Inside Fallujah’s siege: trapped with the Islamic State, and preparing for the death

Abu Anas al-Falluji gives each of his three children a 5-milligram tablet of Valium at bedtime to help them sleep through the thud of rocket and mortar fire as Iraqi forces battle Islamic State. And, he says, to dull any pain if the family’s home is hit.

Life in Fallujah — the first Iraqi city to fall to the extremists and now a major test of their staying power — is full of grim routines. Each night, al-Falluji says goodbye to his wife, just in case. She wears trousers to bed. “Should we die and people have to dig us out of the rubble, her body and legs won’t be exposed,” he explains in a phone interview from the city.

The US-backed fight to recapture Fallujah is in its third week. Victory there would open the way for a campaign to liberate Mosul and eject Islamic State from its last major stronghold in OPEC’s second-largest producer. But any setback could deal a fatal blow to Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi’s government, already beset by popular protests and sectarian strains.

Fallujah has been central to more than a decade of violence in Iraq. It was the first city to rise up against the US occupation after the ouster of Saddam Hussein in 2003. In March 2004, four American Blackwater contractors were burned to death by extremists, their charred bodies dragged through Fallujah’s streets and hung from a bridge. US forces bombed the city for months.

A decade later, sectarian tensions made it easy prey for Islamic State. The jihadist group benefited from the alienation and rage that Fallujah’s Sunni Muslims felt toward the new Shiite rulers in Baghdad.