‘Taliban’ rule imposed on Fallujah

BAGHDAD — Residents of Fallujah say foreign insurgents have banned drinking and music, imposed their own courts to enforce strict Islamic law and killed more than a dozen people suspected of collaborating with U.S. forces.

U.S. military officials, who turned the city over to an Iraqi-led “Fallujah Brigade” last month, say they have only anecdotal information about conditions in the city but remain concerned about the influence of fighters loyal to terror chief Abu Musab Zarqawi.

Regular travelers between Baghdad and Fallujah say various groups of mujahideen, or holy warriors, have turned the city 30 miles west of Baghdad into a haven for Islamist radicals.

Foreign fighters from Yemen, Syria and even Pakistan have set up checkpoints in many parts of the city, said Adnan Abdi, a Baghdad businessman who frequently visits Fallujah.

The mujahideen have imposed occasionally harsh versions of Islamic law, said several residents, some of whom were interviewed when disembarking at the Fallujah bus terminal in Baghdad.

Untroubled by members of the U.S.-backed military force known as the Fallujah Brigade, they said, the extremists have banned liquor and popular music and have established a special 6-week-old “mujahideen court” to dispense justice.

In the case of people suspected of passing information to U.S. forces, the “justice” is even more peremptory.

On Tuesday, witnesses said, a vehicle painted like a police car but probably operated by mujahideen pulled up to a stoplight next to a man suspected of helping the Americans find militants’ safe houses. The “police,” their faces covered, opened fire.

“I must have heard over a hundreds rounds,” said Naqoz, a Fallujah resident and employee of a Western nonprofit group who asked that his family name not be published.

U.S. military officials and Iraqis struck a deal in May after weeks of intense combat that placed security in the city in the hands of the all-Iraqi Fallujah Brigade commanded by a former Saddam-era general.

But a senior military officer reached by telephone from Washington said yesterday, “We remain concerned [that Fallujah] is not under Iraqi government controls. … Most of Fallujah remains under the control of foreign fighters, extremists and the Zarqawi network.”

Zarqawi and his followers are blamed in the beheadings of two civilians and a string of suicide bombings. U.S. forces twice in the past week have rocketed houses in Fallujah that had been identified to them as Zarqawi safe houses.

The U.S. officer said the Fallujah Brigade was “making incremental progress” against the radicals, but that Marine commanders in charge of the region “are not completely satisfied with the pace of progress.”

“There is anecdotal evidence of the [extremists] trying to set up a court system and harassing citizens. But there is no evidence their influence is dominant,” the officer said.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, interviewed last night on Fox News, said officers on the ground deserved credit for trying to work with local leaders to get the resistance in Fallujah “to behave itself.”

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