Retinal Scans, DNA Samples to Return to Fallujah

[R.A. Hettinga]

<http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/12/05/returning_fallujans_will_face_clampdown?mode=PF>

The Boston Globe


 US Marines rode in a convoy through Fallujah on Friday. The US military is
continuing missions to secure the city.  (AFP Photo / Mehdi Fedouach)

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."

A model cityUS 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."

A tall order 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.


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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
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