Special courts formed by the American occupation authorities in Iraq are issuing death sentences — like that carried out on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, on 30 December 2006 — on what many Iraqis are interpreting as a political basis.

“Executing Saddam cost Iraqis a lot of hatred and more division between the sects, ” Walid Al-Ubaidi, post-graduate law student at Baghdad University told IPS.

“Now they [U.S.-backed Iraqi Government] are executing the Ex-Minister of Defense, Sultan Hashim Ahmed, who was very well known for being a professional general who led the Iraqi army against Iran,” Al-Ubaidi said, stressing that, “This man represents a symbol for the Iraqi army that defended Iraq.”

On 24 June 2007 the Iraqi High Tribunal found Ahmed guilty of presiding over the killing of thousands of Kurds during the Anfal campaign in the 1980s.

Several legal delays, and more recently a delay for a religious holiday, have postponed the execution.

A clerk in the court where Ahmed and a number of his generals were sentenced spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. He asked to be referred to as Hassan.

“We were surprised by the sentence,” Hassan told IPS in Baghdad, “This general was no more than a government official who carried out orders with notable skill and proficiency.”

“What makes us better than any of those we called dictators and war criminals?” Hassan asked.

“These generals were the ones who defeated Iran in the war and so [Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] Al-Maliki and his American masters want to punish them in order to please the Iranian Ayatollahs,” former Iraqi army colonel Saad Abbas told IPS in Baghdad.

Anger against the U.S. occupation for the sentences has also been aroused because of the promise for asylum the general was given before he surrendered to U.S. military forces.

“They promised him asylum and that was why he surrendered to them in peace,” a relative of the general, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

“They even asked him to take a post in the new system, but he refused, and maybe that is why they sold him to his enemies,” the relative said.

An Iraqi resistance fighter spoke with IPS on condition of strict anonymity.

“We are not happy for this man’s execution, but we believe it was his fault to trust the Americans,” he said. “He should have known, as a general who negotiated with them more than once, how bad they were. Moreover, he should have joined the resistance against occupation rather than surrender to his dirty enemies.”

“This man and his colleagues represent the army that terrified those Arab tyrants in an Arab neighboring country,” Thuraya Shamil, an engineer from Baghdad Municipality told IPS.

“They cannot forget the day that they ran out of their palaces like rats,” Shamil emphasised.

Others view the situation differently, but still agree that the generals do not deserve to be sentenced to death.

“At the moment we are looking for solutions to the dilemma of internal divisions, comes these sentences to widen the gaps between sects and groups,” Malik Nazar, a member of the Iraqi Dialogue Front that has nine MPs in the Iraqi Parliament, told IPS.

“We must stop sacrificing our men for the sake of sending messages of compassion to Iran and others who have feuds with our heroic army men,” Nazar stressed.

“They are killing any Sunni Arab who might one day lead Iraqis, or at least a group of Iraqis, when this dirty occupation leaves the country,” Ali Salman, a teacher in Baghdad, told IPS, “As long as Iranians and Kurds are our real rulers, all our good men will always be targeted.”

Seventeen Iraqis were killed Sep. 16, and another 27 wounded at Nisoor square in western Baghdad when mercenaries from the company opened fire on them. Dozens of witnesses said that, contrary to Blackwater claims, the mercenaries had not come under attack.

Several Kurds who were at the scene said they saw no one firing at the mercenaries at any time, an observation corroborated by forensic evidence. Kurds are one ethnic group that has been supportive of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Kurd witnesses work for a political party whose building looks directly down on the square where the bloodshed occurred.

“I call it a massacre,” Omar H. Waso, a senior official from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told reporters. “It is illegal. They used the law of the jungle.”

“Some of the victims were Iraqis who were close to the government,” an eyewitness speaking on condition of anonymity told Inter Press Service (IPS). “There was a notable fuss about five or six bodies in particular when the ministry of interior’s inspectors arrived on the scene.”

