Meanwhile, in Falluja

You remember - that place we cleaned up last fall.

A suicide car bomber slammed into a 7-ton U.S. military vehicle in Fallujah, killing five Marines and a Navy sailor, Marine Corps sources told NBC News, adding that at least three of the dead were female Marines and that 13 others were wounded.
  MSNBC article

Remember Falluja?

Well, now you can see it. What's left of it.

Photo Essay — Fallujah: An Unnatural DisasterAll Falluja posts.

Falljua remade

The NY Times in Falluja

by Mike Whitney
Progressive Trail
April 18, 2005

"Things are almost back to normal here. We have teachers and books. Things are getting better."

-- New York Times, "Vital Signs of a Ruined City Grow stronger in Falluja," March 26, 2005

"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government."

-- Rev. Martin Luther King

Cameras aren't allowed in Falluja. Neither are journalists. If they were then we would have first-hand proof of America's greatest war crime in the last 30 years: the Dresden-like bombardment of an entire city of 250,000. Instead, we have to rely on eyewitness accounts that appear on the internet or the spurious reports that sporadically surface in the New York Times and Associated Press. For the most part, the Times and AP have shown themselves to be undependable, limiting their coverage to the details that support the overall goals of the occupation. For example, in the last few weeks both the NYT and the AP ran stories on the alleged progress being made in Falluja. The AP outrageously referred to the battered city as "the safest place in Iraq," a cynical appraisal of what most independent journalists have called nearly total destruction.

[...]

The truth about Falluja is far different than the bogus reports in the AP and Times. The fact that even now, a full 6 months after the siege, camera crews and journalists are banned from the city, tells us a great deal about the extent of America's war crimes. Just two weeks ago, a photographer from Al Aribiyya news was arrested while leaving Falluja and his equipment and film were confiscated. To date, he is still being held without explanation and there is no indication when he will be released.

[...]

The fairytales in the Times and AP are typical wartime propaganda; no different from the fabrications about Jessica Lynch's heroics or the Dear Leader larking about in Baghdad with a plastic turkey in tow (Bush's "surprise" Thanksgiving day visit).

[...]

Falluja is undoubtedly doomed to the same fate as Afghanistan. The media will create the illusion of improvement for the American public, celebrating the meaningless trappings of democracy (sham elections, claims of sovereignty, and the writing of a constitution) while the nation remains fractured and under the brutal rule of the regional warlords. Afghanistan is a lawless, drug colony run by gangsters and narco smugglers. By any standard of measurement, our involvement there has been a complete failure.

The real Afghanistan bears no resemblance to the flourishing democratic republic that graces the pages of American newspapers.

Falluja and the rest of Iraq can expect the very same treatment.

[...]

Deregulation, privatization and control of resources, the same model applied over and over again. The real goal is a radical, fundamental change to the system; "shock therapy," the all-purpose antidote prescribed by the global banking and financial establishment. [...] After Iraq has passed through this vicious transition from semi-socialist government to deregulated capitalist colony, it will be entered into the new world order of American protectorates, stripped of its resources and subjected to the tyranny of foreign rule. All government properties and services will be controlled by multinational corporations and all assets will be held by the foreign lending institutions that own the majority shares of the Iraqi National Bank.

[...]

The real story of Falluja will never appear in the pages of the New York Times; the banned weapons, the bloated corpses, the thousands of dead animals killed by illicit chemicals, the wasteland of rubble and ruined lives. The magnitude of the crime simply won't fit within the paper's glib account of benign intervention. Rather, the Times is focused on promoting a credible story of "rebirth amid the ruins," of lives patched together by a kindhearted father in Washington and his heavily armed disciples.

They're wasting their time.

  Occupation Watch article

Falluja report

Presented to the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights For the period of 1ST January to 25th March 2005

Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy - Bussells Tribunal

The city of Fallujah was subjected to a genocide war by the American forces. The military machinery destroyed almost 70 per cent of the city, from civilian houses to medical center and general services facilities especially water, electricity. This war resulted in killing thousands of innocent civilians and sending almost a half million refugee.

It is well known that the American forces and their puppet government prevented any medical or humanitarian relief agency to enter the city throughout its siege to the city.

[...]

In order to give the international community a clear image of what is happening, we present this short report:

[...]

  Information Clearinghouse
article

And from a reporter who was there...

deep sea diver turned documentary filmmaker Mark Manning asked if I had six minutes to spare — a strange request, considering we’d already spent two hours talking about Manning’s recent trip to Falluja, the heart of Iraq’s bloody Sunni triangle. Six minutes more was nothing, so Manning queued up a short video of footage he’s shot in Iraq and hit play.

