Not surprisingly, there are still hard feelings towards the United
States in Fallujah. Jay Deshmukh, a reporter for AFP, visited the town
and writes of a shop owner named Abdullah:
Abdullah's shop on the main Al-Abbas street of Fallujah bears the
signs of two major battles that broke out between rebels and US forces
in April and in November 2004. The shop's metal shutter and the ceiling are peppered with bullet holes
and the floor above the shop which was pounded by the military has
caved in.
In fact, every other building on that street bears similar scars: walls
riddled with bullets, caved-in roofs and some four-story blocks have
been totally razed to the ground with debris still waiting to be
cleared. Piles of garbage and pools of clogged water are seen at every corner.
Years have passed now and what happened in Fallujah has faded from memory for people not directly linked to the fighting. There was a film released after the second battle in Fallujah and just two weeks before the January 2005 elections in Iraq. It's worth revisiting. You'll find it here. For a look at the destruction that Deshmukh refers to in his article, skip ahead to about the 6:50 point.
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