Get US and Britain Out of Iraq Now!

Workers' Daily Internet Edition: Article Index :

Get US and Britain Out of Iraq Now!
Reports of Chemical Weapon Use in Fallujah
Satan Hides in a Hospital
"Phantom Fury" Poised to Become Phantom Victory

Tributes to Yasser Arafat, August 4, 1929 - November 11, 2004
In Memoriam - The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist)
Yasser Arafat – Mighty Symbol of Palestinian Identity - by Gary Zatzman
Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin Extend Condolences to Palestinian People

Reports of Chemical Weapon Use in Fallujah

IslamOnline.net said on November 10 that there are reports of chemical weapons and poisonous gas being used in Fallujah. "The US occupation troops are gassing resistance fighters and confronting them with internationally-banned chemical weapons," resistance sources told Al-Quds Press November 10. "The fatal weapons led to the deaths of tens of innocent civilians, whose bodies litter sidewalks and streets," IslamOnline.net quotes the sources as saying.

"They use chemical weapons out of despair and helplessness in the face of the steadfast and fierce resistance put up by Fallujah people, who drove US troops out of several districts, hoisting proudly Iraqi flags on them. Resistance has also managed to destroy and set fire to a large number of US tanks and vehicles.

"The US troops have sprayed chemical and nerve gases on resistance fighters, turning them hysteric in a heartbreaking scene," an Iraqi doctor, who requested anonymity, told Al-Quds Press.

"Some Fallujah residents have been further burnt beyond treatment by poisonous gases," added resistance fighters, who took part in Jolan battles, northwest of Fallujah.

In August last year, the United States admitted dropping the internationally-banned incendiary weapon of napalm on Iraq, despite earlier denials by the Pentagon that the "horrible" weapon had not been used in the three-week invasion of Iraq, IslamOnline.net writes. After the offensive on Iraq ended on April 9 last year, Iraqis began to complain about unexploded cluster bombs that still litter their cities, it adds.

The sources said that the media blackout, the banning of the Al-Jazeera satellite channel and subjective embedded journalists played well into the hands of the US military.

"Therefore, US troops opted for using internationally banned weapons to soften the praiseworthy resistance of Fallujah people.

"More and more, the US military edits and censors reports sent by embedded journalists to their respective newspapers and news agencies," the sources added.

Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem al-Shaalan had said that the events of November 9 would be decisive. "The al-Shaalan declaration meant nothing but the use of chemical weapons and poisonous gases to down Fallujah fighters," observers told Al-Quds Press.

By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times Online, November 10, 2004

Everything one needed to know about the true, unspinnable foreign policy of the second George W Bush administration is represented by the "capture" of the first strategic target in the assault on Fallujah: the general hospital, on the left bank of the Euphrates, now totally cut off from the city. According to the Bush administration world view, this is the house where Satan lives.

Bush-installed interim Iraqi Prime Minster Iyad Allawi announced with a smile of victory that he personally ordered the capture of the hospital. So maybe it was not the Pentagon: it was an unelected politician asking a foreign occupation army to attack a hospital in his own country and preventing doctors and ambulances from entering a city under siege.

The assault, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, perversely started on Laylat e-Qadr, the most important and holy night of the year for the Islamic world.

In terms of the information war, the hospital was indeed the most strategic of targets. During the first siege of Fallujah in April, doctors told independent media the real story about the suffering of civilian victims. So this time the Pentagon took no chances: no gory, disturbing photos of the elderly, women and children – the thousands unable to leave Fallujah in advance of this week's offensive, the civilian victims of the relentless bombing.

But this did not prevent the world from seeing doctors and patients at the hospital handcuffed to the floor – as if they were terrorists. Hospital director Dr Salih al-Issawi told Agence France-Presse that the Americans blocked him and other doctors from going to the centre of Fallujah to help another clinic in distress; he also said an ambulance that tried to leave the hospital was shot at by the Americans – just like in April, when all ambulances were targeted. The Geneva Convention is explicit: in a war situation, hospitals and ambulances are neutral.

