FALLUJAH, 1 April 2004 — The city of Fallujah, where the killings of four foreigners occurred yesterday, has been a flashpoint for conflict since the start of the occupation. Its residents are deeply tribal, some subscribe to radical versions of Islam and the region is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle where support for Saddam Hussein was strong.
Like other cities in the Sunni-dominated area that stretches north and west of the Iraqi capital, Fallujah benefited from Saddam’s 23 years in power. Factories were built there providing employment. The former dictator, himself a Sunni, recruited his elite Republican Guard officers and members of the brutal security agencies from Iraq’s Sunni minority.
Resentment of the US presence in this city, which lies on the Euphrates River, 55 kilometers (35 miles) west of Baghdad, has run deep since American troops fired twice on crowds in April last year during the invasion, killing 18 Iraqis.
Fallujah has a population of some 500,000 people, many of whom adhere to Sunni Islam.
They find the behavior by American troops like raiding homes and detaining men in front of wives and children as offensive and see the Americans as an occupying army that has come to subjugate them.
The US military says it is taking pains to adhere to local customs and not offend people. It says it is spending millions of dollars on reconstruction projects, but it acknowledges its benevolent message isn’t getting through.
“Fallujah remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don’t get it,” US Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said yesterday after the latest killings. “They have a view that somehow the harder they fight, the better chance they have for achieving some sort of (restorative) movement within the country.”
But he said the rebels were “a small minority” of Fallujah residents.
The California-based 1st Marine Expeditionary Force assumed responsibility for Fallujah and surrounding areas from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in a troop rotation on March 24.
Two days later, Marines and insurgents fought a lengthy street battle in the city’s working-class Al-Askari district that killed one Marine and wounded seven others. Five Iraqis also died.
Kimmitt blamed the violence on insurgents trying to test the willingness of the Marines to fight so soon after their arrival. A total of eight Marines have been killed in two weeks.
