The Russia-based Iraqi Resistance Report website cites a story from the Iraqi newspaper Mafkarat al-Islam June 1 that US forces beseiging the central town of al-Ramadi are using restoration of water and other basic services as a bargaining chip to get the populace to turn over information on resistance fighters:

US offers to turn on water, electricity, to provide welfare if residents inform on Resistance fighters to US occupation forces.

US occupation forces announced on their propaganda radio beamed at local residents of ar-Ramadi that the US military would stop raiding houses and mosques, would open roads to local people and turn the electricity and drinking water supply in the city back on if local residents would cooperate by informing the American occupation troops of the locations and bases of Iraqi Resistance fighters operating in the city against the Americans.

The statement on the US radio said that the US would launch a program for employing unemployed youths and offer financial help for those wanting to get married on condition that the men and women of ar-Ramadi cooperate and inform the Americans on the Resistance fighters.

The correspondent for Mafkarat al-Islam reported that the Americans made the announcement more than six times by the time he filed his report (posted at 10:22am Mecca time Wednesday morning). The US propaganda station also jammed other local and international radio stations to force listeners in their cars or homes to hear their announcement.

The statement told residents that they could dial the special local telephone number 104 to contact the occupation troops — whom they called "the coalition forces" — to inform them of the whereabouts of Resistance fighters, whom it called "terrorists."

At the same time, however, the American propaganda radio warned that the people of ar-Ramadi would meet a fate similar to that of the residents of al-Fallujah together with all the destruction inflicted on their city during the US offensives there, if they failed to cooperate with the Americans.

See our last post on the ghastly Iraq situation, and the increasingly brutal occupation strategy.