[...]

“There were 500,000 people living in Falluja at the time, not the 250,000 that the media reports. They were given one week to leave home,” Manning said. “After three days, they were told they had to walk out. Then after a week, the U.S. forces sacked the city and killed anyone that was left.” Manning expressed outrage that no provision was made for the mass exodus of refugees. “There were no refugee camps. Families were living in chicken coops, tents, and cars. In Iraq, the winters are very cold and very wet. And these are people who left with pretty much just the clothes on their back.”

[...]

“The whole town is radiated,” said Manning. “We are poisoning the whole country.”

[...]

Even though his taped interviews were stolen, Manning said he managed to download many video images of Falluja onto his computer, as well as many still photos. With these, he hopes to make first a 10-minute DVD, and then later a full-length documentary.

[...]

This 4-year-old spent his time either staring blankly ahead
or jumping at any provocation and shaking.
He was one of seven kids whose family Manning visited almost daily.

  Independent.com article

That is a very interesting article. Check it out.

News about Falluja for Americans

Knight Ridder headline:

Fallujah: From insurgent stronghold to 'safest city in Iraq'

Here are the opening paragraphs (which is all most Americans read, if they bother to go beyond the headlines - which are apparently written for George Bush to scan - and Knight Ridder knows it)...

Piles of rubble still line the streets here, but a few shops have opened on the main drag, schools are finally in session and a compensation program to help families rebuild made some token initial payments this month.

Four months after the assault on Fallujah, in the center of Iraq's Sunni Muslim heartland, American forces working to rebuild the city say they're seeing some progress, albeit limited, in a city that's still blockaded and under a curfew.

Even a little progress is an important development in a city that's been a major test for the American presence in Iraq.

See? It was a difficult and terrible situation, but through hard work and consideration of the people's sovereign needs, we are rebuilding Falluja.

And if you have any real interest in Falluja, you might actually make it all the way to the bottom of the article where you'll find these paragraphs...

And while Marine units adopt and help rebuild schools such as the Palestine School for Boys and Girls, some students aren't able to get through the checkpoints to make it into the city for class, said gym teacher Sulaiman A. Ali Al-Mohamadi.

The southern half of the city is still without electricity. Water service, though now extended to almost all areas, is limited because residents can't power the pumps that bring the water into their homes, said Navy Lt. Chris Lankford. Only 1,000 of the 13,000 telephone subscribers before the war have had their service restored.

For businesses, the security checkpoints on the perimeter of the city are a particular hardship. Fallujah used to be less than an hour's drive from Baghdad. Now, people wait for hours in line, submitting to searches and fingerprinting. Only Fallujah residents and contractors working on reconstruction projects can enter the city.

"Baghdad is the source of the goods we need," said spice dealer Haji Abbas. "I was going and coming from Baghdad almost daily. Now I can't. The checkpoints and the long lines make transportation costs extremely high and this makes my spice prices relatively high ... and Fallujah residents need money to fix their homes. The last thing they need is a shortage of goods and high prices."

[...]

So far, only 40 families have received compensation payments, out of an estimated 25,000 who suffered damages. American officials say the program is being run by the local government, which is still in disarray.

The article doesn't even mention how many Fallujans still reside in tents outside the city because the "damages" were total destruction of their homes. But that 40 out of 25,000 families receiving compensation, and 1,000 of 13,000 who have telephone service, the lack of water and electricity should give you some idea. Here are a great number of links to stories that provide information.

And how about Knight Ridder's summation starter....

Some are happy for a break in the violence, even at the price of their freedom.

How very American of them!

"We can't do business here," said Ali Muhammed Hussein, as he waited with his elderly father to receive a compensation check. "It's the safest city in Iraq because it's a prison."

Now for the Falluja section of 7th Fire's Iraqi Resistance Report from Arab sources:

Three US troops reported killed by Resistance roadside bomb in al-Fallujah Sunday afternoon.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded by a US column in the ash-Shuhada neighborhood of al-Fallujah at 5:30pm Sunday afternoon local time. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the bomb virtually totally destroyed a Humvee killed three US troops and wounded two more. An official statement by the police said that a roadside bomb on the street leading to the al-Anbiya’ Mosque was responsible for the blast that left five SU troops “killed or wounded.”

Resistance car bomb in al-Fallujah Sunday evening.

An Iraqi Resistance car bomb exploded in the ash-Shukr area of northern al-Fallujah at about 6pm Sunday evening. The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the extent of casualties as a result of the blast was unclear.

