Fallujah near Baghdad, finds peace under fascist rule
60km west of Baghdad, there is peace. But residents describe it as the peace of the dead. Resistance to the invasion is still common however. Unemployment is at 80%. Car movement is banned. There is no longer freedom of the press. People often go missing and then turn up as unidentified bodies in the streets. Medical supplies are denied to the residents. It is a slow death that residents are being subjected to.
The city sees no more of the kind of resistance attacks of old, and no more of the 2004 kind of crackdown. "We are so happy that our city is peaceful and quiet after all the battling that killed thousands of our citizens," a captain in the local police force of Fallujah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. "We can patrol the streets without fear now, and arrest any person that we suspect to be a terrorist." ...
... Several of those found dead had been arrested earlier, eyewitnesses and families of several of the men killed have said.
"This is fascist behaviour that shows the brutality of the Americans and the so-called Iraqi government," a former member of the Fallujah city council who asked to be referred to as Mahmood told IPS. "Those young guys were executed without any trial. This brutality was not known in our city before this occupation began." ...
... Journalists inside the city are also quiet after a few of them were arrested and held for several days.
One of the detained journalists spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. Visibly shaken, he said that a major in the Fallujah police force had told him that freedom of the media had been misused and that the police would not allow it any more. He said the major told him that "the news you transmit to the world will be what we tell you, not what you pick up from the street". ...
... Medical services also continue to suffer under the vehicle ban. Doctors at Fallujah General Hospital told IPS that the government in Baghdad is not supplying them with medicines and medical equipment.
"The officials of the Ministry of Health tell us we are terrorists, and so we do not deserve their support," a doctor said. "As if they own Iraqi money and it is up to them whether to give it or not."
The Ministry of Health was headed by Ali al-Shemari from the group of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr until Sadr withdrew from the government Apr. 16.
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These guys were Sunni, and Saddam kept the Shiia minority under control by these exact same tactics.What he says is true--they exported this kind of brutality to other cities when they had power. If the American occupation were to end suddenly, i wonder: would there be enough Sunnis in the country left after the revenge of the oppressed majority to field a ball team? I seriously doubt it.