This month marks the third anniversary of the massive US military assault on the rebel Iraqi city of Fallujah, 55 kilometres west of Baghdad. A year after the US assault, the New York Times described Fallujah as "virtually a police state". Little has changed in the two years since. The October 14 Chicago Tribune described Fallujah as a "place under 24-hour lockdown, surrounded by berms and barbed wire".
The November 2004 assault was preceded by eight weeks of aerial bombardment. US troops set siege to the city, cutting off its water, power and food supplies — condemned as a violation of the Geneva convention by a UN special rapporteur, who accused the US forces of "using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon of war against the civilian population". All but 50,000 of the city's 300,000 residents fled, many to squatters' camps without basic facilities.
Beginning on November 7, 2004, 6000 US soldiers, backed by 2000 Iraqi puppet troops, attacked the city. By November 16, after nine days of fierce fighting in which 95 US troops were killed and 560 wounded, the US military command described the operation as "mopping up pockets of resistance", although sporadic fighting continued until December 23.
The number of Iraqis killed in the assault is unknown, however Iraqi Red Crescent estimated that up to 6000 Iraqis may have died. The November 10, 2005 British Guardian reported that "Fallujah's compensation commissioner has reported that 36,000 of the city's 50,000 homes were destroyed, along with 60 schools and 65 mosques and shrines".
Residents were allowed to return to the city in mid-December 2004, but were forced to carry new ID cards at all times.
"We feel Fallujah is a prison", Mohammed, a restaurant manager, told the November 26, 2005 New York Newsday, which reported that "Fallujans must show [their ID card] at checkpoints to enter the city. Marines take retina scans and all 10 fingerprints of every resident when issuing the cards."
Time magazine reported last month that after "the November 2004 battle that pulverized the city and snuffed out what was left of its economy, a succession of American infantry units developed a security plan for Fallujah that eventually carved it up into nine precincts along traditional divisions.
"The districts are now separated from each other by concrete barricades and Iraqi police checkpoints and watched by thousands of Iraqi police and armed neighborhood watchmen, leading to the nickname 'Fortress Fallujah'...
"Eventually, the plan is to tear down the barriers one at a time to allow the city to gradually return to normal and end the state of martial law."
The October 28 Time article noted that with a "driving ban limiting traffic on the road mostly to buses and taxis, it will be some time before Fallujah allows full access to Sinaa", the former industrial district of the city.
Before 2004, Sinaa's factories and workshops provided employment for 70% of Fallujah's residents. Time reported that "at least 900 shops and factories were destroyed or seriously damaged" in the US assault, but that these have not been reconstructed because US commanders fear residents will use them to make bombs.
An October 23 US Marine Corps press release described Fallujah as a "shining jewel of the combined efforts of coalition and Iraqi Security Forces", and reported that US occupation forces in Iraq now have an electronic database that "holds the information of millions of people, down to even the finest details of physical characteristics".
However, resistance to the US forces has continued in Fallujah since 2004. The November 11 Hartford Courant, the Connecticut capital's main daily paper, ran a feature article on the slow and difficult recovery of Terry Rathbun, a US marine sergeant wounded in the face by a sniper's bullet while he was in Fallujah last year.
The article reported that Rathbun's unit, "lived and worked in the middle of one of Iraq's most dangerous cities. Through most of 2006 ... Marines were the only US military presence in the core of the Sunni stronghold. Gun battles were common. So were the daily roadside bombs, unnervingly accurate mortars and anonymous grenade attacks."
The company, part of a reserve Marine battalion that served in Fallujah from April 2006 to October this year, suffered four fatalities during its deployment in the city. The November 11 Boston Globe reported that 11 of the battalion's 890 members had been killed and 68 had suffered combat wounds while serving in Fallujah, and that "nearly 60 percent report one or more symptoms of war trauma".
Meanwhile, a Rasmussen Reports poll conducted on November 1 found that one third of US voters want all US troops in Iraq to be brought home within a year, while 26% want an immediate withdrawal. A CNN-commissioned poll released on November 8 found that opposition to the war in Iraq among US voters had reached 68%, its highest-ever level.
The November 7 Washington Post reported that the US military announced the previous day "that five soldiers and a sailor had been killed a day earlier, making 2007 the deadliest year for American troops since the start of the war in Iraq" in March 2003.
As of November 7, US troop fatalities in Iraq for the year had reached at least 852. The previous yearly record was 849 in 2004. Last year, 822 US military personnel died in Iraq.