Resistance activity in al-Fallujah on Sunday.

Six 120mm mortar rounds into the as-Su’dad school in the al-Jurayfi neighborhood of al-Fallujah but the extent of losses was unclear.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded near the al-Firdaws Mosque, killing three Iraqi puppet troops, Mafkarat al-Islam reported.

An Iraqi Resistance bomb exploded in the al-‘Askari neighborhood of the city by a patrol of the puppet so-called Iraqi national guard. Witnesses told Mafkarat al-Islam that a number of guardsmen were killed or wounded.

Iraqi Resistance forces battled Iraqi puppet “national guard” troops near the as-Siddiqiyah Bridge in the al-Khalidiyah district on Sunday afternoon. The Resistance forces fired BKC rockets killing two puppet guards and wounding three more, Mafkarat al-Islam reported.

If Falluja is the safest city, you might not want to know what's happening elsewhere. But go ahead and have a scroll through the report.

Reports from Falluja

All is quiet in Falluja, or at least that is how it seems, given that the mainstream media has largely forgotten about the Iraqi city. But independent journalists are risking life and limb to bring out a very different story.

The picture they are painting is of US soldiers killing whole families, including children, attacks on hospitals and doctors, the use of napalm-like weapons and sections of the city destroyed.

One of the few reporters who has reached Falluja is American Dahr Jamail of the Inter Press Service.

[...]

Another report comes from an aid convoy headed up by Dr Salem Ismael. He was in Falluja last month. As well as delivering aid he photographed the dead, including children, and interviewed remaining residents.

[...]

"The accounts I heard ... will live with me forever. You may think you know what happened in Falluja, but the truth is worse than you could possibly have imagined"

[...]

Journalist and writer Naomi Klein has also come under attack for insisting that US forces are eliminating those who dare to count casualties.

No less than the US ambassador to the UK David Johnson wrote a letter to British newspaper The Guardian that published Klein's work, demanding evidence, which she then provided.

The first piece of evidence Klein sent to Johnson was that the hospital in Falluja was raided to stop any reporting of casualties, a tactic that was later repeated in Mosul.

[...]

But as Richard Perle, a senior adviser to US President George Bush said at the start of the Iraq war: "The greatest triumph of the Iraq war is the destruction of the evil of international law."
  Common Dreams article

Dahr Jamail's website.

"I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update."

Do you note how if a party has 51% in this parliamentary system, it automatically gets to form a government?

So why is the United Iraqi Alliance, the coalition of Shiite parties that can count on about 53% of the members of the Iraqi parliament to vote for it in the wake of the Jan. 30 elections, not able to form a government? If it were the Labor Party in the UK, which is the parliament described above, Ibrahim Jaafari would already be Prime Minister.

The US spiked the Iraqi parliamentary process by putting in a provision that a government has to be formed with a 2/3s majority. This provision is a neo-colonial imposition on Iraq. The Iraqi public was never asked about it. And, it is predictably producing gridlock, as the UIA is forced to try to accommodate a party that should be in the opposition in the British system, the Kurdistan Alliance.

Likewise, in France, a simple majority of the National Assembly can dismiss the cabinet. Likewise in India. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the 2/3s super-majority is characteristic of only one nation on earth, i.e. American Iraq. I fear it is functioning in an anti-democratic manner to thwart the will of the majority of Iraqis, who braved great danger to come out and vote.

[...]

I think there is also a real chance that Iraqis will turn against the idea of democracy if it only produces insecurity, violence, and gridlock.
  Juan Cole post

The Association of Muslim Scholars condemned the US for raiding the home of its secretary-general, Hareth Suleiman al-Dhari, for a second time in a week on Sunday.

A reader points out that the interim Constitution requires a warrant for a house search, and wonders if the US military applied to an Iraqi judge for such a warrant in the case of al-Dhari.

A sense of being under siege is palpable in the Iraqi Islamic Party of Muhsin Abdul Hamid.
  Juan Cole post

Patrick Quinn of AP tells the truth about Baghdad, perhaps the world's most dangerous city.

