicted on their city.
A man in his sixties, half-naked and his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition, cursed the insurgents as he greeted the advancing marines on Saturday night.
"I wish the Americans had come here the very first day and not waited eight months," he said, trembling. Nearby, a mosque courtyard had been used as a weapons store by the militants.
Another elderly man, who did not want his name used for fear the rebels would one day return and restore their draconian rule, said he was detained by the militants last Tuesday and held for four days before being freed. He described how he had then sought refuge in a friend's house where they had huddled together clutching Korans in silent prayer for their lives as the massive US bombardment put the insurgents to flight.
"It was horrible," he told an AFP reporter."We suffered from the bombings. Innocent people died or were wounded by the bombings.
"But we were happy you did what you did because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time."
The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.
"They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys," said Iyad Assam, 24. "I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe."
It was not just pedlars of alcohol or Western videos and women deemed improperly dressed who faced the militants' wrath. Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced.
One devotee of a Sufi sect, followers of a mystical form of worship deemed herectical by the hardliners, told how he and other members of his order had lived in terror inside their homes for fear of retribution.
"It was a very hard life. We couldn't move. We could not work," said the man sporting the white robe and skullcap prescribed by his faith. "If they had any issue with a person, they would kill him or throw him in jail."
As a Canadian, I would like to thank the American armed forces for this stunning victory to achieve peace.
Are you sure?
...his underwear stained with blood from shrapnel wounds from a US munition...
How can the reporter tell the shrapnel is from a US munition? If he doesn't know for sure it becomes an anti-US assumption. (Then again, maybe we're the only ones using "ball ammo".)
I guess a "good" article is relative. But compared to the US MSM, it was a real flag waver.
That's true. Too much MSM has made me cynical.
This article's byline indicates it was pieced together from the Times' own reporting and AFP reporting. How much do you want to bet the stuff about civilian casualties caused by the U.S. comes from the "Agence-France Press" portions of the article?
Overall, it was a good article. But the Times articles written by James Hider, who is embedded with the troops and was wounded early on by shrapnel, have been the best I've read so far. I'm sure there will be more interesting things in whatever story he writes for tomorrow's paper.
There's no about the foreign element involved here. In fact, that is precisely why there has been hardly a word of protest from the secular leadership of other Islamic countries about the U.S. assault on Fallujah.
One of the more telling stories of the last week was the discovery of 20 bodies in an insurgent hideout; they were primarily Jordanians. In a scene reminiscent of the battle in The Lord of the Rings between the orcs of Sauron (the "Red Eye") and Saruman (the "White Hand"), they had all been executed by fellow Iraqi insurgents -- apparently after they were caught trying to leave a city that they had originally promised to defend.
Interesting read bump!
fyi
ow! What a bunch of hard asses!
You mean to tell me, the GFCC (Greater Fallujah Chamber of Commerce) didn't stand up to them!
That WAS the Greater Fallujah Chamber of Commerce!
Hallelujah! Dennis Prager covered this story on his show today (11-16-04 Tues;
in the later part of the first hour and into the second hour).
For interested lurkers outslde the Los Angeles area, I think you can hear this
on a archived loop at
http://www.krla870.com
on the "listen live" page from about noon today until 9AM Wed. Just click the
Dennis Prager picture and suffer through the adverts first!
Bump for publicity...
Talk show host Dennis Prager (and VOA) say this article won't make into the American MSM...
Check your local/state papers today and tomorrow to see if it does...
(the MSM is too busy trying to hang a Marine, heck, any US soldier for a "war crime" to
report this "propaganda"....)
Yet the Liberals claim we should not be in Iraq at all.
Moral midgets is what they are.
That's where I heard this story.
I can't believe CBS didn't lead off their nightly "news" show with it.
is that an "M" on his hat - as in "Mc Donalds???"
Embedded reporters for who? The enemy?
Sites has shown his true colors and they are not America's.
Furthermore, the whole policy of embedded reporters needs to be overhauled but better yet, tossed out with the nightly news. Can you imagine if Sites was doing his ideological "thing" in WWII or Korea? We'd all be speaking German or Russian.
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