Tal Afar: the ones that got away. posted by Richard Seymour

After relentless aerial bombardment, tank-fire, missile attacks and rocket launches, Tal Afar is "empty". Not that there are no civilians there but, dammit, the evil-doers got away again. They had a specially prepared network of tunnels, and "decided to bail out". Chickenshits. Obviously not infused with a sense of fair play and honest battle, these insurgents - like their confederates in New Orleans - only wish to destroy property, then flee:

"They want this city to fail. They want Iraq to fail," McMaster said of the insurgents. "But the No. 1 priority is being met by this operation, which is to defeat the terrorists so they can no longer prevent reconstruction from happening."

This is one of the stupidest lines about the Iraqi resistance yet to have emerged. They want the cities which they control to fail. The trouble is that the World Health Organisation's report on the situation in Tal Afar from August 19th of this year notes that it the occupiers and their forces are contributing to the deterioration of the city's infrastructure. They have occupied the Tal Afar General Hospital, and shortages of both staff and materials persist. In the areas they have controlled, garbage piles up. Electricity has been sporadic, although in recent days civilians have reported that it is down to zero. Same with the water. Meanwhile, even in Haditha where - according to a rather lurid report in The Guardian - the most sectarian and loathsome fringe of the resistance is in control, they get the electricity working 24 hours a day. It should go without saying that where resistance fighters gain control they want to make it work, in precise contrast to the occupation.

The occupation forces claim to have killed 141 'insurgents' and arrested 211. Let's be generous and take their words at face value. Daniel Brett reminded us during the November assault on Fallujah that according to Iraq Body Count the proportion of insurgents to civilians killed in Iraq has been 1:8. Which would mean 1,128 civilians have been killed in recent operations on Tal Afar. More generously, one could compare it to the much less severe April 2004 assault on Fallujah, where the ration was 1:3, and get 423 civilians killed.

Meanwhile an Iraq Body Count press release discussing civilian deaths over 2003-2005 breaks responsibility down as follows:

US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims.
Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims.
Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths.

Further:

Over half (53%) of all civilian deaths involved explosive devices.
Air strikes caused most (64%) of the explosives deaths.
Children were disproportionately affected by all explosive devices but most severely by air strikes and unexploded ordnance (including cluster bomblets).

The ones that didn't get away, of course, will be barely reported if at all.