[Shadow_Group] Iraqi City Lies in Ruins

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Iraqi City Lies in Ruins
Rebels are reportedly making their last stand in
Fallouja. 
The next step, reconstruction, could cost the U.S.
tens of millions of dollars.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Times Staff Writer

FROM:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rebuild15nov15,1,623478.story?coll=la-headlines-world<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-rebuild15nov15,1,623478.story?coll=la-headlines-world>

FALLOUJA, Iraq - Even as small groups of guerrillas
continued putting up fierce resistance here Sunday,
U.S. commanders were preparing for the next phase of
the operation: the complete reconstruction of a city
that has been devastated in battle.

"It's a monumental task," acknowledged Marine Maj.
Timothy Hanson, one of the first civil affairs
officers on the scene to assess the scope of
destruction in the city that had become the tactical
and inspirational capital of the Iraqi insurgency.

Reconstruction of Fallouja is on hold as the fighting
persists, especially in southern areas of the city,
where some of the most die-hard guerrillas are
reported to be making a last stand. Some have burrowed
underground, prompting U.S. forces Saturday to drop a
2,000-pound bomb - the most powerful munition used
here to date - on a tunnel complex.

Marines and allied Iraqi troops sweeping through the
southern neighborhoods have found numerous bomb-making
factories and massive arms caches, underscoring
Fallouja's role as a supply center for the insurgency
nationwide, commanders say. Moving the vast
storehouses of weapons and destroying them has proved
a logistical challenge in this war-ravaged city.

"We want to clean this city up," declared Maj. Gen.
Richard F. Natonski, commander of the 1st Marine
Division. "We want to get the people back here. But we
can't bring them back until the city is secure."

Automatic-weapons fire and explosions continued to
rock the center of the city, though much diminished in
the past 24 hours. The U.S. military reported that at
least 38 American troops and six Iraqi soldiers had
been killed in eight days of fighting.

Elsewhere in Iraq on Sunday, insurgents destroyed the
highway bridge in Baiji, forcing the closure of the
main road from the northern city of Mosul to Baghdad.
In Mosul, U.S. and Iraqi troops fought a six-hour
battle with insurgents, and casualties were believed
to be heavy, although hospital officials refused to
discuss figures. Militants seized a police station,
but U.S. and Iraqi forces regained control.

In Baghdad, more than a dozen insurgents attacked the
Polish Embassy and exchanged gunfire with embassy
guards for half an hour, a Polish Foreign Ministry
spokesman said in Warsaw. No one was reported killed
or wounded.

In Fallouja, U.S. troops said they found the mutilated
body of a woman covered with a blood-soaked cloth in a
street. News services quoted a Marine saying he was
"80% positive the body was that of a Westerner." Two
Western women are known to have been kidnapped and are
still missing: Margaret Hassan, the director of CARE
International here, and a Polish woman who is married
to an Iraqi.

The reconstruction effort in Fallouja will require
tens of millions of dollars in U.S. funds to
compensate residents for damaged property and to
rebuild large parts of the city damaged by weeks of
U.S. airstrikes and street-by-street fighting.

The project seems likely to dwarf the large-scale
rebuilding scheme in the southern city of Najaf, where
damage was estimated at $500 million after a Marine
offensive in August ousted Shiite Muslim militiamen.

Fallouja once was home to almost 300,000 people,
though most fled before U.S.-led forces launched the
assault early last week. The city now lies abandoned
and in ruins, a tableau of the aftermath of urban
warfare.

The town's main east-west drag, a key objective of
U.S. troops, is a tangle of rubble-filled lots and
shot-up storefronts. Shattered water and sewage pipes
have left pools of sewage-filled water, sometimes
knee-deep. Scorched and potholed streets are filled
with debris; power lines droop in tangles or lie on
the ground.

Many mosques, the city's pride and joy, are a shambles
after insurgents used them as shelter and firing
positions, drawing return fire from the Marines.

Houses have been ransacked by insurgents and further
damaged as U.S. troops chased snipers, searched for
weapons caches or took cover in the homes. Marines
routinely called in tanks, artillery and airstrikes to
take out gunmen.

But the bombed-out buildings are only the most obvious
damage.

There is no running water or electricity. The water,
power and sewage infrastructure will probably need
complete overhauls.

Food distribution systems must be reinstituted. Shops
must be reopened, commerce resumed. Battered
hospitals, clinics and schools must be patched up and
reopened.

Beyond that, U.S. officials have lofty plans to help
install a democratic government here that will answer
to the administration of interim Iraqi Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi. A police force of more than 1,000
officers must be deployed in a city where police have
been consistently targeted for assassination in the
past as collaborators with the Americans.

