WHY FALLUJA? Why should this relatively obscure Iraqi city of half a million have become the crucible of atrocities against the Coalition in Iraq?

Some analysts say Falluja was a stronghold of Baathist sympathy. The reality is rather different. The al-Jumaili clan, which is a leading force in the area, produced two pre-Saddam presidents of Iraq, the brothers Abd as-Salaam Arif, who ruled from 1963 to 1966, and Abd ar-Rahman Arif, whose tenure lasted from 1966 to 1969. The first died in a suspicious aerial accident, and the second was driven from power, and then from Iraq, by the Baathists under Saddam.

The al-Jumailis have a long memory, and the downfall of the Arif brothers fostered a blood feud between the powerful tribal sheikhs and Saddam, so that when Coalition troops appeared in Iraq the al-Jumaili sheikhs ordered their followers not to interfere with them. That, at least, is the version told by al-Jumaili representatives in the United States, who decline to be identified in the media.

But the al-Jumailis now claim that tensions with the Coalition began with U.S. military raids on their strongholds soon after Saddam's fall. A San Francisco Chronicle report in late 2003 quoted Sheikh Mishkhen al-Jumaili denouncing U.S.-inflicted fatalities in the area. Reporter Anna Badkhen added, "Important members of the community, like al-Jumaili, went from being supportive of the U.S.-led alliance to being openly anti-American."

A more significant ingredient in the stewpot of Falluja's discontent, however, is local adherence to Wahhabism, the extremist Islamic sect that is the state religion in neighboring Saudi Arabia and whose purest expression is al Qaeda. Here and there, Western journalists have alluded to this; an Associated Press report noted that of the residents of Falluja, "many adhere to Sunni Islam's austere Wahhabi sect." Wahhabi militants in Kuwait and other nearby states have begun collecting money, blood, and supplies to sustain the conflict. Even in the United States, some leaders of the "Wahhabi lobby" that dominates American Islam declared their solidarity with the "resistance" in Falluja.

Wahhabi sympathies complicated Falluja's relationship with Saddam's regime, which mainly repressed the Wahhabis, but also used them against Muslims in Kurdistan. Rahul Mahajan, publisher of an anti-American weblog titled "Empire Notes," admitted the Wahhabi connection to Falluja on April 7, politely denoting the fanatics by the camouflage term they prefer, "Salafis." Mahajan wrote, "Many inhabitants were Salafists (Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism), a group singled out for political persecution by Saddam." Wahhabis use "Salafi" the same way extreme leftists have used "progressive."

But where Wahhabis or Salafis go, Saudis are never far behind. Some Western scribes have noted the presence of Saudis among the foreign fighters in Falluja. At the beginning of April, as reported on the Saudi opposition website www.arabianews.com, the supreme mufti, or top religious leader of Saudi Arabia, Shaikh Abd al-Aziz bin Abd-Allah Aal ash-Shaikh, a descendant of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi cult, publicly called on the kingdom's Muslims to "send hundreds of fighters to participate in the ongoing battle in Falluja."