' By day or night, Baghdad has become a cacophony of automatic weapons fire, explosions and sudden death, its citizens living in constant fear of being shot by insurgents or the security forces meant to protect them. Streets are crammed with passenger cars fighting for space with armored vehicles and pickups loaded with hooded and heavily armed Iraqi soldiers. Hundreds of bombs in recent months have made mosques, public squares, sidewalks and even some central streets extremely dangerous places in Baghdad. On Haifa Street, rocket-propelled grenades sometimes fly through traffic. Rashid Street is a favorite for roadside bombers near the Tigris River. '

When Farnaz Fassihi of the Wall Street Journal admitted as much in a private email last October, she was forbidden to report from Iraq for two weeks. I guess Paul Gigot can't dictate the news to the Associated Press. I'd wager most Americans have no idea how bad it is in Baghdad.
  Juan Cole post

Readers often write in for an update on Fallujah. I am sorry to say that there is no Fallujah to update. The city appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000 residents, only about 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes. The rest of the Fallujans are scattered in refugee camps of hastily erected tents at several sites, including one near Habbaniyyah, or are staying with relatives in other cities, including Baghdad.

The scale of this human tragedy-- the dispossession and displacement of 300,000 persons-- is hard to imagine. Unlike the victims of the tsunami who were left homeless, moreover, the Fallujans have witnessed no outpouring of world sympathy. While there were undeniably bad characters in the city, most residents had done nothing wrong and did not deserve to be made object lessons--which was the point Rumsfeld was making with this assault. He hoped to convince Ramadi and Mosul to fall quiet lest the same thing happen to them. He failed, since the second Fallujah campaign threw the Sunni Arab heartland into much more chaos than ever before. People forget how quiet Mosul had been. And, the campaign was the death knell for proper Sunni participation in the Jan. 30 elections [...]
  Juan Cole post

Ramadi - the next Falluja?

Actually, some people who fled Falluja went to Ramadi - they are in the same Anbar province.

Residents of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province some 100 km east of Baghdad, have started to flee the city following the latest offensive launched by US Marines and the Iraqi army.

The military have carried out raids in the province over the past few days in an attempt to crack down on insurgents, with the main focus of operations eing Ramadi, a rebel stronghold.

[...]

Government offices and shops have closed and people are having difficulties getting food supplies as the offensive came quickly and without warning, giving them no time to prepare.

[...]

Firdous al-Abadi, a spokeswoman for the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), told IRIN that many people had been trapped in the university and inside mosques for over 48 hours as fighting raged outside.

"The government should take responsibility and provide those people with everything that is required for their survival," al-Abadi added. "People are tired of running from place to place."

Al-Abadi also said that the IRCS had sent a supply convoy last weekend to Fallujah, as nearly 100 families were still homeless inside the city after their homes were destroyed.
  Alternet article

And by the way, people are still dying (including soldiers) in action in Falluja.

Falluja massacre update

Dr Salam Ismael, now 28 years old, was head of junior doctors in Baghdad before the invasion of Iraq. He was in Fallujah in April 2004 where he treated casualties of the assault on the city.

At the end of 2004 he came to Britain to collect funds for an aid convoy to Fallujah. Now the British government does not want Dr Salam Ismael’s testimony to be heard.

He was due to come here last week to speak at trade union and anti-war meetings. But he was refused entry. The reason given was that he received expenses, covering the basic costs of his trip, when he came to Britain last year and this constitutes “illegal working”.

Dr Salam Ismael merely wishes to speak the truth. Yet it seems the freedom that Bush and Blair claim to champion in Iraq does not extend to allowing its citizens to travel freely.

Legal challenges, supported by the Stop the War Coalition, were launched this week in an effort to allow Dr Salam Ismael to come to Britain.
  article

Excerpts from Dr. Ismael's account:

Nobody knows how many died. The occupation forces are now bulldozing the neighbourhoods to cover up their crime. What happened in Fallujah was an act of barbarity. The whole world must be told the truth.

[...]

I had come to Fallujah in January as part of a humanitarian aid convoy funded by donations from Britain.

Our small convoy of trucks and vans brought 15 tons of flour, eight tons of rice, medical aid and 900 pieces of clothing for the orphans. We knew that thousands of refugees were camped in terrible conditions in four camps on the outskirts of town.

There we heard the accounts of families killed in their houses, of wounded people dragged into the streets and run over by tanks, of a container with the bodies of 481 civilians inside, of premeditated murder, looting and acts of savagery and cruelty that beggar belief.
  Read the full account. (Warning: photos)

THE RESPECTED cameraman and producer Michael Burke co-operated with Dr Salam Ismael to produce powerful material that was due to be shown on Channel 4 News this week. It included film taken of mass burials near Saqlawiya, on the outskirts of Fallujah.

The bodies that were interred there were collected mainly from the Jolan district in the city. Socialist Worker’s Simon Assaf saw the unedited footage and describes its graphic content.

[...]

As the sun begins to set a small cluster of civilians laden with belongings emerge from Fallujah.

They have been told to leave their houses by the US troops and their Iraqi allies.

