Normalcy returning to Falluja, albeit at slow pace

 

Azzaman, May 6, 2005

 

Life is returning to the devastated city of Falluja, west of Baghdad.

 

In interviews, the residents who have opted to return say normalcy is slowly returning to the city and many residents have began reconstructing their damaged houses and cleaning the streets.

 

U.S. troops attacked Falluja last year to flush out the insurgents. Most of the city’s nearly 300,000 inhabitants had fled before the attack.

 

The U.S., after destroying the city, decided to rebuild it. It has allocated $100 million for Falluja’s reconstruction.

 

But not everyone is happy. Many are indignant, saying neither the U.S. nor its allies in the interim government have honored pledges to help them rebuild their lives.

 

Hassan Abdullah has pitched a tent close to his destroyed house.

 

“I have a family of seven. We returned and found our house was fully damaged. We had to erect a tent here and still do not know whether we will ever have a house again,” he said.

 

Many thought the U.S. will be more generous with compensation, but are now bitter over the sums earmarked for families who lost houses and the slow pace of distributing the allocations.

 

There are so many tents in the city right now.

 

“We thought living in a tent was a temporary solution, but five months after our return to the city, we see no light at the end of the tunnel of our ordeal,” said Mohammed Hafidh.

 

“They want us to build what they destroyed with our own resources, which we do not have,” he said.

 

Ahmad Mustafa complained that the authorities were not fair in handing out the sums allocated for compensation.

 

“Families with minor damage occasionally get more than those who had their houses destroyed,” he said.

 

He said even the highest ceiling for compensation – about $2500 – is “considerably insufficient” to repair a heavily damaged dwelling.

 

Thousands of houses in the city were damaged or leveled down in the fighting.

 

Some families say they have received nothing so far.

 

Naaima Abdullah from the Al-Andulus Distrcit which saw some of the fiercest fighting says she and her family are still living in the debris of their “once beautiful house.”

 

“No one has given us anything. We have removed part of the fallen pieces and still live in the heap of the debris of our former house. We have no other choice,” she said.

 

Fighting has ended in Falluja and tens of thousands of people are believed to have returned.

 

But the city suffers from lack of public services such water, power and other amenities.

 

“The authorities’ reluctance and delays in agreeing to hand out reasonable compensation funds will make a return to normalcy very difficult,” said Mustafa Hussein.

 

Most of the school buildings which the insurgents had turned into strongholds were destroyed.

 

Teachers now have to give classes in tents which are only attended by a small fraction of the city’s student population.

 

Noor Sulaiman, head of the Falluja Teachers’ Training College, says the college’s building is heavily damaged “and no official whether U.S. or Iraqi has bothered to even visit the college to assess the damage.”