Fallujah: Inside the Resistance

[Barrett808]

Fallujah: Inside the Resistance
PART 1: Losing it
Nir Rosen

In early May I took a taxi from Amman to Baghdad. After passing through Jordanian customs and approaching the Iraqi border post, my driver warned me to remain in the car. The Iraqi resistance had people working for it at the border post, he said, and if they saw my US passport they would contact their friends on the road ahead. They would welcome us with rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. I pushed the seat back as he said and closed my eyes. Soon we were driving east to Baghdad on Iraq's Highway 10, and I had sneaked into the country without any US or Iraqi official’s cognizance. As we drove past the charred hulks of sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) whose drivers had been less savvy than mine, and whose passengers had been less lucky than me, I wondered who else was infiltrating Iraq with the same ease I did.

...

Referring to Iraq’s Highway 10, a former American marine currently working very closely in a civilian capacity with the marine commanders in Fallujah explained to me, “Fallujah sits on a major artery between Baghdad and the rest of the world. There is no fucking way we will let them stand in our path. We’re trying to rebuild the country. Fallujah is in the way. We will be moving massive amounts of people and material in the region. We would have been using the western route a lot more if it was safe.” I asked him who was in control of Fallujah. “I can tell you who is not in control,” he said. “The marines.” He told me of kidnapping incidents he knew about. “People disappear into the hole of Fallujah,” he said. “The mujahideen control the city.” He was suspicious of anointed warlord General Jassim's ability to control the city, telling me, “I don’t trust Jassim or the Fallujah model.” He was convinced that the status quo in Fallujah would have to be corrected. “The situation will change,” he said. “We should have never gone inside the city. This is not a Marine Corps mission. The marines are a mobile, self-sustainable fighting force. The Marine Corps doesn’t do occupation. We would kick ass shutting borders. The Corps does short displays of massive power. The Marine Corps goes into violent situations, kicks ass and then lets the army handle things. The Marine Corps cannot handle logistics or stay long.” The planned handover of sovereignty to the Iraqis on June 30 would not reduce the need to reassert control over Fallujah, he said, adding, “What will be gone after June 30? A three-letter acronym and some Bush flunkies and third-stringers.”

...

A marine colonel responsible for civil-affairs operations in Fallujah admitted to me that he had no role in the negotiations that led to the settlement and knew nothing about them. He and his men were not even permitted to enter the city. Though marine commanders had claimed they would conduct joint patrols with local forces in the city, since May 10 the marines have stayed away. The colonel admitted to me that he did not even know who was in charge of Fallujah.

...

The police, civil-defense corps and Fallujah Bigade, all ostensibly under final US authority, told me they would attack Americans should they enter. Although the well-dressed General Muhamad Latif was said to be in control, and General Jassim dismissed, the men of the Fallujah Brigade were still commanded by Jassim, it was to him they gave their allegiance and it was to him the town leaders came to discuss plans for the new army. Jassim’s men were not arresting the mujahideen. Their ranks included mujahideen. The general himself was beholden to the mujahideen leaders, seeking their approval, collaborating with them, and under their command. The police were afraid of mujahideen units who were terrorizing them and civilians.

...

Should the Fallujah model be applied elsewhere in the Sunni Triangle, it is clear that radical Sunnis in alliance with former Ba'athist officers would seize control - a warlord with a cleric legitimizing him in every city. Within Fallujah, some neighborhoods were still controlled by irredentist mujahideen, bitter at the ceasefire that betrayed their cause. They were threatening the very radical leaders who had tenuous control of the city, condemning their moderation. With no clear leader, the people of Fallujah were worried about internal power struggles turning bloody.

...

Tomorrow: PART 2, The fighting poets

(much more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG16Aa02.html

[Aidoneus]

1. An excellent piece, thanks

Rosen's past work is also worth checking out, though this series may end up his best reporting to date.

The Asia Times is excellent on these matters.

[Aidoneus]

2. PART 2: The fighting poets

On May 11, one day after US marines conducted their last patrol into Fallujah following their decision to pull back and hand over to a Fallujah Brigade after a bloody month-long siege, hundreds of dignitaries gathered under a long tent in the city 50 kilometers west of Baghdad for a poetry celebration organized by the National Front of Iraqi Intellectuals.

It was staged in front of the unfinished Rahma Hospital, and a podium was placed on top of the rough gray stairs at the hospital's entrance, with the front's emblem and Iraqi flags draped on the podium. Tall columns and arches framed the background. Graffiti on the walls of the hospital read, "Long live the mujahideen and the loved ones of Mohammed", "Victory is Fallujah's and defeat for the infidel America" and "the Fallujah martyrs are the lights for the way to the complete liberation of Iraq".

