And the true believers continue to think Iraq has made them safer. Those that believe that the anger we are creating will never reach these shores, are dreaming.
JMO
Anger over Fallujah reaches ears of the faithful
Anne Barnard
BAGHDAD -- Wearing a sweater vest and an Iraqi government ID card, Jassim Mohammed Abbas, 50, seemed nothing like the "dead-enders" and foreign terrorists the US military says it is fighting in Fallujah.
BAGHDAD -- Wearing a sweater vest and an Iraqi government ID card, Jassim Mohammed Abbas, 50, seemed nothing like the "dead-enders" and foreign terrorists the US military says it is fighting in Fallujah.
Abbas, an engineer in Iraq's Ministry of Trade, said he is working with US officials to rebuild a flour mill north of Baghdad, has a brother in Nebraska, and feels grateful to the United States for toppling Saddam Hussein.
But incensed over reports that about 500 Iraqis had been killed and 1,000 wounded in last week's crackdown by US Marines on Fallujah's insurgents, Abbas rounded up colleagues and bused them to a mosque to give blood for the fighters.
"We are donating for the people who work against the coalition forces," Abbas said. "They represent the heart of our country."
Stories of mounting Iraqi casualties last week in Fallujah -- punctuated on television with images of dead children and bombed-out houses -- are fueling support for antioccupation fighters, drawing in some Iraqis who had shunned violent resistance.
The battles drew hundreds of thousands to Sunni and Shi'ite mosques on Friday for fiery sermons that called on the US-led coalition to leave Iraq, that branded the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council "traitors," that demanded that they resign, and that rallied people to defend Fallujah as a symbol of Iraqi nationalism.
In a show of unity between Iraq's two main Islamic sects, clerics praised both the insurgents in the primarily Sunni area of Fallujah and the Shi'ite militia led by a cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, which is challenging US-led forces in Baghdad and the south.
The casualties also drew sharp criticism of the US-led coalition from some of its supporters.
"These operations were a mass punishment," Adnan Pachachi, of the Governing Council, told Al-Arabiya television. "It was not right to punish all the people of Fallujah, and we consider these operations by the Americans unacceptable and illegal."
Yesterday, residents of Baghdad and its suburbs rushed to take in friends, relatives, and even strangers from Fallujah, as thousands of refugees fled the city on dusty back roads.
"Every time we stopped, we were offered Pepsi, water, food, and free fuel," said Mohammad Ramadan, 53, who brought his extended family from Fallujah in a convoy of six packed cars.
Ghazwan Arrawi, 30, who fled Fallujah on Friday, described five days and nights of explosions and gunfire that kept his family huddled in their house. He said five people in his neighborhood, including two of his childhood friends, were killed in blasts that hit their houses, and when he and others tried to bury them, the gravedigger was shot to death.
It took his family 10 hours to make the 20-mile drive, including a six-hour wait at a checkpoint to cross the cordon US Marines have set up around the city of 200,000.
Tales like these are the subject of conversation at mosques and in living rooms across Baghdad. In response, people across the city -- professionals, elderly women with little to spare, former army officers -- have donated flour, sugar, cooking oil, and dates. Thousands of people marched from Baghdad to Fallujah on Thursday, trying to deliver the goods.
But some have gone farther, pledging their help not only to Fallujah's civilians but to its fighters.
"Before, there were some of us who were not for violence," Ayad Allawi, 40, a Fallujah resident, said as he arrived for Friday prayers at the Umm al Qura mosque. But he said the week's fighting -- in which mosques and houses have been damaged by US artillery -- had changed his mind.
"I brought my family here to Baghdad. I have my weapon, and I'm going back to Fallujah," he said. "God bless you," said a man in the crowd, hugging him.
Despite the pains US military officials have taken to say they do not target civilians, the common perception prevails that the United States is killing civilians intentionally to take revenge for the grisly deaths of four US security contractors, who were ambushed late last month as they drove through the city, then burned and mutilated. Marines say the operation aims to root out those responsible.
US military officials do not make public enemy casualty counts and say they do not count civilian casualties. The precise number of noncombatant civilians caught in crossfire is impossible to verify. Fallujah's main hospital has reported 450 Iraqis killed since last Sunday.
Major Larry Kaifesh, 36, part of the operation, was quoted as telling the Associated Press the rebels were trying to blend with civilians.
"It is hard to differentiate between people who are insurgents or civilians," he said. "It is hard to get an honest picture. You just have to go with your gut feeling."
But for frustrated Iraqis, that does not explain what Haitham Saha, 35, called "a double standard."
"For only four individuals, the Americans killed children, women, elderly, and now a whole city is under siege?" he said as he dropped off food donations bound for Fallujah.
On Friday, the first anniversary of the US troops' arrival in Baghdad, Fallujah was the focus of weekly sermons. At Umm al Qura, formerly called the Mother of All Battles Mosque -- leaders of the Council of Muslim Scholars, a group of influential Sunni Muslim clerics, called for a general strike to force the United States out of Iraq. A number of worshipers waved Iraqi flags.
"The battle of Fallujah is the battle of history, the battle of Iraq, the battle of the nation," Harth al-Dhari, the council's leader, said before about 5,000 worshipers. "Merciful God, take revenge for spilled blood.
"Take revenge for slaughter. Send your army against the occupiers. Kill all of them. Don't spare any of them," he cried.
Up to then, the council had avoided calling Iraqis to battle, although coalition troops have detained some members and searched mosques for weapons. But after the Friday prayers, a tribal leader from Fallujah, Husham al-Dulaimi, used the mosque microphone to call for recruits.
"We don't need your food and clothing. We need you. We need your support. Attack the supply convoys coming to Fallujah," he told the crowd, who shouted, "Jihad! Jihad! Jihad!"
Behind the mosque, a black cloud rose from the highway, where a fuel truck in a US convoy had just been hit by rocket-propelled grenades. One US soldier and an Iraqi driver were killed, the US military said later.
Muthanna Ibrahim, who carried an assault rifle as one of the mosque's guards, said he had driven back from Fallujah on Friday. "I saw houses destroyed, I saw bodies in the street," he said. "I am willing to strap on a belt of explosives and blow myself up."
Nabil Saif, 42, a Baghdad taxi driver with relatives in Fallujah, ferried people out of Baghdad for free so they could join the march. He said the bloodshed over the past week had changed his attitude. He had once wanted the resistance to cease its attacks so that occupation authorities could stabilize Iraq by the return of sovereignty, scheduled for June 30.
"Now it is different," he said. "Jihad seems to be necessary."
boston.com
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