QUOTE(Livyjr @ Nov. 20, 2004)
Top Stories - U.S. News & World Report
"Destroying it to save it?"
By Ilana Ozernoy
FALLUJAH, IRAQ--Once the sky stopped raining fire and the smoke from the tank cannons vanished, it was time to pick up the pieces.
But where to start?
What had been houses were now piles of brick and glass, demolished by 500-pound bombs.
Whole city blocks were leveled, the rubble and mangled carcasses of cars pushed to the sides of the streets by the force of Abrams tanks.
In crushing the Sunni insurgents who had laid claim to the streets, U.S. and Iraqi forces left Fallujah looking like a city ripped asunder by a hurricane.
"It's in bad shape."
"I don't know what they [residents] have to come back to," said Sgt. 1st Class John Ryan of the 1st Infantry's Division Task Force 2-2, which flanked U.S. marines on the eastern side of the city during the fighting.
As muted sounds of gunfire crackled in the city last week, Ryan, along with the soldiers of Alpha Company, took shelter in a damaged house.
Picking through debris, a soldier wondered out loud, "What is this place?"
"Hell."
In an upstairs bedroom, the unit's Iraqi translator took a ballpoint pen and wrote on a closet door in small, neat Arabic:
"We're sorry about the destruction of this house and all the houses of this town."
"We came here to make peace and bring safety."
Bringing safety to restive Iraqi cities is an increasingly costly exercise for U.S. forces stretched thin by their pursuit of insurgents across the Sunni triangle.
Even as Fallujah was declared "secure" (although not "safe"), the military deployed troops to counter insurgents in the cities of Mosul and Baquba.
Rooting out a thousand or so insurgents in Fallujah required American commanders to commit some 10,000 troops, reinforced by punishing air power.
The Army's 1st Infantry Division, lacking the number of soldiers necessary to search every house, employed its tanks, blasting heavy cannon rounds in answer to snipers' gun-and mortar fire to minimize time--and U.S. casualties.
"You never want to destroy someone's city like this."
"These people have worked hard for what they have," said Staff Sgt. David Bellavia, of Task Force 2-2's Alpha Company.
"But this was the only way to eliminate those fanatics."
Hit or miss.
While some houses survived with little damage, whole swaths of the city were made virtually unlivable.
On the eastern side of Fallujah, which suffered some of the heaviest fighting, the front of one house looked as if it had been sliced off with a bread knife.
The upstairs bedroom remained intact, a small vase of plastic roses sitting undisturbed above a perfectly made bed while the guts of the house spilled into the front yard, burying a man caked with blood and dust.
After the fighting subsided, Fallujah was declared a tactical victory.
Military officials said roughly 1,200 insurgents were killed (about 51 Americans were killed and 425 wounded).
Other insurgents fled, and terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi was denied a base of operations.
"We feel right now that we have . . . broken the back of the insurgency," said Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the Marine Corps commander in Iraq.
"We've taken away this safe haven"
Still, the victory in Fallujah is hardly so clear.
The U.S.-backed interim government sees a city wrested from the hands of terrorists in order to pave the way for elections in January.
But minority Sunnis, fearing they'll be shortchanged in the political process, see an exercise in obliteration, not liberation.
To try to convince them otherwise, U.S. commanders hope to make Fallujah a demonstration of American generosity, as well as military might, with plans for some $90 million in reconstruction spending.
Pentagon officials say this will be a larger version of the rebuilding effort begun in Najaf after Shiite-led fighting stopped there, back in August.
The military says that effort has helped keep the peace by putting people to work.
Marine officers will oversee paying compensation to thousands of Fallujah families.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has started distributing humanitarian aid, and the Pentagon plans to give Iraqis jobs rebuilding the electrical grid as well as restoring water and sewer service.
But with weeks to go before the electricity is turned on and serious reconstruction work begins, Fallujah risks becoming a sequel to the battle for Baghdad--a quick, effective military operation, followed by a slow and problematic reconstruction effort.
