Flashback – Fallujah

 
Scandinavian correspondent Rune, who appears to be quite a polyglot, sent us this message last week:

Here's a French piece dating from before the battle of Fallujah; I didn't see it on any of the blogs, in fact never saw it in an English translation. It's out-of-date now of course, but sometimes it's worth revisiting old horrors so as to congratulate oneself that things really are going in the right direction. Also to remember that we have not, and shall never, forget Nick Berg's killers and who we're dealing with. This month [April] it's a year ago.

	After staying for six months in Iraq after the end of the war, French journalist Sara Daniels managed to set up a meeting with the Islamic executioners hiding in Fallujah.
	Marseille, France
	The large report makes your spine shiver. The journalist Sara Daniels of the French weekly magazine Le Nouvel Observateur [The New Observer] finally managed to set up a meeting with the Islamists whom have abducted and killed several foreign hostages in the recent months.
	Inside their Fallujah headquarters -- Fallujah where American troops have not dared venture since their withdrawal April 29 -- they are laughing about why they have cut the throats of the hostages and why the world can expect more hostage taking in the future: it works.
	"I'm responsible for the decapitation of the American agent Nicolas Berg, of the Korean Kim Sun-il and of other Iraqi spies working for the Americans" says the chief of the new military top command of the Islamic groupings - a man of about 30 years, whose name in the article has been changed to Abou Rachid.
	Video with Murder
	Sara Daniels listened with growing horror to the laughs and taunts of Abou Rachid and his recommendations that she watch the DVD the murder of Nicolas Berg twice -- then she'll get used to it. Meanwhile he offers her to participate in the next. Abou Rachid denies that foreign troops control the struggle against the Americans. After the American withdrawal Fallujah is considered the first liberated city of Iraq; an Islamic emirate. The chiefs for 13 Islamic groups have installed a religious regime of terror with summary execution of opponents, spies or people who will not subject to the draconian Islamic rules. According to the leaders, all the Islamic groups now cooperate and abdications and attacks are planned and staged from Fallujah.
	The Method Works
	"We don't abduct people to scare them, we withhold, but solely to put pressure on the countries which help the Americans. They cooperate with the Americans because of economic interests, but their contracts are stained with the blood of Iraqis. Should we merely fold our hands while they murder us? It is not a good thing to decapitate people. But it is a method which works" says Abou Rachid and continue: "Just look at the just reaction of the Philippines. Thanks to their attitude we could free the hostage and show the world that we too love peace and leniency. I by the way tried to negotiate a transfer of Nick Berg with Iraqi prisoners, but the Americans refused. So they are the ones truly responsible for his death."
	According to Abou Rachid, the 13 Islamic groups have different tasks, but they have centralised inside Fallujah the hostage negotiations and the struggle across the whole of Iraq, the better to be able to increase the number of attacks and coordinate future attacks and show their strength. The Islamic leader acknowledges that many foreign Arab holy warriors participate in the fight on their side, but deny that the attacks are controlled by foreigners. When several of the hostages have been executed by Arab warriors it, according to Abou Rachid, is because they have reached a higher religious level.
	"But little by little the Iraqis learn to imitate their Arab brothers" he says and promise the struggle will not end before the occupation has ended and Islamic Sharia introduced into Iraq.
	Prophetic Preaching
	Sara Daniels also interviewed the extremist Islamic religious leader, imam Janabi, who with satisfaction tell her that he already in a preaching in 1996 predicted that an American invasion would first finish off Saddam Hussein and then the American themselves. On tours through Fallujah, it quickly become obvious to Sara Daniels that the Islamic warriors are in possession of all actual powers and that the Iraqi security forces, which according to the ceasefire agreement, should control the security after the American withdrawal are simple irrelevant.

"Higher religious level" huh?! Oh yeah, Religion of Peace. Anyway, Sara Daniels is a very courageous woman, and the lessons are clear; never give in to threats and never negotiate with hostage takers. Also this is a fight to the end. There can be no negotiations and never any settlement with such men.

-- Rune