Al-Fallujah residents return to ruins; anger at U.S. may fuel insurgency

Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder
9 January 2005

AL-FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Mustafa Kareem climbed off the bus into a crowd of women in ankle-length black robes who were clutching bottles of water and stacks of blankets. The midday sun beat down, and their faces were weary. They had returned to Al-Fallujah this week wondering whether their houses were still standing and how they might start their lives again.

Kareem -- 21, cleanshaven and handsome, with carefully slicked-back hair and dirt on his jeans -- wondered the same as he proclaimed his humble mission. ``I want to bring my sister toys,'' Kareem said. ``She just keeps crying for them.''

As Iraqi and American politicians talk about the promise of democracy and national elections scheduled for the end of this month, only a fraction of Al-Fallujah's 300,000 residents have returned home. Many are coming from the cold, filthy camps they fled to before a U.S. offensive in November to retake the rebel town.

In Al-Fallujah, hundreds if not thousands of homes were in a shambles after months of airstrikes. So far, about 40,000 people, or less than 20 percent of the town's population, have begun coming back, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, the senior U.S. ground commander in Iraq. The Iraqi interim government Saturday put the figure at 60,000 and said it expected the rest to return by Jan. 14.

Like Kareem, most returnees are sent by family members who themselves cannot yet bear to see their ravaged town. The militants who intimidated them into obedience are now replaced by gruff U.S. soldiers who take their fingerprints and scan their eyes. Many Iraqis contend that in their attempt to quash the insurgency, U.S. troops may have only strengthened its ranks, creating a generation so inflamed by the assault that they take up arms.

`In the coming days, there will be suicide attacks on that town. They will use the same methods as the Hamas movement,'' said Salman al-Jumaili, a Baghdad University professor, insurgency expert and Al-Fallujah native. Nadhim Jassour agreed. A professor of international relations at Baghdad University, Jassour said, ``The Americans were mistaken in their calculations. . . . They must understand that revenge is an Arab characteristic.''

Outside the town, hundreds of Al-Fallujah citizens stood in a long passage created by strings of barbed wire. At the end of the line, a U.S. soldier sat at a table with an interpreter and asked people for name and marital status, then took all 10 fingerprints. People also were told to look into a box, which scanned their retinas.

Kareem had waited out the fighting in a two-room apartment in the countryside with seven family members. Monday, his father sent the college student -- he was studying to be a math teacher before his school was closed because of the fighting -- to check on their home. A neighbor told Kareem's family that their house had been spared from the bombing, but he feared that the neighbor was being kind. After being scanned, printed and interviewed, Kareem walked from one road to the next, looking in awe at mounds of rubble where buildings used to stand. He motioned up ahead: ``The next street to the right is our house.''

A minute later, he stopped. His dark eyes traced the ground in front of him. All that stood of his house was a bedroom. His lips trembled. ``No,'' he said. ``Why . . .?'' Then he fell silent. Eventually he began picking through the debris. There was a doll with blond hair, in a pink dress, with one leg missing and one of its eyelids shut. ``Here it is,'' he said, tears on his face. ``This is what I've come for.'' He sat down in a garden in front of the house, brushing soot off the doll's plastic face. A few minutes passed. He stood up. ``I don't know what I'm going to tell them,'' he said. He began to walk back to the bus, still holding the doll.

A Knight Ridder special correspondent who cannot be named for security reasons reported the majority of this story from Al-Fallujah. It was written by Tom Lasseter in Baghdad. Knight Ridder correspondent Nancy A. Youssef also contributed.

c 2005 MercuryNews.com and wire service sources.

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Citation: Tom Lasseter, Al-Fallujah residents return to ruins; anger at U.S. may fuel insurgency," Knight Ridder, 9 January 2005; Original URL: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/10603220.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp