FALLUJAH: More than six months after Iraqi forces retook Fallujah from the Daesh group, reconstruction is slow and the government risks alienating those residents who have returned to the city.
“There are no members of the Daesh terrorist organization left in Fallujah,” the police chief, Col. Jamal Al-Jumaili, told AFP.
“Fallujah is a safe city,” he insisted.
Iraqi forces retook Fallujah, an emblematic bastion just 50 km west of Baghdad, in June 2016 with relative ease but that victory came at a hefty price.
A large number of homes were destroyed by the fighting and several neighborhoods are still off-limits to civilians due to the possible presence of booby-traps planted by Daesh in their retreat.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said last month that only about 10 percent of homes in Fallujah were inhabitable.
“Nothing works here, there’s no water, no electricity and houses have been destroyed,” said Firas Mahmud, a 25-year-old who returned to Fallujah after Daesh was defeated and is currently unemployed.
Another man met on the street in Fallujah had the same grievances and complained of the lack of services and jobs.
“The authorities must do something,” said the young man, who gave his name as Mustafa.
The Fallujah municipality defended its record but Mayor Issa Al-Sayer mostly called for “the help of the international community to allow Fallujah residents to live in stability.”
Baghdad has promised to enable the speedy return of Fallujah residents, who were all displaced during the reconquest of their city, but the government is cash-strapped.
Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi’s government “lacks or may lack the focus and resources to adequately budget for an adequate reconstruction effort,” said Omar Lamrani, an analyst with the Stratfor think tank.
“Baghdad’s finances are already stretched with low energy prices and the costly demands of war, and corruption and cronyism affect the direction of the limited funds available,” he said.
The risk that observers were warning against before the operation to retake Fallujah even started is that unkept promises will fuel a sense among its minority Sunni residents that they are being marginalized by the government.
Fallujah has long been known as a rebel city and over the past decade and a half has been a hub of opposition, first to occupying US-led forces and then to the Iraqi government.
In the winter of 2012-2013, protests spread across Anbar province, in which Fallujah lies, complaining that Iraq’s minority was being stigmatized by then Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki.
In January 2014, rebels took control of the city, which was eventually overrun by militants from what became known as the Daesh group.
To retake Fallujah, Baghdad relied on its regular forces but also on the Hashed Al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilization), a paramilitary organization dominated by militia groups with close ties to Iran.
The police chief insisted that “only the army and the police are present” inside the city. Hashed Al-Shaabi forces hold positions in towns and rural areas around the city, he said.
Some residents of the overwhelmingly Sunni area continue to be afraid of the Hashed Al-Shaabi, some of whose components have been accused of sectarian-motivated abuses against civilians.
UN human rights chief Zeid Raad Al-Hussein said in July that there was strong evidence that Ketaeb Hezbollah, one of the main militias that fought alongside security forces in the operation, carried out atrocities.
Such allegations complicate the government’s efforts to win over the population, “a critical step if it wishes to maintain a secure control over the city in the long run,” Lamrani said.
Hashed “leadership has increasingly exerted efforts recently to crack down on negative sectarianism, though such behavior unfortunately continues to exist at some level in the lower ranks,” he said.
The analyst warned the same concern applied to Mosul, Daesh’s last major stronghold in Iraq.
Three months into a huge operation, the head of Iraq’s special forces announced that the eastern side of the city had been “liberated” but the other half is still fully under Daesh control.
Hashed forces have cleared vast, mostly desert areas southwest of Mosul but not entered the city.
Patience wears thin in Fallujah, 6 months after Daesh ouster
Patience wears thin in Fallujah, 6 months after Daesh ouster
Sudan’s RSF committed war crimes, possible crimes against humanity in El-Fasher: UN
- Witness describes seeing bodies thrown into the air ‘like a scene out of a horror movie’
- High commissioner for human rights calls for ‘credible, impartial investigations to establish criminal responsibility’
NEW YORK: Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces unleashed a “wave of intense violence … shocking in its scale and brutality” during their final offensive to capture the besieged city of El-Fasher last October, committing widespread atrocities that amount to war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, the UN Human Rights Office said in a report published on Friday.
