Amid mounting deaths, Fallujah hopes for better days ("tide has turned")

Amid mounting deaths, Fallujah hopes for better days
by Paul Schemm

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - Inside a wooden hut at Fallujah's Development Centre, Hamid Abdel Hadi asked a US navy medic about getting his six-year-old son Harth a throat operation so the boy can talk again.

Outside, in the compound of a rare place where Iraqis and US marines meet regularly, a sharp crack split the air and a marine on a water truck slumped over, shot through the head by a distant sniper.

Two and a half years after marines retook Fallujah from insurgents in a battle which nearly destroyed the town, life is slowly improving. But reconstruction still takes a back seat to security.

Rebuilding has been hampered by an insurgency that daily claims the lives of police, soldiers, marines and ordinary citizens.

Nevertheless, locals say the tide has turned.

"In the beginning the Fallujans cooperated with the insurgents, but now everyone knows their real intentions," said a local building contractor working with the Americans. "They hide their intentions like they hide their faces. No one likes them and everyone wants to get rid of them," he added.