The history of western mercenary companies, often referred to as “security contractors”, is full of such stories.

“They killed my young neighbour Sinan in cold blood,” a 32-year-old using the name Ibrahim Obeidy told IPS. “They have killed so many Iraqis, and no one can even ask them why.”

“Iraqis in Anbar province (to the west of Baghdad) have always said that strange-looking forces have conducted executions in cold blood,” Abdul-Sattar Ahmed, a lawyer from province capital Ramadi told IPS. “Groups of men in civilian outfits, but in armoured vehicles and sometimes helicopters, have carried out the most mysterious executions. They seldom arrest, they prefer to kill.”

Salih Aziz who works with the Iraqi Group for Human Rights, an NGO in Baghdad, told IPS that Blackwater convoys, which usually comprise several large, white SUVs, have proven deadly for Iraqi civilians since the early months of the occupation in March 2003.

“Since the very beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Baghdad streets have seen peculiar looking groups of men in armoured cars with black glasses, killing anyone who approached them,” said Aziz. “They were the first to be hated by Iraqis.”

Blackwater USA came to international attention when four of their mercenaries were killed in Fallujah Mar. 31, 2004. The incident led to two brutal U.S. military sieges of the city.

The November siege of that year left approximately 70 percent of the city destroyed. Tens of thousands of residents remain refugees to this day.

“It is all about business and money making,” Malik Nizar, a 50-year-old businessman in Baghdad told IPS. “Top corporate officials, like the CEO of Blackwater, Erik Prince, are making billions of dollars out of security contracts in Iraq, and they would not give it up for the world.”

Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill is author of the best-selling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. “From documents I obtained, it is clear that Blackwater has been contracted for some 750 million dollars in private armed security services for the U.S. State Department alone,” Scahill told IPS in a telephone interview.

“The extent of its total U.S. contracts worldwide in unknown, as Blackwater also does covert work for the government, and its overt work is shrouded in secrecy and layers of bureaucratic protection.”

Scahill said that while Blackwater is now under increased scrutiny, it is continuing to win lucrative contracts in Washington.

“These include a recent 92 million dollar Pentagon contract to operate flights in Central Asia, as well as a share of a whopping 15 billion dollar contract to fight the so-called war on drugs,” Scahill told IPS. “Even if Blackwater loses its overt Iraq contract, this company will continue to make a killing off the U.S. taxpayers.”

The political fallout from the incident in Baghdad last month has led the Iraqi government to accept the findings of an Iraqi investigative committee that Blackwater guards are guilty of the killings, and that they acted without provocation.

The Iraqi investigators said Blackwater should be expelled from the country, and demanded eight million dollars compensation for the family of each victim. Officials decided last week to establish a committee to find ways to repeal a 2004 directive issued by L. Paul Bremer, head of the former U.S. occupation government in Iraq, which placed private security companies outside Iraqi law, making them immune to prosecution.

Many Iraqis are angry that Blackwater enjoys special rights.

“I was shot at while driving my car in Baghdad in December 2004,” Saad Mohammad Saed, an NGO worker in Baghdad told IPS. “I recognised the vehicles to be with a private security company. My car was destroyed and my survival was a miracle, but when I went to court to file charges, they told me they could not question those people.” While it could not be verified that this incident involved Blackwater personnel, there is deep public anger with the company.

Such incidents continue. Two Iraqi women were killed in Baghdad last week. Maro Bougos and Jenna Jalal were driving in a white Oldsmobile when they were shot dead by men from a private security convoy. Three children in the back seat survived.

“Will (U.S. President George) Bush or (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri) al-Maliki or any politician look after my sister’s children after bringing death to their mother?” said Bougos’s brother, who was at the scene of the attack.

Abu Risha was killed Sep. 13 when a bomb exploded outside his house in the restive al-Anbar province to the west of Baghdad. His tribe is a branch of the powerful al-Dulaim tribe in al-Anbar.

