Getting By in Fallujah

“Tell your father to repent of his guilt for working with the police,” Hatem was told.

The instruction was one he really needed to listen to, as it came from the Islamic State (IS) commanders in Fallujah. And it was one he ought to have obeyed, because it was a precondition for allowing him to return and take possession of the family home.  

The only hitch was that it was impossible to do so since Hatem’s father died some years ago.

He told the IS insurgents. “We’ll check,” was the response.

Like many residents of Fallujah, a city about 50 kilometres west of Baghdad, Hatem and his family had fled because of the continuing battles between IS and the Iraqi military.

Soon after Hatem negotiated his return with the militants, his house was vacated by the family that had been living in it – IS sympathisers who had moved from Babil south of Baghdad. When they went, they took all his family’s furniture and possessions with them.

Before he could claim ownership, another family took over the house. Hatem decided to leave Fallujah and go back to the Abu Ghraib district of west Baghdad, where he drives a taxi.

He is still in negotiations with the house’s new occupants.

Others who have returned to Fallujah take possession of their homes tell similar stories of finding them occupied or looted. Some have stumbled across booby-trap devices.

One Fallujah resident described how a seven-year-old boy was killed while he and his mother were trying to get some possessions from their home.

“He entered one of the rooms and activated a bomb,” he said.

Hatem’s neighbour Qusay is also back in town, working at a market after spending months away.

“I left for Samarra for a period of six months when the insurgents started shelling the army from inside [Fallujah] neighbourhoods,” he said. “I’d spent all the money I had, and I’d been unable to get a job of any kind, so I came back.”

Apart from the dangers posed by ongoing battles between IS and the Iraqi army, Fallujah’s residents have to live with electricity shortages and rising prices.

“A cooking gas cylinder costs 30,000 dinars [25 US dollars], and petrol is over 1.25 dollars a litre,” said Shallal al-Mohammadi, who is more fortunate than most since he earns enough to scrape by from a job at a small grocery store.

Mohammadi said the fighting in Fallujah made it impossible to keep the power network maintained, so life was very hard, especially during the summer when air-condition is essential in the stifling heat.

Public services and schools are barely functioning, especially in those parts of the city controlled by IS.

The city hospital struggles on, desperately short of medical supplies and staff and frequently hit by artillery fire.

“Most of the specialists like the neurologist and cardiologist have left the hospital because of the war,” said Dr. Hasan, one of three qualified doctors still working there.

Dr. Hasan said the hospital lacked most of the essential types of pharmaceutical, and the health ministry in Baghdad was unable to replenish supplies because of the security situation. Patients are forced to buy medicines at local markets, at high prices.

Ali Adil is an IWPR contributor in Iraq.