They claim that the US troops were clearing out the houses so they can demolish their neighbourhood. They join the thousands of others now living in tents around the shattered city.
  Read the full account.

Fallujan police purge

Three-quarters of police officers in the city of Falluja are to lose their jobs in a purge of resistance sympathisers, an Iraqi commander has said.

The commander of Iraqi security forces in the western city, General Madhi Hashim, said not all policemen would be reincorporated

"The force had some 2000 policemen but we will rehire only 500," he said.

"They will be picked for their integrity and on condition they never took part in terrorist operations."
  Aljazeera article

That could be hard to prove.

And get this:

Hashim said the city's old police force had been disbanded on 4 November, four days before a devastating US-led offensive on the city was launched.

That was handy either way, eh?

He said the new police chief would be General Shaaban al-Janabi. "The Interior Ministry has appointed General Shaaban, but he will not have full control over decision-making. If he proves able after a month, he will take full and official responsibility," Hashim said.

Al-Janabi, a former officer in Saddam Hussein's army, had been the first choice of Falluja's tribal leaders, Hashim said.

You just know these people are thinking things would have been so much better if Saddam had just been left in power.

Falluja - a city destroyed

A couple of weeks ago a documentary was made in Falluja for a joint UK Guardian and Channel 4 News report, by an Iraqi doctor, Ali Fadhil, who compiled the first independent reports of Falluja after U.S. operations in November. I posted a link to the transcript at that time. Here's the video of the documentary (courtesy Journeyman TV), which is much more powerful simply by virtue of being visual.

Falluja update

Although there has been resounding silence about the humanitarian disaster in Falluja, the true cost to the civilian population is emerging. Preliminary estimates are as high as 6,000 Iraqis killed, a third of the city destroyed, and over 200,000 civilians living as refugees. It is estimated that it could be months before people are allowed to return to what is left of their homes. According to a UN emergency working group on this humanitarian crisis, there are shortages of food items and cooking fuel. The temperatures have dropped, underscoring an urgent need for winterization items and appropriate shelter. The International Committee for the Red Cross reported on December 23 that three of the city's water purification plants had been destroyed and the fourth badly damaged.

Aid organizations have repeatedly been denied access to the city, hospitals, and refugee populations in the surrounding areas. Sporadic fighting continues as some insurgent forces return. Iraqi National Security Advisor Qassem Daoud has warned of explosive ordnance still hidden in debris and on the streets. Residents seeking to return are required to go through intense security checks before being allowed to re-enter Falluja.

[...]

As firefights continue in Falluja, Iraq's third-largest city, Mosul, has become a new front line in the ongoing war. Suicide bombs and car bombs, firefights, kidnapping, targeted assassinations, and citywide curfews compound the violence.

[...]

Violence is claiming an increasing number of Iraqi civilians - an estimated 100,000 civilians had been killed before the November Falluja attack. During the months of October and November, 338 Iraqis associated with the "new" government or with Americans were assassinated.

[...]

As the US relies on Shia Muslim combatants to join with US forces on the siege of Sunni-inhabited Falluja, and Kurds to help rein in the violence in Mosul, surely an argument can be made that civil war is being fostered by the occupation.

The "catastrophic success" of Falluja

Even before the attack, the U.S. promised that a newly liberated Falluja would be spectacularly reconstructed -- "a feat of social and physical engineering… intended to transform a bastion of militant anti-Americanism into a benevolent and functional metropolis."

[...]

Unfortunately, the only success in the Fallujan campaign so far has been in demonstrating "the consequences" that would accrue to cities that harbored guerrillas. Falluja was gutted. Two months after the invasion, Erik Eckholm of the New York Times described the city as "a desolate world of skeletal buildings, tank-blasted homes, weeping power lines and severed palm trees." At least a quarter of its homes were fully destroyed, and virtually all the others were severely damaged. Blown out windows, wrecked furniture, three-foot blast holes in walls, and disintegrated doors demonstrated that American troops had relentlessly applied what they jokingly called the "FISH" strategy (Fighting in Someone's House), which involved "throwing a hand grenade into each room before checking it for unfriendlies." Since (in the words of Lt. Gen. Sattler) "each and every house" was searched, very few remained livable.

[...]

After eight weeks of this, one leader who remained taunted the occupation by conducting a cell-phone interview with Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid from inside the city, claiming the fighting "would continue for months."

[...]

