Sympathy for the Devil

Pleased to meet you

Hope you guessed my name

But what’s confusing you

Is just the nature of my game

Just as every cop is a criminal

And all the sinners saints

As heads is tails

Just call me lucifer

’cause I’m in need of some restraint

So if you meet me

Have some courtesy

Have some sympathy, and some taste

Use all your well-learned politesse

Or I’ll lay your soul to waste

The Rolling Stones, Sympathy for the Devil

With the conquest of Fallujah almost complete, the United Nations has suddenly become concerned about the conditions in the city. Strangely silent since Fallujah fell to the rule of the Islamofascists, U.N. officials are now eager to express their dismay at the humanitarian situation.

Top United Nations human rights official Louise Arbour has called for investigation of alleged abuses in Fallujah, Iraq, including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians. Those responsible for any violations – US and multinational forces, Iraqi government troops or insurgents – should be brought to justice, the former UN war crimes prosecutor said in a statement.

“There have been a number of reports during the current confrontation alleging violations of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants,” the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights said. She gave no specific examples. On Monday, Amnesty International accused both sides of breaking rules designed to protect civilians and wounded combatants during conflict.

Note the stench of moral equivalence emitted by the United Nations. The application of American and Iraqi force to retake the city is equivocated with the brutal regime of terror imposed on the citizens of Fallujah. Denying humanitarian convoys access to unsecured areas is as bad as using citizens as human shields. A Marine captured on tape shooting a wounded terrorist out of fear of deception is no different than the videotapes of jihadis murdering and mutilating innocent men and women. Such is the mindset of the United Nations, the most morally equivalent institution on the face of the planet; where murderers, terrorists, dictators, fascists and Communists are held in the same esteem as the representatives of democratically elected governments.

The United Nations was fully aware of the situation in Fallujah prior to Coalition intervention, but never issued their concern for the citizens that were subjected to the nightmare of Taliban-like rule. The Fallujans are now free to tell their stories of the repulsive nature of the Islamofascists that treated the citizens viciously.

Mutilated bodies dumped on Fallujah’s bombed out streets today painted a harrowing picture of eight months of rebel rule. As US and Iraqi troops mopped up the last vestiges of resistance in the city after a week of bombardment and fighting, residents who stayed on through last week’s offensive were emerging and telling harrowing tales of the brutality they endured.

Flyposters still litter the walls bearing all manner of decrees from insurgent commanders, to be heeded on pain of death. Amid the rubble of the main shopping street, one decree bearing the insurgents’ insignia – two Kalashnikovs propped together – and dated November 1 gives vendors three days to remove nine market stalls from outside the city’s library or face execution. The pretext given is that the rebels wanted to convert the building into a headquarters for the “Mujahidin Advisory Council” through which they ran the city.

Another poster in the ruins of the souk bears testament to the strict brand of Sunni Islam imposed by the council, fronted by hardline cleric Abdullah Junabi. The decree warns all women that they must cover up from head to toe outdoors, or face execution by the armed militants who controlled the streets.

Two female bodies found yesterday suggest such threats were far from idle. An Arab woman, in a violet nightdress, lay in a post-mortem embrace with a male corpse in the middle of the street. Both bodies had died from bullets to the head. Just six metres away on the same street lay the decomposing corpse of a blonde-haired white woman, too disfigured for swift identification but presumed to be the body of one of the many foreign hostages kidnapped by the rebels. It was initially thought to be either the body of Margaret Hassan, the Dublin-born aid worker with dual British and Iraqi nationality who was kidnapped last month, or a Polish woman kidnapped two weeks ago. A Polish official said today there was no evidence to suggest that the body was that of the kidnapped Pole.

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“But we were happy you did what you did [liberate the city] because Fallujah had been suffocated by the Mujahidin. Anyone considered suspicious would be slaughtered. We would see unknown corpses around the city all the time.” The same story of arbitrary executions was told by another resident, found by US troops cowering in his home with his brother and his family.

“They would wear black masks, carry rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikovs, and search streets and alleys,” said Iyad Assam, 24. “I would hear stories, about how they executed five men one day and seven another for collaborating with the Americans. They made checkpoints on the roads. They put announcements on walls banning music and telling women to wear the veil from head to toe.”

It was not just pedlars of alcohol or Western videos and women deemed improperly dressed who faced the militants’ wrath. Even residents who regard themselves as observant Muslims lived in fear because they did not share the puritan brand of Sunni Islam that the insurgents enforced. One devotee of a Sufi sect, followers of a mystical form of worship deemed herectical by the hardliners, told how he and other members of his order had lived in terror inside their homes for fear of retribution. “It was a very hard life. We couldn’t move. We could not work,” said the man sporting the white robe and skullcap prescribed by his faith. “If they had any issue with a person, they would kill him or throw him in jail.”

Kofi Annan condemns the Iraq war as illegal and advises the Iraqi Interim Government not to take action in Fallujah because the threat of the use of force is potentially destabilizing, and yet signs off on French action in the Ivory Coast. France also condemns American actions in Iraq as illegal, and yet lauds the terrorist Yasser Arafat. American news networks refuse to show the beheadings and executions of innocents by the Islamofascists, and yet images of Abu Ghraib and a Marine shooting a man in a mosque dominate the headlines. These nations and organizations are either knowingly discrediting the United States to subvert her power, or are unable to distinguish the difference between the actions of America and the actions of terrorists.

The Fallujans, like the Afghanis before them, have lived under the heel of the Islamofascists, and know the difference.

Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal.