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1 December 2004

First five photos by Max Becherer/Polaris, for The New York Times, December 1 2004	Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The crumbled remains of a mosque minaret. Marines found weapons and a stinger missile launcher in the mosque.	Lance Corporal Justin Ross of Las Cruces, N.M, of the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. As military officials prepare to start letting the first residents return to Falluja, possibly as soon as mid-December, they face an unusual challenge: how to win back the confidence of the people whose city they have just destroyed.
Winning trust won't be an easy task in Falluja, where Pfc. Guillermo Solorio, 20, of the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, patrolled last week.	A gaping hole in the wall of a medical office. American officials say they cannot afford to let this former insurgent bastion become a microcosm of the broader struggle in Iraq - a rapid military victory followed by a lapse into violence and chaos.
Marines are still doing detailed searches of the city and battling insurgents as they find them. The full extent of the damage inflicted by American bombs, tanks and artillery is only now becoming apparent. The number of buildings destroyed in the fighting is far higher than 200, the figure released last week by the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, engineers and commanders say.	Two residents wait to be transported to a humanitarian camp outside of the city. It is still far from clear how the military will communicate its neat plan to repopulate the city sector by sector, or how the returnees will react. Falluja, where resistance to the American occupation ran high, has a long history as a rebellious city.
Lance Corporal Miles Nelson, of the Third Battalion, Fifth Marines. Americans say they will pour in money and expertise but will cede major decisions to the Iraqi interim government. American planners also say it is essential that much of the actual rebuilding work be given to Iraqi contractors but acknowledge that those contractors will be subject to intimidation and that qualified Iraqi engineers may be hard to find.
A deserted street in Fallujah affected by recent fighting Friday Nov. 26 2004. U.S. troops have continued clearing operations in Fallujah, which came under a massive week-long U.S.-led assault that began Nov. 8. Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said about 50 percent of the houses in the city have already been cleared. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)	Iraqi Red Crescent worker looks at deserted and devastated street in Fallujah, Iraq, Friday Nov. 26 2004. U.S. and Iraqi forces continue to fight sporadic gunbattles with rebel holdouts as they clear Fallujah of weapons. But as the battle calms, U.S. forces are reflecting on the fight, their often-unseen foes and the future of a city which lies in ruins. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
This undated family photo shows U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Brad Faircloth of Mobile, Ala. Faircloth was killed Thursday, Nov. 25, 2004, during fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, his family said. Faircloth, 20, stationed out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., was a member of the First Battalion, 8th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon. He earned two purple hearts being wounded in November before being killed Thanksgiving Day (AP Photo/Family Photo via the Mobile Register)	This 2002 family photo shows U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Brad Faircloth of Mobile, Ala., when he was a senior defensive lineman for the Murphy High School Panthers. Faircloth was killed Thursday, Nov. 25, 2004, during fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, his family said. Faircloth, 20, stationed out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., was a member of the First Battalion, 8th Marines, Alpha Company, 3rd Platoon. He earned two purple hearts being wounded in November before being killed Thanksgiving Day (AP Photo/Family Photo via the Mobile Register)
A student at Hartford High School puts a note into a basket for the family of Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffery Holmes, Monday, Nov. 29, 2004, in Hartford, Vt. Holmes, 20, was killed by insurgents when he and other soldiers entered a house in Fallujah, Iraq, on Thanksgiving Day. He was a 2003 graduate of the school. (AP Photo/Valley News, Jennifer Hauck)	Marine Lance Cpl. Jeffery Scott Holmes, of Hartford, Vt., is shown in this undated family photo was was killed in Fallujah on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 2004. Lt. Gen. John F. Sattler, commanding general of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, said the U.S. troops were ambushed by insurgents from inside a house as they entered it. Holmes, a 2003 Hartford High School graduate, was one of those two, Patti and Scott Holmes said the Marines told them. (AP Photo/Courtesy of the Holmes family via the Valley News)
A horse drawn carriage bears the casket of Marine Lance Cpl. Abraham Simpson as it makes it's way to his funeral service at the Riverside National Cemetery Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004, in Riverside, Calif. Simpson was killed in combat in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force based in Camp Pendleton. (AP Photo/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Therese Tran)	A procession headed by family members follows the casket bearing Lance Cpl. Abraham Simpson after funeral services for the fallen Marine Saturday, Nov. 27, 2004 in Chino Hills, Calif. Simpson was killed in combat Nov. 9, 2004, in the al-Anbar province of Iraq. (AP Photo/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Therese Tran)
Members of the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., carry the casket of S/Sgt. Marshall Hugh Caddy out of New Hope United Methodist Church in Durants Neck, N.C., during his funeral Saturday morning, Nov. 27, 2004. Caddy was killed in Iraq November 16, when the Humvee in which he was riding collided with a tank. (AP Photo/The Daily Advance, Sam Wolfe)	Marine Staff Sgt. Charles Dorsey presents Martina Burger with a U.S. flag during the funeral service for her son Marine Cpl. Dale A. Burger Jr. at Arlington National Cemetery Monday, Nov., 29, 2004, in Arlington, Va. Burger was killed Nov. 14, in Iraq. (AP Photo/Baltimore Sun, Lloyd Fox)