A January UN dispatch reported that only nine of 27 neighborhoods were safe enough for medical teams to enter; and that reporters were not being permitted in the city "for their own safety." A Los Angeles Times report referred just to "occasional firefights" in the city, but then declared that "only certain parts of Fallouja are considered safe enough for residents to return" and that temporary U.S. bases within the city bore signs with the peculiar but unambiguous warning: "STOP Or U.S. Military Will Shoot Fire."

[...]

A sense of the ongoing fighting is reflected in a report from a refugee describing his first and only night back in the city ("Report from Falluja Refugee Camp," Free Speech Radio News, Jan. 6, 2005): "The houses around mine have all been destroyed. Our house was full of smoke. It was a mess. We cleaned up the house and spent the night there. But the bombing started at seven in the evening and lasted until the morning. There were all sorts of bombs. My children could not sleep." Because there was "no real end of the fighting in sight," they chose to leave once again and focus on "day-to-day survival" as refugees.

Since the rubblized terrain that is now Falluja can probably hide guerrillas indefinitely, the fighting might only end with an American withdrawal. In the meantime, with so many front-line troops fighting in, or occupying Falluja, the American military has only been able to mount half-hearted responses to insurgent efforts elsewhere, while remaining vulnerable to IEDs planted along convoy and patrol routes, to the mortaring of bases and of the Green Zone, and to suicide attacks like the one at the army mess hall in Mosul.
  Michael Schwartz at Tom Dispatch (links embedded)

Schwartz discusses the likelihood of Falluja being rebuilt as virtually none.

[T]he Bush administration is unlikely ever to allocate the massive resources needed for such an undertaking. The monetary commitment cited by U.S. officials escalated from a pre-attack $50 million to an early January estimate of $230 million. But this figure, which Hess claimed to be adequate for the job, is actually a fraction of what would needed.

[...]

Based on the estimated $400 million cost of repairing the less disastrously damaged Sadr City water systems in Baghdad, the repair of Falluja's sewers and treatment plants would in itself surely exhaust the entire $230 million allocation being discussed. The electrical system, which needed to be "ripped out and rebuilt from scratch," would cost at least as much as the sewers. Rejuvenating the medical system, rebuilding the schools, and clearing and rebuilding the streets, would likely claim another $100 million or more each.

And that's without even considering housing repair. The Iraqi Interim Government promised families from $2000 to $10,000 for each damaged dwelling. With 12,000 to 20,000 of the 50,000 homes in Falluja effectively demolished, this added up to yet another $200 million promise, with another $100 million needed to meet the government's promises to shop owners.

And remember that Falluja, the "city of mosques," now has had an unknown but significant number of its 100 or so mosques more or less annihilated, and well over half damaged. Christian Parenti, a knowledgeable independent reporter, estimated that just two of the mosques would require some $80 million in repairs; the full bill might therefore exceed $1 billion.

[...]

Total this up and you discover that the promised allocation for the reconstruction of Falluja is at least $2 billion less than would reasonably be needed. And, given the record of reconstruction funds released by the Americans over the last year, even the $230 million is certainly in question.

In other words, the promise of a "benevolent and functional metropolis" could be seen, at best, as a cruel hoax, vitiated only slightly by the fact that Fallujans never believed it.

ABC plays military's game

A US soldier was killed in action in the volatile western province of Al Anbar on Tuesday, the military announced in a statement.

"A soldier assigned to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was killed in action on January 11, while conducting security and stability operations in the Al Anbar province," the military said.

The military gave no further information.

article

Nor does ABC give further information that "security and stability operations in Al Anbar province" is code for "continued fighting in Falluja". Must allow Americans to think that mission has been accomplished.

Reuters follows the same script, releasing the military's official statement, adding this silly, but true, closing line:

U.S. troops often come under attack from insurgents who want them to leave Iraqi soil.

Speaking of the relatively new "hot" spot, The Australian doesn't sugar coat the news that two bombs in the last two days have killed more Iraqi soldiers.

Mosul was plunged into all-out war between US forces and insurgents in early November.

Indeed. And the "operations" in Falluja still constitute war, too. No matter how they avoid saying so.<

Returning to Falluja

They took prints of all my fingers, two pictures of my face in profile, and then photographed my iris. I was now eligible to go into Falluja, just like any other Fallujan.

But it was late by then, somewhere near 5pm (the curfew is at 6pm). After that anyone who moves inside the city will be shot on sight by the US military.

Guardian article

I guess pushing you into a river isn't so bad, then is it?

The approach to the checkpoint was covered in pebbles so we had to drive very slowly. The soldiers spent 20 minutes searching my car, then they bodysearched Tariq and me. They gave me a yellow tape to put on to the windscreen of the car, showing I had been searched and was a contractor. If I didn't have this stripe of yellow, a US sniper would shoot me as an enemy car.

