Dateline Fallujah

One of the bigger mysteries about the current fighting is what's happening in Fallujah. It's hard making an accurate assesment while sitting in Brooklyn Heights, sipping ice coffee. And it's probably not much easier while sitting in the Green Zone, where many journalists--understandably--appear to be hanging.

Anyway, I've only seen one story datelined Fallujah, a Agence France Presse dispatch (cribbed off Nexis; no link). The reporter, Ahmed Fadaam, seems to be on the city outskirts rather than inside. Still, here's an snippet:

Hundreds of panicked residents in cars, buses and pick-up trucks flooded out of Fallujah as explosions and gunfire crackled across this flashpoint Iraqi city after insurgents shot down a US helicopter.

"It was total chaos inside. Everyone was confused, everyone was running. Everyone was trying to find shelter or get out of the city. It was just like a state of emergency," said a witness.

"You can feel the stress and the danger. You start to shiver because you think at any moment they may shoot you. There were hundreds of insurgents at every corner, at every intersection."

One of the bigger questions has to be what role the U.S.-backed Fallujah Brigade is playing. Reports filed from Baghdad suggest that everything is A-OK. As the Chicago Tribune puts it, "U.S. military officials said Marines and members of Iraq's Fallujah Brigade worked together to quell insurgent attacks." But unless I'm misreading it--a distinct possibility, Im hungry... and cranky--the AFP story suggests something murkier:

A series of checkpoints manned by young men toting Kalashnikov rifles and wearing red or black keffiyeh headscarves stopped and searched cars heading toward the southern exit of the city of 500,000 residents.

Some of the checkpoints were also guarded by members of the Fallujah Brigade, the force made up of remnants of Saddam Hussein's former army now patrolling the city after the US marines' withdrawal two months ago.