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December 29th,
2008 - Falluja Rebuilds And Looks With Relief to Exit of U.S. Troops |
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Falluja Rebuilds
And Looks With Relief to Exit of U.S. Troops By Timothy Williams International Herald Tribune December 29, 2008 Falluja, Iraq - In Falluja,
a town that rises abruptly out of the vast Syrian Desert an hour west of
Baghdad, nearly every building left standing has some sort of hole in it. Mosques are without their
minarets. Apartment walls have been peeled away by artillery shells. A
family's kitchen is full of tiny holes made by a fragmentation grenade. Of all the places fighting
has raged since the American invasion nearly six years ago, Falluja - the
site of two major battles and the town where American security contractors
were killed and hung from a local bridge - stands out as one of the bloodiest
and most intractable. This month, as the last
Marines prepare to leave Camp Falluja, the sprawling base a few kilometers
outside town where many of the American troops who fought the two battles
were stationed, Falluja has come to represent something unexpected: the hope
that an Iraqi town that was at the heart of the insurgency can become a model
for peace without the U.S. military. As part of the drawdown of
U.S. troops from Iraq, there will be few Marines in or around the city by the
end of the year. The closing of Camp Falluja is the most visible sign yet
that America's presence in the country, which at times had seemed
all-encompassing, is diminishing. As recently as a year ago,
that was cause for alarm. The calm that seemed to have taken hold here was
fragile enough that both Iraqi and American officials feared the potential
consequences of the Marines' departure. Today they look forward to
it. "That will make our job
easier," said Colonel Dowad Muhammad Suliyman, commander of the Falluja
Police Department. "The existence of the American forces is an excuse
for the insurgents to attack. They consider us spies for the Americans." To be sure, the threat of
violence has not vanished. But the police said they were proud that a place
that suffered a major attack once a week just a few years ago has had only
two major attacks in the last five or six months. The police view that the
town was better off taking care of itself was echoed by residents, even in
the neighborhood that was the target of the most recent major attack, in
early December, when suicide truck bombers linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia
killed 19 people, wounded dozens of others, and leveled nine houses and two
police stations. "Our sons will take
care of the security issue," said Khalil Abrahim, 50, as he walked over
the rubble of his house, wondering aloud how he could afford to rebuild.
"They can do a better job." Camp Falluja itself will be
handed over to the Iraqi Army, with most of its Marines relocated to Al Asad
Air Base, a remote site about 145 kilometers, or 90 miles, to the west. A
smaller contingent of Marines will remain at nearby Camp Baharia. The move reflects the
confidence of the American command that major violence will not return here. "It won't happen again
because the Iraqis don't want it to happen again," said Colonel George
Bristol, commanding officer of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force
Headquarters Group at Camp Falluja. "We've certainly turned
a page," he said. "The conditions are now there where we can close
it and turn it over to the people who fought beside us. It's a great thing.
If you look at the city, it has really come to life." The city, which had been
emptied of much of its population prior to the second Battle of Falluja in
November 2004, now bustles with people, its streets filled with honking cars
inching their way to the Old Bridge, which spans the placid green water of
the Euphrates River. In a small building at the
foot of the bridge, freshly painted green, not far from where the bodies of
two Blackwater security guards were hung, Falluja has established an Office
of Citizen Complaints. At the elementary school
where in 2003 members of the 82d Airborne Division fired on protesters - some
of whom may have been armed - killing 17 people, dozens of girls are at play
during recess. And not far away, a
restaurant named KFC - not affiliated with the American chain but adorned
with unlicensed pictures of Colonel Sanders - sells a fried chicken lunch for
about $3.50. All around the city, people
are rebuilding houses and clearing away rubble. If a rocket-propelled
grenade launcher symbolized Falluja during the height of the insurgency, its
new symbol may well be the broom. They are sold in bunches at roadside
markets, and are in almost constant use by workers in bright orange
jumpsuits. At Camp Falluja, Major James
Gladden and Master Gunnery Sergeant Ray SiFuentes are overseeing the
dismantling of a base that had once been home to 14,000 Marines and
contractors. The post had its own fire
department, water treatment plant, scrap yard, voter registration booth, ice
making factory, weather station, 75-cell prison (for insurgents), beauty
shop, power plant, Internet café, Turkish bazaar, satellite dish and dog
catcher. It used 600,000 gallons of
Euphrates River water each day and could fit 800 Marines into its chapel for
religious services, a Toby Keith concert or a performance by the Philadelphia
Eagles cheerleaders, both of whom performed there. "We had basically
everything a small town had," said Major Gladden, 34, who is known by
other Marines as "the mayor" of Camp Falluja. "Everything
except fast food outlets," he said, which were deemed too unhealthy. There are only 200 Marines
left now, and some of the camp's perimeter security has been temporarily
turned over to Ugandan military contractors. About 170 truckloads a day
leave the base, most headed for other United States military installations.
One of Camp Falluja's three prefabricated mess halls has already been
transported to Camp Baharia, where it will be the new PX and post office. The headquarters of the
camp's artillery battalion, which rained 155-mm howitzer shells on the town,
is now a graded dirt field. The Abrams tanks are gone too, as are the rows of
trailers that had seemed to stretch to the horizon where the Marines lived. Even the gaggle of geese
from the camp's artificial pond, which some Marines had adopted as pets, has
been taken away. One by one, they were trapped and set loose at a larger pond
at Camp Baharia. A good deal of packing up
involves making sure nothing is left behind that later could be used against
American forces. Obsolete armor for trucks, ballistic glass plates for
Humvees and concertina wire are cut to pieces. Thousands of mammoth concrete
barriers are being trucked to other military bases. Back in town, where
residents have been required to be fingerprinted and to submit to iris scans,
Hashim Harmoud, 69, a caretaker at a mosque which had been said to be a
center for insurgent activity, said he is thankful for the city's newfound
peace. But as testament to the
town's dual nature, he is hesitant to discuss an insurgency that could rise
up again at a moment's notice. "Al Qaeda?" he asked, a bit cagily.
"I don't know anything about them. I go from the mosque to my house, and
that's all." Tariq Maher and another
Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting. External link: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/29/mideast/falluja.php |