How easy will it be to counterfeit a yellow tape? Will you want to drive with one, tempting an 'insurgent' to shoot you for your 'legal' car?

Falluja used to be a modern city; now there was nothing. We spent the day going through the rubble that had been the centre of the city; I didn't see a single building that was functioning.

The Americans had put a white tape across the roads to stop people wandering into areas that they still weren't allowed to enter. I remembered the market from before the war, when you couldn't walk through it because of the crowds. Now all the shops were marked with a cross, meaning that they had been searched and secured by the US military. But the bodies, some of them civilians and some of them insurgents, were still rotting inside.

[...]

Fallujans are suspicious of outsiders, so I found it surprising when Nihida Kadhim, a housewife, beckoned me into her home. She had just arrived back in the city to check out her house; the government had told the people three days earlier that they should start going home. She called me into her living room. On her mirror she pointed to a message that had been written in her lipstick. She couldn't read English. It said: "Fuck Iraq and every Iraqi in it!"

"They are insulting me, aren't they?" she asked.

[...]

I tried to figure out who these four men were. It was obvious which houses the fighters were in: they were totally destroyed. But in this house there were no bullets in the walls, just four dead men lying curled up beside each other, with bullet holes in the mosquito nets that covered the windows. It seemed to me as if they had been asleep and were shot through the windows. It is the young men of the family who are usually given the job of staying behind to guard the house.

[...]

The US military destroyed Falluja, but simply spread the fighters out around the country. They also increased the chance of civil war in Iraq by using their new national guard of Shias to suppress Sunnis. Once, when a foreign journalist, an Irish guy, asked me whether I was Shia or Sunni - the way the Irish do because they have that thing about the IRA - I said I was Sushi. My father is Sunni and my mother is Shia. I never cared about these things. Now, after Falluja, it matters.

Read more.

Falluja today

Zeynep hits the nail on the head with this post:

Even amidst all the Pentagon propaganda re-released as news, all the false assumptions, distortions and outright lies, it's hard to not understand what's actually going on in Iraq if one is paying a bit of attention.

This one is from the L.A. Times:

At five heavily guarded entry points to the city [Fallujah], military interrogators are selectively asking returning residents whether they have heard of the upcoming election and, if so, which, if any, candidates they support.

First a foreign occupying army levels your city. Then they tell you that you can't be in your own hometown without I.D cards issued by them and that there will be fingerprinting and retina scans. Then they claim it's so that there can be "elections" free of coercion. Then their military interrogators question you on your vote as you try to return to what's left of your house.

How can something like that be reported just like that, in passing, without much comment? Military interrogators questioning refugees about which candidate they plan to support. If it happened anywhere else in the world, everyone would recognize it for what it was.

People do recognize it for what it is. Some Americans don't. And some just refuse to admit what it is.

Support our troops.

God knows they need something. Maybe a little insight into reality.

"It's kind of bad we destroyed everything, but at least we gave them a chance for a new start," said Navy corpsman Derrick Anthony, 21, of Chicago.

LA Times article

Maybe a freaking lick of common sense would be helpful.

As he navigated his Humvee through rubble-strewn streets, Lance Cpl. Sunshine Yubeta articulated a question key to the Marines' mission here.

"I wonder," said the 23-year-old from Madras, Ore., nodding toward several sullen-looking men on a corner, "if they hate us or like us."

I hope that was rhetorical. On the other hand, if it weren't, maybe it's actually a sign of hope that the ignorant grunts are actually starting to wonder about what's obvious to everyone else on the planet (except the wingnuts back home, of course).

This is how the LA Times is reporting on Falluja - headline:

After Leveling City, U.S. Tries to Build Trust: In Fallouja, Marines are on a 'hearts and minds' campaign to woo residents and help keep rebels from returning.

How nuts. Again, as Zeynep asks, how can something like that be reported without any comment? Is anybody using their brain?

Wait, before you answer that...

Outside the Humanitarian Assistance center tents, Iraqis stand for hours to receive water and food packets stamped with a U.S. flag and the words "A Food Gift From the People of the United States of America." Hands are marked to prevent a return for seconds.

And...

Iraqis gather here not only for aid but for a chance to work in the assistance program, a job that pays about $8 a day.

Gee, Lance Cpl Yubeta, I wonder if they like you.

Maybe it just takes a few years of maturing - or maybe it's a Red State / Blue State thing.

In many ways, the "hearts and minds" tactics are straight from the Marine Corps' "Small Wars Manual," written in the late 1930s to preserve information about successful campaigns against insurgents in South America and elsewhere.

