"We hope it will be an excellent model for all Iraq," says Jassim
Saleh, a stout general appointed the first chief of a 1,000-strong
"Fallujan Brigade" to which the US has ceded control.
The May 1 truce ended a three-week battle in which more than 100 US
troops and several hundred Iraqis were killed.
But while calm has returned to Falluja, it has produced a storm of
protest from Iraq's new political leaders, who fear that US forces looking
to regain control of Iraq could be turning to former Ba'athists.
At a tribal feast on Friday, Barakat Saadoun, a chieftain from the Bu
Eissa, Falluja's largest tribe, called on his 30-strong assembly to end
their battle with the Americans to ensure that the town held on to its
gains.
"Now is the time for diplomacy," Mr Barakat told his tribesmen, some of
them Shias, assembled in a vast octagonal hall with a velvet awning
cascading from the ceiling to a black marble floor.
But several tribal followers accused him of selling out to the
Americans, after spending seven months in Abu Ghraib jail, near Falluja,
two in solitary confinement. Mr Barakat said he had been freed as part of
negotiations conducted inside the prison, which saw hundreds of senior
Ba'athists and army officers released.
"We will welcome police and the civil defence corps back to their posts
provided they come from Falluja," said one of his guests, Kais Nazzal, who
owns Falluja's largest factory. "But the Mujahideen must continue to give
orders - if the police co-operate with the Americans against the people of
Falluja they will be killed."
Mr Barakat's conciliatory message was echoed by Gen Saleh, who called
on guests assembled for a separate Friday feast not to be deluded by the
city's calmest week since the fall of Mr Hussein.
"Can we say we have won, when any day the Americans in their tanks at
the city's peripheries can bomb and attack us?" he asked. While Falluja
may have won the battle to expel troops from the city, he said, it has not
won the war.
The deal remains fragile. The Americans have ordered that Gen Saleh be
replaced as head of the Fallujan Brigade after Ali Allawi, Iraq's defence
minister, accused him of being a former Republican Guard commander during
the suppression of a 1991 Shia uprising. Gen Saleh now calls himself "a
consultant", although his followers say he remains in charge of
recruitment to the brigade.
On Friday, General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of
staff, warned that "the situation is not resolved at this point" and told
the Armed Forces Committee in Washington that the brigade had yet to
fulfil the terms of the agreement. "They've got to find the perpetrators
of the Blackwater killings and desecration of the bodies," said Gen Myers,
referring to the gruesome killing of four men working for Blackwater, a
contractor, which sparked the US military intervention in Falluja.
"They've got to find the foreign fighters. They've got to find the
regime extremists that have not given up."
On Friday, Gen Saleh insisted both groups had fled when the Americans
lifted their siege. He added that two other US conditions - the handover
of heavy weapons and the start of joint patrols - would also be hard to
meet.
Initially scheduled for April 29, a patrol was due to take place today
but Gen Saleh said it had been postponed until May 15.
"We are concerned that it is not yet safe for them," he said.
Ahmed Hardan, chief negotiator of the ceasefire, said the Americans had
promised him $50m (€42m, £27.9m) for the city's repairs. He pulled out a
notebook where he said he had details of 443 homes destroyed in the
fighting.
But while leaders, such as Sheikh Barakat, see an opportunity to
capitalise on the truce and suggest they would be willing to play a role
in a future government, they have yet to convince their followers who
believe deliverance came not from negotiations but from God.
"With God's blessing we forced them back and stopped them entering the
city," says Mr Nazzal, as he pointed at his rubble home, which he said was
struck by 14 missiles. "The mightiest army in the world ran from the city
like rats."
Others circulated fantastic myths, including the divine intervention of
angels, grenade-dropping doves and giant tarantulas. "The angels fought
with the people," says Mr Nazzal's cousin Jawad, a colonel in the former
Iraqi army. "They sent forth huge spiders to support right against
wrong."
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