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Fallujah (also Fallouja, Falluja, or Al Fallujah; in Arabic: فلوجة) is a city of some 285,000 inhabitants in the Iraqi province of Al Anbar (Umbar). Within Iraq, it is known as the "city of mosques" for the more than 200 mosques found in the city and surrounding villages. It has long been one of the most important places to Sunni Islam in the region.
Fallujah is located roughly 69 km (43 miles) west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River and is on the main road connecting Baghdad to Jordan. 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, Pallugtha, is derived from the word division. There is some evidence that millennia ago a branch of the Euphrates divided off at that point, and that this is the source of the name, but today that branch has disappeared.
Fallujah was a small and rather unimportant town for most of its history under the Persians and Arab Caliphates. It was overshadowed by the city of Al-Anbar to the north which served as a place of learning in the region and under the Abbasid Caliphate for a time became the capital of the large empire. With the decline of the Abbassids the region declined and Al-Anbar was abandoned and is today only ruins.
Under the Ottoman Empire the town continued to play a secondary role and in 1947 the town had only about 10,000 inhabitants. The city grew after Iraqi independence with the influx of oil wealth into the country.
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 that has come to be known as the Sunni Triangle. Many residents of the primarily Sunni city were employees and supporters of the government of Saddam Hussein, and many senior Ba'ath Party officials were natives of the city. The city was heavily industrialised during the Saddam era with several large factories built — including one that may have been used to create chemical weapons, but it was closed down by United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) in the 1990s.
During the First Gulf War, Fallujah was one of the cities in Iraq with the most civilian casualties. Two separate failed bombing attempts on the city's bridge across the river hit crowded markets, killing an estimated 200 civilians, and greatly angering the population.
Fallujah was one of the most peaceful areas of the country just after the fall of Saddam. There was very little looting and the new mayor of the city — Taha Bidaywi, selected by local tribal leaders — was staunchly pro-US. When the US Army entered the town in April 2003, they located themselves at the vacated Ba'ath Party headquarters — an action that erased some goodwill, especially when many in the city had been hoping the US Army would stay outside of the relatively calm city.
On the evening of April 28, 2003, a crowd of 200 people celebrating the birthday of Saddam Hussein defied the Coalition curfew and gathered outside a school building to protest against the US-led coalition forces who had occupied the school.
During the protest, it is alleged stones were thrown at US troops. Fifteen unarmed Iraqi civilians died from US gunfire. There were no coalition casualties.
Fallujah has been one of the most dangerous areas for coalition military troops during the occupation of Iraq. Since the occupation began, over sixty Americans have died in Fallujah — more than any city except Baghdad.
Approximately one year after the invasion, the city's Iraqi police and civil defense forces were unable to establish law and order. Armed gangs, foreign fighters, and Iraqi insurgents staged spectacular attacks on police stations in the city. This situation enabled a highly publicised attack on March 31, 2004, in which four "security contractors" from the U.S. company Blackwater_USA were dragged from their vehicle and lynched. Their bodies were then mutilated. A crowd of militants and townsfolk, estimated to number over a thousand, beat the corpses, dragged the corpses behind automobiles, and hanged the dismembered remains from the girders of a bridge over the Euphrates River. These acts were recorded on film by journalists and broadcast worldwide on television.
Independent journalist Tara Sutton, in a report into US atrocities notes that the killing of the American contractors happened in the context of a long-simmering exchange of hostilities, most notably by the shooting by American troops of seventeen Fallujah residents at an "anti-America" demonstration in April of 2003. "This was the context of the March 31 lynching. The impact of the images upon American public opinion was huge," Sutton said, while the previous history was ignored.
In response to the killing of the four Americans, the coalition military surrounded the city in the following days, attempting to round up the individuals responsible and any others in the region who may be involved in insurgency or terrorist activities. As of this writing, military action in Fallujah is still ongoing. The attempt by coalition forces to regain control of Fallujah, Operation Vigilant Resolve, and led to about 40 US Marine deaths and 600-800 Iraqi deaths in April alone.
Rahul Mahajan reported, "To Americans, 'Fallujah' may still mean four mercenaries killed, with their corpses then mutilated and abused; to Iraqis, 'Fallujah' means the savage collective punishment for that attack, in which over 600 Iraqis have been killed, with an estimated 200 women and over 100 children (according to some sources, women do not fight among the muj, so all of these are noncombatants, as are many of the men killed)."
