Precision-strike democracy

[bemildred]

Pepe Escobar. Good read, good summary of Iraq situation.

Fallujah may become the new Gaza. Or the new Grozny. Meanwhile, here's what's happening on the ground, as summarized to Asia Times Online by sources in Baghdad very close to the Fallujah resistance.

More than 1,000 marines, supported by a few hundred US-trained Iraqi forces, are entrenched less than a kilometer away from the city. There are constant firefights in the eastern and southern sectors. Thousands of families have left, "90% of them" - according to guerrilla leaders themselves - but there is no looting. Hospitals are badly overstretched. All shops are closed. And the city may be running out of food. The Americans even bombed a local institution - the top kebab restaurant in a city that prides itself on making the best kebabs in Iraq.

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The majority of Fallujah's citizens yearn for peace. But they also believe US military precision strikes - at times imprecision strikes - and the almost inevitable assault against the city will happen because the mujahideen, after three weeks and hundreds of casualties in April, inflicted a de facto military defeat on the Americans. Most citizens also believe the central government in Baghdad is split between President Ghazi al-Yawar, a Sunni sheikh, deeply involved in negotiations, and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, a Shi'ite surrounded by a coterie of thuggish neo-Ba'athists, taking orders from the Americans and ready to level Fallujah to the ground. The problem is negotiations collapsed last week. Senior Sunni clerics are adamant: if the Americans attack, they will issue a fatwa proclaiming jihad all over Iraqi territory.

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Whom is al-Qaeda voting for?
From al-Qaeda's point of view, the US leaving Iraq would be a major victory. And the US staying in Iraq - bleeding thousands of men and billions of dollars in the hands of a national guerrilla struggle - is also a major victory. So al-Qaeda does not bother to vote Bush or Kerry because the main sticking point - US policy in the Middle East, the thirst for oil, the one-sided support for Israel - will still be there. But in terms of accelerating a clash of civilizations - a total polarization between the Muslim world and the Christian world - of course al-Qaeda prefers a fundamentalist like Bush.

Asia Times