What Iraqis have seen so far are the images of scorched neighborhoods and wounded civilians looped on Arab satellite TV newscasts, and those who survived the fighting angrily condemned the military tactics.
"There was no food, no water, no electricity--just the smell of gunpowder," recalled Muhsan Fuad, 30, who fled his house in Fallujah's Jolan neighborhood a few days after the offensive began, transporting the remains of a cousin killed by mortar fire.
"It's a war for freedom and democracy where there is no mercy, no law, no difference between men, women, and children."
"This is the American way of democracy?"
Last week, Iraqis tentatively braved the streets under Marine supervision to pick up decomposing bodies and provide them an Islamic burial.
Military commanders said most of the dead were combatants, explaining that civilians had plenty of advance warning and that most had fled before the fighting.
"Everybody out there," said Staff Sergeant Bellavia, referring to the dead, "you can pry a weapon out of their hands."
Military officials say ensuring that the reconstruction of Fallujah goes as smoothly as its downfall will require a substantial security commitment.
"What is it going to take to clean this place up?"
"A lot of money and a lot of manpower," said Sgt. Major Wayne Bell, from the 1st Marine Division.
Even as the military's civil affairs units wandered through town assessing damage to public utilities and private businesses, sporadic gunfire and the threat of booby traps hindered their work--raising the specter that the insurgents might strike again, hoping to exploit reconstruction delays to undermine the Americans' efforts.
"Shiite-Sunni Tension Rises Anew in Iraq"By HAMZA HENDAWI, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 3, 1:37 PM ET
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The Shiite mourners were crying for blood, threatening to burn down a Sunni town where dozens of Shiite travelers had been slain.
Their rage boiled over after a fresh spate of bombings killed nearly 40 people in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad.
A senior Shiite politician, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, appealed for calm, telling the 2,000-strong crowd that Sunnis and Shiites must live in peace together.
Yet he had sent a very different message just two days before, suggesting Shiites set up vigilante groups to track down "terrorists" in the Sunni-led insurgency and report them to security authorities, which are dominated by Shiites.Tensions between Shiite Arabs and the Sunni minority are rapidly worsening, pushing Iraq closer to a civil war that could disrupt its young democracy and lead to its breakup.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime more than two years ago, tensions have flared several times.
But each time, historical ties binding the two groups and appeals for calm from religious leaders have averted conflict.
In the face of spiraling violence, however, anti-Sunni sentiments among Shiite leaders are being articulated publicly, with impunity and tacit approval from powerful political circles.
On Tuesday, a Shiite lawmaker joined al-Hakim's call for vigilante groups, finding so much support in parliament that some fellow Shiites forfeited their turn to speak so he could finish.
"The rage of our young people is putting pressure on us," said Khidir al-Khozai, who warned Sunni Arab political parties not to remain silent over the Baghdad bombings.The bombings last week in the Shula and Karradah districts, and the killing Tuesday of a Shiite legislator in his 80s, have pushed anti-Sunni sentiments to levels never seen since Saddam's ouster.
Beside making the rounds of parliament, the issue also had been discussed in the home of Shiite spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
"There is a terrifying amount of sectarian tension in Iraq these days," warned Adnan al-Janabi, a senior Sunni Arab legislator and a moderate.
Mohammed Abdul-Hassan al-Shammari, a 37-year-old tennis pro, was among the victims of the Karradah bombings.
Mithaq Salem, his Sunni colleague and friend of 13 years, was with al-Shammari's family for four consecutive days to help with the funeral, sitting with family and friends under an outdoor tent drinking bitter coffee and listening to Quranic verses.
"Everyone was cursing the Sunnis and praying to God that He takes revenge on them," Salem recalled.
"But what can I do?"
"Not all of us are terrorists."
"Mohammed and his brother Fayez taught me everything I know."
"We are like brothers."
"This Shiite-Sunni thing never came up."
