From the new World Media Watch..........
2//Asia Times Online, Hong Kong Oct 22, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FJ22Ak04.html PRECISION-STRIKE DEMOCRACY
By Pepe Escobar
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.
Fallujah at the moment is still basically controlled by the Iraqi police and dozens of different mujahideen groups from different clans. They all fiercely coordinate the defense strategy among themselves. The unifying banner is Islam, not the tribal clan. The police - as long as they are not perceived as being bossed around by Americans - and the mujahideen get along very well.
According to the sources in Baghdad, Fallujans vehemently deny the presence of foreign jihadis - including of course the ubiquitous al-Qaeda-linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, blamed by the Americans for virtually everything that happens in Iraq. The few dozen foreign jihadis who indeed may be in action have blended in smoothly. Fallujah tribal leaders are notoriously suspicious of foreigners: they fear they may be spying for the Americans. One of the key organizers of the guerrillas is Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed, a former senior Ba'athist official also badly wanted by the Americans.
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