The Pentagon does not do "collateral damage" body counts. But as its relationship with the people of Fallujah now consists of a non-stop barrage of heavy metal, the Pentagon is certainly in a much better position than Fallujah's doctors to estimate the amount of civilian victims of its own bombing.

The marines are not only occupying a hospital; they even turned it into a military position, as they were using positions around it to attack the resistance.

Cluster-Bomb Democracy

The Pentagon's key primary target in Fallujah has been information: doctors in hospitals, telephone lines that people use to tell the world about the civilians' plight. Most of the world is interpreting Fallujah through embedded, Pentagon-censored reporters and Arab television. The Pentagon line is American "heroes" on the way to "liberate" the people of Fallujah. Iraqis, Arabs, 1.3 billion Muslims, the majority of European public opinion and decent Americans won't be fooled – again.

Asia Times Online sources close to the resistance say the talk in the streets of Baghdad is that the bulk of the estimated 2,500 mujahideen in Fallujah have already left to Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, Haditha, Khaldiya, and even Mosul in the north. Even before the assault on Fallujah, there were more than 100 resistance attacks a day all over the country. The main story playing in the Arab world in the past 24 hours is that of Mohammed Abboud – who saw his nine-year-old son bleed to death of shrapnel wounds when his house in Fallujah was hit because he could not venture out to go to a hospital. Abboud had to bury his son in his own garden.

Terrified Fallujans calling Baghdad tell of A-10 jets raining cluster bombs on the city's streets. Iraqi (very) black humour qualifies unexploded cluster bombs as the Iraqi version of Toys "R" Us: children get injured or killed because they think cluster bombs are toys. Everyone is talking of "scores of bodies" in streets destroyed by U.S. bombing. There is no power, no water, shops are closed, food is scarce and practically no medical supplies remain, according to Dr Sami al-Jumaili, speaking to al-Jazeera. No more clinics are open throughout the city – and there is no possible way to estimate how many civilians are dead, blown up, burned or injured, although al-Jumaili tells of "scores of injured civilians". A brand-new clinic funded by a Saudi Islamic relief non-governmental agency was bombed by the Americans during the weekend, as well as a medical dispensary in the city centre: this was apparently the last place where anybody could get any medical attention.

Fadhil Badrani, a reporter for the British Broadcasting Corp (BBC) World Service in Arabic, is one of the very few journalists inside Fallujah. He writes that "a lot of the mosques have also been bombed. For the first time in Fallujah, a city of 150 mosques, I did not hear a single call to prayer this morning. I broke my Ramadan fast yesterday with the last of our food – two potatoes and two tomatoes. The tomatoes were rotten because we have no electricity to run the fridge. My neighbours – a woman and her children – came to see me yesterday. They asked me to tell the world what is happening here. I look at the devastation around me and ask – why?"

The Mujahideen Battle Plan

Apart from a maximum of 1,500 "Arab brothers" – as the Iraqis call them – from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Jordan, Syria and Tunisia, most of the remaining mujahideen in Fallujah are nationalist Iraqis whose tribal code mandates that they defend at any cost their homes, their families and their city under foreign attack.

They have been preparing for this onslaught for months. And they do have a battle plan – as it was relayed to Asia Times Online by sources in Baghdad. Former or retired Iraqi army officials have always been serious students of Viet Minh tactics and Che Guevara's theory of the guerrilla foco (centre of guerrilla operations). Now they are applying this to urban warfare. This, in a smaller version, is what the Battle of Baghdad would have been like in April 2003.

The Americans are closing in toward the city centre, under fire from mujahideen equipped with only Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades hidden in clusters of low-roof houses. The Americans are firing back at the houses and at anything that moves. They have been prevented – at least for now – by the resistance from storming any buildings. Their priority is to control the main bombed-out roads.

The mujahideen are operating with small mobile units of five or six or a maximum of 20 fighters, changing positions all the time. As a counter-measure, American snipers are trying to control the rooftops. The mujahideen are trying to attract as many American troops to the city centre as possible – so they can unleash what seems to be hundreds of coordinated car bombs and improvised explosive devices.