The Bush administration used Abu Risha to send messages to many parties and groups in Iraq. The week before Abu Risha was killed, U.S. President George W. Bush met with him in Iraq, and claimed that al-Anbar province now suggested “what the future of Iraq can look like.”

“Bush kept his mouth shut when his little collaborator was killed despite all the protection he had,” a young man from Ramadi, capital of al-Anbar province, told IPS. “This was and will be the end of all those who take the path of collaborating with the occupation.”

Abu Risha, who had been arrested by Saddam Hussein, became the centrepiece of Bush administration efforts to show that its troops surge in Iraq had been a success.

Many Iraqis, even one of Abu Risha’s distant cousins, think differently.

“Sattar was a common thief, and we all knew him to be chief of a highway robbers gang,” Salim Abu Risha told IPS in Baghdad. “He and his gang brought shame to our tribe and the whole province, but the Americans tried to make a hero of him.”

It is no secret in Anbar province that Abu Risha’s activities were not legal either before or after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. When the U.S. government began to support the ‘Awakening of Anbar’ led by Sattar Abu Risha, which operated under the flag of fighting al-Qaeda, some people did begin to think differently.

“Americans always choose the worst of their collaborators to be leaders of their campaigns,” Sheikh Ahmed Ali of the Muslim Scholars Association told IPS in Baghdad. “Look at the governments and councils they chose to lead Iraq. This Sattar Abu Risha only provoked a division among the people of Anbar, and that was exactly what the Americans wanted.”

But many saw in Abu Risha an answer to their endless suffering. “We know what Sattar was, but what could we do but support him,” Ali Farhan, who worked as a captain in Abu Risha’s U.S.-backed militia told IPS.

“Those sectarian officials in Baghdad have destroyed our cities and deprived us of life for over four years, and someone had to do something about it,” said Farhan, who operated in an Iraqi police uniform added. “It is only cooperation with Americans that could solve the problem.”

Other Iraqis say the U.S. strategy of arming and backing certain Sunni militias has been a huge mistake.

“Americans applied a strategy that has affected some weak brains and hearts,” former Iraqi Army colonel Jabbar Saed from Fallujah told IPS. “They starved people, arrested those who opposed their occupation, killed a million Iraqis, supported sectarian militias and death squads, destroyed infrastructure to increase the rate of unemployment, and divided Iraqis into sects and now into tribes, just to make us feel that life would not be possible unless we work for them.”

Just Foreign Policy, a U.S.-based independent group, says more than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. The group is “dedicated to reforming U.S. foreign policy to serve the interests and reflect the values of the broad majority of Americans, rather than those of special interests both inside and outside of government.”

An Iraqi policeman who referred to himself as Colonel Saed spoke with IPS about U.S. policy in the siege of Fallujah during 2004 which left thousands dead, and destroyed much of the city. The crimes committed were not mistakes as U.S. officials claim, but a well organised and conducted strategy, he said.

“The only factor they did not calculate well was that Iraqis prefer starving to death to living under the dirty flag of occupiers,” Saed said.

New defiance is rising against U.S. forces following military “crimes”, fleeing residents say.

“On Sunday the 26th of August, there was fierce fighting between armed men and American forces in the Armooshiya district, and I saw Americans evacuate many of their soldiers by stretchers,” a man who fled Samarra for Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “As usual, Americans took revenge by bombing the district.”

A woman who also fled Samarra for the capital in recent days, who gave her name as Iman, told IPS that the U.S. military had “committed another crime in the medicine factory residence area” when “they bombed a house there and killed a woman with her seven children.”

The Sunni and anti-occupation Muslim Scholars Association issued a statement confirming these two assaults, and condemning the “ugly crimes” of occupation forces in Samarra. The Association accused the U.S. military of attempting to break the spirit of Iraqis who reject the U.S. occupation.