Clerics resplendent in their turbans, tribal leaders wearing white kafiyas, or headscarves, businessmen, military and police officers and men in Ba'athist-style matching solid-color open-collar shirts and pants called "safari suits" sat on plastic chairs under a long tent shading them from the noonday sun. Banners hung on the sides of the tent and walls of the hospital made clear the sentiments of the moment: "All of Fallujah's neighborhoods bear witness to its heroism, steadfastness and virtue", "The stand of Fallujah is the truest expression of the Iraqi identity", "Fallujah, castle of steadfastness and pride" and "The martyrs of Fallujah, Najaf, Kufa and Basra are the pole of the flag that says God is great".

Above the podium, tough-looking men wearing sunglasses and grimaces looked down on the crowd. A banner above them described the event as a poetry festival to support Fallujah against the occupation. Cans of soft drinks and bottles of water were provided for the honored guests.

"Hey Fallujah," called one poet, "when I wrote my poem you were the most beautiful verse inside it and without your stand I could not raise my head again." Another poet, with the strong accent of Shi'ite southern Iraq, declared: "Fallujah is full of real men." Bridging the Sunni-Shi'ite divide, he referred to the important Shi'ite martyr Hussein, who is venerated for defying Sunni tyranny: "From the 'no' of Hussein Fallujah learned so much." He continued that just as "Hussein was supported by 70 of his followers, we have to be like his followers and end the internal strife ... I have a brave friend from Fallujah and I came from Karbala." He led the audience in chants and hand-clapping, calling for unity between Sunnis and Shi'ites.

Another Shi'ite poet from Baghdad, Falah al-Fatlawi, declared that radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Army of the Mahdi militia "awoke for Fallujah, and Sadr's voice from Najaf" declared the value of Fallujah. "We will never sell it," he said, "people sacrificed their spirit for Fallujah, one heart, one line, Sunni and Shi'ite for Fallujah!" Mohammed Khalil Kawkaz recited a poem called "The Fallujah Tragedy" in a barely intelligible local accent. "Fallujah is a tall date palm," he said. "She never accepts anybody touching her dates, she will shoot arrows into the eyes of those who try to taste her, this is Fallujah, your bride, oh Euphrates! She will never fall in love with anyone but you ... Americans dug in the ground and pulled out the roots of the date palm."

--snip--

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG17Ak01.html

[jmcgowanjm]

3. Fallujah is in the way

US aggressors attack wedding party in al-Fallujah, leave 10 civilians wounded.

Latest Thursday night dispatch from embattled ar-Ramadi:
20 Americans killed, four Humvees destroyed.

http://www.freearabvoice.org/Iraq/Report/report101.htm

The Russians killed 60000 est when they
leveled Grozny.

One particular Chechen action was to hang Russian bodies
in front of their positions.

[markses]

4. This is an article that appeared in Harper's 2 months ago

Probably should be in the articles forum now that it's gone full text. Not breaking news.

[Barrett808]

5. You're probably thinking of this New Yorker piece by Rosen

Home Rule - A dangerous excursion into the heart of the Sunni opposition
by NIR ROSEN
Issue of 2004-07-05
Posted 2004-06-28

It does cover much of the same ground, but there's a lot more in this new Asia Times story.

[Aidoneus]

6. No..

markses is referring to Patrick Graham's "Beyond Fallujah: A Year with the Iraqi Resistance", from the June issue of Harper's.

Another excellent report indeed, but Nir Rosen's series here is different. This thread should not be moved.

[Barrett808]

7. It's pretty amazing how much good coverage there's been

One thing that strikes me in some of these stories is how confident the insurgency is. They seem quite convinced they will be liberating Baghdad from occupation and collaborators. Soon.

[Aidoneus]

9. There have been some excellent things put out

They do not rank with the influence of the more shoddy work, but they are out there thankfully..

The resistance does indeed appear confident to the press. The camera and newspaper are perhaps more important weapons than the AK47/RPG7 & Abrams tanks are. I think, however, that the capital is a very different affair than what has gone on as yet. The city of mosques was already more or less united behind their Sufi & Salafi sheikhs (aside: never, ever, ever piss off the Sufis; it is quite difficult to do, but stupid people in history have learned the hard way), so that the task of liberation from an already tenuous grip of occupation was eventually achieved after much struggle and sacrifice--but more or less achieved all the same.

