Fallujah residents left displaced and bitter[/size][/b]
Hailed by the U.S. and Allawi as a success, assault against militants exacts high priceBy BORZOU DARAGAHI
Special to The Globe and Mail
UPDATED AT 11:16 PM EST Saturday, Jan 15, 2005
BAGHDAD -- Wafat Hassan is at hope's end, her tale a long stream of woe that has all but dried out her tear ducts.
After losing her husband, her house and her hometown, she and her five children wound up at a mosque in Baghdad that has been turned into a makeshift refugee camp for 930 Fallujans who've reached the end of the line.
"What have we done to deserve this?" she cries. "When can we move back to our homes? Shall we be away from our homes forever?"
Two months after their city became a major battleground between U.S. forces and insurgents, the lives of Ms. Hassan and many Fallujans who fled continue to flounder.
The U.S.-led ground invasion of the city was supposed to secure it so that Iraq's national election could go forward, but for Fallujans, that logic seems a universe away.
"You give a drowning man a life jacket," said Sheik Hussein Zubayee, a Fallujah native who turned the Mostafa Mosque he oversees into a camp for displaced Fallujans. "You don't give him a sandwich."
Americans and officials of the interim government continue to hail the massive Fallujah offensive as a means to stabilize the Sunni Arab heartland in time for the election. Just yesterday Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who gave the green light to the assault in November, called the operation "a significant success in terms of getting the terrorists and ridding the Fallujah people [of] terrorists and insurgents."
Over the past six months, U.S. forces, aided by Iraq's nascent armed forces, stormed Iraqi cities such as Fallujah, Tal Afar, Samarra and Ramadi, centres of the armed Sunni Arab insurgency.
U.S. officials said they wanted to root out militants determined to disrupt the election. But in the process, they also disrupted the lives of many people in the Sunni triangle, embittering them toward the election in which they are now desperately urged to take part. Many Iraqi analysts fear a massive Sunni Arab boycott of the Jan. 30 poll, creating a government heavily weighted toward Shia Arabs and Iraqi Kurds, and further alienating the Sunni Arab minority at the heart of the insurgency.
Inside Fallujah, U.S. marines continue to come under fire, engage in skirmishes and seize weapons caches. Troops in Fallujah die in combat at a rate of about one a day. The recent fighting has all but destroyed the city, which emerged almost unscathed from the invasion in March of 2003.
The interim government has designated millions of dollars to rebuild Fallujah, and has promised each family who lost their home as much as $10,000 in compensation, about a fifth of the cost of building a new home in Iraq. Each family returning to the city is also supposed to get about $100 to get started.
But the Fallujans from the camp who have dared to visit their homes have come away horrified. Mohammad al-Rawa, a university student, said he found his home destroyed and 90 per cent of his neighbourhood in ruins.
"There's no water. There's no electricity," he said. "No one can live in the city any more. Even electricity poles are missing."
Some Fallujans have turned into nomads, wandering the cities and countryside, Mr. Zubayee said.
Wafat Hassan's tale of woe shows the multitude of ways that suffering can befall Fallujans, sometimes at the hands of fellow Iraqis, sometimes by the weapons of U.S. forces and sometimes just as a consequence of bad luck.
Fortune began frowning on her about a year ago, when bandits killed her husband while hijacking his car. Then, about four months ago, the insurgents who ran Fallujah before the invasion forced her and her five children out of their home, turning it into a resistance hideout.
In November, a U.S. missile flattened the house.
Then, her mother became sick. She scrounged for money and got some medicine, but nothing seemed to work. About 10 days ago, her cash ran out and she was evicted from the small apartment she was renting, and she wound up at Mr. Zubayee's camp.
"At least I have food to eat here," she said, as she wept over her stricken mother.
The interim government recently announced a timetable for the return of Fallujans to their homes. After they show identification cards and subject themselves to searches, they are allowed to enter the city.
Many Fallujans have gone back to visit their homes, but only a small fraction have remained in the city, U.S. and Iraqi officials said. So far, Mr. Zubayee said, every resident from his camp who has paid a visit to Fallujah has declined to stay.
Despite their hardships, the camp residents try to make the best of their lives. Little girls in bright red and green dresses run about. Curious, laughing boys follow foreign visitors. Camp residents make communal meals using food donated from Islamic charities or wealthy sons of Fallujah.
A rusty trailer stores bags of rice and dried beans. One tent doubles as a makeshift clinic and another as a school. Every evening the women wash pots and pans from a single water spout. Every morning, the men join the legions of unemployed seeking work in Baghdad.
Mr. Zubayee said a group of Americans wanted to donate $25,000 to the Fallujans at his camp. But the residents refused to take money from Americans, whom they blame for their economic suffering.
Fallujans at his camp said their experiences have made them bitter about the election and the future of Iraq. They said they feel the game has been fixed, against them and their fellow Sunni Arabs.
"I'm a part of the Sunnis," said Mohammad al-Dulaymi, 45, whose appliance store and home were destroyed in the fighting.
"If I know it will be free and honest elections, I will vote. But I know that the Americans will put whoever they want in there. So, I won't vote."
