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Against all the odds: FALLUJAH FIGHTS!

by our Arab Affairs Correspondent

IRAQI partisans are battling against US Marines in the heart of Fallujah three days after the American offensive to crush the defiant city that has been in the hands of the resistance since April.

A Sunni Muslim party has withdrawn from the puppet interim council in protest; partisans overran the city of Ramadi, guerrillas have taken control of large parts of Baghdad and three relatives of puppet premier Iyyad Alawi have been seized.

Over the weekend a puppet army officer, who had been briefed on the US battle-plan, defected to join the Fallujan resistance so the American onslaught that began on Monday came as no surprise. Hundreds of puppet troops have refused to fight and others have deserted and back in Baghdad the puppet regime is close to breaking point.

The Iraqi Islamic Party that represents the mainstream Sunni Muslim Brotherhood stormed out of the “interim government” on Tuesday in protest at the assault on Fallujah that had been rubber-stamped by stooge premier Alawi.

More than 40 Shia and Sunni religious leaders have urged Shia Ayatollah Ali al Sistani to publicly declare his opposition to Iraqi troops taking part in the attack on Fallujah. And rebel Shia cleric Muqtada al Sadr has called on his supporters to rally behind the city’s defence. At the same time the influential Association of Muslim Scholars has called for a boycott of the sham elections set for January next year.

grave mistake

The Sunni Islamic association has called on the puppet forces to refuse to fight alongside the Americans warning that they would be “making the grave mistake of invading Iraqi cities under the banner of forces who respect no religion or human rights”.

Inside the city Arab journalists are reporting that the US Marines are facing stiff resistance. But the Americans have used their overwhelming numbers and fire-power to devastating effect. All power and water supplies have been cut. Hundreds of townspeople have been killed or wounded in US air-raids and artillery barrages and at least ten per cent of their houses have been destroyed.

striking back

While thousands of US and puppet regime forces are tied down in Fallujah, the resistance is striking back at targets throughout occupied Iraq. In Baghdad partisans are operating freely throughout the city centre and they have imposed a curfew on the city.

Islamic guerrillas seized three relatives of puppet premier Alawi on Wednesday. They will be beheaded unless the “interim government” calls off the Fallujah attack and frees resistance fighters held in US concentration camps in Iraq.

The capital is virtually clear of US troops with all American and puppet “national guardsmen” contained within their fortress barracks or their “Green Zone” stronghold in the heart of Baghdad. Smoke is rising over the “Green Zone” military compound and explosions can be heard all over Baghdad as resistance fighters hit US and puppet regime targets.

The international airport is closed to all traffic after heavy shelling and partisans have taken control of a bridge on one of the major highways in western Baghdad.

Over the weekend partisans launched devastating attacks in Samara, the city north of Baghdad that the Americans claimed to have retaken last month. The mayor’s office, a US army convoy and several police stations were blasted with deadly effect. Many puppet police were killed in the attacks including their commander.

Hundreds of partisans are in control of Ramadi, north of Fallujah, after forcing American and puppet forces to flee last weekend. Fierce fighting continues outside the US army camp on the outskirts of the city and guerrillas are fighting running battles with the puppet police in the heart of Baquba, 50 km north east of Baghdad.

Iraqi railway workers declared on Tuesday that they would boycott all supplies to US troops or forces loyal to the Alawi puppet regime. Workers in the National Iraqi Railways Company also stated that they will only agree to deliver food supplies that are part of the UN’s relief programme. If forced to do otherwise they will respond with a national walk-out. The Alawi regime has accused the workers of “civil disobedience”.

in blood

Bush and Blair believed they could drown the Iraqi resistance in blood and impose the peace of the grave on the Arab country they illegally invaded last year.

The heroic Iraqi masses have proved them wrong. Now the millions upon millions of people who took to the streets all over the world to protest against the invasion and occupation of Iraq must also mobilise to end the war and allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their country in freedom.

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Editorials

Heroism and slaughter in Iraq

THE HEROIC PEOPLE of Fallujah are fighting tooth and nail, and street by street, against the might of American imperialism. Bush has started his second term the way he clearly intends to go on. Torching Fallujah is Bush’s message to the world. It’s what the “new world order” is all about.

The US killing-machine is running amok in the defiant Iraqi city while British troops, shamefully sent to the combat zone by Blair, do America’s dirty work in the rear. All of this has been ordered by Bush and his willing tool, Tony Blair. All of it is being done in our name.

Blair tells us that the slaughter is in the name of the Iraqi people. But not in the name of the 100,000 Iraqis who, according to the Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Association, have died as a result of the war and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

Not in the name of the UN Security Council that refused to sanction the Anglo-American invasion last year. Not in the name of Britain’s major European allies like France and Germany or Great Powers like People’s China and Russia. Not in the name of the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who publicly opposed the onslaught against Fallujah.

Nor even in the name of the puppet interim Iraqi “president”, who has washed his hands on the affair, or the Sunni Islamic party that has walked out of the puppet regime in protest.

No, it’s being done in our name to fulfil the neo-colonialist dreams of Bush and Blair for the benefit of the big oil corporations that want all the Arabs’oil for themselves.

Some union leaders have been diverted by so-called Iraqi trade unionists who are nothing more than mouthpieces of a puppet regime propped up by American bayonets.

Some are still taken in by those turncoat “communists” who sit on the puppet council and tour the world providing an alibi for the likes of Blair and his kind to split the peace movement and justify Anglo-American imperialism’s horrendous crimes in Iraq. All links with these Iraqi quislings and traitors must be cut.

The labour movement must build solidarity with the genuine representatives of the Iraqi working class like the workers refusing to assist the occupation army and the patriotic communists who are fighting with the masses in the Iraqi resistance to kick the imperialists out of their country.

The labour movement must mobilise behind the anti-war movement to get all British troops out of Iraq immediately. They are not wanted by the Iraqis and they have no role to play in ending the crisis.

US imperialism, led by George W Bush, is the enemy of all the peoples of the world.

He will eventually answer to the American people for his crimes. Forging links between the British anti-war campaign and the American peace movements will help build a world-wide anti-imperialist camp in solidarity with the Iraqis and Palestinians and all the others on the front-line against the “new world order”.

Protests and vigils are taking place throughout the country and a new mass mobilisation is needed to isolate the warmongers and build the movement that can and must defeat Blair and Brown within the Labour Party. They’ve got to go.

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