Fallujah

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This article is about the city of Fallujah in Iraq. For detailed information on the events of war in Fallujah, see US occupation of Fallujah.

For the site in Israel (formerly an Arab town), see al-Faluja.

For the district in Iraq, see Fallujah (district)

Fallujah skyline

Fallujah (Arabic: الفلوجة‎; sometimes transliterated as Falluja or Fallouja) is a city in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar, located roughly 69 km (43 miles) west of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Fallujah dates from Babylonian times and was host to important Jewish academies for many centuries. The city grew from an unimportant town in 1947 to a pre-war population of about 350,000 inhabitants in 2003. The current population is unknown but estimated at over 350,000, with approximately 300 residents arriving monthly. Within Iraq, it is known as the "city of mosques" for the more than 200 mosques found in the city and surrounding villages. The war has reportedly damaged 60% of the city's buildings, with 20% totally destroyed including 60 of the city's mosques.

1 History
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] History

The region has been inhabited for many millennia and there is evidence that it was inhabited in Babylonian times. The origin of the town's name is in some doubt, but one theory is that its Syriac name, Pallgutha, is derived from the word division. The city's name in Aramaic is Pumbedita.

The region of Falluja was a part of the Sassanid Persian province of Anbar. The name anbar is Persian and means "the warehouse". This region was the warehouse of the Sassanid troops.[1] The city of Falluja itself was called Misiche at that time.

The city played host for several centuries to one of the most important Jewish academies, the Pumbedita Academy, which from 258 AD to 1038 AD was one of the two most important centers of Jewish learning worldwide.[2]

Under the Ottoman Empire Fallujah was little more than a minor stop on one of the country's main roads across the desert west from Baghdad. In the spring of 1920, the British, who had gained control of Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, sent Lt. Col. Gerard Leachman, a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer, to quell a rebellion in Fallujah. Leachman was killed just south of the city in a fight with local leader Shaykh Dhari. The British sent an army to crush the rebellion, and the ensuing fight took the lives of more than 10,000 Iraqis and 1,000 British soldiers.^{[citation needed]}

During the brief Anglo-Iraqi War of 1941, the Iraqi army was defeated by the British in a battle near Fallujah. In 1947 the town had only about 10,000 inhabitants. It grew rapidly into a city after Iraqi independence with the influx of oil wealth into the country. Its position on one of the main roads out of Baghdad made it of central importance.

Under Saddam Hussein, who ruled Iraq from 1979 to 2003, Fallujah came to be an important area of support for the regime, along with the rest of the region labeled by the U.S. military as the Sunni Triangle. Many residents of the primarily Sunni city were employees and supporters of Saddam Hussein's government and many senior Ba'ath Party officials were natives of the city. The city was heavily industrialised during the Saddam era with the construction of several large factories, including one closed down by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in the 1990s that may have been used to create chemical weapons. A new highway system (a part of Hussein's infrastructure initiatives), however, circumvented Fallujah and gradually caused the city to greatly decline in national importance by the time of the Iraq War.^{[citation needed]}

Fallujah as seen from the west in April 2004

[edit] Gulf War, 1991

During the Gulf War, Fallujah was one of the cities in Iraq with the most civilian casualties. Two separate failed bombing attempts on Fallujah's bridge across the Euphrates River hit crowded markets, killing an estimated 200 civilians, enraging city residents.

The first bombing occurred early in the Gulf War when a British jet intending to bomb the bridge dropped two laser guided bombs on the city's crowded main market. Between 50 and 150 civilians died and many more were injured. In the second incident, Coalition forces attacked Fallujah's bridge over the Euphrates River with four laser-guided bombs. At least one struck the bridge while one or two bombs fell short in the river. The fourth bomb hit another market elsewhere in the city, reportedly due to failure of its laser guidance system.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Iraq War, 2003

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See main article, United States occupation of Fallujah

Downtown Fallujah, December 2003

Fallujah was one of the least affected areas of Iraq immediately after the 2003 invasion by the U.S. led Coalition. It had not witnessed any major fighting as Iraqi Army units stationed in the area abandoned their positions, blending themselves into the local population and leaving a lot of unsecured military equipment to the hands of whoever wanted it. Al Fallujah was also the site of a Ba'athist resort facility called 'Dreamland', located only a few kilometers outside the city proper. The Iraqi military's desertion of the Ba'athist compound and the dissolution of nearby military units dispersed a large number of military and para-military personnel into the local Fallujah-area population.

The damage the city had avoided during the initial invasion, was negated by damage from looters, who took advantage of the collapse of Saddam's regime to help themselves. The looters targeted former government sites, the 'Dreamland' compound and the nearby military bases, who stripped buildings of anything of value including floor tiles, window frames, and door frames. Aggravating this situation was the proximity of Fallujah to the infamous Abu G'raib prison, where Saddam, in one of his last acts, had released all prisoners. While many prisoners of the Ba'athist regime may have been political opponents, this act freed both political prisoners and criminal prisoners alike.