“They think their crimes would stop Iraqis from demanding their rights for liberty and prosperity, but the results are always different from what the American leaders hope,” Sheikh Taha from the Muslim Scholars’ Association told IPS in Baghdad.

“They are only pushing more Iraqis to be armed against them, and you can see that the facts on the ground are the opposite of what they tell their people. Their soldiers are getting killed every day and they (U.S. military) are losing in Iraq.”

A young man spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity outside a Sunni mosque in Baghdad where refugees from Samarra were arriving.

“We will be the thorn that makes Bush’s life more difficult,” he told IPS. “I am only here to ensure the safety of my family, then I will go back to my city to defend it against all strangers.”

Located 125 km north of Baghdad, Samarra has seen fierce fighting between the Iraqi resistance and U.S. military units since the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2003.

The Sunni dominated city of 200,000 has suffered continuing raids by U.S. and Iraqi forces that have hit civilian life hard.

The resistance seems to have grown as the attacks have continued.

“Four years of occupation have caused this city a great deal of damage,” Thul-Faqar Ali, a lawyer and human rights activist who fled Samarra to Baghdad told IPS. “It is true that there was strong resistance to the occupation, but most of those who got killed, injured or detained were innocent civilians. The U.S. occupation forces in Samarra were so brutal that they conducted many executions on site.”

One of the first instances of brutal U.S. military execution of Iraqis in Samarra came in 2004 when eyewitnesses told the press that U.S. soldiers threw two young men into the Tigris River and watched one of them drown.

Marwan Hassoun, the surviving Iraqi, later testified in a U.S. military court that he and his cousin were stopped on their return to Samarra and forced at gunpoint into the Tigris River as U.S. soldiers laughed. The cousin who died was named as 19-year-old Zaidoun Fadel Hassoun.

“I could hear them laughing,” Marwan told a reporter of the Jan. 3, 2004 incident, recalling how U.S. soldiers pushed him and his cousin into the river. “They were behaving like they were watching a comedy on stage.”

A U.S. Army sergeant involved in the incident, Sgt. 1st Class Tracy Perkins, 33, was later acquitted of involuntary manslaughter but convicted of assault. Many other such instances have been reported since.

Fallujah, 60km west of Baghdad, produced some of the strongest resistance yet to U.S. forces and their Iraqi collaborators. These forces led two severe assaults on the city, in April and November of 2004. Three-quarters of the city was destroyed, massive numbers of people were killed.

There has been little by way of reconstruction.

The city sees no more of the kind of resistance attacks of old, and no more of the 2004 kind of crackdown. “We are so happy that our city is peaceful and quiet after all the battling that killed thousands of our citizens,” a captain in the local police force of Fallujah, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “We can patrol the streets without fear now, and arrest any person that we suspect to be a terrorist.”

There has been a good deal of this, residents say. Hundreds of suspected resistance fighters are now held at the Fallujah police station. Many have been killed on the streets; the police speak of finding “unidentified bodies”.

Several of those found dead had been arrested earlier, eyewitnesses and families of several of the men killed have said.

“This is fascist behaviour that shows the brutality of the Americans and the so-called Iraqi government,” a former member of the Fallujah city council who asked to be referred to as Mahmood told IPS. “Those young guys were executed without any trial. This brutality was not known in our city before this occupation began.”

Journalists inside the city are also quiet after a few of them were arrested and held for several days.

One of the detained journalists spoke with IPS on condition of anonymity. Visibly shaken, he said that a major in the Fallujah police force had told him that freedom of the media had been misused and that the police would not allow it any more. He said the major told him that “the news you transmit to the world will be what we tell you, not what you pick up from the street”.

Residents speak of other reasons why the city is relatively quiet.

“But of course the city is quiet,” Rahemm Othman, a high school teacher, told IPS. “They are banning car movement, and that would make it as quiet as the dead. We are being subjected to slow death here, and the world is so happy about it.” The local police and the U.S. military banned car movement in May.

