Post by POA on May 3, 2004 3:51:23 GMT -5
Iraqi general refuses to give up Falluja fighters
Rory McCarthy in Falluja
Monday May 3, 2004
The Guardian
The Iraqi general chosen to run a new security force in Falluja yesterday distanced himself from the US military by refusing American demands to give up foreign fighters supposedly hiding in the city.
As a flood of civilians returned home after four weeks of a ferocious assault on the city by American marines, Major General Jasim Mohammed Saleh said the US had provoked a backlash from ordinary Iraqis.
"The reasons for the resistance go back to the American provocations, the raids and abolishing the army, which made Iraqis join the resistance," he said.
American commanders say 200 foreign fighters are holed up in Falluja and have demanded that the city hands them over. But Gen Saleh, an ex-Republican Guard officer who has been mooted to run a 1,000-strong local security force, has refused. "There are no foreign fighters in Falluja and the local tribal leaders have told me the same," he said.
His remarks have put him at odds with the US-led coalition.
Yesterday America's most senior military officer, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, added to the confusion about Gen Saleh's role by denying that he had been put in charge of Falluja.
"There's another general they're looking at," Gen Myers told ABC's This Week. "My guess is, it will not be General Saleh. It will not - he will not be their leader ... He may have a role to play, but that vetting has yet to take place."
Gen Myers, who stressed that the marines were not withdrawing from Falluja, did not respond to a question earlier on Fox News about whether Gen Saleh, one of Saddam Hussein's generals, had been involved in brutally suppressing Iraq's Kurdish minority.
He told Fox: "The goals and objectives ... in Falluja have been what they've been all along. We've got to deal with the extremist and foreign fighters, we've got to get rid of the heavy weapons and we've got to find the folks that perpetrated the Blackwater atrocity", in which four American contract workers were killed and mutilated by a mob.
Yesterday Iraqi police and members of the new Iraqi Civil Defence Corps were positioned along the main street in the city, but many of the back roads were still under the control of men with their faces wrapped in scarves and armed with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades.
In a back street behind the ICDC's headquarters, young recruits gave their names to register for the new security force. Once approved by a local former Iraqi army officer they received a uniform and a pair of desert boots. Several tried to sell the boots almost immediately, asking for 15,000 dinars (£8) a pair.
"What the people want now is security and that is what we are providing," said Salah Noori, 22, a Fallujan student who studies management at Baghdad University and signed up yesterday to join the new force. "But you know this big battle in Falluja wasn't just to get the Americans out of our city, it was to get the Americans out of Iraq. We have had a great victory in Falluja. The Americans have all these weapons and we had nothing, and we fought them."
Until now the police and civil defence corps, both created by the US military, have struggled to assert any authority in Falluja. Marked out as collaborators, they regularly face attack.
"The core of the problem is when you bring people to provide security who have been chosen by the Americans and not by the people of Falluja," said another recruit, Ahmad Khudair, 32. "Gen Saleh is not chosen by the Americans and he is supported by the people here. He will bring the right solution."
Several of the families returning to the city called at the football stadium, which at the start of the fighting was turned into an impromptu graveyard. At the entrance a white cloth banner hung from the wall, leading to the "martyrs cemetery of Falluja". Doctors say at least 600 Iraqis died in the fighting, and many are buried here.
Yesterday each grave was marked with a simple concrete slab for a headstone, a name and an epithet quickly painted on. "The courageous martyr Nasser Hussein. Killed doing his duty on April 15 and buried the same day," read the first.
Others were unidentified. "Here lies an unknown martyr, a big security guard with a blue shirt ... found near the industrial area with a chain of keys," said one. A pair of brown boots stuck out from one mud heap. The inscription on the stoneread: "An unknown worker from the industrial area, wearing a black shirt with yellow pants, found inside a white Oldsmobile car."
Some were women, while other graves held more than one body. Many of those at the graveyard came not to search for relatives, but just to look. "What can I say?" said one man. "Just look for yourself at this."
