This week the US army decided to substantially reduce its troop presence in Faluja. It amounts to an admission of their failure to govern there, reports Graham Usher in Faluja Last week officers in the newly formed Iraqi police force marched from their central station to Faluja town hall to present a petition to a senior officer in the US army. It warned that unless the US army in the city allowed them to do their policing work alone they would quit their jobs. The Americans appeared to get the message -- aware that the collective resignation of an Iraqi police force in a Sunni town is just about last thing Paul Bremer needs right now to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. The officer announced the detachment of US soldiers at the police station would be reduced from 20 to one or two. He also said that of the 22 sites formerly guarded by the US army in Faluja, 11 had been turned over to the Iraqi police, including the old Ba'ath Party headquarters. Natives of Faluja expressed relief at the redeployment, even though some said it was not enough. "We don't want a single American soldier here. We just want the US to leave," said one. But for those Iraqis recently recruited to the police force their perceived proximity to their American occupiers was becoming a matter of life or death. Since the US army occupied Faluja in April, there have been dozens of armed attacks on American soldiers, patrols and positions. But in recent weeks the Iraqi insurgents have turned their sights on Iraqi policemen in lethal warning that there can be no normalisation with occupation. Two weeks ago seven Iraqi police officers were killed in a bomb attack in Faluja's sister town of Ramadi. And ever since US soldiers took up position there, Faluja's central police station has been hit with a torrent of rocket- propelled grenades. It was this sense of mortal danger that prompted the protest, says police officer Ismail Daoud. "All of the people [in Faluja] are our families, our relatives; we know them better than the Americans. We know the tribes and the mosques. And the people see us as collaborating with the Americans. But we're not collaborators". The police protest and Faluja generally attests to the monumental failure of the US and Britain to win legitimacy among ordinary Iraqis for the "liberation" of their country. Hailed initially by people in Faluja, the American soldiers have become hated occupiers in less than three months, spawning both civil protests and armed resistance. One reason was the US army's easy resort to violence to establish their rule in the city. The bloodiest example of this was on 28 April, when jittery US soldiers shot dead 15 unarmed Iraqis protesting their presence at a school. But there have been other, more mundane cases. Take Hilal Khalaf, a 52-year-old car salesman. Last month US soldiers stormed his home by "smashing through every window even though every door was open to them". When he tried to protest the violence, he was yelled at in American slang translated into incomprehensible Arabic. The consequence was potentially fatal, he recalls: "My wife and sister were in bed and both are half paralysed. The US soldiers kept telling them to stand up. I tried to tell them they couldn't. But no one understood or wanted to understand." Another factor was the sheer unaccountability of an occupier that controlled everything but took responsibility for nothing. For example, on 6 June US soldiers raided the one-room home of Amin Abowd, arresting her brother for allegedly hiding a wanted Ba'ath officer. The soldiers wrecked her home and stole $250, he says. She gives me a note that was delivered some days after the raid and written by John Ives, a US captain in Faluja. The note acknowledges that Amin's home has been "destroyed" by an army tank, that "restitution" is owed her and that her brother was "not the wanted man they were after". Ten weeks on, has her brother been freed? No, she says. Has she received compensation for the damage done to her home? No, she says again. Does she know where her brother is imprisoned? She shrugs her shoulders: "a detention centre south of Faluja, I think". Finally there was the arrogance of American behaviour that showed not the slightest deference to conservative, tribal and religious mores of Iraqi culture. Just about everyone in Faluja has stories of US soldiers searching men by placing boots on their heads or -- in early days at least -- frisking women in public. It was this -- far more than rogue remnants from Saddam Hussein's regime -- that was responsible for the attacks on American soldiers, says local Sheikh Ahmad Janabi. Nor is he impressed with the US's belated decision to assume a lower profile. "Two months ago we advised them to leave the centre of the city and build a strong police force made up of local youths with good salaries. Then many of these problems would have been solved. You'll have to ask them why it took so long to hear."