People in Baghdad are also telling of US$3,000 being offered for any battered old car to be used as part of a counter-offensive coming in behind the U.S. positions once the house-to-house battle in the city centre is fully engaged.

Boycotting the Election

The US approach in Iraq appears to be a rehashing of the British imperial dictum of "divide and rule". Dr Harith al-Dhari, secretary general of the powerful Association of Muslim Scholars, says the scheduled January election would be held "over the corpses of those killed in Fallujah and the blood of the wounded", and has called on all Iraqis to boycott it. The association sides with the people of Fallujah – not Allawi: "We have said we support the resistance since the occupation of this country began. This is our right as Iraqis. Therefore, we don't need a fatwa on this issue as this matter is clear."

As yet another measure – if any were needed – of the illegitimacy of the Allawi government, Secretary of Defence Hassim al-Sha'alan recognised on al-Arabiya TV that the resistance won't be finished, even when the Americans finally take Fallujah, because "they have already prepared to fight in other places". This only confirms the above-mentioned that the bulk of the mujahideen have already left Fallujah – and are now launching dozens of daily attacks in Baghdad itself, Ramadi, Baquba, Latifiyah, Samarra, Khaldiya, Kirkuk ...

Hospitals "captured", showers of cluster bombs, Fallujah burning, civilians dying, not to mention the more than 100,000 Iraqis killed since the beginning of the invasion-occupation, the country's infrastructure in tatters, the centre of Najaf and a great deal of Sadr City razed to the ground. This is the way Phantom Fury will end: not with terrified Iraqis voting for an Allawi-modelled puppet regime in a sham election, but with a Bush administration forced to deal with Iraqis who are ready to die to achieve real democracy.

by Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, November 8, 2004

With Monday's launch of "Operation Phantom Fury" to regain control of the key insurgent-dominated Sunni city of Fallujah, the administration of US President George W Bush appears to be moving toward another "phantom victory" in its broader quest to achieve a stable, pro-western Iraq. While experts here are united in the conviction that the 10,000-15,000 US troops and a reportedly diminishing number of Iraqi auxiliaries will militarily crush the estimated 1,000-4,000 insurgents who remain in the city, they also believe the eventual outcome will mark yet another political setback to stabilising the country.

In particular, the operation, especially if bloody and protracted, will almost certainly further alienate the Sunni population, who constitute about 20 percent of Iraq's 25 million people, not to mention the much larger Sunni communities in neighbouring countries, including Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Jordan, Syria and Turkey.

"The entire Arab public opinion, which had hoped for Bush's (electoral) defeat, has been watching developments carefully," noted As'ad Abukhalil, an Iraq specialist at the University of California at Berkeley. "But now they will see the scenes of carnage on live TV contrasted with the celebratory ambiance in Washington, DC."

The campaign also threatens to split the interim Iraqi government whose president, Ghazi al-Yawer, has opposed a major offensive and last April threatened to resign after hundreds of civilians were reported killed when US Marines last tried to take Fallujah.

"There was already a struggle within the (Iraqi) Sunni community between those open to participation in January's elections and those who favour a boycott," noted Juan Cole, an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan. "An 'iron fist' policy is likely to shift the balance of power in the community toward the rejectionists."

"So, in going forward with the campaign, US forces are really shooting themselves in the foot," Cole added, noting that while US forces clearly defeated the ragtag Mehdist militia of Muqtada al-Sadr in Najaf in August, it also succeeded in boosting the young cleric's political standing within and even beyond the majority Shiite community to unprecedented heights, according to surveys taken the following month.

That, of course, is not the way the Bush administration sees either Operation Phantom Fury (soon to be renamed "New Dawn") or last August's Najaf campaign, which it has depicted as both a military and a political victory because of Sadr's tentative decision to take part in January's vote and the militia's partial disarmament in Baghdad's Sadr City.

In its view, the persistence of insurgent control of one of the "Sunni Triangle's" largest towns, its status as a "no-go" area and its use as a base for attacks all over the country could not be tolerated given the overriding short-term objective of pulling off the national elections.

