“Under the Tent of Occupation”
Fallujah’s Refugees Won’t Return Home, Won’t Vote
by Robert Fisk
The Independent
They live beneath old fly-blown tents in the car-park of the Mustafa mosque and their canvas-roofed kitchen stands next to a pool of raw sewage, but the refugees from Fallujah will not return home.
First, because many have no homes to go to; second, because they are – with the encouragement of local clerics – listing a series of demands that include the withdrawal of all American soldiers from the city, the maintenance of security by Fallujans themselves, massive compensation payments and the return of money and valuables which those who have just visited Fallujah say were stolen by American troops.
And they are very definitely not going to vote in the 30 January elections. Squatting on the floor of his concrete-walled office in his black robes to eat a lunch of chicken and rice, Sheikh Hussein – he pleads with me not to print his family name – insists that his people are not against elections.
“We are not rejecting this election for the sake of it,” he says. “We are rejecting it because it is the ‘tent’ of the occupation. It is the vehicle for the Americans to ensure that [interim President Iyad] Allawi gets back in. And we are still under occupation.”
Full Article: counterpunch.org