------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Aug. 19, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
PENTAGON HAMMERS NAJAF, RESISTANCE SPREADS By Leslie Feinberg There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction. No Saddam Hussein government in power. Yet the U.S. military machine is once again unleashing open warfare in Iraq. There's no room for any misunderstanding as to who it's aimed at: the Iraqi people who are trying to defend the gains of their anti-colonial revolution half a century ago. Dark smoke has billowed up from Najaf since Aug. 5. U.S. fighter aircraft, helicopter gun ships and armed drones have pummeled the city with ordnance from the sky above, while on the ground a pounding siege by artillery, tank and heavy machine-gun fire from Marines and U.S. Cavalry units have reduced much of the old city to rubble. Yet Iraqi insurgents, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, have battled back. And this blaze of resistance has ignited in other parts of the country as well. Some 5,000 troops carrying out the fierce assault on Najaf include 2,000 members of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, additional U.S. Cavalry units and some 1,800 collaborating Iraqi troops. An additional force of 1,000 GIs is being prepared. This military force has targeted a vast, ancient cemetery in the heart of the old city, putatively to deprive the resistance of an operational base. U.S. commanders confirmed Aug. 9 that Marines had formed a tight military cordon around the gold-domed Imam Ali mosque--one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam. The same day, in the midst of heavy fighting, Shia cleric Moqtada al- Sadr appeared publicly to demand an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Speaking from inside the Imam Ali shrine, he vowed: "I am staying in Najaf and I will not leave. ... I will stay until the last drop of my blood is spilled." The next day a U.S. fighter jet bombed an inner-city hotel only 300 yards away from the mosque, setting off a raging inferno. Pentagon forces have also reportedly cut off all electricity and water. The Aug. 10 Guardian Unlimited reported on conditions faced by the 1,200 people arrested: "In Najaf's main police station officers showed off a room crowded with around 300 Mahdi army prisoners, each sitting cross- legged and facing the wall. In one corner there were several plastic water bottles filled with urine. "Before they opened the door the sound of screaming had been coming from inside." Najaf's Police Chief Ghalib al-Jazairy explained that some of the people who were now prisoners had recently been trained by the occupation force as police officers and were stationed in Basra and Amara--but had defected to join the militia defending Najaf from the U.S. assault. FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION The monopolized media industry in the United States is pumping out the spin that U.S. military commanders are acting under orders from the "new Iraqi government." But it's the Allawi grouping that salutes the Pentagon brass hats, not vice versa. The imperialist generals also claimed on the fourth day of fighting to have killed 360 insurgents in Najaf alone. But, noted the Guardian, there is no evidence to back this up. During the Vietnam War the Pentagon routinely inflated the body count of Vietnamese killed to boast of its military prowess and demoralize military resistance. Representatives of al-Sadr report that the number of their fighters killed was closer to 40. Of the 35 wounded, they said, most were hurt by cluster bombs. (sundaytimes.co.za) An Aug. 9 casualty report from Hussein Hadi, deputy director of Najaf's main hospital, was much closer to that of the Mahdi spokespeople. Hadi "said that 23 people had been killed since the fighting started last week and 98 had been injured, mostly civilians. Among the dead were five Iraqi police and four Iraqi army soldiers, he said." (Guardian Unlimited, Aug. 10) Al-Sadr spokespeople also charged Pentagon commanders with under- reporting GI casualties--which the U.S. command put at four killed and 22 wounded in the first four days of fighting. (www.freep.com, Aug. 9) This kind of media spin will become even more dominant after "Prime Minister" Iyad Allawi, a CIA darling, acted as a marionette for Washington when he ordered the closure of Al Jazeera's Baghdad news bureau on Aug. 7. Al Jazeera's broadcasts are a thorn in the imperialist side because they are an independent source of news about the imperialist occupation for millions of Arab viewers. The old fig leaf for the imperialist war and occupation, Ahmad Chalabi-- handpicked by the Pentagon--has now been indicted on counterfeiting charges. His nephew Salem Chalabi, a lawyer prosecuting Saddam Hussein, is now wanted on murder charges. Both men are outside the country. RESISTANCE SPREADS While the U.S. forces have battered Najaf, fighting has spread. Intense fighting has erupted in Sadr City, five miles from the heart of Baghdad. Sadr City, like Falluja, is completely in the hands of the Iraqi resistance. (New York Times, Aug. 11) Insurgents using a rocket-propelled grenade shot down a U.S. military helicopter over the impoverished neighborhood on Aug. 8. On Aug. 9, insurgents repeatedly hit a U.S.-protected district council hall with mortars, a barrage of bullets and rocket-propelled grenades. Four Iraqi guards were killed, and nine other people, including three U.S. soldiers, were wounded. Even a U.S.-imposed curfew that night did not quell some outbreaks of resistance. And the next day, a roadside bomb wounded two GIs in central Baghdad. In the Baquba area, a suicide car bomb exploded on Aug. 9 in Balad Ruz-- 40 miles northeast of Baghdad--wounding the assistant governor of Diyala province and 17 others, and killing seven police. (newssindependent.co.uk, Aug. 10) An insurgent group vowed Aug. 9 to begin targeting offices of "government" collaborators in Baghdad. Another Marine was confirmed killed in fighting in western Iraq in the Anbar province on Aug. 9. Two Jordanian and two Lebanese hostages were freed by insurgents on Aug. 9 after their company agreed to end its operations in Iraq. In the southern city of Diwaniya, militia surrounded the police station and governate. RESISTANCE HALTS THEFT OF OIL Insurgency also broke out in the southern port of Basra. Ninety percent of Iraq's oil is exported through Basra. In one incident on Aug. 9, a British soldier on patrol died and five more were wounded when their Land Rovers burst into flames after being hit by RPGs. The militia seized control of the city's main intersections. The resistance temporarily shut down oil output in the south--almost 2 million barrels a day--sending oil prices higher on the world market. "Iraq's other export line--from the north to Turkey--is already out of operation," reported the Aug. 10 Globe and Mail. The "Oil Ministry," a front for the imperialist theft of Iraqi wealth said the threat of attacks by the resistance remains high. (New York Times, Aug. 11) This neocolonial plunder is generating Iraqi fury. One local militia leader, Latif al-Khalisi, who reportedly welcomed the U.S. invasion at the onset, observed, "All the rich people in the west came and started taking money and contracts in this country." (The Guardian Unlimited, Aug. 10) - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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