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Under the [[Ottoman Empire]], Fallujah was 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 ColonelCol [[Gerard Leachman]], a renowned explorer and a senior colonial officer, to meet with local leader [[Shaykh Dhari]], perhaps to waiver a loan given to the sheikh. Exactly what happened depends on the source, but according to the Arab version, [[Gerard Leachman]] was betrayed by the sheikh who had his two sons shoot him in the legs, then behead him by the sword.[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/24/030324fa_fact?currentPage=2]
During the brief [[Anglo-Iraqi War]] of [[1941]], the BritishIraqis were defeated by the British in a battle innear Fallujah by the inhabiters. In 1947 the town had only about 10,000 inhabitants. It grew rapidly into a city after Iraqi independence with the influx of [[petroleum|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 US military as the "[[Sunni Triangle]]." Many residents of the primarily [[Sunni]] city were employees and supporters of Hussein's government, and many senior [[Ba'ath Party]] officials were natives of the city. Fallujah was heavily industrialised during the Hussein 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) circumvented Fallujah and gradually caused the city to decline in national importance by the time of the Iraq War.<ref>[http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/fallujah.htm Global Security, Fallujah]</ref>
A similar program was met with success in the city of Ramadi in late 2006 and early 2007.
===Return to Fallujah===
A recent independent article describes Fallujah as,"Three years after the devastating US assault, our correspondent enters besieged Iraqi city left without clean water, electricity and medicine
Fallujah is more difficult to enter than any city in the world. On the road from Baghdad I counted 27 checkpoints, all manned by well-armed soldiers and police. "The siege is total," says Dr Kamal in Fallujah Hospital as he grimly lists his needs, which include everything from drugs and oxygen to electricity and clean water.
The last time I tried to drive to Fallujah, several years ago, I was caught in the ambush of an American fuel convoy and had to crawl out of the car and lie beside the road with the driver while US soldiers and guerrillas exchanged gunfire. The road is now much safer but nobody is allowed to enter Fallujah who does not come from there and can prove it through elaborate identity documents. The city has been sealed off since November 2004 when United States Marines stormed it in an attack that left much of the city in ruins.
Its streets, with walls pock-marked with bullets and buildings reduced to a heap of concrete slabs, still look as if the fighting had finished only a few weeks ago.
I went to look at the old bridge over the Euphrates from whose steel girders Fallujans had hanged the burnt bodies of two American private security men killed by guerrillas – the incident that sparked the first battle of Fallujah. The single-lane bridge is still there, overlooked by the remains of a bombed or shelled building whose smashed roof overhangs the street and concrete slabs are held in place by rusty iron mesh.
The police chief of Fallujah, Colonel Feisal Ismail Hassan al-Zubai, was trying to show that his city was on the mend.
As we looked at the bridge a small crowd gathered and an elderly man in a brown coat shouted: "We have no electricity, we have no water."
Others confirmed that Fallujah was getting one hour's electricity a day. Colonel Feisal said there was not much he could do about the water or electricity though he did promise a man that a fence of razor wire outside his restaurant would be removed.
Fallujah may be better than it was, but it still has a very long way to go. Hospital doctors confirm that they are receiving few gunshot or bomb blast victims since the Awakening movement drove al-Qa'ida from the city over the past six months, but people still walk warily in the streets as if they expected firing to break out at any minute.
Colonel Feisal, a former officer in Saddam Hussein's Special Forces, cheerfully admits that before he was chief of police, "I was fighting the Americans". His brother Abu Marouf, a former guerrilla commander, controls 13,000 fighters of the anti-al-Qa'ida Awakening movement in and around Fallujah. The colonel stressed that the streets of Fallujah were now wholly safe but his convoy drove at speed and was led by a policeman, his face hidden by a white balaclava, on top of a vehicle holding a machine gun and frantically gesturing oncoming vehicles out of the way.
The police station is large and protected by concrete and earth barriers. Just as we reached the inner courtyard we saw signs that the battle against al-Qa'ida may be over but arrests go on. From another part of the police station there emerged a line of 20 prisoners, each with his eyes covered by a white blindfold, gripping the back of the clothes of the prisoner in front of him. The prisoners reminded me of photographs of men blinded by gas in the First World War stumbling along behind a single man who could see and who, in this case, was a prison guard.
There are new buildings in the main street. I used to eat at a kebab restaurant called Haji Hussein, which was one of the best in Iraq. Then, as the occupation went on, I started attracting a lot of hostile stares. The manager suggested it might be safer if I ate upstairs in an empty room, and soon after it was destroyed by an American bomb. It has now been rebuilt in gaudy colours and seemed to be doing good business.
At one time Fallujah had a population of 600,000, but none of the officials in the city seemed to know how many there are now. Col Feisal is hopeful of investment and took us to a white, new building called the Fallujah Business Development Centre, which had been partly funded by a branch of the US State Department. Tall American soldiers were guarding a business development conference. "It has attracted one American investor so far," said a uniformed American adviser hopefully. "My name is Sarah and I am in psychological operations," said another US officer and proudly showed us around a newly established radio Fallujah.
