forwarded 11-May-2004 from greenleftweekly Australia
www.greenleft.org.au

[AddedNote: re: War in Iraq and media censorship; atmosphere here
remind me of one Australian saying, "We're like mushrooms --kept
in the dark and fed with bullshits". Of course, except for
GLW which has the gut to stand up saying what is right, and
report as accurately as possible. The Iraqi mass resistance
to the foreign powers appear to be growing by the day. Just
forget about oil grabs, and it's time for US/UK/AU to gracefully
get out of Iraqi soil. --U Ne Oo.]
********************
GWL-April 28,2004.
IRAQ: Resistance grows into mass revolt

Doug Lorimer

There have been 98 [US troop] deaths [in Iraq] by hostile fire so
far this month, more than in the opening two weeks of the invasion,
when 82 Americans were killed in action, the April 17 San Jose
Mercury News reported, adding that the last time US troops
experienced a two-week loss such as this one in Iraq was October 1971,
two years before US ground involvement ended in Vietnam.

The Pentagon claims that its troops in Iraq have killed at least 700
Iraqi insurgents over the same two-week period. However, at least
600 of the Iraqis killed by US troops during the first two weeks of
April died during the US assault on Fallujah. Doctors in the city said
that most of the dead were women, children and old men.

According to the April 21 British Independent newspaper, the
Americans refuse to keep count of Iraqi civilian casualties. Lt Gen
Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of US forces in Iraq, deals with the
question of civilian loss of life by assuming that all dead are
rebels.

The mass rebellion of Iraqis sparked by US troops' assaults on the
liberated city of Fallujah, 45km west of Baghdad, has dramatically
broadened the Iraqi resistance to the US-led occupation.

Most of Baghdad was shut down over the weekend of April 10-11, as
residents heeded a joint call by Sunni and Shiite clerics for a
general strike to protest the occupiers brutal attempt to retake
Fallujah and to crush Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's Madhi Army,
which had taken control of the centre of Najaf.

The public adherence to a cleric's call for a general strike
demonstrates just how much the relationship between Americans and
Iraqis has deteriorated over the past few weeks, the April 12 Wall
Street Journal observed.

The mass protests in Baghdad forced the Pentagon to proclaim a
temporary halt to the US marines' brutal assault on Fallujah from
April 11 and to delay plans to invade Najaf to kill or capture
Sadr.

Nevertheless, on April 13, Aljazeera's correspondent in the city
reported that a column of US tanks and armoured personnel carriers had
entered Fallujah's Nizal neighbourhood, firing on residents'
houses. Resistance fighters rushed from other parts of the city to the
neighbourhood and, after a five-hour battle, forced the marines to
retreat, leaving two armoured vehicles abandoned and burning.

Since then, repeated marine forays into Fallujah have been repulsed by
the city's estimated 2000 armed defenders.

Under a deal negotiated over the April 17-18 weekend, US marines'
attacks on Fallujah were supposed to be permanently halted if
resistance fighters in the city surrendered all their weapons other
than their AK-47 assault rifles.

Guerrillas and residents of Fallujah handed over only a paltry
assortment of old and rusty weapons, the US Fox News TV channel
reported on April 22. Describing the truckload of weapons that was
turned over as junk, US Marine General Jim Conway said: It's our
estimate the people of Fallujah have not responded well to the
agreements.

The April 17 Washington Post reported that the fierce insurgency in
Iraq has isolated the US-appointed civilian government and stopped the
American-financed reconstruction effort, as contractors hunker down
against waves of ambushes and kidnappings, according to US and Iraqi
officials.

According to the Post, thousands of non-Iraqi employees of foreign
companies awarded reconstruction contracts
including Bechtel and Halliburton have been confined
to the highly fortified Green Zone in Baghdad. It also reported that
many Iraqis have stopped turning up to work in the Green Zone, despite
the lack of other work.

As well as reporting that increasing numbers of young men in Baghdad
both Sunnis and Shiites are
volunteering to join the armed resistance, the Post noted that the
upsurge of armed resistance across Iraq has pressured US forces to
vastly expand their area of operations within Iraq, while triggering a
partial collapse of the new Iraqi security services designed to
gradually replace them.

On April 21, General Martin Dempsey, commander of the US Army's 1st
Armored Division, told Associated Press that about 10% of the
US-recruited Iraqi security forces actually worked against US
troops during the recent upsurge of resistance attacks, and an
additional 40% had deserted their posts.

The only unit of the puppet Iraqi security forces that the
Pentagon has claimed fought alongside US troops against the insurgency
is the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps' 340-member 36th Security
Brigade. This is from the militias run by various members of the Iraqi
Governing Council, the puppet advisory body appointed by the Coalition
Provisional Authority.

However, Reuters reported on April 18 that a soldier from the brigade
had said: ``They told us to attack the city and we were
astonished. How could an Iraqi fight an Iraqi like this? This meant
that nothing had changed from the Saddam Hussein days. We refused en
masse', said Ali al-Shamari...

After the brigade refused to fight, he said, soldiers were stripped
of their badges and confined to tents in a US base on the outskirts of
Fallujah.

At a Baghdad press briefing on April 20, US General Mark Kimmitt,
deputy commander for coalition operations in Iraq, praised the
brigade's role in the Fallujah siege and declared that it will serve
as a benchmark for ICDC performance in the future.

From Green Left Weekly, April 29, 2004.

http://netipr.org/~uneoo/ (Burma HR Activity)
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POST: Dr U Ne Oo, 18 Shannon Place,Adelaide SA5000,AUSTRALIA