“Witnesses said fighting between US marines and guerrillas broke out in several districts of the Sunni Muslim town, despite a unilateral ceasefire declared by the Americans on Friday.”

The unilateral ceasefire by the US is most significant. It is testimony for the mauling the US army has suffered in a week of fighting. It is only the fierce resistance which has compelled the unilateral ceasefire. The enemy prides itself with its policy of not negotiating with “terrorists”. What has constrained them to engage ‘fundamentalist' clergy and sheikhs to act as peace-brokers? The events on the battlefield in the streets of Iraq have dictated the unilateral declaration of the ‘ceasefire'.

“ A few hours later, the gunmen reminded Baghdad that they could still strike, irrespective of US-imposed exclusion zones. A loud explosion echoed over the rooftops when a mortar bomb landed outside the Sheraton Hotel. Scores of US soldiers piled into their armoured cars near Firdus Square and set off to hunt for more men dressed in black.”—The Telegraph

“The men dressed in black” is a sarcastic remark to ridicule US forces who apprehend unarmed civilians to show that they are succeeding in their pursuit of ‘terrorists'. The “men in black” are Shiah worshippers attending a Shiah festival. They are randomly arrested because the Shi'ite cleric, Sadr's men also dress in black. Paranoia has driven US forces to believe that every man dressed in black is an ‘insurgent' of Sadr.

( Reproduced from Sunday Tribune 11th April 04 )

Since it appears that Muslims were responsible for the recent bombings in Spain , a need has developed to explain these events in the light of the Shariah of Islam so that all confusion and misgiving are eliminated. For a proper understanding of this event and the Islamic Ruling for it, it is necessary to first understand the purpose of Islam. Why did Allah Ta'ala dispatch Muhammad (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) to earth with His Final Message, the Shariah of Islam?

SALVATION

Everyone does understand who the true and real terrorists are. The terrorists can never be those who valiantly fight an invading and a brutal enemy which never inherited a conscience from anyone. They who commit the horrendous massacres, the destruction of homes and families therein, the cowardly air strikes before they dare enter a populated zone for their so- called searches for weapons, are the real terrorists. In Iraq they are American and British.

The 11 year old boy with his AK rifle fighting the marauding barbarians who cowardly shoots at his grandmother, mother and sisters, is a Mujaahid. He is not a terrorist. He fights the American and British terrorists inspite of the overwhelming odds of lethal weapons and brutal , inhuman creatures who have the external appearances of human beings.

The killing of thousands of Iraqi civilians by the Americans and British has gone unreported in US and UK media, writes John Plger

Four years ago, I travelled the length of Iraq, from the hills where St.Mathew is buried in the Kurdish north to the heartland of Mesopotamia, and Baghdad , and the Shia south. I have seldom felt as safe in any country. Once in the Edwardian colonnade of Baghdad 's book market, a young man shouted something at me about the hardship his family had been forced to endure under the embargo imposed by the US and Britain .

Iraq has been ravaged by the American and British state-terrorists. Pillage, plunder and murder have reduced large areas of the country to rubble. There is no government infrastruc- ture. The entire fabric of Iraqi life has been destroyed. Brutal acts of murder from the safety of the air fortresses and the land garrisons from behind massive concrete barricades and in tanks, long range guns, missiles and airstrikes have and are punnelling and flattening entire residential areas. Musjids, hospitals, houses, women and children all come within the murderous and bloody assaults of the American and British terrorists. But inspite of this murder and genocide on a massive scale, the Americans and British are NOT in control of Iraq.

( Report reproduced from Sunday times, 18th April 2004)

“Since the US offensive began, Jo Wilding has been one of the few Westerners who has braved the bullets to deliver medical supplies to the city (of Fallujah). Here she tells her disturbing tale of the bloody horror taking place there. ”

Trucks, oil tankers, tanks are burning on the highway east of Fallujah. A stream of boys and men goes to and from a lorry that is not burnt, stripping it bare. We turn onto the back roads through Abu Ghraib, Nuha and Ahrar singing in Arabic, past vehicles full of people with few possessions heading the other way.

A war founded on illusions, lies and right -wing ideology was bound to founder in blood and fire. Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He was in contact with al Qaeda, he was involved in the crimes against humanity of september 11, 2001 . The people of Iraq would greet us with flowers and music. There would be a democracy. Even the pulling down of Sad dam's statue was a fraud. An American military vehicle tugged the wretched thing down while only a few hundred Iraqis watched.

Freedom from Saddam's dictatorship in those early days meant freedom to loot, burn, kidnap and murder. The mobs were followed by sinister squads who systematically destroyed every archive and government ministry (save the Oil and Interior which were secured by US troops), Islamic manuscripts and irreplaceable antiquities. The very cultural identity of Iraq was being annihilated.

The realization that it has landed in a boiling cauldron is increasingly dawning on the U.S.A. and its coalition partners. A year after its invasion, the resistance far from having been eliminated has gained momentum and American and other foreigners are increasingly being killed by the fighters The reports and views aired by the western media are a good barometer to gauge the plight of America in Iraq and the degree of the fierce resistance of the Iraqi Muslims notwithstanding their weaknesses in every field of life.

BLOODIEST

A year after the American invasion, the first week of April 2004 has seen some of the bloodiest fighting throughout Iraq . Every major city in Iraq is up in flames fighting the American and its coalition oppressors. While hundreds of civilians have been indiscriminately murdered by the occupying forces in just a week, scores of Americans have been killed by the Iraqi fighters. On the otherhand, the casualties among the Iraqi fighters were comparatively speaking slight.

Fear stalks the US forces every moment of their existence in Iraq . In the beginning of the invasion after the US forces had settled in Iraq , it had appeared that they had won the day and the ‘hearts' of the Iraqi people. The Sunday Times, 11th April 2004, reports: “When order was restored a few weeks later and asemblance of normality returned, US soldiers could be seen shopping in Baghdad 's supermarkets, carrying groceries in their combat helmets or logging on at internet cafes, with their M16 carbines lying on the floor.

This would be unthinkable today. Now US troops travel in convoys of Humvee and Bradley armoured personnel carriers, often guarded by Abrams tanks. Baghdad's ever - present theme tune is the throbbing beat of helicopters flying along the Tigris River, guarding the approaches to the occupation authority's headquarters in the “Green Zone”.