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thedrifter
05-25-07, 06:33 PM
Amid mounting deaths, Fallujah hopes for better days
Posted on Friday, May 25, 2007 (EST)

Inside a wooden hut at Fallujah's Development Centre, Hamid Abdel Hadi asked a US navy medic about getting his six-year-old son Harth a throat operation so the boy can talk again.

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Outside, in the compound of a rare place where Iraqis and US marines meet regularly, a sharp crack split the air and a marine on a water truck slumped over, shot through the head by a distant sniper.

Two and a half years after marines retook Fallujah from insurgents in a battle which nearly destroyed the town, life is slowly improving. But reconstruction still takes a back seat to security.

Rebuilding has been hampered by an insurgency that daily claims the lives of police, soldiers, marines and ordinary citizens.

Nevertheless, locals say the tide has turned.

"In the beginning the Fallujans cooperated with the insurgents, but now everyone knows their real intentions," said a local building contractor working with the Americans.

"They hide their intentions like they hide their faces. No one likes them and everyone wants to get rid of them," he added.

Developments in recent months may have created opportunities for Fallujah to extricate itself from years of crisis.

The city has a dynamic new police chief, his hand-picked mayor, a police-friendly Iraqi army commander and a top tribal leader has also returned.

Sheikh Khamis of the Al Bu Eissa tribe, which controls large swathes of territory south of city, came back from Jordan in December and ordered his followers to work with the US and Iraqi forces to hunt down Al-Qaeda.

Record numbers of locals, many of whom once fought in the insurgency, have joined the police and tribal militias, while police and the army are cooperating after years of animosity.

But Al-Qaeda has not taken these developments lying down. In March they set off two truck bombs loaded with chlorine gas in Al Bu Eissa territory, sending hundreds of tribe members to hospital.

Later that month, just days after the security-conscious mayor took office, the government complex was devastated by two truck bombs.

And on Thursday, a deadly car bomb exploded at a funeral procession for a tribal leader known to be hostile to Al-Qaeda.

"Fallujah in my opinion is going to be the last thing we win," said Colonel Richard Simcock, commander of the US 6th Marine Regiment. "They want it back -- they are fighting us in Fallujah harder than anywhere in the area."

Simcock sees progress. He noted that while elsewhere in Iraq, US forces play a major role, much of Fallujah has been turned over to Iraqi forces.

The transfer has been accompanied by a rise in insurgent violence, however.

Broken glass and debris litter the floor of the city council building and dust fills the meeting room nearly two months after the attack. Pipes ruptured by the blasts periodically form a lake of water and sewage in the courtyard.

Last week, none of the 20-person council showed up for their weekly meeting with the mayor after one member was assassinated just five days earlier.

"If someone gets killed no one shows up for a few weeks," observed Mayor Saad Awad, a former police officer who still carries a sidearm.

Two weeks ago the council's chairman was also gunned down, the fourth to be killed since the council was formed.

"Fallujah is the capital of terrorism in Iraq," said Awad. "If we fix Fallujah that would solve 70 to 80 percent of the terrorist problem in Iraq."

For the mayor, rebuilding Fallujah's devastated main street and shattered utilities must take a back seat to restoring security. He wants to rid the city of insurgents, neighbourhood by fractious neighbourhood.

"There are a lot of reconstruction projects but first there has to be security... when we get the first sector of the city cleared and we put people in there so the terrorists don't come back, then we will build," he told AFP.

Awad has little time for the city council, most of whom he says are trying to make money on reconstruction contracts and may even have ties to the insurgency.

"According to intelligence from (police chief) Colonel Faisal some of them were involved with the killing of Sheikh Sami," he said, referring to the former council chairman.

Insurgents are also taking 15 percent commission on all reconstruction projects in the city to bankroll attacks on local authorities, according to both the mayor and police chief.

The few modest reconstruction projects that are proceeding are by the marines' civil affairs section using local contractors, including the things a city council would normally do such as fixing broken water mains.

"The main issue in Fallujah is essential services," Staff Sergeant Mauricio Piedrahita said, pointing to a board in his office listing some dozen projects.

Next to two entries, however, is the succinct note "Contractor killed," referring to a project to pave the city streets.

"If you pave the road, they can't dig an IED" bomb, explained Piedrahita.

"Once a contractor gets killed, no one wants to step up," noted Corporal Kevin McDonald, so the road project remains unfinished.

Other projects are moving ahead, however, and that day at the development centre, McDonald and Piedrahita commissioned two contractors for several more, including solar-powered street lighting.

"I work with the Americans because I am poor and it's honest work to support my family," said one, who asked not to be named. His sons no longer go to school because of kidnap threats.

Inside the hut Harth's father explains that his son underwent a tracheotomy three years ago after scar tissue began to close his windpipe following a serious car accident.

The boy listens to the conversation with interest, smiling occasionally but unable to talk as his breath hisses through the little metal hole in his throat.

"The bottom line is I'm going to get your son looked at -- it just might take a bit of time," promises Navy medic Stephen McCloskey, who has taken a personal interest in Harth's case.

Outside, somewhere, the sniper waited.

Ellie