In preparation for Iraq, officers were ordered to reread the manual, particularly the section on insurgencies. One rule it discusses is maintaining moral superiority in the minds of the populace by stressing that the fighting was the insurgents' fault. Amid the destruction here, it is not an easy rule to follow.

"It's hard to look these people in the eye after blowing everything up," said Staff Sgt. Travis McKinney, 31, of Vallejo, Calif. "These people were just victims."

Indeed. To maintain moral superiority, you have to have it.

Left I comments on one of the bizarre quotes in the article:

"'Any time we can interact with these people is good,' said Sgt. James Regan, 29, of San Antonio. 'They can see us for what we are. I asked one of them, 'When was the last time the mujahedin gave you water or food?' Never.'"

And when was the last time the mujahedin dropped a 500-pound bomb on your house, or burned it down, or destroyed the water and electricity and sewage systems in your city? Oh yeah, that was "never" also. Jesus. Do these people hear themselves?

No. They're not listening.

Falluja's inflaming incident has precipitated a lawsuit

Families of four slain security contractors whose bodies were burned and dragged through the streets of Fallujah, Iraq, sued the workers' former company Wednesday.

[...]

The workers were sent into Fallujah without proper equipment and personnel to defend the supply convoy they were guarding, according to the civil lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that one week before the deaths, Blackwater fired a project manager who had insisted that the contractors use armored vehicles.

Kansas City Star article

<

Fallujans demonstrate

Thousands of Fallujans demonstrated on Saturday in front of the main entrance to the largely abandoned city. They demanded that US military forces leave their city and that basic services be restored so that they could return. One eyewitness reporter called in from the scene an estimate of 30,000 demonstrators. [Cole: I saw footage of the demonstration on Arab satellite television, and agree that it was a big, important demonstration, but I'd say it was only a few thousand strong; I suspect that having 30,000 people out by that gate would be a logistics problem--where did their water come from, e.g.]

Some of the placards announced that Fallujans refused to live under a military occupation. They presented a list of demands, which included the facilitation of their return to the city, speedy return of services, rebuilding of the devastated city, and monetary compensation to its inhabitants. They also protested the US military demand that returnees show identification papers. Many said that such papers got left behind in the city when they fled.

[...]

The Fallujah demonstration was big enough to be news, but I couldn't find out anything about it via Western newspapers and wire services.

Juan Cole post
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Slight discrepancy

The head of the Iraqi intelligence service has estimated that there are more than 200,000 active fighters and sympathisers in the war-torn country.

[...]

"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," he added.

[...]

Past US military assessments on fighter numbers have been increased from 5000 to 20,000 full and part-time members in the past half year, most recently in October.

[...]

And in stark contrast to many US assessments of success in Falluja, the spy chief said the November campaign against the town was far from a military triumph.

"What we have now is an empty city almost destroyed and most of the insurgents are free. They have gone either to Mosul or to Baghdad or other areas."

Shahwani stopped short of saying that anti-US fighters were now taking control of the situation in Iraq, but warned: "I would say they aren't losing."

Defence experts have broadly accepted the new assessment as valid.

Aljazeera article

Alternative methods

It has recently been discovered that US and Iraqi forces have been using a method of demolishing houses in Felluce (Fallujah) that Israelis have also used on Palestinian homes.

An Iraqi soldier told an Agency France Press (AFP) reporter that they set the houses on fire where they encounter pro-insurgence publications or materials. Ismail Ibrahim Shaalan, a 50 year old resident of Fallujah, explained that he saw some soldiers set houses on fire on December 14th even though there were no clashes. A US soldier also admitted that, in some situations, they use ''alternative precautions'' like ''setting fires and bombing'' for houses that are presumed to shelter insurgents. US Sergeant John Cross also said that if they are unable to enter a place, they apply alternative methods.

[...]

There are big X letters painted in red on the walls of the houses that have been searched by US troops. Others are either partially burned out or completely ruined.

[...]

Many of those who returned to Fallujah are picking up the pieces of what is left of their ruined homes and the corpses of their relatives.

[...]

The Halil family is one family that was forced to move out of their home by US soldiers and then found it in ruins when they returned to their home ten days later. US Major Naomi Hawkins says the Halil family can apply to the governor's office or Bagdat (Baghdad) and receive $100 to repair their home.

  Zaman International article

Good old American justice for foreigners.

A reporter in Falluja

The date is not current, but the news is still being suppressed. Via POAC, this link provides a reporter's account of the Fallujan seige, with photos.