We won't go home and we won't vote, say refugees of Fallujah First Edition

• Published in: Independent (London, England : 1986)
• Main Author: Robert Fisk in Baghdad
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Independent Digital News & Media 13.01.2005
• ISSN: 0951-9467

The stories of looting in Fallujah are only adding to the refugees' sense of grievance. And to the over-enthusiastic demands for compensation. "We will settle for $5bn (pounds 2.7bn) to $10bn," Sheikh Hussein says. "This is for the destruction in Fallujah, the shedding of blood and the killing of innocents; history will write of this. The Americans started off by killing native Americans and still they kill people they look down on." Everyone in the room, including a student of computer sciences from Fallujah who has so far listened in total silence, vigorously nod their heads. It is Fallujah in miniature. Twenty teachers from the city are now running a camp school for 120 children. Doctors see patients in the sheikh's private home. A great-grandfather in the camp says he cannot go back to his city while the Americans are there. And when I ask him if he will vote, he laughs at me. "The Americans must leave Fallujah unconditionally," the sheikh says. "They have done too much harm there to be accepted." A family warns American troops that they are at home in Fallujah, top left, and a couple who had to sift the debris of their house, above, failed to find the deeds that would have qualified them for aid AFP/Getty Images; A man tries to salvage belongings from his wrecked car outside the rubble of his home in Fallujah and, right, a family returns to what is left of their home after the American assault Ibrahim Mohammed AFP/Getty Images