Fallujah: A city still under
siege By Dahr Jamail and Ali
Fadhil
FALLUJAH, Iraq - One and a half years
after the US assault on Fallujah, residents tell
of ongoing suffering, lack of jobs, little
reconstruction and continuing violence.
The US Marines Corps launched Operation
Phantom Fury against the city of Fallujah in
November 2004, destroying an estimated 70% of the
buildings, homes and shops, and killing between
4,000 and 6,000 people, according to the
Fallujah-based non-governmental organization (NGO)
the Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy
(SCHRD).
Inter Press Service (IPS) found
that the city remains under draconian, biometric
security, with retina scans, fingerprinting and
X-raying required for anyone entering the city.
Fallujah remains an island: not even the residents
of the surrounding towns and
villages such as Karma,
Habbaniya, Khalidiya, which fall under Fallujah's
administrative jurisdiction, are allowed in.
Security badges are required for anyone
wishing to enter the city. To obtain a badge, one
has to be a Fallujah native from a certain class.
That is, if one is from Fallujah and a government
official, a high-class badge of grade G will be
issued. Journalists get an X-grade badge. Then
there are B for businessmen and C for those who
have contracts with the US military in the city.
Last are the R-grade badges, for those not to be
admitted through the main checkpoint at the west
side of the city and must seek entrance through
"second class" checkpoints elsewhere.
Having entered the city through the main
checkpoint, the first thing visible are the
destroyed homes in the al-Askari district.
Virtually every home in this area has been
destroyed or seriously damaged.
"I could
not rebuild my house again because rebuilding is
rather costly nowadays," Walid, a 48-year-old
officer with the former Iraqi army, told IPS. With
sorrow in his eyes he told of how he built his
home six years ago. After the destruction, "They
[US military] paid us 70% of the compensation, and
with the unemployment in the city we spent most of
it on food and medicine. Now everybody is waiting
for the remaining 30%."
A slightly
different version of this same story could be told
by the hundreds of people who lost their houses in
the April and November 2004 bombing campaigns.
Across the Euphrates River sits Fallujah
General Hospital. Built in 1964, the hospital was
unable to function during either siege because it
was being occupied by the US military.
Doctors were reluctant to talk to IPS
unless promised anonymity. "It is more a barn than
a hospital, and we are not honored to work in it,"
said one doctor. "There is a horrible lack of
medical supplies and equipment, and the Ministry
of Health is not doing much about it," added
another doctor, also speaking on condition of
anonymity.
When IPS mentioned a new
hospital under construction in the city, one of
the doctors replied, with irony, that half of the
people of Fallujah would be dead before that
hospital project was completed. He said an
emergency plan for the existing hospital was
essential, especially because people were too
afraid of seeking medical attention in any of the
Baghdad hospitals for fear of being kidnapped and
killed by death squads.
The situation is
further complicated by the fact that Ramadi
General Hospital, often used by residents of
Fallujah, is no longer accessible due to the
ongoing US military siege of that city.
During the interview of the doctors,
patients and their companions gathered around and
started complaining about "the lack of everything"
in the hospital. "You press people always come
here and talk to us, but nothing ever comes of
it," said an elderly woman in a challenging tone.
"If you put me on television, I will tell the
whole world how bad the situation is in this
city."
The doctors interviewed, however,
did praise the role of some local and
international NGOs that had offered help to the
hospital on occasion.
The people of Fallujah are
struggling to survive amid skyrocketing unemployment,
lack of supplies and ongoing violence in the city.
At a grocery market, there was another side to
the story. Haji Majeed al-Jumaily, 64, was a
blacksmith before his hands weakened. He asked the grocer
a dozen times how much an item cost before
saying, "I only have 2,000 dinars [less than US$1.50] to
spend, and I don't know what to buy with it.
Everything is so expensive and my nine family
members must be fed."
He told IPS how his
two sons were killed by random gunfire from the
new Iraqi army two years ago. "Now I have to take
care of their two wives and six children as well
as my wife," he said. The market was full of
people, but poverty is obvious from the way people
wander about trying to balance what to spend with
what they have in hand.
"Unemployment in
Fallujah is a major problem that should be
addressed," commented Jassim al-Muhammadi, a
lawyer. "The financial situation is collapsing
every day and people do not know what to do. The
siege is adding a lot to this problem."
Ali Ahmed, a 17-year-old student,
interrupted: "We do not need press releases in
this city, sir. What we really need is a solution
to the everlasting problem of this city ... The
Americans and Iraqis in power accused us of
terror, killed thousands of us and now they are
just talking about reconstruction. Well, they are
all thieves who only care for what they can pinch
off the Iraqi fortunes. Just tell them to leave us
alone as we do not want their fraudulent
reconstruction."
Ahmed added that the US
military continued to kill and arrest people for
any reason whatsoever, and sometimes for no
reason.
Infrastructure in Fallujah is just
as bad as any other part of Iraq. Water,
electricity, cooking gas, fuel, telephone and
mobile services are very poor. All of the
residents interviewed complained about the
government's indifferent attitude toward them. The
majority believed it was for sectarian reasons,
although some others thought it is the same all
over Iraq.
The mayor of Fallujah was not
available to interview - in his latest appearance
on television he announced his resignation. In his
statement televised on June 14, he declared
firmly, "The Americans did not fulfill their
promises to me and so I resign."
Similar
reports about the situation in Fallujah were made
by the United Nations Integrated Regional
Information Network (IRIN) on May 21: "There is
still slow progress on humanitarian issues,
according to local officials".The report stated
that two-thirds of the city's residents had
returned but 15%, or about 65,000, remained
displaced in the outskirts of Fallujah, "living in
abandoned schools and government buildings".
The IRIN report, similar to what IPS found
here, said, "Despite Baghdad allocating $100
million for the city's reconstruction and $180
million for housing compensation, very little can
be seen visibly on the streets of Fallujah in
terms of reconstruction. There are destroyed
buildings on almost every street. Local
authorities say about 60% of all houses in the
city were totally destroyed or seriously damaged
and less than 20% of them have been repaired so
far ... Power, water treatment and sewage systems
are still not functioning properly and many
districts of the city are without potable water."
Residents complained to IPS that they had
less than four hours of electricity per day, and
there was great frustration that at least 30% of
the allocated reconstruction funds were shifted to
pay for extra checkpoints and security patrols in
the city.
And while the residents continue
to wait for the promised compensation funds, of
the 81 reconstruction projects slated for the
city, fewer than 30 have been completed and many
others will most likely be cancelled due to lack
of funding, according to a Fallujah council member
who spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity.
Current estimates of the amount needed to
rebuild Iraq are between $70 billion and $100 billion.
Only 33% of the $21 billion originally allocated
by the US for reconstruction remains to be spent.
According to a report by the US inspector general
for reconstruction in Iraq, officials were unable
to say how many planned projects they would
complete, nor was there a clear source for the
hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to
maintain the projects that had been completed.
As for Fallujah in particular, security
has eaten up as much as 25% of reconstruction
funding, but even more has reportedly been
siphoned off by corruption and overcharging by
contractors.
Last year, a US congressional
inspection team was set up to monitor
reconstruction in Iraq. On May 1, it published a
scathing report of the failure of US contractors
to carry out projects worth hundreds of millions
of dollars. The report also noted that nearly $9
billion in Iraqi oil revenues which had been
disbursed to ministries was "missing".
