November 4, 2004 - The media focus on the U.S. presidential campaign has sidelined vital information about two dramatic developments taking place in Iraq: the further growth of the resistance and preparations for an all-out U.S. attack on Falluja.

As aircraft roar overhead, the U.S. has moved tanks and armored vehicles into position around the city and cut off the main road leading west to Jordan. Britain's Black Watch battalion has left Basra for the Baghdad area to free up U.S. military units for an assault on Falluja.

The head negotiating team in Falluja announced that peace talks with the U.S.-appointed "interim government" had reached a deadlock. "The peace talks have stopped because there are parties in the government which do not want a political solution for Falluja," Sheik Khaled al-Jumaiyli told the Xinhua news agency on Oct. 25. (Xinhuanet)

Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a U.S. puppet, has demanded as part of the negotiations that the people hand over Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the group Tawhid and Jihad. The people of Falluja say they cannot hand him over because he is not there. (See accompanying appeal of people of Falluja to Kofi Annan: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=6601 ) They say they will permit Iraqi police to come into the city but will not permit any U.S. forces to set foot in Falluja.

"Jumaiyli called on the people of Falluja to stand shoulder to shoulder and to prepare themselves to face a U.S. offensive if the peace talks failed," continued Xinhua. Meanwhile, U.S. forces attacked in the Jolan district in western Falluja and the Askari district in the northwest.

The U.S. military continues to pound the city from the air and bombard the outskirts with tanks and artillery. The "softening up" process is carried out under the phony pretext of bombing "safe houses" of al-Zarqawi. After each raid the Pentagon announces the death of "aides to Zarqawi." Meanwhile, civilian deaths and injuries are piling up, houses are destroyed, and the population is being forced to emigrate to safety.

These raids against the so-called "terror network" are a carbon copy of Ariel Sharon's policy in Gaza and the West Bank, where Israel carries out raid after raid under the guise of going after a "major terrorist leader." Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children have been killed and wounded in an unsuccessful attempt to force an end to the Palestinian national resistance.

The so-called "precision strikes" on so-called "terrorists" are actually precision strikes against the civilian population. "U.S. warplanes pummeled Falluja on Sunday as intense battles raged on the outskirts of the insurgent-held city," wrote the Washington Post of Oct. 18. "Witnesses reported that U.S. forces fired on a vehicle carrying a family fleeing the fighting, killing all five passengers."

The Christian Science Monitor of Oct. 19 reported how the bombing is affecting the children of Falluja. "Classes began Oct. 1," wrote the Monitor, "and lasted just two days. Since then, the children have hardly slept, their parents say, kept awake by the constant crash and vibrations of explosions."

Ahmad Salim, a father taking his family from Falluja to Baghdad, told the Monitor about another so-called "precision strike" two weeks earlier "when a huge air-dropped bomb landed a few hundred yards from Salim's house at 2 a.m." After the attack Salim made his way to the two-family house that was targeted.

"He will never forget the image that greeted him, and never forgive. 'Most of them were children, all of them dead,' Salim says of the families he helped dig out of the rubble with bare hands.

"The targeted house often hosts weddings and other gatherings.

"'What did this teach us about the Americans?' asked Mrs. Salim. 'First we thought the Americans came to liberate our country, but now our conclusion is the opposite. We know they came to destroy our country.'"

It is this hatred of the occupation that compels the people of Falluja to stand and fight rather than let colonial occupiers enter the city. Falluja has become the symbol of resistance, not only in Iraq but in the entire Arab world and beyond.

Salim and the entire population of Falluja remember the brutal assault last April when U.S. bombs, artillery and snipers killed 600 to 800 people. Snipers killed people as they were trying to leave the city, trying to reach stranded children, and driving ambulances to assist the wounded and pick up the dead.

It was wholesale butchery carried out over a period of a month by U.S. Marines. Finally, they were beaten back and President George W. Bush ordered a truce in order to keep the military crisis from escalating and doing political damage at home and in the Arab world.

Massacre in name of democracy

Since then, however, the Bush administration has decreed that Iraq should have a "democratic election" in January. This phony election was originally planned as an attempt to justify the invasion and occupation, to stabilize the country politically, and to put in place a loyal puppet regime with the mantle of a "popular mandate," thus permitting the legal takeover of the country by U.S. corporations, oil companies and the Pentagon.

