Fallujah's city council battles to hold its ground

His voice cracking with emotion and anger, the mayor of Fallujah lashes out at his city council: Insurgent violence is growing, he tells them, and they're not trying to stem the tide.

"You haven't done anything," says Jassim Bedawi. "When Sheikh Kamal and Sheikh Hamza got killed, what had you citizens done to prevent their deaths?"

Mayor Bedawi is a rare phenomenon: an Iraqi still willing to participate in a democratic institution once seen as central to the rebuilding of Iraq. No other city council operates in the insurgent-riddled Anbar Province. But the embattled Bedawi – whose family, like those of other members, is under threat of kidnapping or worse – continues to forge ahead in one of the most stressful jobs the city has to offer. No debates over parking or playground equipment occupy his agenda. Issues of life and death occupy him and a number of city councilors who meet every Tuesday – as well as the question of whether they will survive a US pullback from the city. The Marine presence is reviled by many here, even though many recognize its importance to maintain some level of protection and even reconstruction.

"The people of Fallujah are not standing with me," the mayor complains, saying that without such support, asking for help from the central government could "get my head cut off, or a member of my family kidnapped."

"Citizens can't just come here and make requests," says Bedawi. "They must also give support."

Two years after US marines invaded Fallujah to force out insurgents who had made the city off limits to US forces, militants are filtering back into the city, despite only six entry points, which are heavily guarded. Since August, they have waged a campaign of intimidation that has left two key councilmen and the deputy chief of police chief murdered, and a trail of threats against those who persist.

The previous mayor fled to Syria earlier this year, after a dispute with the Ministry of Defense in Baghdad over his plans to raise a local Sunni militia.

On this day in late November, the meeting begins with three men who complain about shootings by US Marines – one of them fatal – of their sons and a nephew. They demand prosecution of the "snipers" involved, and their removal.

The council also discusses compensation by the military for occupation of certain properties; they had previously dismissed 300 false claims by residents. They talk of the need for US forces to "get close to the people" and how the US election is likely to change their lives. They ponder who will guard the phone exchange after repairs by US forces.

"I'm in awe.... Against all odds, they continue to meet," says Col. Lawrence Nicholson, the Marine regimental combat team commander who attends every meeting. "I don't know how resilient we [Americans] would be, if [insurgents] came to our door and said: 'We will kill your family.' "

"Witness No. 1," a man called Khalid with a bandaged wrist and his arm in a sling, tells how his teenage son Hamidi was shot by a Marine "sniper" on Oct. 30 from Observation Post Fenton, a tall house with three lookout positions on the main east-west artery. The son died a week later; Khalid was wounded, and a neighbor boy who came to assist him was also shot.

The family home is near OP Fenton. Marines there, officers say, believed that Hamidi was armed with a grenade.

"No matter how much compensation, it will not be worth a dime when I go to my son's funeral," Khalid told the council and the officers present. "I want the sniper to be prosecuted, according to the law."

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