In Shula, storekeepers have taken matters into their hands, prohibiting parking in parts of the neighborhood by placing tires, metal containers and palm tree trunks alongside sidewalks.
There's virtually nothing in looks or speech to distinguish between ordinary Sunnis and Shiites, yet Salem Lazem Hussein, who runs an electrical supplies store by the site of one of last week's car bombs, said: "We have become so alert now that we can tell who is an outsider right away."
"I close the store when I hear the call to sunset prayers."
"You cannot see your enemy in the dark, so I stay home," said the 37-year-old father of six.
Shiite-Sunni tensions were most palpable at the June 26 ceremony marking the bombing deaths in Karradah and Shula.
It was held at the offices of Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Many in the 2,000-strong crowd cheered the Badr Brigade — a Shiite militia associated with al-Hakim's party and which many Sunnis accuse of targeting their community.
Most of their ire was directed at sheik Harith al-Dhari, leader of the Association of Muslim Scholars, an influential Sunni group known to have ties to the Sunni-dominated insurgency.
"Al-Sistani is the sword of the Shiites, if he gives the order we will burn down Latifiyah," they chanted, alluding to the Sunni town south of Baghdad notorious for killings of Shiites.
The mood of the crowd appeared to reflect the angry tone of al-Hakim's June 24 statement in which he called on Shiites to set up "popular committees" in their neighborhoods to "uncover terrorist cells" and report them to security forces — most of which are Shiite-dominated.
The call for vigilante groups appeared to suggest a system very similar to what was used by Saddam's Baath party and security agencies to ferret out critics of the regime. In a statement Saturday, al-Hakim warned against sectarian strife and called on the Iraqi government to step up efforts to fight with militants.
"We stress the importance of being alert and cautious not to be carried away toward the sectarian strife that our enemies want for us," he said.
"We ask the Iraqi government, particularly the security apparatuses, to exert more efforts to strike these terrorist groups."
Shiite tribal sheiks, meanwhile, have been begging al-Sistani to issue a fatwa, or edict, permitting them to go after Sunnis who kill their fellow Shiites, according to Iraqis familiar with the meetings held at the cleric's home in the holy city of Najaf.
Al-Sistani, whose word is law for many Shiites, has refused to grant such permission, but has signaled his concern about the rising tensions.
He told Shiite and Sunni politicians who met him Monday at the holy city of Najaf that it was "unacceptable" from a religious viewpoint for Muslims to kill each other.
Over the past century, Iraq's Sunni Arab minority dominated the country — pushing the Shiites and Kurds to the sidelines.
That ascendancy ended with the ouster of Saddam, their last patron.
The domination by Sunnis of the two-year insurgency, and the rise to power of a Shiite-Kurdish alliance after elections in January, have deepened the rift.
Sunni Arabs account for up to 20 percent of Iraq's estimated 26 million people.
Their inclusion in the political process — drafting a constitution, putting it to a vote in October and holding a general election two months later — is essential for its credibility and success.
If Sunni-Shiite tensions burst into conflict, the process will be derailed, throwing the country's political future into doubt and possibly causing the breakup of Iraq.
Already, the process is troubled over problems of a sectarian nature — Shiite opposition to come of the Sunnis on the committee drafting Iraq's constitution, and a growing desire in the oil-rich, mainly Shiite south of Iraq for autonomy modeled on Iraqi Kurdistan.
There, 14 years of self-rule have reduced Baghdad's authority to virtually nothing.
Replicated in the south, it could spell the breakup of Iraq, a country that has existed in its present shape for less than a century. For some, the marble plaza outside the Shiite Kazimiya shrine in northern Baghdad offered some respite from the mounting pressures.
Here, large families of robed women, children and men picnicked on rice, lamb and vegetables as worshippers prepared for the sunset prayers.
"Peace and tranquility are found here," said Abu Bilal al-Basri, a silver-bearded man who came with a friend to pray.
"For us, it's the only safe place in Baghdad."
___
Associated Press reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this story from Baghdad.