New York Times, December 1, 2004

RECONSTRUCTION

In Falluja's Ruins, Big Plans and a Risk of Chaos

By ROBERT F. WORTH

FALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 27 - Standing in the rubble outside an empty medical clinic here, Dr. Basam Mohamed, dressed in a blue blazer and work boots, gazed out at the ruins of his native city. He had just heard a group of American civil affairs officers explain their plans to rebuild the clinic and install a huge water tank behind it until the water pipes - smashed by bombs - could be fixed.

But Dr. Mohamed, a Health Ministry official in the Iraqi interim government, had other worries. His parents are among the residents who fled Falluja just before the American military offensive here earlier this month, he said. They are eager to return but have no idea how badly the fighting damaged the city.

"They will feel hard toward the Americans," Dr. Mohamed said with a wince, as his American guides led him off to look at another ruined clinic.

As military officials here prepare to start letting the first residents return to Falluja, possibly as soon as mid-December, they face an unusual challenge: how to win back the confidence of the people whose city they have just destroyed. Their task will be made harder by the need to deter returning insurgents, who will try to sabotage the reconstruction with attacks, commanders say.

American officials say they cannot afford to let this former insurgent bastion become a microcosm of the broader struggle in Iraq - a rapid military victory followed by a lapse into violence and chaos.

Yet even some American officers here are skeptical about their ability to bring back safely more than a small number of residents in time for the national and provincial elections in January - a central goal of the offensive. Fighting goes on in the city's southern neighborhoods, where small groups of guerrillas are still holding out. American troops have found an unexpectedly large number of weapons storehouses, commanders say, and the need to dispose of them safely has delayed rebuilding efforts in those areas.

The full extent of the damage inflicted by American bombs, tanks and artillery is only now becoming apparent. The number of buildings destroyed in the fighting is far higher than 200, the figure released last week by the Iraqi prime minister, Ayad Allawi, engineers and commanders say. The city's power lines are so badly damaged that in most of the city, they will have to be ripped out and rebuilt from scratch - a project that will take six months to a year, American engineers say. Damage to the city's water and sewer pipes, already badly corroded before the invasion, is milder but will also take months to repair.

The coordination of all this work will be hard enough, with the Americans saying they will pour in money and expertise but will cede major decisions to the Iraqi interim government. American planners also say it is essential that much of the actual rebuilding work be given to Iraqi contractors but acknowledge that those contractors will be subject to intimidation and that qualified Iraqi engineers may be hard to find. Just last week, as water from broken pipes created chest-deep floods in Falluja's streets, American officers had trouble persuading any of the Iraqi engineers who knew where the valves were located to venture into the city and help shut them off.

The role of the city's roughly 250,000 residents, now mostly scattered in other towns throughout the region, may be the most crucial and unpredictable part. It is still far from clear how the military will communicate its neat plan to repopulate the city sector by sector, or how the returnees will react once they arrive. Falluja, where resistance to the American occupation ran high, has a long history as a rebellious city.

