Last week, a six-year old Iraqi child was crushed underneath a US tank in Abu Gharib. Fourteen other civilians were shot dead by US soldiers in a demonstration that turned violent. When Al Jazeera inquired whether an investigation was launched by US forces into the crushing death of the child they were simply told “We do not provide information on Iraqi casualties” by a US military spokeswoman.

Almost simultaneously, a report emerged which accused the US Army and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) of sidestepping the number of Iraqi civilians killed. This has fueled bitterness and open resentment against US forces with the average Iraqi remarking that Iraqi lives seem unimportant to the American people.

(Fallujah has been a flashpoint in recent months with the greatest number of US fatalities coming from the area.)

In the area surrounding Fallujah, Iraqis have complained to reporters and human rights investigators that US military tactics and cultural ignorance are increasing the resistance and the veracity of those seeking revenge.

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin reported from Iraq that US bungling is creating enemies behind every corner. “In Khaldiyah, next to Fallujah, where a Chinook helicopter was downed on Sunday, I visited Shaikh Fanar al Kharbit. His brother leads the huge Sunni Bu Khalifa tribe, which worked with Saddam in the 1980s but plotted against him in the 1990s. On April 10, based on bad intelligence, U.S. jets bombed the house of Kharbit’s nephew and killed 23 of his relatives,” she wrote last week.

The same day the Chinook helicopter was downed near Fallujah, jittery US forces fired on a truck carrying Iraqi civilians back from taraweeh (traditional Ramadan) prayers. Six Iraqi civilians were killed. No independent inquiry was made of the incident since then. Relatives later told reporters that US forces had declared the curfew lifted for Ramadan prompting the men to travel about freely.

“The men gathered in the mourning tent were bitter about the killings but they were almost as angry that nobody in the outside world knew or cared their relatives had been killed. The US army does not keep a count of Iraqi civilians killed in such incidents, but the hostility they create towards the occupation goes a long way to explain why guerrilla war is becoming endemic in this part of the Iraqi countryside,” wrote Patrick Cockburn of the aftermath of the above incident in The Independent last week.

With so many Iraqi civilians killed north of Baghdad, it is not surprising then to understand who downed the two helicopters in what is being termed the “Sunni Triangle.”

However, resistance is not restricted to this fantastic triangle theory. The Italian contingent was attacked in Nasiriyah, south of Baghdad, while several US soldiers have been killed in the northern city of Mosul in recent weeks, with the number of attacks on coalition forces and the local Iraqi police spiraling upwards. Iraq’s local police force has had a particularly difficult time of things. They have come under constant attack for aiding US forces, but ironically have lost their greatest number in ranks thanks to bungling US attacks.

“A third police officer who survived the attack said US soldiers shot one of the other officers between the eyes even though that officer had already been wounded and was shouting that he was a police officer. The surviving officer said he was kicked and beaten despite waving his badge and despite being wounded in the leg,” says Derrick Z. Jackson in The Boston Globe.

It is unfortunate that US viewers are not allowed such reports or the images that come with them. In fact, the Iraq war seems to be unraveling in some far off galaxy and involves other people in other circumstances. Had images of decapitated civilians, burned cars with children inside them, and US soldiers roughing up elderly men been shown to US viewers, the backlash against the war would have risen dramatically.

“Television reports produced by ‘embedded’ correspondents in the Iraq conflict gave a sanitised picture of war,” says a BBC study released last week.

True, US forces have been able to successfully achieve a number of humanitarian missions, such as rebuild or refit war-ravaged schools, and bring textbooks, games and toys to war-weary children, but those events have been rare and far in between.

Last Friday, US forces, with the help of eight Abrams tanks and a squadron of F-16s, shelled regions of Fallujah in retaliation for the most recent downing of a Black Hawk helicopter. US forces also blew up 3 abandoned buildings where it was feared Iraqi resistance had been hiding. The US commander of the operation said the strike was punitive, to show residents that US forces “have teeth.” They have lobbed satellite-guided missiles at former Saddam palaces and partially destroyed a warehouse for textiles in Baghdad.

The teeth scenario is backfiring - it only creates more hatred for US forces. Iraqi residents later told reporters they felt terrorized in their own homes.

Punishment by burning crops doesn’t work either.

“The bulldozers worked for 10 days, methodically clearing the date palms and citrus groves as 200 U.S. soldiers sealed off the area. Townspeople looked on helplessly, while jazz music blared from speakers mounted atop the soldiers’ trucks,” says Mohammed Bazzi for Newsday.

US soldiers have remarked that Iraqi civilians sometimes give them cold, menacing stares.

In the November 10th issue of Newsweek, “Specialist Jose (Psycho) Lopez, 21, struggles to know how to handle more-threatening situations. ‘You see them standing there and they’re doing this...’ He makes a slashing motion across his throat. ‘You see them, but what are you going to do? Kill them? I’ll grab them by the throat and slap them hard.’ Maybe not the best way to make friends and cultivate informants.”

Newsweek’s analysis is accurate.

While the attacks on the Red Cross and United Nations are likely not the work of local Iraqi fighters and probably the work of foreigners, the attacks on US soldiers in Baghdad, Fallujah, Kut, Tikrit and Mosul are.

The Iraqi resistance draws its numbers from farmers and other ‘dishonored’ civilians, former Iraqi Army personnel, Iraqi Special Forces, Iraqi volunteers, and Iraqi teenagers. In some cases, impassioned Arab youth have been able to slip across the border and volunteer. However, if Iraqi sources are to be trusted, Iraqi resistance cells feel Arab fighters are unreliable and may leave when fighting US forces becomes exceedingly difficult.

As for Ansar-Al-Islam, the radical Muslim faction holed up in the extreme north of Iraq, bordering Iran, their military actions have been limited in scale after successful US raids in March and April of last year which virtually wiped out the organization. Ansar actions have been limited to scant retaliatory attacks against Kurdish forces in the north. It is unlikely they have been involved in any of the attacks on US soldiers in the south.

The attacks on the UN, Red Cross and other international aid organizations are considered by Iraqis to be the work of non-Iraqis.

One Iraqi university professor blamed Al Qaeda, who he believed were able to enter Iraq only after the US invasion. He blames the US for the breakdown in security and civil order.

Another Iraqi businessman, who travels to Oman regularly, believes Israeli agents of the Mossad are behind the above attacks. He does not believe attacking international organizations is a legitimate resistance achievement and thinks someone is trying to both destabilize the country and undermine the Iraqi resistance.

Several Iraqi resistance organizations which were established during the summer months have disassociated themselves from the spate of attacks on international installations.

The CPA has to date been unable to positively identify who the perpetrators of the above attacks actually are.

At press time, US forces have stepped up their attacks. There is fury in Washington that so many soldiers are being killed with nearly 9,000 wounded and evacuated US personnel reported in the press. Japan has balked at sending troops. Turkey has said no way. All of a sudden, the US is on its own and paying the price. Consequently, Washington is trying a two-prong approach - step up the fight against the resistance, and promise a hand-over of power to the Iraqis by June 30th ^2004. However, there is a catch. Killing more Iraqis will just lead to more Iraqis joining the resistance, and the hand-over is just a charade: Bremer has already announced (or rather invited himself) that Iraq’s new government (to be decided in June 2004) will ask US military forces to stay in the country.

How this is supposed to fool the Iraqi population is anyone’s guess.

Firas Al-Atraqchi is a Canadian journalist of Iraqi heritage. Holding an MA in Journalism and Mass Communication, he has eleven years of experience covering Middle East issues, oil and gas markets, and the telecom industry. You can reach him at firascape@hotmail.com.