IT WAS the "nest of vipers" that had to be cleansed, an Iraqi hellhole that had become the stronghold of al-Qaeda forces just 43 miles west of Baghdad.
In November, 2004 – a year after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein – the city of Fallujah, on the
banks of the River Euphrates, was a deathtrap for coalition forces. Then came Operation Phantom Fury, an all-out assault by the US Marine Corps determined to gain control. More than 1,300 insurgents died, along with 95 American marines, in what still ranks as the fiercest firefight of the occupation of Iraq.
From the coalition point of view, the military operation was a resounding success. The question was, what next for the so-called City of Mosques, named after more than 200 places of Muslim worship?
In the aerial and artillery bombardment and the hand-to-hand fighting, around 80% of the city's buildings were destroyed, infrastructure for basic services, such as water supply, was severely damaged, and cemeteries used as battlegrounds. Fallujah may not have been a fully-functioning city before the second Iraq war in 2003, but now it was shambolic.
Even for Doug Smith, a 47-year-old Scottish engineer and combat zone reconstruction expert, it was going to be challenge. But, lauded for his earlier efforts to restore water supplies to Basra, the southern Iraqi city in the British zone, it was a challenge he couldn't resist.
At the beginning of last year, the Territorial Army Warrant Officer resigned from his civilian job as plant and emergency contingency coordinator with Scottish Water, left his family behind and threw himself into helping to rebuild one of Iraq's most-shattered communities. It's a rare good news story in a country which – five years after the war started – is still wracked by ongoing sectarian violence, random bombings, missile attacks, murders and general instability.
"It was a big decision but I just felt a moral obligation to the people of Iraq and particularly the children," he says. "They are in this state partly because of 13 years of western intervention in their country and I want to help in any way I can to put that right. I had two deployments to Iraq with the TA and I felt I had to go back because the job was unfinished."
Smith is modest, playing down any sense of civic heroism, even though he swapped a relatively comfortable life and job back home for a mission which is far from risk free. Even now, he cannot venture out in Fallujah except in armoured vehicles and with a six-man, heavily-armed US Marine Corps protection squad. "All my life I have had a public service ethos and this is just a continuation of that," he shrugs.
Reconstruction of communities splintered by warfare rarely makes the headlines. By the time the work begins, the world's media has usually moved on to other trouble- spots. But in politically-fractured and volatile Iraq, long-term peace will be as much a product of how the country is repaired as the deposing of the Saddam regime.
Most news bulletins still concentrate on the ongoing military campaign to subdue insurgent elements rather than the lower profile engineering projects that bring life and jobs to damaged areas and prevent militants from regaining a stranglehold.
In Basra, run down after years of conflict going back to the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88, Smith's job, when still in uniform, was the regeneration of the waterways and canals of a city once known as the Venice of the Middle East. The aim was to supply mains water and improve sewerage systems to more than 900,000 people in 28 districts of southern Iraq.
When he first arrived in 2003, shortly after the war was officially declared at an end, 95% of the water passing through the city's network of pipes was being lost through around 5,000 leaks. When he left in 2006, after the replacement of 200km of high-density, polyethylene pipes, the leakage had dropped to 55%, better than London, he says. It was a feat for which, earlier this year, he was awarded an official Iraq Reconstruction Medal.
Fallujah is a smaller city than Basra, now handed back to the Iraqi authorities by British forces, but the challenges are probably greater. Now working for an American reconstruction organisation, RTI, he is working on restoring a stable and safe water supply to the city's regenerating population.
"The problem is not lack of water but delivering it to the right places," he said. "The problem is the leakages from broken pipes. Lack of funding for the infrastructure goes back way before the war but during the assault the city was shot to hell. It was heavily shelled, all the big water tanks were riddled with holes."
It's not a task he faces alone. US combat troops have now been reassigned to help with reconstruction work. Out inspecting one giant water tank, he was accompanied by a US army officer.
