repression, which becomes ever more indiscriminate and punishes the civilian population more and more
Nothing more demonstrates the callousness towards Iraqi civilians than the continuing plight 200,000-plus refugees from the destroyed city of Fallujah, flattened by marines last November.
Most remain stuck in pathetic camps, unable to
their destroyed homes
Jonathan Steele and Dhar Jamail writing in the UK Guardian sate: "In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja." (Guardian April 27).
Anti-war activist Milan Rai, founder of Voices in the Wilderness, has reconstructed a detailed picture of why Fallujah became a key centre of the resistance, and hi account is more evidence of
the random callousness of US
troops.
He argues: "But how did
Fallujah become the heart of the Iraqi insurgency? For the
answer we must turn back to
the events of April 2003, when
US troops entered the peaceful city of Fallujah and occupied local secondary
school. Local people angry
about the US occupation, and
demanding the re-opening of
the school, demonstrated outside the school on the evening
of 28 April, nearly three weeks
after the fall of the regime. US
soldiers fired on the crowd,
killing 13 civilians immediately.
"This is the same number of civilians as was killed by British soldiers in Derry in Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972. The Fallujah
as Iraq's Bloody Sunday, a similarly potent injustice sparking armed resistance." (Turning Point Fallujah: How US Atrocities Sparked The Iraqi Resistance. Electronic Iraq, 4 May 2005). Worldwide Gulag
After detailed investigations by numerous journalists and human rights organisations a detailed picture of the US worldwide network of
and torture emerging.
It is increasingly based on secret detention facilities in Afghanistan, but according to the US lawyers organisation Human Rights First, in addiAfghanistan and Guantanamo Bay there are at least 22 detention facilities in Iraq, one confirmed and two suspected centres in the US itself, two in Pakistan, a CIA
interrogation centre in Jordan
and probably some kind of
detention and interrogation
facility at the US base on the
British-owned island of Diego
Garcia.
According to Adrian Levy
and Cathy Scott-Clark (One
Huge US Jail, The Guardian,
Saturday March 19,
2005) "The floating population of i 'ghost detainees',
according to US and UK military officials, now exceeds
10,000.
"What has been glimpsed
in Afghanistan is a radical
plan to replace Guantánamo
Bay. When that detention
centre was set up in January
2002, it was essentially an offshore gulag - beyond the reach
of the US constitution and