Where is fallujah located

These days, the bases is operated by the Iraqi Army. It is an expeditionary base involved in many of the recent local conflicts. The base was initially used by the Mujahideen e Khalg people. MEK is an Iranian organization dealing with various political events.

They decided to fight against the invasion of the western imperialism and established headquarters in both Iraq and France. Its life in Iran was not too long, as they were overrun by their enemies. However, Saddam Hussein decided to support them and hosted the units on the Iraqi territories, from where they conducted multiple attacks on the Iranian military forces that tried to exterminate them.

Camp Fallujah was used as a training site. Although this fight had nothing to do with the so called liberation of Iraq, no measures were taken. These days, the MEK and the American forces have a little armistice and cease fire agreement. The base was then turned over to the 1-st Marine Expeditionary Force in the spring of That was the moment when the military base was turned into an expeditionary base.

In , the United States of America realized that the base was not that important for its mission in Iraq. By that time, they also took over Iraq and installed a government to support their actions. Fallujah began to fold in on itself. Everyone was hungry. More and more of my cousins were dropping out of school to work in the local markets.

I wanted to just be a teenager and focus on my life in France. The turning point came on Sept. I remember the shock and grief watching the news on that fateful Tuesday. I remember phone calls of disbelief and tears from my cousins in Iraq. But as Bush administration officials wasted no time in building their case for invading Iraq, a slow horror set in about what this emerging narrative — however fraudulent — could mean for my hometown.

My father had fled Iraq after being imprisoned by Saddam Hussein for spreading Communist ideas and building an opposition to his authoritarian rule. During the lead-up to the war, we talked about his activism in Iraq and his fears and hopes for the future every day. I knew I had to go back myself and tell stories about what Iraqis were going through. And so for a decade, I made Baghdad my base and reported across the country for a range of French and international outlets on everything from the fallout of the U.

But my most powerful stories — and life lessons — came from Fallujah and my family. The horror of reporting on bodies buried in the local football stadium after the deadly battles of Fallujah in April and November was surpassed only by recognizing some of the names on the makeshift tombstones.

Three of my cousins died during the fighting and are buried there. A fourth cousin had joined the insurgency but was caught and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

When he was released a year later, he decided to enroll in the newly created Iraqi police force. He was killed a week later by al-Qaida in Iraq, which called him a traitor for joining any part of the U. As I was trying to make sense of the senseless violence and the sectarian nightmare that was unfolding in Iraq, I learned that my uncles, all of whom had been in the Iraqi military, had joined different sections of the anti-American insurgency: Salafi, Sufi, nationalist, independent.

But mostly, I was uncomfortable with how the fighting had changed my uncles. One of them, a decorated veteran of the war with Iran, reminded me that resistance to an occupying force was legitimate under international law. But I also saw the rage that swept across his face each time an American military convoy passed through the rubble of our hometown.

It terrified me. This is when my father planned his first visit to post-invasion Iraq. Minutes after the encounter, two young men walked in and shot his friend, killing him on the spot. We later learned that the friend had been suspected of working with the Americans. My father left Iraq soon after and, after three decades of holding out hope of returning and playing a role in his country, applied for French citizenship. My friend Abu Yunis, a former football player who became my fixer and guide in the city, told me about babies dying soon after birth and deformed children growing up in hiding.

His descriptions were so fantastical that I had struggled to believe him. But after he started sending me photographs, I started investigating the phenomenon for French television.