"One part of the country cannot remain under the rule of assassins ... and the remnants of (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein," declared Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld at a press conference Monday.

"You can't have a country if you have a safe haven for people who chop people's heads off. These folks are determined. They're killers. They chop people's heads off. They're getting money from around the world. They're getting recruits."

Rumsfeld was careful to stress that victory in the battle of Fallujah would not end the insurgency. But he argued that if successful elections are held in January as a result of defeating the insurgents there, a "tipping point" in securing Iraq could be reached, similar to one he said had been reached in Afghanistan, where unexpectedly smooth polls were carried out last month.

Hawks within and outside the Bush administration have been calling for a major offensive against the Fallujah-based insurgency virtually since April, when White House policymakers, fearful of the political costs of what had become a bloodbath, called off a three-week Marine offensive to retake the city and punish those responsible for the lynching and mutilation of four US security contractors.

The Marines handed over control to a group of military and security officers from the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, many of who were apparently fighting with the insurgency. Since then, the city has reportedly been run by a coalition of former Baathists, other nationalists, fundamentalist Iraqi Sunnis and some foreign fighters who, according to Washington, answer to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who US officials say is linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist movement.

As the US election drew to a close last week, the neo-conservative commentators, in particular, began baying for a no-holds-barred campaign as a way of "setting an example" to insurgents elsewhere in Iraq, and indeed in the Arab world as a whole.

"Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it," wrote one neo-conservative former military officer, Ralph Peters, in the New York Post, while the Wall Street Journal's editorial page declared the insurgents "have to be killed if Iraq is ever going to be able to hold free elections".

The same editorial railed against United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan for sending a letter to Bush, Iraqi Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last week cautioning against an offensive.

Annan warned, "the threat or actual use of force not only risks deepening the sense of alienation of certain communities (in Iraq), but would also reinforce perceptions among the Iraqi population of a continued military occupation." The Journal called the letter a "hostile act".

Yet most experts here agreed with Annan's analysis, which they said has been bolstered by a number of developments, including the reported desertion over the weekend of more than one-half of a 500-man battalion of Iraqi National Guard that was supposed to fight alongside the Marines.

Both the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), one of the main Sunni clerical groups, and Sadr's aides have urged their co-religionists not to take part in the assault.

More desertions will make it far more difficult for the Marines to turn over control of Fallujah, once it is re-taken, to local forces, a conclusion that was also reinforced this weekend when insurgents – who supposedly had been routed from Samarra in a joint US-Iraqi operation – set off multiple co-ordinated attacks in that city, killing at least a dozen National Guard and local police.

Underlining the tenuousness of the security situation, the attacks prompted Allawi to declare martial law over the entire country, except Kurdistan, for the next 60 days, a step that, as pointed out by the Los Angeles Times Monday, was starkly at odds with his declaration on a visit here in late September that of Iraq's 18 provinces, "14 to 15 are completely safe".

The weekend's desertions reportedly left only one fully intact Iraqi unit deployed with the Marines on the outskirts of Fallujah – the 36th Battalion, whose troops were recruited mostly from Kurdish and Shi'a militia. "If the 36th turns out to be the 'Iraqi face' of the new government in Fallujah," noted one worried administration official, "it'll be seen as another occupation force."

In Memoriam

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) released the following in memory of Yasser Arafat – Abu Ammar, November 11, 2004, Ottawa.

The Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-Leninist) is very saddened to learn that today, November 11, 2004, President Yasser Arafat, the mighty symbol of Palestinian identity, passed away.

On this occasion of great loss for the Palestinian people and the peoples of the entire world, CPC(M-L) expresses its deepest condolences to the Palestinian leadership, the entire Palestinian people, President Arafat's co-fighters of every generation and to his family and friends.

CPC(M-L) wishes to express the great honour it has been to be associated since the day of the Party's founding with President Arafat and the life and death struggle he has waged in defence of his people and humanity's cause for progress.

