Hajji Abbas once led a busy, comfortable life as the head of a family trading business. His brothers hauled produce from Jordan in their fleet of cargo trucks. Their children played soccer in the clan's compound of solid cinder-block houses surrounded by fat palm trees.
But since U.S. Marines sealed off Fallujah on April 5, set up camp in a soda-pop factory next door to the compound and declared war on urban guerrillas, Abbas's life has slammed to a halt. His trucks are idled and his days are spent smoking and pacing the yard in his long white robe.
At night, the houses shake from the booming impact of mortar shells, aimed at the Marine base just beyond the compound wall. One night last week, a shell landed on the porch where two of Abbas's young nieces were playing. One was hit by shrapnel and died almost instantly despite efforts by U.S. military medics to save her.
"We wanted to take her to the cemetery for a proper burial, but the soldiers wouldn't let us leave. We buried her in the yard for now," Abbas, 63, said Monday, fingering prayer beads as he sat in his parlor surrounded by his brothers and nephews. "There has been so much suffering here. We don't want to get involved, we just want this to end so we can return to a normal life."
On Monday, an agreement for an extended cease-fire was announced by U.S. officials in Baghdad after three days of negotiations with civilian leaders from Fallujah. The deal is contingent on heavy weapons being collected in the city.
But the Abbas family, like thousands of other Fallujah residents who stayed home while at least 70,000 others fled at the urging of U.S. military forces, remains caught between hope and fear. Trapped at home and unable to work, shop, visit a doctor or bury the dead, they are eager to resume their daily activities. But they are unsure whether it is safe to go out and worried that the mortar shells and rockets will suddenly start flying again.
"There were too many of us to take, especially the children, so I decided not to allow anyone to leave," said Abbas, a Fallujah native and the family decision-maker. "I said we would either all live or die here. But now we are just waiting here, walking the yard like prisoners. I never thought it would take so long."
'A lessening of tension'
Over the past several days, there have been increasing indications that hostilities in Fallujah are easing. As the drumbeat of mortar rounds and gunfire has lessened, U.S. military psychological operations teams have toned down their earlier messages from loudspeaker trucks, taunting the insurgents as cowards and goading them to fight.
Instead, new announcements have gone out on radio stations operated by the U.S. military, saying that the 7 p.m. curfew has been pushed back by two hours, that Marine forces have been moved to clear a path to the central hospital, and that doctors and ambulance drivers should return to work. Residents have also reported hearing messages from mosque loudspeakers calling for markets to reopen so people can purchase food and other necessities.
"The past two days have been eerily quiet," said Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, who commands the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, which is encamped in the soda factory. "Marines are beginning to notice people poking their heads out to see what's going on. There's a lessening of tension, and it's giving residents a little respite."
Byrne said the lack of attacks could indicate a "genuine effort by the city fathers" to rein in the insurgents and help the negotiations succeed. But he also said the fighters had been "scared to death" by Marine snipers, who have been positioned day and night on rooftops throughout southeast Fallujah.
Despite the positive signals, Marine forces here have remained poised to attack if the cease-fire collapses, and engineering squads with bulldozers have finished building a high dirt barrier around two miles of the city, with military vehicles patrolling it constantly to ensure that enemy fighters do not escape.
Frequently, residents who do venture out, or who try to leave the city on foot, encounter suspicious Marine patrols on the lookout for disguised fighters or hidden weapons. One man told a patrol he was sick and trying to walk to a hospital and was allowed to pass. On the way home, much to his consternation, he was detained by a different patrol and briefly held for questioning, according to witnesses.
The role of Iraqi police, Civil Defense
One of the most important unresolved issues in the emerging cease-fire agreement is what role the Iraqi police and Civil Defense Corps will play in the coming days. Fallujah leaders want their own security forces to gradually assume control of the city and possibly play a role in collecting weapons from insurgent forces.
But Marine officials said the performance of Iraqi security forces in Fallujah has been mixed over the past several weeks. Some civilian defense force squads deserted their posts in fear of retaliation by insurgents, and others refused to fight fellow Iraqis. During one Marine raid on a mosque full of fighters, people in Iraqi police uniforms were seen carrying weapons to them.
"Whether the Iraqis have the capability to run their own security apparatus is a big question for the future," said Byrne, who has a battalion of defense force troops under his command but does not allow them to carry weapons after curfew. "If a unit dissolves because they are conflicted over their mission, what is the future of the Iraqi security forces?"
Byrne said that even if local fighters, including jobless ex-soldiers and loyalists of former president Saddam Hussein, could be persuaded to give up their weapons, it might be more difficult for Iraqi security forces to challenge other groups of insurgents who appear to be highly trained Islamic extremists, including suicide squads bent on martyrdom.
For families with independent businesses such as the Abbas clan, who never depended on Hussein's military state and kept aloof from Fallujah's treacherous mix of criminal gangs and tribal conflicts, the only concern now is to see the conflict ended so they can get their trucks back on the road and their children back in school.
Abbas, speaking to journalists in the presence of Marine security escorts, repeatedly said he knew nothing about the issues or groups involved in the current fight. He also said he did not blame his misfortune on the presence of the Marines, who tried to save his niece, paid him $6,000 in compensation for his loss and delivered cases of military rations to his house.
"We don't eat their meals because we are afraid there is pork in them," confided the family elder with a laugh. But his face grew sad as he motioned to the spot in his compound, a pile of cinder blocks behind a sand pit, where his niece has been temporarily laid to rest. "All we really want," he said, "is to give her a proper burial."
