IRAQ: The controversial redeployment of a battalion of British Blackwatch troops serving in southern Iraq is meant to bolster US forces in an assault on the city of Falluja, writes Michael Jansen
The Blackwatch would free up the 24th US marine expeditionary unit which would spearhead the onslaught, reinforced by 1,000 "green berets" said to be on their way to Iraq from Colorado. Once an offensive has been launched, the Blackwatch would hold the approach roads to Falluja in order to prevent supplies and reinforcements from reaching the city.
The US considers Falluja to be the font of the insurgency as well as the main base of "al-Qaeda Iraq", formerly "Tawhid wal Jihad" (Monotheism and Holy War), commanded by Abu Masab Zarqawi, Washington's prime enemy in Iraq.
Iraqis know Falluja as the "City of Mosques". It is a conservative tribal city with 300,000 inhabitants located in the Tigris-fed green belt to the west of Baghdad. Falluja capitulated to US forces without a fight in April 2003. Its disciplined citizenry prevented the city from being looted and vandalised after the ouster of the government as were most Iraqi urban areas. However, a few days after US soldiers occupied Falluja, they fired on demonstrators protesting the take-over of a school, killing 18. This incident created a blood feud between Falluja and the US military, not settled in the time-honoured way by paying blood money to families of victims.
The men of Falluja, who followed a long tradition of serving in the armed forces, had been in former president Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guards, the regular army, police, and security agencies. They were deprived of their livelihood when the US disbanded the 400,000-strong armed forces in mid-2003.
Unemployment, exacerbated by resentment created by the unresolved blood feud, made Falluja fertile ground for resistance recruiters as well as sympathetic to Islamist militants seeking to wreak havoc amongst US forces. Falluja became a no-go area for US forces.
In April 2004 Washington launched a campaign to reoccupy Falluja and other restive towns with the aim of eliminating resistance ahead of the end of June transfer of sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government. The offensive was a military failure and a public relations disaster. Seven hundred Iraqis were killed in Falluja alone, 70 US and allied soldiers died, and 40 foreigners were kidnapped. Shias united with Sunnis against the occupation, insurgents stepped up attacks on US convoys, there was an international outcry.
The US negotiated a deal which involved the entry into Falluja of Iraqi forces (the "Falluja Brigade") under a former Baathist general. The brigade joined the rebels.
Aware that a fresh assault on Falluja would infuriate the Iraqi populace, on Sunday the rebel Shia cleric, Sayyed Muqtada al-Sadr, offered the resistance the support of his Mahdi Army militia which battled the US in April and August in Najaf.
The Sunni Association of Muslim Clerics warned it would call for a boycott of the January 2005 election if Falluja was assaulted.