"Let Them Drink Sand!"
War Crimes in Fallujah
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Counterpunch
November 13 / 14, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11132004.html
The United States is bringing "democracy" to Iraq on the same terms that the Russians imposed its federal mandate on Chechnya, a region which has Iraq's future written in its rubble. The advocates of intervention in Iraq, the epigones of Wolfowitz , should take a walk through Grozny, and measure against its ruins the fate of their proclaimed ambition to bring democracy to Fallujah and other cities in Iraq.
In the waning weeks of the US election campaign the antiwar movement here in the US, was largely corralled into the Kerry campaign and strangled by the bizarre contradiction of supporting a candidate whose "peace plank" was continuing war. Will it now turn out that for many Kerry supporters their interest in the US war on Iraq was in fact mostly its utility as a rationale for attacking Bush? Now that the race is over, will they forget the war along with Kerry's disastrous campaign?
If there is anything that should fuel the outrage of the antiwar movement, it is surely the destruction of Fallujah and the war crimes being inflicted by US commanders on its civilian population, who are now being denied the most basic and essential source of life, water.
This is not the first time that US forces have cut water supplies, something explicitly forbidden under Article 14 of the second protocol of the Geneva Conventions, which reads as follows:
"Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population such as food-stuffs, agricultural areas for the production of food-stuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works."
Back in 1991 the US war planners targeted and destroyed the infrastructure of Baghdad's water supplies, and the sanctions thereafter denied new equipment necessary to repair it. In consequence civilians, particularly babies and young children died in vast numbers.
Here at CounterPunch we are in receipt of a compelling dossier of the denial of water to Iraqi civilians, assembled by Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq (CASI)], whose briefing may also be studied at http://www.casi.org.uk/
Water supplies to Tall Afar, Samarra and Fallujah have been cut off during US attacks in the past two months, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. This appears to form part of a deliberate US policy of denying water to the residents of cities under attack. If so, it has been adopted without a public debate, and without consulting Coalition partners. It is a serious breach of international humanitarian law, and is deepening Iraqi opposition to the United States, other Coalition members, and the Iraqi interim government.
On 19 September 2004, the Washington Post reported that US forces 'had turned off' water supplies to Tall Afar 'for at least three days' . Turkish television reported a statement from the Iraqi Turkoman Front that 'Tall Afar is completely surrounded. Entries and exits are banned. The water shortage is very serious'.
Al-Manar television in Lebanon interviewed an aid worker who stated that 'the main problem facing the people of Tall Afar and adjacent areas is shortage of water' Relief workers reported a shortage of clean water . Moreover, the Washington Post reports that the US army failed to offer water to those fleeing Tall Afar, including children and pregnant women .
'Water and electricity [were] cut off' during the assault on Samarra on Friday 1 October 2004, according to Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Independent. The Washington Post explicitly blames 'U.S. forces' for this . Iraqi TV station Al-Sharqiyah reported that technical teams were working to 'restore the power and water supply and repair the sewage networks in Samarra' . Al Jazeera interviewed an aid worker who confirmed that 'the city is experiencing a crisis in which power and water are cut off' , as well as the commander of the Samarra Police, who reported that 'there is no electricity and no water' .
On 16 October the Washington Post reported that:
'Electricity and water were cut off to the city [Fallujah] just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that U.S. forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra.' .
Residents of Fallujah have told the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks that 'they had no food or clean water and did not have time o store enough to hold out through the impending battle' . The water shortage has been confirmed by other civilians fleeing Fallujah, Fadhil Badrani, a BBC journalist in Fallujah, confirmed on November 8 that 'the water supply has been cut off'.
In light of the shortage of water and other supplies, the Red Cross Has attempted to deliver water to Fallujah. However the US has refused to allow shipments of water into Fallujah until it has taken control of the city.
According to the Cambridge dossier, the information reported above is more widely known in Iraq than in the US and UK, and has had become a significant political issue.
Condemnations of the tactic have been issued by several major Iraqi political groups. On October 1 the Iraqi Islamic Party issued a statement criticizing the US attack on Fallujah which 'cut off water, electricity, and medical supplies', and arguing that such an approach 'will further aggravate and complicate the security situation'. It also called for compensation for the victims .
Three days later Muqtada al-Sadr criticized both the denial of water To Samarra, and the lack of international outrage at it: 'They say that this city is experiencing the worst humanitarian situations, without water and electricity, but no-one speaks about this. If the wronged party were America, wouldn't the whole world come to its rescue and wouldn't it denounce this?'
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11132004.html
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