Word: fallujah
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...best hope now is to train and deploy a new Iraqi army with enough firepower to regain control of rebel-held areas. The U.S. says some 145,000 Iraqi soldiers will be fully trained and battle ready by year's end. But in places like Fallujah, the goal of creating a viable indigenous army is a long way off. Hundreds of Iraqi recruits have deserted the ranks for fear of being killed by anti-U.S. militants. Others have shown reluctance to fight their countrymen. But U.S. commanders don't have many other options. "Until we have trained soldiers," says...
...Iraq's new security force when gunmen pulled him over. Two white Oldsmobiles screeched around his Nissan pickup, and four men armed with AK-47 machine guns grabbed Hadi, blindfolded him and stuffed him into the trunk of a car. They drove him to a safe house in Fallujah, where, for five days in early August, he was tortured and interrogated by some of the insurgents who control the town. His captors, he says, beat his feet and legs with a pipe until he could no longer feel them, thrashed his back and tied his genitals before forcing...
...Fallujah right now, the criminals are in control. Since April, when U.S. Marines pulled back from a planned assault to seize the city, which lies 35 miles west of Baghdad, Fallujah has fallen under the sway of an assortment of hard-line insurgents--including, the U.S. believes, Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's chief operative in Iraq. The U.S. has tried to find Iraqis willing to root out the militants who are imposing Taliban-style rule in the city, bringing miscreants before a strict Islamic court. The Fallujah Brigade, a group of former Baathist officers whom the Marines armed...
...training camps. The Marines have received reports from scouts saying insurgents wearing U.S.-issued desert camouflage have attacked American positions. "We joke that after shooting at the range here, the shooting is better at TCP-1," Collins says, referring to a U.S. checkpoint at the entrance to Fallujah. The notion that the Marines are unwittingly training enemy fighters has become the source of dark barracks humor. Some drill sergeants joke about making T shirts that read INDIA BASE: AMERICA'S ONLY OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED TERRORIST TRAINING CAMP...
Even if they can be found, faithful Iraqi recruits are proving difficult to retain. Iraqi commanders working alongside the American forces walk a dangerous line, trying to convince their neighbors they are patriots, not traitors. Painted on a concrete blast wall outside Marine headquarters at Camp Fallujah is a portrait of Lieut. Colonel Suleiman Hamad al-Marawi, a former commander of the Fallujah-based 506th Battalion of the U.S.-backed Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC). Last month al-Marawi was kidnapped with another Iraqi lieutenant colonel when insurgents overran two Iraqi army positions. Six days later, his body was found...