A Fallujah Mosque

The

New York Times' Robert Worth has a fascinating article on the battlefield archaeology of Fallujah centering
on the contents of a mosque just to the north of the main east-west road through
the city, Highway 10. (Hat tip:
FreeRepublic) The murdered Blackwater contractors must have driven just
yards from it on their way to the bridge.

The mosque, in a residential area just north of the main east-west artery
known as Highway 10, included at least a dozen brick outbuildings packed with
bombs, guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and ammunition. The diversity of the
weapons surprised the officers here: in the street outside, a ship mine stood
in a puddle. Just inside the mosque compound was an aluminum shed full of
mortars and TNT. Like many weapons depots in Falluja, it had been wired to
explode, and had to be carefully dismantled by an American explosives team.
Inside the compound was a document explaining how to destroy tanks using
rocket-propelled grenades. General Natonski picked up a white pilot's helmet
among the mortars and gazed wonderingly at it. "Did you find any Darth Vader
helmets?" he asked the marine captain next to him.

One of the more interesting artifacts was a very special kind of ice-cream
truck, probably driven by a laughing, mustachoied gentleman of the sort one
would never suspect.

In the back of the compound was an ice cream truck, its sides colorfully
decorated with orange, red and blue popsicles. Inside it was packed with
rocket-propelled grenades and bomb-making materials. "This was probably a
traveling I.E.D. factory," General Natonski said, using the military term for
improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs.

Near the mosque was the empty home of Abdullah Janabi, the insurgent leader
of this city's mujahedeen council. Like the archives of some unfamiliar
civilization, Janabi's correspondence provided a glimpse into the methods
through which the insurgency was controlled, motivated and disciplined.

On a table were stacks of documents, including passports (the only country
he had traveled to recently was Syria, a translator who read the document
said) and other identification papers for Mr. Janabi and members of his
family. There were letters, including one dated Oct. 20 from the clerical
council of Baghdad asking him to negotiate the surrender of Falluja. In a box,
there was a Bronze Star, an American military decoration awarded for valor -
in all likelihood, the general said, stolen from a convoy. There was also Mr.
Janabi's personal name stamp, used for letters, and a white hat signifying
that he had made the pilgrimage to Mecca that is expected of devout Muslims at
least once in a lifetime, if they can afford it.

Also found in the house were files showing the names of people who had been
tortured and executed for cooperating with the Americans and their allies,
military officials said. There were also more than 500 letters from the
families of insurgents who had been killed or wounded, asking for compensation
from Mr. Janabi, said a military translator on the scene. They included the
families of fighters from Lebanon, Jordan, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, and about
100 native Fallujans.

Here was a man who could offer you paradise, money or excruciating torture,
expert in the kind of governance still common in some parts of the world, a
minor Saddam Hussein or a royal prince writ small. Robert Worth noted that "a
fridge stood open in the kitchen, with a plate of rice visible inside, three
yogurt containers, a half-rotten apricot", proof if anything that the evanescent
insurgency; the unkillable idea of popular journalism was tangible after all,
requiring physical weapons, logistics and money. It ate and drank; wrote and
read; could kill and be killed; and knew both triumph and defeat.