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A file photo of a US soldier having lunch over school debris in Fallujah.
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FALLUJAH,
February 13 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Three months
after the western Iraqi city of Fallujah was pounded to rubble by US
warplanes, teachers and schoolchildren are unremittingly gearing up
for the resumption of classes.
Bullet-scarred
blackboards, dog-eared, half-burnt textbooks, and volunteers will do
in a city that became a ghost down in the broad sense of the word,
Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported on Sunday, February 13.
“All
the furniture has been destroyed, most of the supplies, books and
stationery as well,” said headmaster Shalal Saddah Haraj, giving a
tour of the school's only structure still standing in the middle of a
field of rubble and mangled metal.
“There
is not one single window on this building,” he lamented.
The
education ministry announced that teaching should resume on February
5, but many of the schools have been destroyed in the November US-led
offensive and thousands of residents have yet to return
to the devastated city.
“When
my family and I came back to Fallujah, we found our house burnt, the
houses around it and the school destroyed,” said Hadil Khaled, a
nine-year-old girl.
“I
have been moved to another school, but all the books there were
stolen. How am I going to study?”
A
meager $100 for each family has been pledged by interim Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi in the aftermath of the US raid.
Distraught
Fallujans rejected government cash, saying no money can make up for
the loss of loved ones and destruction of their homes.
Teachers
Missing
Few
schoolchildren have shown up so far and many teachers are also still
missing.
“Most
of my teachers are not back. I don't know where they are, I don't even
know if they are still alive,” said Liqaa Shaker, the headmistress
of the Aisha school as she was sitting in her crumbling office.
“I've
had their salaries with me for months, but they haven't collected
them,” she added.
Most
of the 250,000-strong population of Fallujah fled the city before the
launch on November 8 of what was the largest military offensive in
Iraq since the March 2003 invasion-turned-occupation.
After
staying with relatives or being encamped in Baghdad and neighboring
villages, some families have started trickling back into the city,
often to find their homes have been leveled or looted.
Shaker
lamented that teaching would have to resume with less than half of the
staff and virtually no equipment.
“I
don't have enough books for my own students, but now three other
schools are being merged into mine because the others were
destroyed.”
Teacher
Maysun Hawas will have to write around the bullet holes dotting her
blackboard.
“To
catch up on the curriculum, we will have to study through the summer,
when other provinces will have finished the school year. But for the
moment we have no
electricity and water,” Hawas told AFP.
Volunteers
and officials were busy shoveling bricks into a wheelbarrow in what
used to be the Dhat Al-Salasil school's storage room.
“Be
careful, don't come here, the roof could collapse,” said an
exhausted municipal employee.