CPC(M-L) also wishes to express its profound conviction that the heroic Palestinian people will find the strength to overcome their profound loss. Nothing will deter them from holding high the banner of their identity as President Arafat led them to do throughout his life. This is the legacy of a truly historic figure. That this historic figure is Palestinian is a matter of utmost pride for the Palestinian people, for all the Arab peoples and for the peoples of the entire world.

President Arafat, we pledge to you today: No stone will be left unturned to ensure that the dark which precedes the dawn gives way sooner rather than later. Your people will live as you wished they should live and as you and they deserve.

With deepest condolences

by Gary Zatzman

It has now fallen to a new generation to finish the work begun by Yasser Arafat. His name and personality are indissolubly linked with the Palestinian popular movement reorganised on the modern basis of a national liberation struggle. Before the launching of Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the idea of the Palestinian nation as a people of a definite territory, regardless of religious backgrounds of individual Palestinians and irrespective of any wider, e.g., pan-Arab, identity was neither widely nor generally accepted. Today those continuing to reject or resist this view stand utterly exposed. Such an outlook is associated not merely with backwardness, but actually with the darkest reaction and retrogression. This represents a tremendous step forward not only for the Palestinians' struggle for national rights, but also for the struggle of peoples around the globe for self-determination.

Before the Second World War, a tiny group of ancient families of prominence and standing – an incipient national bourgeoisie – formed a significant strand of the leadership of the Palestinian national movement. They worked largely through international connections in other regions and countries of the Arab world as well as in certain European capitals and the United States. Today, as a result of the work unfolded by Fatah, the PLO and the first and current Intifadahs, anyone who would attempt to reduce the Palestinian personality to that of supplicant to the world imperialist system of states actually has to reckon with a very different prospect. Among a people activated and made vigilant by decades of stern and unremitting struggle against Zionist oppression and occupation, any perceived "acceptance" anywhere among the Israeli Cabinet or the US State Department of such an individual could well become a kiss of death.

Most significantly, there is the fact that Palestinians around the globe, however much they differ over many issues of the Palestinian National Authority and its role and over how to deal with the US imperialist-Zionist axis, remain united as one about the general direction given to the struggle for their national rights. Whether there be two states or one in Palestine, and regardless of whether and when the Israelis wake up and scrap the imperial mission of Zionism, and no matter where and in whatever circumstances the Palestinians are still living together, that direction is set. The fact of the Palestinians being a people with, and in, their own land cannot and will never be extinguished by any combination, however desperate, unleashed by the world imperialist system of states. This is another important legacy of Yasser Arafat's life and work.

This stand and consciousness has survived all the pressures from the imperialists, Soviet social-imperialists and Zionists – especially during the so-called Oslo Process from 1993 to 1998, and through the great "incredibly generous offer" fraud unleashed at Taba in 2000 by US President Bill Clinton and the war criminal Ehud Barak – to compromise principles and accept half-a loaf or often much less; to give up permanently any and all claim to the entire territory of historic (pre-1947) Palestine; and to bottle up and bury the cause of national liberation and the struggle to implement the right of self-determination inside a so-called authority stripped of all meaningful power.

The monopoly media expend considerable effort to sow doubts about the support among the current Palestinian leadership for the right of return for those Palestinians whom the Zionist war machine and its "ethnic cleansing" operations turned into refugees in 1948 and 1967. The fact is, however, that when – as in Beirut during the Israeli invasion of central and northern Lebanon in 1981-82, or at Jenin in 2002 – the Zionist war machine unleashed attacks on the very refugee camps to which its earlier actions had already consigned Palestinians, Yasser Arafat and the PLO distinguished themselves in teaching the aggressors lessons they would not soon forget.

At the time the Soviet superpower imploded and predictions of the "end of history" and of struggles for social and national liberation were everywhere, the first Palestinian Intifadah was at its height, becoming the first major national liberation struggle of the post-bipolar period. Its persistence has become an important source of inspiration for the resistance in Iraq to the current American-led occupation. Today not even Ariel Sharon dares to repeat what one of his predecessors, Golda Meir, said of the Palestinians: "They don't exist!" In her day, Israeli public opinion hewed shamelessly to portrayals of Palestinians alternately as non-existent or as inconsequential, easily-crushed insects. A recently-conducted opinion poll in Israel, on the other hand, disclosed a massive rejection of the government's mindlessly punitive treatment of the PLO Chairman and Palestinian National Authority president as a virtual prisoner of his Muqtada compound in Ramallah.