Everything is costlier as a result. “A jar of propane gas costs over 20 dollars, and the groceries are too much for us to afford,” Um Muhammad, a mother of four whose husband was detained four months ago told IPS. “I have no income, and people who used to help me are not able to do so any more. Everybody is getting poor because people cannot go to work.”

Medical services also continue to suffer under the vehicle ban. Doctors at Fallujah General Hospital told IPS that the government in Baghdad is not supplying them with medicines and medical equipment.

“The officials of the Ministry of Health tell us we are terrorists, and so we do not deserve their support,” a doctor said. “As if they own Iraqi money and it is up to them whether to give it or not.”

The Ministry of Health was headed by Ali al-Shemari from the group of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr until Sadr withdrew from the government Apr. 16.

“To say Fallujah is quiet is true, and you can see it in the city streets,” said Shiek Salim from the Fallujah Scholars’ Council. “The city is practically dead, and the dead are quiet.”

One after another, residents spoke of Fallujah finding the quiet of the dead. The streets are empty except for the occasional person walking to clinic, or at some of the few markets still open. Most shops remain closed, others open only a few hours.

Residents say unemployment is above 80 percent. Most of the rest who have some work are government employees. The huge industrial area has been closed by U.S. and Iraqi Army units.

“After sacrificing thousands of our beloved, Americans and their tails want to kill the rest of us,” said a 50-year-old woman at the football field that was turned into a graveyard following the April 2004 U.S. siege of the city, in which residents say at least 700 were killed.

Intent on demonstrating progress in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is expected to recommend removing U.S. troops soon from several areas where commanders claim security has improved, including Fallujah.

But resistance has not died altogether. Five U.S. soldiers were killed when their helicopter was shot down Aug. 14 near al-Taqaddum airbase on the outskirts of Fallujah.

At least 20 U.S. soldiers were killed in al-Anbar province to the west of Baghdad in July, several of them in Fallujah area. According to the U.S. Department of Defence, 1,257 U.S. soldiers have died in al-Anbar province, more than in any other Iraqi province.

The Iraqi football team defeated South Korea 4-3 in Malaysia last Wednesday to gain entrance into the finals of the Asian Cup. That set off a wave of celebrations across the capital and most of the country.

Tens of thousands of overjoyed Iraqis swarmed the streets of Baghdad, waving Iraqi flags and firing into the air to celebrate. Not even two car bombs that killed more than 50 people dampened all of the enthusiasm.

The football team is one of the last remaining symbols of national unity, because it includes mixed sects and ethnicities — a rarity under an occupation that has fractured the country along ethnic lines and along sects within Islam.

For a brief time it appeared that the people of Iraq suddenly had suddenly forgotten those differences.

“This is a punch that came right in the nose of anyone who says we are divided,” Mahmood Farhan of the Iraqi Journalists League in Baghdad told Inter Press Service (IPS). “Look how we swept off the dirt of occupation politics and, hand in hand, won each other’s love.”

Iraqi security forces were taken off guard by the spontaneous burst of celebrations, and for a brief time the capital appeared the old, crowded, noisy Baghdad.

“Our hearts beat together, and let the occupiers go to hell,” shouted a young man on a bicycle on the streets of the Sadr City area of the capital. Many people gathered around the IPS correspondent when they figured their celebrations were being reported to the outside world.

A man who referred to himself as Hussein who was visiting Baghdad from Basra, told IPS amidst the celebrating crowd in Sadr City: “Iraq only, no Shias, no Sunnis and no Kurds. Down with divisions. Down with sectarian attitudes.”

Iraqis also crowded the streets of Basra and other southern Iraqi cities. Around the country people sang the song “Victory for Baghdad”, composed by a group of non-Iraqi Arab singers ten years before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In the semi-autonomous northern region Kurdistan people who now came across as Iraqis and not just Kurds waved Iraqi flags in a rare display of national unity. Kurds normally view the Iraqi flag as an Arab symbol, and instead fly the Kurdish flag.