"The challenge is to get a civil administration up and
running, and they are starting from zero," said a
senior U.S. diplomat. "They have to do everything from
getting the director of the waterworks to come back to
work to getting a chief of police."

And, if all that wasn't enough, commanders would like
the city to be ready to hold peaceful elections in
January, when Iraqis nationwide are scheduled to
choose a national assembly.

In all, it is a colossal challenge of nation-building
- albeit concentrated in one city - made all the more
difficult because Fallouja remains in the heart of the
Sunni Triangle, long a source of support for ousted
dictator Saddam Hussein and resistance to U.S. and
coalition forces.

"This is very important: to restore the infrastructure
of the city and . get the Iraqi government and the
police established, and keep the insurgents from
coming back in," Natonski said.

Despite the clear military gains, the city remains
insecure enough that major civil affairs units that
will oversee reconstruction have yet to arrive. But
more than $50 million in contracts has already been
let, and people are standing by, ready to start work
as soon as it is safe enough.

A coordinating team - including officials from the
U.S. military and civilian agencies as well as the
Iraqi government - has been meeting for the last two
weeks to figure out how to spend the roughly $200
million allocated for Fallouja and nearby Ramadi.

Overall responsibility for rebuilding Fallouja will
fall to the Marines' 4th Civil Affairs Group, a
largely reserve unit based in Washington that is
poised on the outskirts of the city.

Mortuary teams to pick up the remains of hundreds of
insurgents killed in the fighting also have been held
back, as bodies rot in the streets.

"It's a health hazard," conceded Natonski. "We'll soon
be taking care of that.. We just need to ensure that
we're not taking casualties taking care of bodies."

It is unclear when residents will be allowed back into
the city. A 24-hour curfew is in effect, and those
civilians still present have been warned to stay in
their homes, as food and water supplies dwindle. U.S.
and Iraqi forces have been handing out emergency water
and rations.

On Sunday, when Muslims marked the holiday of Eid
al-Fitr, virtually no one was seen on the streets
besides U.S. troops and their guerrilla quarry.

Marines are constructing a displaced-persons camp east
of the city, though most former residents appear to
have settled in with extended family members in
Baghdad and elsewhere.

The abandonment of the city made the Marines' job a
lot easier during combat, reducing the threat of
civilian casualties.

Now, commanders worry that a large-scale return of
residents - and vehicles - will increase the peril,
especially from suicide car bombers.

"As civilians begin driving around, the [car bomb]
threat . is going to be at its highest point," said
Lt. Col. Gareth Brandl, commander of the 1st
Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment.

Plans are already in place to screen returning
civilians, especially military-age males. But
differentiating between fighters and noncombatants is
likely to be a difficult task, given that many of
Fallouja's native sons are known to have joined the
insurgency.

In the works is some kind of "Welcome Back to
Fallouja" campaign, directing residents to military
civil affairs offices where people can find
reconstruction help.

"It won't be a fruit basket or anything like that,"
said Hanson, the Marine major. He had $500,000 in cash
for various expenses: compensating civilians who had
suffered property losses or injuries or lost relatives
deemed not to be insurgents.

Money also will be spread around to pay residents to
help clean up the streets, assuming the people of
Fallouja would be willing to take money from Americans
and overcome fears of being branded collaborators.

Establishing security will be essential to allowing
U.S. personnel and Iraqi contractors to work.

"We have to be able to allow the Iraqis to come in and
work freely and independently without being terrorized
and intimidated and corrupted," said Hanson, a
reservist and police sergeant from suburban Omaha. "If
they go into a building, they shouldn't have to worry
about that."

U.S. officials also hope to work with civilian leaders
to select a representative council. Thousands of Iraqi
police and soldiers are said to be ready to be
deployed to Fallouja. Many are from outside the city,
in the hopes that they will be less susceptible to
intimidation.

The entire municipal government complex must be
rebuilt and secured. The police station, City Hall and
other government buildings have been seriously
damaged, heavily looted and are occupied by Marines.

The compound is probably going to be refurbished and
expanded to house both the Iraqi government and U.S.
forces, commanders say.

Inside an adjacent school complex where Marines also
are posted, state-of-the-art photocopy machines and
refrigerators stand gutted and abandoned, the remnants
of earlier U.S.-funded reconstruction efforts. Marines
say they are confident the next attempt to rebuild
Fallouja will spur goodwill and divert people from
supporting the insurgency.

"We're poised and ready to go to help Fallouja
rebuild," said Marine Capt. Matt Nodine, an attorney
for the 1st Battalion. "People will know where to find
us if they need help."
-------------------------
Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad, special
correspondents Caesar Ahmed and Roaa Ahmed in Mosul
and Associated Press contributed to this report.



 



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