At the other end of the city we crossed over the iron bridge built in about 1930 and now the only link with the far side of the Euphrates. There is a modern bridge half a mile down river but it has been taken over by the American army and, say locals, used as a vehicle park. On the far side of the bridge, past beds of tall bullrushes where people escaping the city during the sieges of 2004 tried to hide, there is a building eviscerated by bombs on one side of the road. On the other side is the hospital whose officials US commanders used to accuse of systematically exaggerating the number of those killed by American bombing.
When I asked what the hospital lacked Dr Kamal said wearily: "Drugs, fuel, electricity, generators, a water treatment system, oxygen and medical equipment." It was difficult not to think that American assistance might have gone to the hospital rather than the business development centre.
Colonel Feisal said things were getting better but he was mobbed by black-clad women shouting that their children had not been treated.
"Every day 20 children die here," said one. "Seven in this very room."
The doctors said that they were tending their patients as best they could. "The Americans provide us with nothing," said one mother who was cradling a child. "They bring us only destruction."
During the US assault on Fallujah, US forces cut off water and electricity to the city of 600,000 people. US air strikes have destroyed hospitals and medical centres. The US took over the Fallujah General Hospital and converted to a military hospital, thus denying the citizens of Fallujah any health care service. On 09 November 2004, US warplanes attacked the Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the centre of the city and completely destroyed it. Thirty-five patients were killed, including five children under the ages of 10 years. According to Amnesty International, "20 Iraqi medical staff [doctors and nurses] and dozens of other civilians were killed when a missile hit a Fallujah clinic on 09 November 2004". The air strike also destroyed the hospital medical supplies warehouse. The destruction of Fallujah is a crime against humanity.
As of today, the exact number of civilians killed by the US assault on Fallujah is not known. According to an official in the Allawi's puppet "government", "more than 112,085" Iraqis have been killed. US forces used internationally banned weapons such as napalm, phosphorous weapons and jet fuel, which makes the human body melt, to attack the city in violation of international law. Medact has also called on US forces to re-evaluate the use of these illegal weapons in populated areas, given the high rate of civilian casualties.
The Iraqi Red Crescent Society was prevented by US forces from entering the city to provide supplies to the wounded civilians, and called the health conditions in and around Fallujah "catastrophic". Eyewitnesses say most of the victims are civilians, including, women, children, and unarmed men between the ages of 14-60 years old, who were prevented from leaving the city before the US onslaught. Furthermore, many children have died as a result of starvation, dehydration and outbreaks of diarrhoeal infections. UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy said that the death of was "an unconscionable slaughter of innocents". "The killing of children is a crime and a moral outrage", Bellamy added.
Medact says: "The war is a continuing public health disaster that was predictable - and should have been preventable". It added that, "[e]xcess deaths and injuries and high levels of illness are the direct and indirect results of ongoing conflict". According to the Medact, Iraq had also experienced an alarming recurrence of previously well-controlled communicable diseases, including acute respiratory infections, diarrhoea and typhoid, particularly among children.
The Medact study found that, "one in four people in Iraq were now dependent on food aid, and there were more children underweight or chronically malnourished than before the US invasion". The near disappearance of immunisation programmes had contributed to the recurrence of death and illness from preventable disease, and infant mortality rose due to a lack of access to skilled help in childbirth, as well as to violence, confirming the Fafo report.
The Fafo report paints a catastrophic picture of Iraq's health care under US Occupation. "It's in the level of some African countries", Jon Pedersen, deputy-managing director of the Norway-based Institute told The Associated Press. "Of course, no child should be malnourished, but when we're getting to levels of 7 to 8 percent, it's a clear sign of concern", he added.
Like the Fafo report, the Medact study specifically blames the US Occupation for the deteriorating conditions in Iraq's health and the tactics of the US-led occupying forces for exacerbating the country's health problems, particularly the decision to sideline the UN. Unreliable supplies of electricity have made it hard to boil water for safe drinking. The destruction of Iraq's infrastructure, including the sewage and water systems has exacerbated the problem and led to increase in outbreaks of virulent diseases such as hepatitis. More that 20% of urban residents and 60% of rural Iraqis don't have access to clean water, as a result of the destruction of Iraq's infrastructure. According to the Medact report: "twelve percent of Iraq's hospitals were damaged during the war and the country's two main public health laboratories were also destroyed".
In order to foster the sale Iraqi assets and resources, the US must render them useless first. The deliberate targeting of Iraq's health care system for destruction is part of the illegal armed conquest of Iraq. The objective is quite clear: the cheap sale of Iraqi assets and resources to US corporations.
The US is unable to provide all Iraqis with acceptable and equal health care. Health care in the US is worse than any of the developing countries, with appalling statistics. The US is one of the few countries in the world that does not provide universal health care for children and pregnant women. Infant mortality, low birth weight, and child deaths under five are ranked among the highest in the U.S. as compared to Western industrial nations and Japan.
According to Gill Reeve, of Medact: "Immediate action is needed to halt this health disaster". The best and lasting solution to the humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq is for the US to stop the violence against the Iraqi people, withdraw its forces from Iraq, and restoration of Iraq's sovereignty. The current interim US-appointed "government" is illegitimate. Iraq's sovereignty should be restored to ensure the peaceful rehabilitation of Iraq's infrastructure and health care system."
==See also==
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