Iraqis outside the country also celebrated the victory.

“Dozens of Iraqis have telephoned me to express their happiness and unity,” Maki al-Nazzal, an Iraqi businessman in Amman told IPS on telephone. “Arabs from Jordan and the Gulf countries who are in Amman celebrated the winning as if it were their own.

“It seems that sports achieved the unity of Iraqis and Arabs that politics has managed to ruin,” added Nazzal. “Two hours of football was far more fruitful than four years of politics. Do not ask me whether this unity will last long.”

The same day the two car bombs went off amidst the throngs of cheering Iraqis. The blasts came half an hour apart in different areas of Baghdad. The killings did not end the celebrations elsewhere.

“This is a game that Iraq won, and I hope Bush won’t now say, look, I made them win that match,” a member of the Iraqi Olympics Federation in Baghdad, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS.

“He did it once and we hated him even more for that because it was our boys who won despite the miserable support we are getting from the Americans and our government,” he said. He was referring to the claim by US President George W. Bush in August 2004 that the Iraqi football success in the Olympics was proof that the US-led occupation was benefiting Iraq.

At that time, Iraqi football star Salih Sadir told reporters, “Iraq as a team doesn’t want Mr. Bush to use us (in an ad) for the presidential campaign . . . we don’t wish for the presence of the Americans in our country. We want them to go away.”

Iraq’s football coach Adnan Hamad Majeed had then said: “(My problems) are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American Army has killed so many people in Iraq.”

Update: On Sunday, July 29, Iraq beat Saudi Arabia 1-0 to win the Asian Cup.

Baquba, 50km northeast of Baghdad, and capital city of the volatile Diyala province, has born the brunt of violence during the U.S. military Operation ‘Arrowhead Ripper’.

Conflicting reports are on offer on the number of houses destroyed and numbers of civilians killed, but everyone agrees that the destruction is vast and the casualties numerous.

The operation was launched June 18 “to destroy the al-Qaeda influences in this province and eliminate their threat against the people,” according to Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, deputy commanding officer of the 25th Infantry Division.

But most Iraqis IPS interviewed in the area say the operation seeks more to break the national Iraqi resistance and those who support it. Adding credibility to this belief is the fact that the U.S. operational commander of troops involved in the operation told reporters June 22 that 80 percent of the top al-Qaeda leaders in Baquba fled before the offensive began.

“Americans want Sunni people to leave Diyala or else they face death,” Salman Shakir from the Gatoon district in Baquba told IPS outside the U.S. military cordon around the besieged city. “They warned al-Qaeda days or maybe weeks before they attacked the province and so only us, the citizens, stayed to face the massacre.”

Shakir said many of his relatives and neighbours were killed by the military while attempting to leave the area. “I cannot tell you how many people were killed, but bodies of civilians were left in the streets.”

“We all know now that the U.S. military is using the name of al-Qaeda to cover attacks against our national resistance fighters and civilians who wish immediate or scheduled withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq,” Hilmi Saed, an Iraqi journalist from Baghdad told IPS on the outskirts of Baquba.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group in the Iraqi cabinet, issued a statement July 1 alleging that more than 350 people had been killed in the U.S. military operation in Baquba.

The group called the operation “collective punishment” and said “neighbourhoods in western Baquba have witnessed, since last week, fierce attacks by occupation forces within Operation Arrowhead Ripper.”

The statement added, “The forces shelled these neighbourhoods with helicopters, destroying more than 150 houses and killing more than 350 citizens. Their bodies are still under the wreckage. And they have arrested scores of citizens.”

The U.S. military does not keep count of the number of civilian casualties caused by their operations.

Animosity towards the United States appears to be rising throughout the area as a result of the military action.

“Americans are pushing us to the corner of extremity by these massive crimes,” Abbas al-Zaydi, a teacher from Baquba told IPS. “They simply want us to sell cheap our religion, history, tradition and faith or else they would call us terrorists.”

