Going home to Fallujah, a city of turmoil
Nearly eight months after the Iraqi government recaptured one of the major support bases of the Islamic State, the victory seems at risk
Iraqi forces had taken Fallujah from the Islamic State (Isis) group months before, and Sabah Rashid was more than ready to return home. But the police warned him not to go. Isis fighters had rigged bombs all through his south Fallujah neighbourhood, and these had still not been cleared, they told him.
Mr Rashid, 30, moved back into his ransacked house anyway. Last week, they were camped out in their sagging house with no heat, electricity or running water. And they waited with mounting frustration for promised government aid.
Nearly eight months after the recapture of Fallujah showed that Iraq’s government could wrest one of the Isis’s major support bases away from it, the victory seems at risk.
The Shia-dominated national government has not yet demonstrated that it can secure and rebuild this shattered Sunni city, soothe sectarian grievances or provide for 250,000 returning residents. Iraqi and US security officials fear that if the Sunnis of Fallujah are given no reason to trust the government, they may once again embrace Isis.
Local officials say Isis sleeper cells remain active, and many residents continue to aid the insurgents.
The seeds of an incomplete victory were there from the start. Fallujah had long been disaffected from the government, and it was the first Iraqi city to fall under Isis control. Even with the group mostly driven out, the government faced a widespread lack of trust.
The government tried to keep the militias out of Fallujah to avoid antagonising Sunni residents. But many entered the city dressed as policemen, Sunni lawmakers said. Local officials said Shia militiamen were now confined to checkpoints on Fallujah’s outskirts, about 40 miles west of Baghdad.
“Of course, violations occurred in some places” by Shia militiamen, said Salam Ajmi, a Fallujah municipal councilman. But now, he said, some Sunni residents were cooperating with security forces to help root out Isis sleeper cells.
A visit to Fallujah by Times journalists showed that last summer’s battle had left some sections of the city relatively unscathed but had reduced others to rubble. Many streets were littered with crumpled buildings, collapsed roofs and burned-out cars, all coated with dust. The skeleton of a crushed Humvee lay near Mr Rashid’s home.
“Fallujah has had some hard lessons — we hope this will be our last hard lesson,” said Sheikh Talib al-Efan, the head of Fallujah’s local council, who has promised returnees that help is on the way.
The UN Development Program said it had made stopgap repairs to the city’s main teaching hospital and to five schools and health centres. The agency has restored rudimentary electricity and water in many areas, cleared debris and hired 300 locals to clean streets.
Lise Grande, the UN deputy special representative in Iraq, said the agency’s stabilisation work was to help patch up Fallujah until more permanent repairs could be made. The agency has spent US$8.6 million of $18.5 million allocated — a small fraction of the amount needed to rebuild the city.
Mr Ajmi, the councilman, said the council had little funding. Depressed oil prices had kept Iraq’s economy floundering. Life was precarious everywhere, he said, not just in Fallujah.
Hussein Ahmed, 53, who lived in a displaced-persons camp for three years, said he had lost patience with the council. He returned to Fallujah to find his house wrecked — the third he has lost. Two previous homes were destroyed during battles against fighters for al-Qaida in Iraq, he said.
“We were hurt badly by Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Isis. “And now we’re being hurt by our own government.” Other returning residents nodded as Mr Ahmed added, “I speak for thousands of people when I say the government has forgotten us.”
Fallujah has endured tragedy on an epic scale since 2003. The city was pounded during repeated battles — first between the United States and Saddam Hussein’s forces in 2003, then between US Marines and al-Qaeda fighters. Most insurgents were eventually evicted with the help of Sunni tribal fighters.
But the insurgency was reborn as Isis. It overran Fallujah in December 2013, and the city became an important base for the group’s operations. One reason the government assaulted the city last May was to curb a devastating car bomb campaign against Baghdad that was being operated from Fallujah.
Fallujah is hardly the government’s only worry in a nation with 3.1 million internally displaced people. The government is pouring resources into the Mosul battle while also trying to rebuild Fallujah and Ramadi, in Anbar province, and to repair the city of Tikrit, farther north.
Of the 320,000 people who fled Fallujah for aid camps, about 250,000 have returned since mid-October, the UN said. They are desperate to live at home again, whatever the risk.
In south Fallujah, 1st Lt Walid Mohammed of the police shook his head as Rashid and his children tended their campfire. “We told them the risk is all theirs,” he said. “They are responsible if anything happens, not us.”
Mr Rashid said he was accustomed to danger. He lifted his shirt to reveal jagged, crimson scars on his belly from an Islamic State bomb that he said blew up the family car in late 2013. The blackened front seat lay in the front yard.
A tall, grey-whiskered man suddenly appeared: Mohammed Saeed, 49, a neighbour whom Mr Rashid had not seen since 2013. Mr Saed had returned that morning, three years after fleeing. His home was dirty and bereft of electricity or water. But he was moving in.
Mr Saed kissed Mr Rashid on both cheeks. “I’m so happy,” he told him. “It’s a dangerous, terrible place, but we are home.”