Baghdad itself, as being the center of a diverse nation, is made up of dozens of tendencies, each just as willing to scheme and plot against one another as with the occupyers. The mujihadeen thus have no less a task than the great Salahudden had with' the people in crusader-occupied Palestine and Lebanon, those who quite easily kissed the arm they couldn't break. Some areas are already free from the occupyers' grip, or never were, Madinat as-Sadr for instance. Some of the other areas are also in the 'weak at best' under influence of the invaders. Completely freeing the city from occupation and then establishing a new order will be quite a task (I do not expect the Vichyesque regime that exists now under the occupyers will be able to do so); I suspect it will be nearly the final one, after the remainder of areas have freed themselves.

Another trouble, both in establishing that in the future and in general at this very moment, is the complete and total lack of any sort of unified command of the various resistance groups. The Salafis hate the Baathists & Shiites and it is mutual, the latter two greatly dislike one another, the communists (not the collaborationist party) and left-nationalists look at the three as a "reactionary terrorist pole" in the world (with the US as the other) and the dislike of course mutual.. The only person who was able to cross every line was Sadr. If he had a less traumatic life and 20yrs more life experience under his belt, he'd be the best potential figure I could think of for that "new Salahuddeen" that millions in the area had hoped to find for decades.

[Barrett808]

8. PART 3: The Fallujah model

With Fallujah being touted by Iraqi fighters as a successful example of how to liberate their country from the US-led occupation, and by the occupation leaders as a successful example of how to hand over the country to its people and avoid further bloodshed, I set out to discover the reality behind the "Fallujah model".

What I found was a city run by the Iraqi resistance, itself divided between those who supported the ceasefire with occupation forces in May that ended a month's heavy fighting in the city and those who sought to continue the struggle throughout Iraq "and all the way to Jerusalem".

...

"After the war ended," he said, "we expected things to improve, but everything became worse, electricity, water, sewage, draining, so mosque speakers openly spoke of jihad and encouraged prayers to join it after a month of occupation." Abu Mohammed explained that the "mosque culture developed against the Americans in this year. The mosques were free. Mosque culture in Fallujah centered on the jihad. This attracted foreign Arabs who felt constrained by their own regimes, and of course there were neighboring countries who supported this financially. Nobody in Fallujah opposed the resistance and many different resistance groups came in. Weapons were very available in Fallujah. All soldiers and security personnel took their weapons home, and the Ba'ath Party had also distributed weapons."

Abu Mohammed was bewildered by what he called "the stupidity of the Americans", explaining, "They didn't seize ammunition depots of the army that contained enormous amounts of weapons." The military experience, the financing and the weapons were all present in Fallujah, he said, and "the nature of the people here is violent because they grow up with weapons from childhood and weapons become part of our personality". He added that "the imams of mosques took over the defense of Fallujah efficiently".

...

I met with Khalid Mohammed, the office director, who insisted on speaking only classical Arabic, or Fus-ha, an annoying habit akin to speaking Shakespearean English in daily conversation. Though the Islamic Party had been a key player in the negotiations with the Americans that brought about the hudna, or ceasefire, Mohammed was worried about groups in the city "who reject the hudna and want to turn Fallujah into a center to export the rebellion". Three differences had emerged during the fighting, he said, "and when we worked on the ceasefire there were other fighters who want fighting to continue until the occupation ends". Mohammed confirmed to me that former Iraqi Republican Guard general, Jassim Mohammed Saleh, had not been dismissed as some reports said but was in fact the No 2 man in power in the city.

(more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG20Ak01.html

[Barrett808]

10. PART 4: All power to the sheikh

On Friday, March 14, I pulled up to the mosque of Sheikh Dhafer al-Ubeidi, a key cleric in organizing the resistance in Fallujah, along with Abdallah Janabi. Hadhra Mosque lies inconspicuously across the street from the Rahma Hospital, where two days before I had attended a poetry festival staged to celebrate US forces pulling out of the city after a month-long siege. Fallujah is known as medinat al-masajid or the city of mosques, for its 80 mosques, but Hadhra Mosque is small and modest compared with others in the city, its colors faded, its dome small. But if there is a final authority for the resistance in Iraq, a command and control center, this is it.

I had been warned that Dhafer ran the city, and to operate in it I would need his "clearance". Other journalists who had not done so were held up by armed gangs. A writer for a leading US newspaper was caught at a checkpoint attempting to disguise his face with a woman's black veil. Another writer for a top US magazine was held after coming out of the marine base in an armored car, with an armed driver, bulletproof vest, US passport with Israeli stamps and a receipt from the Israeli-Jordanian border crossing in his pocket. My contact in Fallujah was asked by Dhafer to confirm whether these and other foreigners held by local militias were in fact journalists. I was hoping to get a piece of paper from the sheikh that would be a license to work in the city.