Al-Zaydi added, “My son was not a fighter, but he was killed by a militia leader who is at the same time an Iraqi army division commander. Our great fault is only that we are Sunnis, and Americans do not like that.”

“It is clear now that any Iraqi who refuses to serve the American plan is considered an enemy of the United States,” a community leader in the city who did not want to give his name told IPS.

He said some people are angrier with other leaders supporting the U.S. forces. “The whole world is responsible for these murders, and a day will come that we say to the world, ‘you supported Americans who killed us’.”

A man wearing a mask, who appeared to be a resistance fighter, spoke with IPS just outside Baquba on condition of anonymity.

“Hundreds were killed and thousands evicted from the city while the so-called al-Qaeda fighters survived,” he said. “Americans must be told that we will never stop killing their sons who came to kill us unless they leave our country in peace.”

The siege in this city located 60km west of Baghdad has entered its second month. There is little sign of any international attention to the plight of the city. Fallujah, which is largely sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance, was assaulted twice by the U.S. military in 2004.

The second attack in November destroyed roughly three-quarters of the city of 350,000 residents. Now, Fallujah faces assault of another kind by way of a strict curfew where people are closed in from all sides.

Many people who had earlier supported the Iraqi police that works with the U.S. military, now oppose it.

“We gave full support to the police force despite opposition from others to forming this force,” a community leader in the city who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS. “Others told us this force would only serve the occupation forces, but we accused them of being against stability and order. Unfortunately, they appeared to be absolutely right.”

Cars have not been permitted to move on the streets of Fallujah for nearly a month now. A ban was also enforced on bicycles, but residents were later granted permission to use them.

“Thank God and President Bush for this great favour,” said Ala’a, a 34-year-old schoolteacher. “We are the only city in the liberated world with the blessing now of having bicycles moving freely in the streets.”

On May 21 U.S. and Iraqi forces imposed a security crackdown on the city following continuing attacks. Local non-governmental organisations such as the Iraqi Aid Association (IAA) have told reporters that the U.S. military is not allowing them access to the city.

“We have supplies but it is impossible to reach the families. They are afraid to leave their homes to look for food, and children are getting sick with diarrhoea caused by the dirty water they are drinking,” IAA spokesman Fatah Ahmed told reporters. “We have information that pregnant women are delivering their babies at home as the curfew is preventing them from reaching hospital.”

Medical services are inaccessible to most because the hospital is located on the other side of the Euphrates River from the rest of the city. Extra security checkpoints have severely hampered movement within the city, and most businesses have closed. A year ago the local police cut mobile phone services.

The curfew is also restricting residents’ ability to go out and find much needed supplies in the markets. Residents told IPS that there is on average only two hours electricity in 24 hours.

Residents say they are up against killing prices. “Now they are killing us with a new weapon,” a young man with a mask covering his face told IPS. “A jar of gas costs 20 dollars and a kilo of tomatoes costs 1.50 dollar, and people cannot go to work.”

“U.S. snipers on rooftops are enjoying themselves watching us walk around to find a bite of food for our families,” 55-year-old Hajji Mahmood told IPS. “They laugh at us and call us names. They should know Fallujah is still the same city that kicked them away three years ago.”

Life seems completely paralysed with little sign of movement under a blazing sun, with temperatures up to 45 degrees.

“We are sweating to death because some of us went to those damned elections,” said a 40-year-old lawyer, speaking with IPS on condition of anonymity, referring to the Jan. 30, 2005 elections.

“The wise men told us not to, but we believed those crooks of the Islamic Party who promised to make things better,” he said. Many people in the city accuse the Islamic Party supportive of the U.S. of leading the ’security plan’ in al-Anbar province where Fallujah is located.

A local political analyst offered his views to IPS via the Internet, on condition of anonymity.

