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Fallujah Fears a 'Genocidal Strategy'
Inter Press Service by Ali al-Fadhily
FALLUJAH, Mar 30 (IPS) - Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.
Since the mysterious explosion at the Shia al-Askari shrine in Samara in February last year, more than 100 Iraqis have been killed daily on average, without any forceful action by the Iraqi government and the U.S. military to stop the killings.
U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces working with them are also executing people seized during home raids and other operations, residents say.
"Seventeen young men were found executed after they were arrested by U.S. troops and Fallujah police," 40-year-old Yassen of Fallujah told IPS. "My two sons have been detained by police, and I am terrified that they will have the same fate. They are only 17 and 18 years old."
Residents of Fallujah say the local police detention centre holds hundreds of men, who have had no legal representation.
Others
are killed by random fire that has long become routine for U.S. and
Iraqi soldiers. Sa'ad, a 25-year-old from the al-Thubbat area of
western Fallujah was killed in such firing.
"The poor guy kept
running home every time he saw U.S. soldiers," a man from his
neighbourhood, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "He used
to say: Go inside or the Americans will kill you." Sa'ad is said by
neighbours to have developed a mental disability.
He was recently shot and killed by U.S. soldiers when they opened fire after their patrol was struck by a roadside bomb.
Last
week, U.S. military fire severely damaged the highest minaret in
Fallujah after three soldiers were killed in an attack. What was seen
as reprisal fire on the minaret has angered residents.
"They
hate us because we are Muslims, and no one can argue with that any
more," 65- year-old Abu Fayssal who witnessed the event told IPS. "They
say they are fighting al- Qeada but they are only capable of killing
our sons with their genocidal campaign and destroying our mosques."
Others believe occupation forces have another sinister strategy.
"It
is our people killing each other now as planned by the Americans,"
Abdul Sattar, a 45- year-old lawyer and human rights activist in
Fallujah told IPS. "They recruited Saddam's security men to control the
situation by well-known methods like hanging people by their legs and
electrifying them in order to get information. Now they are executing
them without trial."
IPS has obtained photographs of an elderly man who residents say was executed last month by U.S. soldiers.
"Last
month was full of horrifying events," a retired police officer from
Fallujah told IPS. "Three men were executed by American soldiers in the
al-Bu Issa tribal area just outside Fallujah. One of them was 70 years
old and known as a very good man, and the others were his relatives.
They were asleep when the raid was conducted."
Another three men
from the same tribe were executed similarly in ar-Rutba town near the
Jordanian border. Their tribe did not carry out the usual burial
ceremony for fear that more people would be killed. Instead, a cousin
performed a religious ceremony in Amman in Jordan.
"Seven people
were executed in al-Qa'im recently, at the Syrian border," Khalid
Haleem told IPS on telephone from al-Qa'im. "They were gathering at a
friend's place for dinner when Americans surrounded the house, with
armoured vehicles with helicopters covering them from the air. Those
killed were good men and we believe the Americans were misinformed."
Adding
to the violence are U.S.-backed Shia militias which regularly raid
Sunni areas under the eyes of the U.S. and Iraqi army. Residents of
Fallujah, Ramadi, and especially Baghdad have regularly reported to IPS
over the last two years that Shia militiamen are allowed through U.S.
military cordons into Sunni neighbourhoods to conduct raids.
Last
month, residents report, more than 100 men aged 20 to 40 were executed
by Shia militias in Iskandariya 40 km south of Baghdad and Tal Afar 350
km northwest of the capital. Another 50 were detained by the Iraqi
Army's fifth division, that many believe is the biggest death squad in
the country.
A U.S. military spokesperson in Baghdad told IPS
that their troops "use caution and care when conducting home raids" and
"in no way support Shi'ite death squads and militias."
In the face of the U.S.-backed violence, most Iraqis now openly support attacks against occupation forces.
"The
genocidal Americans are paying for all that," a young man from Fallujah
told IPS. "They seem to be in need of another lesson by the lions of
Fallujah and Anbar." He was referring to the intensive resistance
attacks in and around Fallujah that have killed dozens of U.S. and
Iraqi soldiers this month.
According to the U.S. military, at
least 1,194 U.S. soldiers have died in al-Anbar province since the
U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The number is far higher than
in any other province in Iraq.
(*Ali, our correspondent in
Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based
specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
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(c)2007 Dahr Jamail.
[Republished at PFP with author permission]
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FALLUJAH, Mar 30 (IPS) - Iraqis in the volatile al-Anbar province west of Baghdad are reporting regular killings carried out by U.S. forces that many believe are part of a 'genocidal' strategy.
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