The occupying force on April 9 allowed about 70,000 women, children and elderly residents to leave the besieged city, but forced all males of military age to remain. Days after entering the city US marines discovered a suicide bomb vest source. What was reported was the use of suicide vests by the resistance forces. Once this was reported to the media, it was changed to a suicide vest factory.
On April 10, the US military declared a unilateral truce to allow for humanitarian supplies to enter Fallujah and pulled back to the outskirts of the city; local leaders reciprocated the ceasefire, although lower-level sporadic fighting on both sides continued. One of the American terms of the ceasefire was that an Al-Jazeera journalist, who had filmed tens of civilian corpses reported to have been killed in US bombing raids, leave the city. An Iraqi mediation team entered the city in an attempt to set up negotiations between the US and local leaders, but as of April 12 had not been successful. The resistance forces capitilized on this 'ceasefire' to conduct the most aggressive counter-offensive of the cordon. Additionally, numerous weapons were found hidden in the humanitarian supply trucks that were attempting to enter the city.
The ceasefire followed a wave of resistance fighting across southern Iraq, which included the capture of two American soldiers, seven contract employees of Kellogg, Brown and Root, and more than 50 other foreigners in Iraq. At least 30 of the prisoners were released within days of their capture.
The US asserted that it hopes for a negotiated settlement but will restart its offensive to retake the city if one is not reached. Military commanders said their goal in the siege was to capture those responsible for the March 31 murders of Kellogg, Brown and Root security personnel. US forces were unable to determine in early April whether those shown in news images attacking the company's elite security team had remained in the city or fled. As the siege continued, even though US Marines were under a unilateral ceasefire, insurgents continued to conduct hit-and-run attacks on US Marine positions.
The siege was briefly lifted to allow food and medicine to be delivered to Fallujah. However, US marines soon discovered ambulances and food trucks smuggling weapons and fighters into the city. Some have reported that foreign troops are involved in the insurgency. According to Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times:
However, no evidence to back that assertion has been produced.
On the British news programme Channel 4 News (made by ITN) in May 2004 a segment by independent film-maker Tara Sutton claimed to show evidence that US snipers had targeted civilians emerging from their homes. This information was also reported by reporter Dahr Jamail, writer of the .
At the beginning of May, US troops announced a ceasefire. The US was handing control of the city over to a former Iraqi general with an Iraqi brigade; it acknowledged that many of the people under control of the general were insurgents themselves. The general - Maj. Gen. Muhammed Latif - replaced an earlier pick, Gen. Muhammed Saleh, who was discovered to have been involved in the earlier attacks on the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war. Latif's militia brought back the old Iraqi military uniforms from Saddam Hussein's era for the forces under his control, and has stated that the United States army needs to leave the country.
Inside the city, mosques proclaimed the victory of the insurgents over the United States. Celebratory banners appeared around the city, and the fighters paraded through the town on trucks. Iraqi governing council member Ahmed Chalabi, after a bombing that killed fellow IGC member Izzadine Saleem, blamed the US military's decisions in Fallujah for the attack, stating "The garage is open and car bombs are coming repeatedly."
Fallujah, according to reporters who have visited it since, has become sort of an Islamic mini-state, with Sharia law enforced by the mujahedeen.
In September 2004, US Marine commander Lt Gen James Conway criticised his military and civilian superiors over their handling of Fallujah: "We felt that we probably ought to let the situation settle before we appeared to be attacking out of revenge." He also criticised his superiors for "vacillating" after the offensive had started: "Once you commit you have to stay committed." Although it is not clear how high up the chain of command the decision was taken to attack Fallujah, a Newsweek report suggests that it was taken in the White House, with George Bush ordering "Let heads roll."
Throughout summer 2004, sporadic airstrikes on Fallujah took place, often in residential areas. US forces claimed that these were targetted, intelligence-based strikes against houses used by the group of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, linked to al-Qaeda. For instance on 13 September airstrikes killed 15-20 civilians . On September 17, U.S. air strikes on the city of Fallujah killed an estimated 60 people, according to the U.S. military. A spokesman for Iraq's health ministry reported that two women and at least 17 children were wounded.
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