[Media-watch] Returning Falluajns will face clampdown - The Boston Globe - 5/12/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown?pg=full
Returning Fallujans will face clampdown

By Anne Barnard, Globe Staff
December 5, 2004

FALLUJAH, Iraq -- The US military is drawing up plans to keep insurgents 
from regaining control of this battle-scarred city, but returning residents 
may find that the measures make Fallujah look more like a police state than 
the democracy they have been promised.

Under the plans, troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen 
processing centers on the outskirts of the city  to compile a database of 
their identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would 
receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at all 
times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the deadliest tool 
of suicide bombers, would be banned.

Marine commanders working in unheated, war-damaged downtown buildings are 
hammering out the details of their paradoxical task: Bring back the 300,000 
residents in time for January elections without letting in insurgents, even 
though many Fallujans were among the fighters who ruled the city until the 
US assault drove them out in November, and many others cooperated with 
fighters out of conviction or fear.

One idea that has stirred debate among Marine officers would require all men 
to work, for pay, in military-style battalions. Depending on their skills, 
they would be assigned jobs in construction, waterworks, or rubble-clearing 
platoons.

"You have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That 
radiates stability," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, intelligence 
officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine regiment that took 
the western half of Fallujah during the US assault and expects to be based 
downtown for some time.

Bellon asserted that previous attempts to win trust from Iraqis suspicious 
of US intentions had telegraphed weakness by asking, " 'What are your needs? 
What are your emotional needs?' All this Oprah [stuff]," he said. "They want 
to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to 
be the benevolent, dominant tribe.

"They're never going to like us," he added, echoing other Marine commanders 
who cautioned against raising hopes that Fallujans would warmly welcome 
troops when they return to ruined houses and rubble-strewn streets. The 
goal,  Bellon said, is "mutual respect."

Most Fallujans have not heard about the US plans. But for some people in a 
city that has long opposed the occupation, any presence of the Americans, 
and the restrictions they bring, feels threatening.

"When the insurgents were here, we felt safe," said Ammar Ahmed, 19, a 
biology student at Anbar University. "At least I could move freely in the 
city; now I cannot."

US commanders and Iraqi leaders have declared their intention to make 
Fallujah a "model city," where they  can maintain the security that has 
eluded them elsewhere. They also want to avoid a repeat -- on a smaller 
scale -- of what happened after the invasion of Iraq, when a quick US 
victory gave way to a disorganized reconstruction program thwarted by 
insurgent violence and intimidation.

To accomplish those goals, they think they will have to use coercive 
measures allowed under martial law imposed last month by Prime Minister Iyad 
Allawi.

"It's the Iraqi interim government that's coming up with all these ideas," 
Major General Richard Natonski, who commanded the Fallujah assault and 
oversees its reconstruction, said of the plans for identity badges and work 
brigades.

But US officers in Fallujah say that the Iraqi government's involvement has 
been less than hoped for,  and that determining how to bring the city safely 
back to life falls largely on their shoulders.

"I think our expectations have been too high for a nascent government to be 
perfectly organized" and ready for such a complex task, Colonel Mike Shupp, 
the regimental commander, said at his headquarters in downtown Fallujah.

While one senior Marine said he fantasized last month that Allawi would ride 
a bulldozer into Fallujah, the prime minister has come no closer than the US 
military base outside the city.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry  has not delivered the 1,200 police officers it 
had promised, although the Defense Ministry has provided troops on schedule, 
US officials said. Iraqi ministry officials have visited the city, but 
delegations have often failed to show up. US officials say that is partly 
out of fear of ongoing fighting that
sends tank and machine-gun fire echoing through the streets.

Meanwhile, the large-scale return of residents to a city where only Humvees 
and dogs travel freely will make  military operations  as well as 
reconstruction a lot harder. The military must start letting people in, one 
neighborhood at a time, within weeks if Fallujans are to register for 
national elections before the end of January. The government insists the 
elections will proceed as scheduled despite widespread violence.

The Marines say several hundred civilians are hunkered down in houses or at 
a few mosques being used as humanitarian centers. In the western half of the 
city, civilians have not been allowed to move about unescorted. In the 
eastern half, controlled by another regiment, they were allowed out a few 
hours a day until men waving a white flag shot and killed two Marines.

"The clock is ticking. Civilians are coming soon," Lieutenant Colonel 
Leonard DiFrancisci  told his men one recent evening as they warmed 
themselves by a kerosene heater in the ramshackle building they commandeered 
as a headquarters. "It's going to get a lot more difficult. We've had a 
little honeymoon period."

If DiFrancisci's experience dealing with a small delegation of Iraqi aid 
workers is any indication, sorting out civilians from insurgents in large 
numbers will be overwhelming.

One afternoon last week, DiFrancisci, a reservist from Melbourne, Fla., and 
a mechanical engineer, was ordered to escort workers from the Iraqi Red 
Crescent Society out of the city on their way back to Baghdad. The Red 
Crescent, an equivalent to the Red Cross, had been butting heads for days 
with Marines who initially denied the aid organization entry to the city, 
insisting the military was taking care of civilians' needs. The society 
finally won a Marine escort in and refused to leave, setting up in an 
abandoned house.

Dr. Said Hakki, the group's president, met DiFrancisci and Lieutenant 
Colonel Gary Montgomery at a mosque, eager to mend fences. "We want to play 
by your rules," Hakki said.

Montgomery agreed that Marines would ferry a group of aid workers to 
Baghdad, along with several women and children who had been rescued from 
houses. But when the Humvees pulled up to the Red Crescent house, scores of 
young men who had taken refuge there were milling around the streets. There 
was no way to tell whether they were fighters.

"All these military-age males are out during curfew," Montgomery told Hakki. 
"If you all don't follow the rules, you're going to get people killed."

Tensions rose when about a dozen women and children started climbing into 
ambulances for the ride to Baghdad. One man tried to get in, gave the 
Marines who challenged him several versions of his age, then decided not to 
go rather than discuss it further.

Suhad Molah, a young woman in a veil that showed only her eyes, was 
indignant that  a translator said she might be Syrian because of her accent, 
implying she was the wife of a foreign fighter.

"I am Iraqi," she said, adding that she and her children had been trapped in 
their house for weeks.

The Marines were also suspicious when more than a dozen men, not the handful 
they expected, said they were Red Crescent staff members headed back to 
Baghdad. Some had no identification, and there was no way to verify whether 
they were the same men who had come out from Baghdad.

"This is not a 'muj' rescue service," DiFrancisci said, using slang for 
mujahideen, or holy warriors. Montgomery remarked, "The real negotiations 
start after you've agreed on something."

The Marines let the men go after Hakki vouched for them, but not before the 
Iraqis grew angry that their motives had been questioned. The convoy headed 
onto the highway, but only after a dozen Marines had spent two hours 
organizing and searching the vehicles. Back at their headquarters, the team 
debated the procedure for allowing civilians to return. Major Wade Weems 
warned that there should be a set number per day so that a backlog would not 
form behind the retina-scanning machine, fueling resentment.

When they heard of the proposal to require men to work, some  Marines were 
skeptical that an angry public would work effectively if coerced. Others 
said the plan was based on US tactics that worked in postwar Germany. 
DiFrancisci said he would wait  for more details. "There's something to be 
said for a firm hand," he said.