American officials say they fully understand the risks, and have been planning for them since last spring. Already, American civil affairs teams have begun making condolence payments to residents who were injured or had their houses destroyed in the attack, up to a maximum of $2,500 per person. The interim Iraqi government has also promised $100 to each returning family.

The American plan here involves a carefully phased renewal. The city will be opened to residents sequentially, starting in the north and moving southward as basic services are restored to 16 separate areas designated by American military planners, said Col. John R. Ballard, the commander of the Marine Fourth Civil Affairs Group, based in Washington. Generators will supply power, and water tanks placed along the city's main boulevards will provide water, at least for the moment.

To prevent looting, the head of every household will be asked to wear an identification badge, Colonel Ballard said, and American and Iraqi troops will be given special rules of engagement to deal with theft. No cars will be allowed in the city at first, to prevent car bombs. Instead, a bus system will provide free transportation.

Within two or three months, Marine officials say, bigger projects will be set in motion: a new $35 million wastewater treatment plant, four new school buildings, several new health clinics. Badly damaged homes will be bulldozed and rebuilt, or owners will be compensated. To help revive the city's economy, the Marines will ask all returning residents with relevant skills to take a job in the reconstruction projects.

In short, the Marines envision a huge effort of social and physical engineering, all intended to transform a bastion of militant anti-Americanism into a benevolent and functional metropolis. There are even plans to build new housing projects on the city's outskirts while the central areas are being rebuilt.

"The best place to bring a model town into place is Falluja," Colonel Ballard said. But if similar rebuilding efforts in Najaf and elsewhere are any guide, the project under way here - far more ambitious than anything yet tried in this country - will be more expensive and time-consuming than its planners think.

Reconstruction projects undertaken in Najaf since the fighting there in August, for instance, have been plagued by corruption, overpayment and shoddy work, relief officials said. After an American corporation there began rebuilding a wastewater treatment plant, they found a lack of local people with the training to operate it, said Lt. Cmdr. Michael Woltz, a member of the team of Navy Seabees helping rebuild Falluja.

In Falluja, too, there are questions about how many Iraqi engineers are available to help figure out the city's antiquated infrastructure.

"Before the battle, Iraqi engineers were not willing to talk to us, and I have not been able to get a good list yet," said Lt. Col. Leonard J. DeFrancisi, a Marine civil affairs officer. "I'm confident that when we put the call out we will find good people to help run the city."

All these plans, military officials say, are predicated on Iraqi security forces successfully keeping insurgents out and preventing violence. If they fail, as they did in April, the whole project could unravel.

American and Iraqi forces will provide security for all the reconstruction projects, at least initially, Colonel Ballard said. They will also form a cordon around the city, screening anyone who enters and checking for weapons.

While some Iraqi companies have already been taken on, none wanted their names disclosed because of security concerns. Officials would not comment on whether any American contractors had been hired.

So far, it is far from clear that the Americans can keep insurgents out of the city. Some appear to be living there now, relying on the Americans for emergency food and water during the day and attacking them by night, according to both American commanders and Iraqis living in the area. All of them are young men, some with suspicious wounds, and all have the same story: they stayed in the city to protect their family's property. Some even wear the distinctive black clothes and tennis shoes favored by the insurgents.

Nor is it clear that the city's residents will favor the Americans over their enemies. Last week, Hamid Humood, a 38-year-old cigarette seller who had stayed in the city during the battle, was one of those seeking American food and water at the Hadra mosque.

"They are all liars, the government and the Americans," Mr. Humood said. "The mujahedeen didn't hurt us. They helped us."

Others are friendlier to the American presence. But most are waiting in small towns or rural areas outside the city, and they are growing impatient. Just east of Falluja, several hundred exiled residents are now living on the grounds of a cement plant. During a visit there on a day when the temperature was just above 40 degrees, many displaced residents were dressed in light summer clothing and complained that they had no blankets and had left their winter clothing in Falluja. Americans who brought them emergency food and water could only apologize and explain that they had no blankets.

"They need help," said Dr. Mohamed, the Health Ministry official whose own parents are waiting to return, speaking of Falluja's scattered residents. "They are suffering. But when they return, they will suffer even more."

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington for this article.