As I got out of the car in front of the mosque, a big explosion shook the city, and in the distance I could see a large mushroom cloud growing, and then being dispersed by the wind. Probably a mortar converted into a roadside bomb. The police car in front of the mosque veered off to take a look. On the tall fence lining the mosque, a banner announced, "Sunnis and Shi'ites are committed to defeating the Zionist plan." It did not explain what plan was being referred to; apparently the locals already knew. The white paint was peeling off of the rusted gate. A sign above the gate bore the title al-Hadhra Muhamadia Mosque and Madrassa (religious school). The mosque's manar, or tower, was damaged from a US shell.

Leaflets and announcements were taped on to the gate. One said that "the fatwa council asks for pictures and evidence of occupation forces violating human rights and any attack on our values and our Islamic symbols. Please give them to the council in the Hadhra Mosque." Another one contained a long verse dedicated to a man martyred by the Americans. An announcement from the Telecommunications Ministry reminded people not to pay telephone repairmen, who were salaried by the ministry. Another one from the qaimaqamia (an old Ottoman word for "city hall") instructed people about what documents they should bring "to receive compensation for martyrs, and wounded people, and damaged vehicles". A similar one asked the families of martyrs to go to the courts to get a death certificate and then to the hospital to get additional proof of death in order to process their compensation claims.

Finally an announcement from the Mujahideen Council declared that "imams are responsible for their mosques and the mujahideen have no rights to interfere in mosques after today". It added that "some thieves go to markets, confiscating goods and money and consider themselves mujahideen, but they are liars and we ask the people of the city of mosques to catch these people and educate them and the mujahideen will support them to prevent strife in our city".

(more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG21Ak03.html

[Aidoneus]

11. Parts 5 & 6

PART 5: The tongue of the mujahideen
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG22Ak02.html

PART 6: Mean and clean streets
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG23Ak01.html

[Barrett808]

12. Thanks, Aidoneus

I was just about to post these myself.

[Aidoneus]

13. You can have the 7th & last

They are one & the same, and should be out in a day or two.

:)

[leftchick]

14. Should be titled... "Lost It"....

excellent articles all Barrett... thank you so much for the links...

[Barrett808]

15. PART 7: Radicals in the ashes of democracy

The day two German journalists, Uwe Sauerman and Manya Schodche, nearly experienced sahel, the Iraqi lynching made famous by the death in Fallujah of four American contractors employed by US company Blackwater, the city's Mujahideen Council banned all journalists from the city and warned that those who entered might be killed.

Fallujah was still a safe haven for the mujahideen, including foreign fighters who were supporting the resistance. Video compact discs (VCDs) with footage of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Shi'ite fighters battling Americans in Nasiriyah were sold in Fallujah, alongside propaganda films for Sunni resistance groups based in Fallujah, such as Ansar al-Sunna and the Iraqi Islamic Army, with a cheerful reggae-like beat accompanying victorious Islamic music. Young foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia and other countries were shown giving testimonies before going out on suicide operations. The VCDs depicted various operations conducted by the resistance, primarily against US military targets, as well as various crimes of the occupation, destroyed homes, abusing prisoners, and a lot of bloody dead people accompanied by mournful chanting Islamic music.

The VCDs glorified martyred fighters, claiming they died smiling and smelling sweet - though I did not find that to be the case - they listed operations, and they displayed a lot of captured booty from attacks. One scene depicted a large spread on the carpet of what was clearly a Sunni tribal leader's guest hall or diwan, containing what appeared to be the contents of the two vehicles belonging to the four Blackwater men, many weapons, communication devices, electronic airplane itineraries printed off the Internet, identity cards, supermarket discount cards, plane tickets, anything one would expect to find in the pockets of a high-paid US contractor.

At one point the Ansar al-Sunna production showed the Spanish passports and other belongings of what it claimed were Spanish intelligence agents killed in Mansour last November. I even received two thick monthly newsletters from the Saladin Victory Group, a mujahideen unit, which included articles, poems and lists of all their operations. The mujahideen wanted to continue the battle, even after the June 28 handover of sovereignty. "As long as the Americans are in Iraq we will fight," they said. Radical Fallujan clerics had admitted to a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official I spoke to that the Fallujah settlement "is an opportunity to secure themselves and be sovereign and expand the liberation". If the Americans could not quell the rebellion, surely no Iraqi force would be able to, and the victory in Fallujah had only encouraged the resistance throughout Iraq.

(more)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG24Ak01.html