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Reports From Iraq > Mon., Apr. 26, 2004
Fallujah Siege Yields It's First Tent City
The Iraqi Red Crescent has established the first refugee
camp for the tens of thousands of civilians who have fled
the American onslaught on Fallujah. |
by Aaron Glantz
BAGHDAD, IRAQ --New families seem to arrive every hour at
the Iraqi Red Crescent refugee camp in West Baghdad. The camp
-- the first tent city erected as a result of the American
assault on Fallujah holds more than 50 families, a small fraction
of the tens of thousands of civilians forced to flee their
homes. These families are the most desperate -- unable to
find housing with with family or friends.
"All these families the Americans destroyed their houses
Kamer Jabi, Director for Youth and Volunteers of the Iraqi
Red Crescent. "They destroyed it all. No furniture no
nothing. So they need this help from us."
Jabi says the Red Crescent first tried to set up a camp closer
to Fallujah, but she says the area came under repeated fire
from American helicopters.
"We established a camp 7km outside of Fallujah but it
was destroyed by the Americans," she says. "They
burned two tents with a helicopter and even until now we have
a lot tents there but we cannot send our volunteers to bring
the tents here because its very dangerous."
Among those staying in the Red Crescent camp is 12 year old
Khalid Anwar Khalidi. He hasn't been to school for almost
a month. He says when his family initially fled Fallujah two
weeks ago, they all crammed into a relatives home in the poor,
West-Baghdad neighborhood, Washash.
"Before we came here we lived in a relatives house,"
he relates. "There were nine families in that house so
it was very crowded. One family on top of the other. So my
parents and my sister and my aunt and her two children moved
to this camp. The rest of my relatives still live in that
house."
It's a story that repeats itself again and again across the
camp. Poor Iraqi families who welcomed their relatives from
Fallujah with open arms unable to support them over what appears
to be a long American siege.
"We are refugees in our own country," says one
man from the inside of his tent. "It's so sad. We're
just like the Palestinians." He says his family of 12
stayed with relatives in Baghdad for two weeks before coming
to the Red Crescent camp. He says he has money to rent a house
or apartment in Baghdad but he says now that he's a refugee
he doesn't have job -- and he says he'll need to use his savings
to fix the glass and doors of his house in Fallujah which
have been destroyed by the American Army.
"I'm ashamed to be a refugee," he says. "I
had to cross the street when my brother came to visit the
camp. He said it was a shame on our whole family.'
It may be a long time before these refugees have normal lives
again, says the Iraqi Red Crescent's Kamer Jabi: "Of
course they will eventually be able to go back to their houses,"
she says. "They have to give them some peace. All the
Iraqi people are really tired of the war. For 35 years we
were under Saddam Hussein and now we are under the Americans.
We are fed up. We are very tired."
But while the US military has postponed an all-out assault
on Fallujah it isn't giving up on the city. Officials say
the US military plans to have American troops begin joint
patrols with Iraqi security forces inside Fallujah tomorrow
in an attempt to restore control over the insurgent stronghold
without a major attack.
The decision comes as Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations
envoy who is helping appoint a new Iraqi government urged
the Bush administration to "tread carefully" in
besieged Fallujah and avoid alienating an already angry populace.
Before leaving Iraq Sunday he described the siege as unacceptable
collective punishment: "When you surround a city, you
bomb the city, when people cannot go to hospital, what name
do you have for that? And you, if you have enemies there,
this is exactly what they want you to do, to alienate more
people so that more people support them rather than you."
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