Increasing numbers of people today now also see through the focus of media attention on anything that looks like "splits and divisions among the Palestinians" and "ordinary Palestinians' fear and loathing about the future". The effort to deflect attention from the simplest and most essential fact that the Palestinian struggle itself repeatedly exposes, which is that Zionism remains racist to its core, aggressive through its every pore, and the Eternal Victimiser and Eternal Provocateur of the Palestinians, not the "eternal victim" of "Arab terrorism", is impossible to deny. As proven recently by the decision of the Canadian Islamic Congress to retain their national president in his post after he told the truth on television about the conduct of the Zionist occupation, the impact on popular consciousness even in Canada of the evident justice of the Palestinian struggle has been sufficient to block and deflect a major assault by the monopoly media on the organised Canadian Muslim mainstream.

It is due in no small measure to the work and life of Yasser Arafat that the Palestinian struggle for rights has become one of the broadest and profoundest points of convergence within the movement that has revived and re-energised on all continents in recent years. One Humanity, One Struggle! President Arafat, we salute you!

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams MP has expressed his deep sorrow at the death of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Mr Adams said that the most fitting legacy to President Arafat will be a sovereign Palestinian state.

The Sinn Féin leader has sent his condolences to President Arafat's wife Suha, to his family and to the Palestinian people in a phone call to Ambassador Ali Halimeh in Dublin yesterday morning.

Mr Adams: "Throughout a lifetime in struggle President Yasser Arafat has not only been a father of the Palestinian people he has been an inspiration to people throughout the world as he led the struggle for a sovereign Palestinian state. There is a close affinity and affection between the Irish and Palestinian people and his death this evening will be a cause of much sorrow.

"In recent years I spoke to President Arafat on several occasions and just last month Alex Maskey was in Ramallah meeting with Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekhat.

"The most fitting legacy to President Arafat is for the international community to act immediately to ensure that the Israeli Government remove its troops and illegal settlements from Palestinian lands and a return to the negotiating table.

"I want to extend my deep condolences, on behalf of Sinn Féin, to President Arafat's wife Suha, to his family and to the Palestinian people."

Sinn Féin spokesperson on International Affairs, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, offered his sympathy not only to the family and friends of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat on his death but to the Palestinian people on the loss of an inspirational and dedicated leader of the Palestinian cause.

Deputy Ó Snodaigh said, "Today is a very sad and difficult day for the family and friends of Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat. It is also a very sad and difficult day for the Palestinian people who have lost an inspirational and dedicated leader of the Palestinian cause. I would like to offer my sincere condolences on behalf of the Sinn Féin TDs in Leinster House to his family, friends and comrades and to the Palestinian people.

"Yasser Arafat and his PLO were an inspiration to freedom fighters throughout the world. Their determination and resolve in the face of overwhelming odds gave encouragement to others around the world who were also involved in similar struggles for national self-determination.

"When efforts to secure a lasting peace between the peoples of Palestine and Israel began Yasser Arafat and the PLO were not found wanting. That he didn't live long enough to see the full establishment of a truly independent Palestinian state is regrettable, but his legacy must be built upon and the international community has a crucial role to play in turning his dreams and aspirations and the dreams and aspirations of the Palestinian people in to reality."

Sinn Féin MEPs Bairbre de Brún (six counties) and Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin) have also paid tribute to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

In a joint statement the Sinn Féin MEPs offered their condolences to the family of President Arafat and the Palestinian people. The MEPs said that the President will be remembered as an "enduring symbol of struggle".

Speaking yesterday the MEPs said: "It was with deep regret that we learnt of the death of President Arafat in Paris this morning, and we want to express our sincere sympathy to the family of President Arafat and the Palestinian people.

"President Arafat was an inspiration to people throughout the world who faced hardship and adversity. He will be rightly remembered as an enduring symbol of struggle."