Citizens of Al Fallujah had to defend their own homes and property from these looters and criminals in the absence of peace-keeping authorities. The new mayor of the city—Taha Bidaywi Hamed, selected by local tribal leaders—was staunchly pro-American. When the U.S. Army entered the town in April 2003, they positioned themselves at the vacated Ba'ath Party headquarters—an action that erased some goodwill, especially when many in the city had been hoping the U.S. Army would stay outside of the relatively calm city. A Fallujah Protection Force composed of local Iraqis was set up by the U.S.-led occupants to help fight the rising resistance.

On the evening of April 28, 2003, a crowd of 200 people defied a curfew imposed by the Americans and gathered outside a secondary school used as a military HQ to demand its reopening. Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne stationed on the roof of the building opened fire on the crowd resulting in the deaths of 17 civilians and the wounding of over 70. [3]. The events leading up to the event are disputed, with American forces claiming they were responding to gunfire from the crowd, while the Iraqis deny this version, although conceding rocks were thrown at the troops. A protest against the killings two days later was also fired upon by US troops resulting in two more deaths.

The shootings created widespread anger against the occupation. Over the next year, various Sunni rebel groups, including foreign terrorists aligned to al-Qaeda^{[citation needed]}, entrenched themselves in the city, using it as a command base and a symbol of defiance against the multinational forces and the interim Iraqi government, to whom sovereignty was returned in July 2004.

The crowds mob the bridge on which two corpses are hanged

On March 31, 2004 - Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA who were conducting delivery for food caterers ESS [4]

The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerry (Jerko) Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.[5] This bridge is now commonly and unofficially referred to as "Blackwater Bridge" by coalition forces operating there.

Photos of the event were released to news agencies worldwide, causing a great deal of indignation and moral outrage in the United States, and prompting the announcement of an upcoming "pacification" of the city.

This led to an abortive US operation to recapture control of the city in Operation Vigilant Resolve, and a successful recapture operation in the city in November 2004 called Operation Phantom Fury in English and Operation Al Fajr in Arabic. Operation Phantom Fury resulted in the reputed death of over 1,200 insurgent fighters, approximately 100 American Marines KIA, and over 1,000 wounded. According to local sources, hundreds of civilians were among those killed. There are widespread reports that numerous illegal weapons were used in operation Phantom Fury. These reportedly include nerve gas, mustard gas, chemical burning agents, thermobaric weapons, and white phosphorus. All of these weapons were reportedly used by coalition forces when there were at least 50,000 civilians in the city, although no confirmation exists of this accusation. Eyewitness reports give accounts of whole section of the city being completely dead, including birds, stray dogs and cats, and people, but once again no independent verification or press coverage exists of these reports. All of the weapons listed above are banned by multiple international treaties, especially when used in the vicinity of civilians or civilian infrastructure. White phosphorus and thermobaric weapons are not outlawed by any ratified conventions of warfare, however. One Marine, Sgt. Peralta killed during the battle has been nominated for the Medal of Honor after being killed protecting fellow Marines by covering a grenade with his body just before it exploded.

[edit] Current situation

Residents were allowed to return to the city in mid-December after undergoing biometric identification, provided they wear their ID cards all the time. US officials report that "more than half of Fallujah's 39,000 homes were damaged, and about 10,000 of those were destroyed" while compensation amounts to 20 percent of the value of damaged houses, with an estimated 32,000 homeowners eligible, according to Marine Lt. Col. William Brown [6]. According to the NBC [7], 9,000 homes were destroyed, thousands more were damaged and of the 32,000 compensation claims only 2,500 have been paid as of April 14, 2005. According to Mike Marqusee of Iraq Occupation Focus writing in the Guardian [8], "Fallujah's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines". Reconstruction is only progressing slowly and mainly consists of clearing rubble from heavily-damaged areas and reestablishing basic utility services. This is also due to the fact that only 10% of the pre-offensive inhabitants had returned as of mid-January, and only 30% as of the end of March 2005 [9].

Pre-offensive inhabitant figures are unreliable; the nominal population was assumed to have been 250,000-350,000. Thus, over 150,000 individuals are still living as IDPs in harsh conditions in tent cities or with relatives outside Fallujah or elsewhere in Iraq. Current estimates by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and Coalition Forces put the city's population at over 350,000, possibly closing in on half a million.

In the aftermath of the offensive, relative calm was restored to Fallujah. However, the number of insurgent attacks has gradually increased in and around the city. Roadside bombs, snipers and small-arms fire attacks are an almost-daily fact of life for Coalition Forces, Iraqi citizens and Iraqi Security Forces alike.

By Summer 2006, the city that had once been used as a staging point for insurrection has become something of an island of peace, by contrast to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the rest of the volatile Al-Anbar province[10]. The invasive security measures which had been emplaced to prevent mass re-infiltration by Sunni rebels or Al-Qaeda elements had proven effective^{[citation needed]}, though it should be noted that a significant fraction of the population of the city was lost as refugees fled from the activities of Operation Vigilant Resolve and Operation Phantom Fury.^{[citation needed]}