The report, based on interviews with more than 140 victims and witnesses from Sudan’s Northern State and eastern Chad in late 2025, documented more than 6,000 killings in the first three days of the RSF assault that followed 18 months of siege.
The report said at least 4,400 people were killed in El-Fasher during those initial days, and more than 1,600 others were killed while they attempted to flee.
The actual death toll during the week-long offensive is likely to be significantly higher, the report added.
In many cases, attacks were directed against innocent civilians based on their ethnicity or perceived affiliation, the report said.
“The wanton violations that were perpetrated by the RSF and allied Arab militia in the final offensive on El-Fasher underscore that persistent impunity fuels continued cycles of violence,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk.
“There must be credible and impartial investigations to establish criminal responsibility, including of commanders and other superiors.
“These must lead to meaningful accountability for perpetrators of exceptionally serious crimes, through all available means — whether fair and independent Sudanese courts, use of universal and extraterritorial jurisdiction in third states, before the International Criminal Court or other mechanisms.”
The report said there were reasonable grounds to believe that the RSF and affiliated Arab militia committed war crimes including murder; intentionally directing attacks against civilians and civilian objects; launching indiscriminate attacks; using starvation of as a method of warfare; attacking medical and humanitarian personnel; sexual violence and rape; torture and other cruel treatment; pillaging; and the conscription, enlistment and use of children in hostilities.
The UN said patterns of violations in El-Fasher mirrored those documented in RSF offensives on Zamzam camp in April 2025 and in El-Geneina and Ardamata in 2023.
Taken together, the report said, the incidents demonstrated an organized and sustained course of conduct suggesting a systematic attack against the civilian population in Darfur which, if knowingly committed as part of such an attack, would amount to crimes against humanity.
“The unprecedented scale and brutality of the violence meted out during the offensive deeply compounded the horrific violations the residents of El-Fasher had already been subjected to during the long months of siege, constant hostilities and bombardment,” Turk said.
The report documented multiple incidents of mass killings targeting locations where civilians had gathered, apparently to inflict maximum harm.
On Oct. 26, around 500 people were killed when RSF fighters opened fire with heavy weapons on a crowd of 1,000 sheltering at Al-Rashid dormitory at El-Fasher University.
One witness described seeing bodies thrown into the air “like a scene out of a horror movie,” according to the report.
The RSF also carried out summary executions of civilians accused of collaborating with the Sudanese Armed Forces, often determined on the basis of non-Arab ethnicity such as the Zaghawa community, the report said. Adolescent boys and men under 50 were specifically targeted.
Turk said he had heard direct testimony from survivors during a recent visit to Sudan describing how sexual violence was systematically used as a weapon of war.
Survivors and witnesses recounted patterns of rape and gang rape, abductions for ransom involving sexual violence, and sexual assault during invasive body searches, with women and girls from the Zaghawa and other non-Arab communities particularly at risk.
The report also documented widespread abductions for financial gain as civilians fled.
It identified 10 detention facilities used by the RSF in El-Fasher where severely inadequate conditions led to disease outbreaks and deaths in custody, including the conversion of a children’s hospital into a detention site.
Several thousand people remain missing and unaccounted for, the UN said.
Turk renewed his call on parties to the conflict to end violations by forces under their command, and urged states with influence to act urgently to prevent a repeat of the abuses documented in El-Fasher.
“This includes respecting the arms embargo already in place, and ending the supply, sale or transfer of arms or military material to the parties,” he said, calling on states to support local, regional and international mediation efforts aimed at securing a cessation of hostilities and a pathway toward inclusive civilian governance.
“In a protection crisis of this scale, human rights must remain central to efforts to achieve a durable resolution of the conflict.”
