- FALLUJA -- Mohammed Hassan
al-Balwa arrives at the city council's office, just off Falluja's main
street, as workmen are putting in place the final sections of a vast, concrete
blast wall, the unmistakable signature of insecurity in the new Iraq. Mr
Hassan, the council's chief for the past two months, is furious. For days
he has been arguing against the wall, but to no avail.
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- "It makes me so upset," he says. Already he
is making plans to move out and set up his own office in a private building
nearby, without a security wall.
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- To Iraqis, the walls symbolise the allies of America,
and in a town like Falluja, the frontline of the insurgency against the
US military occupation, that is the last thing Mr Hassan wants people to
think of him.
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- Already there is a queue of petitioners waiting on sofas
in his office, sipping tea and clutching folders bearing their requests.
Many want the council leader to secure the release of their relatives from
American jails; others are asking about jobs or pensions.
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- This morning several people have come to complain about
the local bus station, next to the police headquarters, another barricaded
building just a few minutes away from the council office.
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- Earlier in the day the police chief ordered the bus station
closed as part of an increase in security to protect his officers. Two
weeks ago around 20 policemen were killed when insurgents stormed the police
building and freed dozens of prisoners.
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- "I want to talk to the police chief on the phone
now," Mr Hassan says to his staff. "If he can't protect himself,
how is he going to protect us? Is he going to shut down every building
around him?"
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- At a news conference in Baghdad a few weeks ago, an American
military spokesman said he believed that 95% of Falluja residents "fully
support the coalition". The reverse is probably the reality.
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- Iraqi police are regarded by many as little more than
collaborators, and American troops come under daily attack. In November
16 US troops died when their helicopter was shot down outside the town,
and last month insurgents even attacked the most senior US commander in
the Middle East, General John Abizaid, chief of US central command, as
he visited an Iraqi base in Falluja.
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- Dozens of people from the town have been killed in strikes
and raids by the US military; hundreds have been arrested.
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- Two months ago Mr Hassan, 48, stepped into the middle
of this confrontation when he was elected by the 45 men on the city council
to be their leader. He is intensely critical of the Americans, often to
their faces, but speaks soberly and eloquently about the crisis that has
gripped the town for the past year.
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- He lives with his wife and five children in a modest
two-storey house, one of a dozen or so properties he owns in Falluja, and
never leaves home without his two well-armed bodyguards. He took a doctorate
in engineering from Romania and since he returned to Iraq in 1986 he has
run a successful import-export company.
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- He insists he was never a member of the Ba'ath party
and now appears to be grooming himself for a political career.
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- Sitting at his desk signing papers, he describes how
he once hoped Iraq would benefit from America's might after the collapse
of the regime last year. "America is a great state and has a huge
military force and the greatest technology in the world. We could get the
benefits from building and developing Iraq through them and have America
as a friend."
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- Much of Iraq's educated Sunni elite feels the same way.
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- For hundreds of years - under the Ottomans and the British
- the Sunnis, a minority of the population, were relied on as the ruling
class. Once America and Britain invaded, they expected the generals to
ask them to rule Iraq again. During the war there was barely any fighting
between Saddam Hussein's army and the invading forces in Sunni towns such
as Falluja, north and north-west of Baghdad.
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- Ba'athist commanders simply discarded their uniforms
and slipped away to their homes. "They are dealing with the Sunnis
as if they are all supporters of Saddam Hussein and that is a big mistake,"
Mr Hassan says.
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- The first problems came in the weeks after the war. In
May the US military occupied a school in Falluja to use as a base. A large
crowd protested at the decision and the troops, thinking they saw guns
in the crowd, opened fire, killing 14 people. Two other locals were killed
at a similar rally the next day. "This incident was the starting point
of the resistance against the occupation," Mr Hassan says. "We
asked the Americans to apologise to control the situation. We explained
the tribal nature of this town. It is a society that doesn't forget revenge.
But they were so late in their apology."
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- Deeply conservative Since then several different units
of the US army have passed through Falluja, each equally confident they
could calm the situation. None has succeeded.
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- "The Americans have done nothing to make it peaceful,"
Mr Hassan says. "They are opening channels with the wrong people.
