fallujah

Another refugee, Abu Sabah, an older man in a torn shirt and dusty pants, told of how he escaped with his family, just the day before [the attack on Fallujah], while soldiers shot bullets over their heads, killing his cousin. "They used these weird bombs that first put up smoke in a cloud, and then small pieces fell from the air with long tails of smoke behind them. These exploded on the ground with large fires that burned for half an hour. They used these near the train tracks. When anyone touched those fires, their body burned for hours."

"You, people of the media, say things in Fallujah are good," Mohammad Sammy, an aid worker for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Fallujah told IPS, "Then why don’t you come and live in this paradise with us? It is so easy to say things for you, isn’t it?"

His anger is due to the fact that the embattled city is still completely closed and surrounded by military checkpoints to make it look like an isolated island.

Since the November 2004 U.S.-led attack on the city, named Operation Phantom Fury, which left approximately 70 percent of the city destroyed, the U.S. military has required residents to undergo retina scans, and finger-printings in order to gain a bar-code for identification.

"But of course the city is quiet," Rahemm Othman, a high school teacher, told IPS. "They are banning car movement, and that would make it as quiet as the dead. We are being subjected to slow death here, and the world is so happy about it." The local police and the U.S. military banned car movement [in Fallujah] in May...

"To say Fallujah is quiet is true, and you can see it in the city streets," said Shiek Salim from the Fallujah Scholars' Council. "The city is practically dead, and the dead are quiet."

One after another, residents spoke of Fallujah finding the quiet of the dead. The streets are empty except for the occasional person walking to clinic, or at some of the few markets still open. Most shops remain closed, others open only a few hours.

Residents say unemployment is above 80 percent. Most of the rest who have some work are government employees. The huge industrial area has been closed by U.S. and Iraqi Army units.

"After sacrificing thousands of our beloved, Americans and their tails want to kill the rest of us," said a 50-year-old woman at the football field that was turned into a graveyard following the April 2004 U.S. siege of the city, in which residents say at least 700 were killed.

The TV channel, al-Baghdad, accompanied [Former Iraqi minister of state for foreign affairs] Issawi on his tour and broadcast some of the scenes from inside Fallujah. The footage exposed the painful truth of the real situation here. The streets were deserted, shops were closed, and people appeared with sullen faces.

"Of course we are happy to have our city peaceful, but not this way," lawyer Ahmed Hammad told IPS. "The local police guided and supported by the American Army have prevented car movement for nearly three months now. They should not be proud of having the city quiet in a way that kills everybody with hunger and disease."

Hammad referred to the vehicle ban which was imposed by the U.S. military in Fallujah in May.