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Monday
07 February 2005
Three months after the American offensive and capture of
the Sunni bastion, barely 20% of the population has returned.
Some residents survive in the ruins. The Red Crescent tries
to help, while the Iraqi Army patrols and loots whatever remains.
Three months after the American offensive against Falluja that
began November 8, 2004, the rebel city fifty kilometers west
of Baghdad is devastated, emptied, sepulchral. "Like after
an earthquake, a fire and bomb tsunami that spared practically
nothing, not even the mosques," relates Sheikh Taghlib
Al-Alousi, President of the Chura, the assembly of religious
dignitaries.
The city with a hundred mosques is now only a shadow of its
former self. "It's a tragedy! I cried about it like a child,"
explains the official from the Hazrah Mohammedia mosque, who
has returned to what was once a Sunni bastion three times in
the period since the end of the main fighting in early December.
Tears come to his eyes when he evokes the present condition
of this city of 400,000 on the banks of the Euphrates. "Practically
not a single house has been spared. 20% of them have burned
and at least 10% are totally destroyed," asserts this engineer
who denounces the massive American bombardments every time the
Marines encountered any resistance.
Sheikh Taghlib was not there during the fighting. He left before
it began. On the other hand, Abu Ahmed lived through hell, sheltering
in a mosque which the Americans made him leave with some other
men to bury the dead who were lying in the streets. "There
were corpses everywhere," he says, "bodies burned,
decapitated, mutilated. Some were still wearing explosive belts.
Others met their death in their cars. We had to pay attention
to everything. We put the bodies in bags, then in trucks to
take them to the cemetery or to bury them just as they were,
with none of the usual preparations, at the stadium. Those who
were with me all went along with it; no one resisted except
for a Sudanese man."
During this trip, Abu Ahmed discovered survivors holed up in
their houses who came out haggard, holding white flags. He tells
the story of a young woman, Suad, who had telephoned him at
the beginning of the assault and whom he saved from fear and
madness after ten days of terror. "I do not wish this on
anyone," he adds. "The soldiers marked an "X"
on the houses that had already been searched, an "X"
with a circle around it on those that were to be blown up, and
a death's head on the houses where there were bodies. I can
promise you, there are still more in the ruins."
Marine Control
It's difficult for Sheikh Taghlib to say how many people died.
He offers several figures: "1,800, 2,000, maybe 2,500.
I don't know whether it will ever be known exactly."
Falluja has since become a ghost town. A very small fraction
of the population has returned, certainly less than 20%, most
of them poor people who had no means to live in Baghdad or who
found no other place to live elsewhere. They survive in an apocalyptic
decor, in the midst of ruins and roads blocked or clogged up
with burned out cars and piles of rubble.
The stores are empty, looted. The hospitals have been damaged
and closed. Electricity and water service are just beginning
to barely return. Cars are only exceptionally permitted to enter
the city. The residents live like nomads.
The Red Crescent is trying to provide for basic needs and a
few itinerant merchants on foot bring some subsistence into
this broken city which the Marines continue to occupy and control
through numerous checkpoints.
The Iraqi Army has installed itself on the central square and
patrols the city. Composed essentially of Shi'ites and peshmerga
(Kurdish fighters), it scours the houses, looting, firing on
furniture, walls, and appliances, according to several witnesses
to these scenes. "They take computers and throw them on
the ground. I saw them with my own eyes, just as I saw them
open the gas lines and start fires. They amuse themselves by
destroying whatever hasn't already been destroyed," rages
a resident who does not wish to give his name.
Every day, former residents return to the place where their
home used to be. In order to do that, they must be equipped
with an American-issued identity card and go through the hours
of waiting at check points before they can get into the city
which is still under high surveillance, just to observe the
damage and preserve whatever still can be preserved. Most people
leave again the same day.
They return to Baghdad, Ramadi and Habbania and to all the camps
that have been opened on the periphery of Falluja, back to farms,
make-shift shelters, and tents.
Thousands of families have settled this way in the expectation
that the soldiers will one day leave. A whole city in exile
demands to be able to return to what remains of its walls, to
be able to rebuild what the guerilla had transformed into a
Salafist stronghold and the Americans have demolished by fire.
According to witnesses, the mudjahidin fled to Mosul or elsewhere.
Some, like the snipers or suicide bombers, still try to make
forays into what had been their fief. No one ever saw the Al
Qaeda Jordanian Mussab Al-Zarkawi in Falluja, although the Americans
always pinpointed him there.
"For us, he's ghost. The Americans made him up because
they needed an enemy to justify their actions" is Sheikh
Taghlib's considered opinion. Opposed to the Salafists, this
dignitary explains how he tried to save the city from the fighting.
He highlighted the futility of fighting, arguing that it was
"a trap set by the Americans" and that they "shouldn't
fight the Marines as they wanted.... We didn't want the war."
He was not listened to.
In the face of this field of ruins, he asks himself how and
when Falluja could be reborn from this chaos. Abu Ahmed is desperate.
"I'd be happy never to see another American, not here or
anywhere else on Earth," he says. "If I could take
up arms, I'd do it, but I'm too old and the Americans are too
strong. They're going to colonize Iraq for twenty years or more
because we have oil. I don't know whether they'll ever leave."
Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent
Leslie Thatcher.
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