What's up, Fallujah, what's uuup???

On Sunday, for example, scores of masked mujahedeen, shouting "Allahu Akbar," or God is Great, paraded four men stripped down to their underpants atop the back of a pickup truck that drove through the city. Their bare backs were bleeding from 80 lashes they had received as punishment for selling alcohol. They were taken to a hospital where they were treated and released.

Residents said a man found intoxicated last week was flogged, held overnight and released the next day.

Fallujah's women hair stylists shut down their shops several months ago after repeated attacks blamed on Muslim militants.

On Tuesday, the mujahedeen expanded their "clean-up" campaign. About 80 masked, armed men, accompanied by local police, forced hundreds of street hawkers at gun point to clear out from the streets and confine their businesses to designated areas.

The masked men later moved to the city's used car market and "persuaded" dealers to move away from the city centre because they were blocking traffic. In both cases, the police stood by without intervening.

According to residents, barbers have been instructed not to give "western" haircuts - short on the back and sides and full on top - or to remove facial hair. Four youths with long hair were stopped at a market by mujahedeen Sunday and marched to a public market where they were shorn.

"Are we Muslims, or not?" asked Abdul-Rahman Mahmoud, a 40-year-old father of three. "We are. So, we must apply God's laws. The mujahedeen's word is heard and respected, and the same goes for our clerics."

There is little sign of opposition to the mujahedeen, though it could be that some people are simply afraid of confronting armed men.

Sheik Omar Said of the Fallujah branch of the Association of Muslim Scholars, a Baghdad-based organization created last year to defend the rights of the Sunni Arab minority, insists that nearly everyone in Fallujah really wants Islamic law.

Hmmm... so we invade Afghanistan, then we pull troops out of Afghanistan to send them to invade Iraq, then cities in Iraq end up looking like Afghanistan before we invaded it?