"He told me that the last time he was there, he was firing at the tank," Smith explained. "Now he said he was back to fix it."
Smith likens his task to setting up a city's infrastructure from scratch and then finding and training the people to run it.
"There are about 4,500 unemployed youths in this town. They are the guys who were paid $40 (£20) a day to shoot at the coalition forces or were given weapons and employed by the security services to keep a look-out for them.
"It would not be right to send them to sweep the streets. That wouldn't work. But sending them out to make a map of every lamp-post in the city and tell us whether it is bent, broken and needs replacing gives them vocational training and a job with skills they can keep on using. They are helping themselves and helping their city."
The current water supply is fit only for washing and sanitation – most people drink bottled water. But Smith hopes that within five years the quality will have been improved enough to allow consumption straight from the tap. Meanwhile, there are other projects underway. There are plans to dredge the Euphrates, which has become silted up.
"If we get it moving again we can beautify the banks and turn it into a real recreational asset once again, Smith says. "There can be kebab stalls and ice-cream parlours for people to enjoy."
The transformation is clear already, in other parts of the city. "It was a pretty horrendous atmosphere when I arrived but there is a real buzz about the place now. People are getting back to the normal everyday activities of life. There has been a complete turn-around."
Dangers remain ever-present, however, despite a lull in the violence levels of just a year ago. "There was something going on every day, be it a shooting or a grenade attack. But since last August there have been no direct attacks on US forces. Hopefully, that will continue."
The US commanders in the area still insist that he travels through the city in armoured vehicles, with bodyguards, even to meetings with city officials. He may now be a fully-fledged civilian volunteer but he has not shed his protective body-armour and hard helmet yet. "It is much safer now," he said. "While it is not a holiday camp yet it is not the fields of Flanders either."
Key datesFebruary 3, 2003: Publication of disputed dossier claiming Iraq holds weapons of mass destruction capable of 45-minute deployment.
February 14: UN Security Council told Iraq is co-operating more by head weapons inspector Hans Blix.
February 15: Millions march in coordinated anti-war demonstrations across the globe.
March 17: Saddam Hussein given two days to leave Iraq by US.
March 18: Commons votes in favour of war.
March 20: Invasion begins.
April 9: US troops drape American flag over statue of Saddam toppled by Iraqi citizens.
May 1: Bush announces end of major combat operations in Iraq.
July 18: The body of Dr David Kelly, right, is discovered after he is revealed as a source for Andrew Gilligan's claims that the Iraq dossier had been "sexed up".
July 23: Saddam's sons Uday and Qusay killed by US troops.
December 13: Saddam captured by US forces following his discovery in a cellar 15 miles outside Tikrit.
April 2004: US TV show breaks Abu Ghraib Prison story of torture and abuse by US soldiers (pictured below).
June 28: US hands sovereignty over to Iraqi interim government.
October 6: Top US arms inspector in Iraq finds no evidence of existence of WMDs.
October 19: Trial of Saddam for crimes against humanity begins.
July 26, 2006: Saddam, right, states that if found guilty he would prefer to be shot than hanged.
August 21: George Bush admits no connection between Saddam and September 11 attacks.
December 25: US military personnel official death toll now higher than 9/11 death toll.
December 30: Saddam executed by hanging.
January 10, 2007: Bush announces "surge" plan estimated to cost $1.2bn
August 1: Iraq government thrown into crisis by withdrawal of main Sunni group.
September 16: British hand Basra control back to Iraq.
October 23: UNHCR estimates 4.2 million Iraqis displaced by war.
December 17: Deputy leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, states winding down of UK forces in Iraq proved insurgents gaining strength.
February 29, 2008: Execution of 'Chemical Ali' approved.
March 12: UK military death toll 175 since invasion. Nearly 200 journalists and media workers killed.
March 13: UK Defence Secretary Des Brown states that UK commitment to Iraq is "absolute".
The full article contains 1641 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