It was relatively easy for the imperialists to form an interim puppet government with a former CIA operative, Allawi, as the prime minister. They rounded up a few hundred collaborators and conciliators in a hall in the Green Zone, the secure bastion of the U.S. military command--although several rockets did fall there during the ceremonies. After twisting arms, Washington came out with its so-called "interim government."

It is another thing altogether to organize an election, involving millions of people in a country seething with hatred for the U.S. occupation and a resistance movement growing stronger every day. This scenario has created a self-made, increasingly acute political crisis for the U.S. occupation.

The Pentagon must try to crush the resistance if it is to stage manage an election. And the militarists in the Pentagon view the conquest of Falluja as the key to establishing control on the ground in Iraq.

Dozens of cities are not under their control right now. They recently took control of Samarra, but the resistance has resurfaced and Iraqi National Guard soldiers have been killed and wounded by roadside bombs at a checkpoint south of the city.

During the first invasion of Falluja in April, the regional and national character of the resistance showed itself. Caravans drove from Najaf, Baghdad and other cities to aid Falluja.

Journalist Patrick Graham went there during the second week of fighting. He wrote in the Oct. 19 Guardian of Britain that "We left Baghdad and drove down roads guarded by guerrilla fighters. The countryside from Ramadi east to Falluja and then to Baghdad was in revolt. We had to pass through resistance lines to get to the Marines and then through insurgents to get into the city. It was the Marines who were surrounded, not the rebels.

"The Americans have more than enough troops to attack Falluja," continued Graham, "but as soon as they do the area will once more erupt, and it will take everything the Americans have to control the surrounding villages of Habbaniya, Khaldiya and Al Kharma. According to the Iraqi president, Ghazi al-Yawar, there is a good chance that when the Marines hit Falluja again, even Mosul, home to 3 million, will explode."

Since the April assault, the resistance has grown. The Pentagon has raised its estimate of guerrilla fighters from about 2,000 to between 8,000 and 12,000. Of course, they have no accurate count, but it is clear there has been a great advance.

The more important point is the relationship between the population and the fighters. The greater number of fighters means the support network among the population is undoubtedly growing by leaps and bounds, showing the political weakness of the occupation.

The New York Times of Oct. 24 reported that attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces have grown 30 percent since Ramadan began on Oct. 15. "Attacks against allied and Iraqi forces and civilians are now averaging 80 to 100 per day," wrote the Times, up from 60 to 80 during September and the first half of October.

Moktada al-Sadr, the Shiite cleric who led two uprisings against the occupation and has recently made some sort of agreement to reduce the arms of his followers, made a statement of support for the people of Falluja, excerpted in the German newspaper Junge Welt of Oct. 25:

"In a statement, which was distributed on Saturday evening in Baghdad," wrote Junge Welt, "and the Shiite pilgrimage city of Najaf, he said: 'I stand at your side, no matter which course you decide on. ... I am ready to help the Mujahedin in Falluja wherever I am able to, but I hope at the same time that your city can be spared a war, because the occupation powers know no mercy.' Liberty and democracy are not possible under occupation. Sadr demanded that the Iraqis themselves should decide their fate."

At each turn the Pentagon faces more than it ever thought it would have to deal with. This has been true from day one of the war. In fact, the scandal over the 380 tons of missing HX and RDX munitions, whose existence and whereabouts were told to the U.S. government by the International Atomic Energy Agency in March 2003, can undoubtedly be explained by the low priority given it by the military. They thought they would be in complete control of the country and never dreamed that the munitions would be used against them by a national resistance.

The morale of U.S. troops is sinking. The New York Times of Oct. 24 quoted a Marine stationed in Ramadi, where the troops have to drive a 4.5-mile "suicide run" every day to supply their bases in the city. "This is Vietnam," said Cpl. Daniel Planalp, 21, of San Diego. "I don't even know why we are over here fighting. We're fighting for survival. The Iraqis don't want us here."

Reprinted from the Nov. 4, 2004, issue of Workers World newspaper

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