While the US military says it now controls Fallujah and is simply “mopping up” what is left of the Iraqi resistance, over 400 soldiers wounded in the fighting have been flown out of Iraq to US air bases in
Germany.

As giant C-141 transport planes carrying wounded and maimed American soldiers roar over the Iraqi desert, armed men carrying rocket propelled grenades and kalashnikov machine guns roam freely in the streets of Mosul, the third largest city in Iraq.

After the US military withdrew from inside Mosul, looters with mattresses tied to the tops of cars and pushing desks in wheelbarrows emptied the abandoned American base of its contents. The horrendous situation afflicting civilians in Fallujah, which the Iraqi Red Crescent Society refers to as a big disaster, didn’t seem to concern a contractor from India who works supplying US bases in Iraq.

“One thing I feel is that in Fallujah, most of the insurgents are there and nobody bothered to clear them off,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, “So many innocent people were killed and no actions were taken.” He then added, “So one way is good to clear those insurgents.”

The Iraqi Red Crescent Society states that scores of civilians have died in Fallujah. Thousands of families remain trapped in the city with no source of food, clean water or electricity. They report outbreaks of cholera, as well as children bleeding to death because there are no medical facilities left in the city. Red Crescent attempts to get relief supplies through the US military cordon around the city have been nearly impossible.

Due to the disaster in Fallujah, Muqtada al-Sadr has announced that his followers will boycott the elections, scheduled for January. The Islamic Party of Iraq is seriously considering boycotting them as well. Ayad al-Azi, spokesman for the Islamic Party of Iraq, said, “The Americans called for all the civilians to come to the mosques in Fallujah and they detained all of the men and let the women and children go. We are calling for all the people in the world to look at this humanitarian disaster.”

He added, “We are strongly considering withdrawing from the elections.”

With over 30 US troops dead and what US-appointed Iraqi security advisor Ayad Daoud claims are 1,000 insurgents killed in Fallujah, the goal of their operation, capturing the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has escaped them.

But Zarqawi isn’t the only one to have escaped, as up to 80 percent of the resistance fighters in Fallujah may have left before the siege even began.

“The Iraqi government announced there are fifteen cities not under their control,” said Dafer al-Ani, an Iraqi political analyst, “Fallujah and Samarra are just the start, and there is serious resistance all over Iraq now outside of the government’s control. If we are talking about Fallujah and Ramadi, they are using street fighting.”

He continued, “It’s not their [the Iraqi resistance] aim to keep controlling the cities. They are just making the enemy lose as much as possible and then pulling out to go to other cities. What everybody knows is the resistance in Fallujah, they left before the siege of Fallujah, and what they left was less than twenty percent of the resistance there.

And we can see what losses they caused for the occupation forces around the country.”

The Iraqi resistance now controls large areas of Ramadi, Samarra, Haditha, Baquba, Hiyt, Qaim, Latifiyah, Taji, Khaldiyah, and Baghdad, along with fighting in the holy city of Kerbala.

Having been closed on November 7, Baghdad International Airport remains closed indefinitely. Along with the borders of Syria and Jordan being closed under US-appointed Ayad Allawi’s announcement of martial law in Iraq, people here are now left with no exit from the liberated country.