“I find it rather strange that to control a city under the flag of providing citizens with peace and prosperity, you deprive them of all signs of life,” he said. “Arab, Muslim and all international community leaders should be ashamed of themselves for not even talking about this crime.

“Nonetheless, U.S. leaders are just buying more time towards more failure that they hope will magically turn into success. I am hopeless of any peace in Iraq as long as the democrats sold their fight cheap to the Bush administration.”

Lt-Col Azize Abdel-Kader, a Defence Ministry official who coordinates security operations in al-Anbar said the curfew — which runs from 6 pm until 8 am — was necessary to maintain security.

“It is a temporary curfew and we hope it can soon end,” he told reporters in Baghdad last week. “We are looking into ways to let aid agencies enter Fallujah but it is too dangerous for the time being.”

It is a part of the bigger dream of reconstruction that collapsed. On all measurable levels, the infrastructure is worse than under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, even when it was crippled by the harshest economic sanctions in modern history.

Iraqis lack security, jobs, potable water, and these days when it really pinches, electricity.

“Electricity is life,” said 45-year-old Zahra Aziz, a schoolteacher and mother of four, using a hand-fan in an attempt to cool herself. “Modern life depends on power, and we do not have that here. Having no electricity means having no water, no light, no airconditioning, and in other words, no life.”

Most people IPS spoke to in Baghdad said they get one hour of electricity in 24 hours.

“June is a very hot month, and this permanent electricity failure is just another way of giving Iraqis slow death,” Umayma Salim, a doctor who quit her work at a hospital in Baghdad due to security threats told IPS.

“We are getting all kinds of diseases — sunstrokes among those work outdoors to provide their children food, and psychological effects on all people. The weak functioning of hospitals and other infrastructure facilities have brought all kinds of complications of health and life.”

“We are boiling here Sammy,” a woman said to her husband on her mobile phone while talking to IPS. “You enjoy the breeze and electricity in Jordan my dear, but do try to take us off this frying pan. We are sweating like Niagara falls over here.”

Temperatures in Iraq are usually above 40 degrees centigrade in June, and can jump to more than 50 degrees in July and August.

“We cannot supply frozen and cooled food properly because of electricity failures,” Jamal Rfai, a supermarket owner in Baghdad told IPS. “We bring very limited quantities and if there is any curfew or trouble in the street, then it is all wasted because of the heat, and of course no one will compensate our loss.”

Workers at water service stations speak of incessant electricity cuts. “The main problem we are facing is electricity supply,” a worker who gave his name as Ahmed told IPS. “We have our standby generators, but they are meant to be used in emergency, not for so many hours a day as we do nowadays. Besides, the fuel supply is also not sufficient.”

Waiting time at petrol stations in Baghdad continues to average more than 24 hours. People sleep in their cars, or hire others to sit in their cars for them. And there is no guarantee there will be petrol at the end of the wait.

Most factories have stopped production because of the security situation and the lack of electricity.

“I moved my plastic bags factory to another area seeking better security, but now I cannot work because there is no electricity,” Ahmad Ali, a factory owner from Baghdad told IPS. “We are wasting our time hoping for something that we will never have because this occupation intentionally kills life in this country.”

Similar complaints are coming from farmers. Many say production is down at least 80 percent from what it was before the U.S.-led occupation.

“It is deliberate damage caused by the occupation,” Salim Abdul-Sattar, a local politician from Baghdad told IPS. “To cut electricity is to cut the main vein of life, and that is the main goal of the occupation.”

Abdul Sattar believes that the occupation authorities “could have provided electricity in a few months if they wanted to, but this problem is useful for what they call creative chaos.”

Most of Iraq faced near total electricity failure last week. Iraqi media outlets like al-Hurra and al-Iraqiyah which are known to be heavily influenced by the U.S. government broadcast messages claiming that terrorists had attacked the main electricity stations, causing power outages.

“We are now used to hearing such lies,” a government engineer who works at one of the stations told IPS.