Falluja is a mix of traditions. It is run by tribal law and religious law,
by nationalism and by a group of well-educated people. Whoever wants to
control Falluja should open channels with these people."
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- It is a deeply conservative society (one of the decrees
Mr Hassan is signing bans alcohol sales and warns that internet cafes will
be shut down if they allow access to "disrespectful" websites).
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- It is also a dangerous place to be a community leader.
Several men have been the mayor in the past year, only to resign in fear,
or in one recent case, to be arrested by the US. One cleric, a member of
the city council, was shot and seriously injured last month because he
was seen as too supportive of the US presence.
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- Violence has been such a barrier to progress that there
has been little chance of serious reconstruction. The US military boasts
of schools repainted, football grounds cleared and schoolbooks delivered,
but the town's officials are scathing.
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- A few minutes' walk from his office, Mr Hassan visits
his old school, the Falluja preparatory school for boys. It is the best
school in the town and has had several thousand dollars spent on it in
reconstruction in the past year. But it is hard to see where the money
has gone. Windows once repaired have been smashed. There is no equipment
in the physics lab and only dusty bottles of expired chemicals in the chemistry
lab. In the English class, groups of two or three students share copies
of the Merchant of Venice.
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- "We have got nothing. This is no reconstruction,"
says the headmaster, Taiseer Omar. There is no air conditioning, only ceiling
fans, and no generator to cover for the frequent power cuts. There is no
library and textbooks are in scant supply. "The Americans came last
year and checked the school and promised they would support us, but there
was nothing after that," Mr Omar says.
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- A few miles away is another school, the Osama bin Zayed
primary, perhaps Falluja's worst. Again there are no air conditioners and
no generator, but here few of the rooms even have lightbulbs or switches.
Bare wires dangle from cracks in the plaster. US troops have been here
too and have spent thousands more dollars. There have been new blackboards
and some walls have been painted. But still broken desks are piled high
in the corridor, windows are smashed, rubbish is piled high in the playground,
the outside wall is in ruins and the concrete ceiling on the second floor
is precariously buckled.
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- "If you wonder why there are demonstrations in Falluja,
it is because of this," says Hekmat Jabbar, the head of the town's
teachers' union, as he walks through the debris of the school.
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- Mr Hassan has complained about the state of the schools
to Major-General Charles "Chuck" Swannack, the commander of the
82nd Airborne Division, which now controls Falluja and the surrounding
province.
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- "The problem is that the Americans always connect
the project of development with the security situation," he says.
"And this excuse is unreal." Mr Hassan believes $10,000 was spent
on each of the two schools, but that much of the money was pocketed by
Iraqi contractors. "It is invisible maintenance," he says.
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- Although the US military was instrumental in creating
the city council that Mr Hassan leads, selecting influential tribal and
religious figures as members, it has yet to give it a budget. The men are
struggling to gain the respect of their people.
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- One of the first issues at the afternoon meeting of the
council is about a serious dispute at a mosque the previous week. American
troops raided one of Falluja's most important mosques, trying to arrest
the imam who is also a member of the city council, Sheikh Abdullah al-Janabi.
Although the sheikh, suspected of supporting the insurgency, was not caught,
the raid triggered huge protests. Mr Hassan spoke to the crowd, criticising
the Americans, but urging calm.
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- Violated sanctity "It was the first time the local
people have obeyed the instructions of our council," Mr Hassan says.
The next day at a regular meeting with the US military he complained bitterly
that soldiers had violated the sanctity of a mosque. "I told them
they were making a mistake by raiding the mosques." The Americans
listened, he says, but gave no assurances there would not be more raids.
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- Next on the agenda is the problem of the local security
forces, particularly the US-trained Iraqi civil defence corps, a paramilitary
force intended for serious law and order operations. All council members
insist that the council, not the US military, should be responsible for
recruiting new troops. Only that will solve the problem of the "disrespect"
accorded to the current Iraqi security forces. The idea is likely to be
rejected by the US military out of hand.
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- Although there seems little chance that Falluja will
ever embrace the US military, Mr Hassan believes that if the town is left
to run itself it could only be more stable. "If we had independence,
a central government, a constitution and a legal system, we would see some
peace and order. In the space of a few months there would be security,"
he says. "That is all we need."
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2004
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- http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1170702,00.html
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