Muslim Groups Urge Iraqis to Abandon Falluja Assault
Mon Nov 8, 7:42 PM ET Top Stories - Reuters
By Lin Noueihed
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Muslim leaders urged members of Iraq (news - web sites)'s fledgling security forces on Monday to refuse to fight alongside U.S. troops storming the rebel-held city of Falluja, where Iraqi units have deserted in the past.
Anti-U.S. Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr joined a call by a powerful Sunni Muslim group, saying the siege of Falluja risked further destabilizing the rest of Iraq.
"We have called on the Iraqi National Guard, army and police not to participate with the occupation forces in attacking Falluja," Sadr spokesman Abdul Hadi al-Darraji told Reuters.
"We condemn this attack that will escalate the security situation inside Iraq."
Last time U.S. forces tried to take Falluja in April some Iraqi units refused to fight and the assault failed.
An uprising led by the fiery Sadr was also raging in the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf at the time and spread to Baghdad's Sadr City slum.
Iraqis, just a fraction of the total 10,000 to 15,000 combined troops in the latest offensive, did join Monday's initial push into Sunni Muslim Falluja.
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference desertions were a problem.
On Friday, an Iraqi commander deserted hours after receiving a full briefing on U.S. plans to storm Falluja, where U.S. and Iraqi leaders say Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) loyalists and foreign Islamists leading a relentless insurgency are entrenched.
But U.S. commanders said the captain, a Kurd, had no known contacts in Falluja and was unlikely to contact the rebels.
It was not clear if other Iraqi soldiers, including former Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas and former members of Saddam's army, had refused to fight in Falluja this time.
Hours before the assault, the Muslim Clerics Association, a national group with influence over some rebels in Falluja, urged Iraqi troops not to join the U.S.-led action.
"We call on the Iraqi forces, the National Guard and others who are mostly Muslims ... to beware of making the grave mistake of invading Iraqi cities under the banner of forces who respect no religion or human rights," it said in a statement.
"Beware of being deceived that you are fighting terrorists from outside the country, because by God you are fighting the townspeople and targeting its men, women and children and history will record every drop of blood you spill in oppressing the people of your nation."
Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has vowed to crush insurgents behind daily bombings, killings and kidnappings in Iraq ahead of elections due by the end of January.
He visited frontline troops to offer encouragement just before the assault began.
"Your job is to arrest the killers but if you kill them then let it be," he said, according to a pool report.
"May they go to hell," shouted the soldiers. "To hell they will go," Allawi replied.
The clerics association, which has helped negotiate the release of foreign hostages in Iraq, has threatened to boycott the poll if assaults on the Sunni heartland escalate. |
