- The United States likes to think that all it confronts
in Iraq are a few die-hard Saddamists. But Paul McGeough meets a new guerilla
movement with growing popular support.
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- There's a knock on the door. Standing in the first-floor
corridor of the Al Safeer Hotel are two men - Ahmed, a weapons dealer and
group commander in the Iraqi resistance, and Haqi, one of his foot soldiers.
They enter and take a seat on the sofa, edgy but full of bravado after
what they claim was a successful strike against a US convoy in a rural
area north of Baghdad.
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- They had agreed, after weeks of negotiation through a
go-between, to talk about the resistance. Now they are here to recount
the detail of their most recent offensive against the US occupation forces
in Iraq.
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- Ahmed begins: "Yesterday we were told about the
new movement of convoys, so we used a special car to take our RPG [rocket-propelled
grenades] and guns up there. We struck at sunset, in an area surrounded
by farms.
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- "We positioned ourselves as locals, just standing
around. But as the convoy came into view we picked up the weapons which
we had lying on the ground. There were 19 soldiers. I could see their faces.
I fired three grenades - two at a truck and one at a Humvee. Then we escaped
across the fields to a car that was waiting for us. It took just a few
seconds because God makes it easy for us."
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- This is the third mission for Ahmed, a 32-year-old who
has inherited family wealth, including a factory and a farm, and the fourth
for Haqi, a 25-year-old Baghdad taxi-driver who defers to Ahmed as "my
instructor".
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- Their claim to success is in keeping with exaggerated
local accounts of the hundreds of hit-and-miss resistance attacks on the
US.
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- I checked. At Al Meshahda, near Tarmiya, which is 60
kilometres north of Baghdad, the road is scorched and gouged. Two local
farmers, brothers Muhammad and Ibrahim Al Mishadani, insist three US soldiers
died when the tail-end vehicles in a convoy were hit.
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- But the Americans reported no deaths from Tarmiya on
Tuesday.
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- The postwar US death toll in fighting in Iraq now stands
at 60, with almost 500 wounded. The conflict is showing all the early signs
of what could be a protracted guerilla war.
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- When he took up his commission in mid-July, the new US
military chief in Iraq, General John Abizaid, acknowledged the rapid development
of the resistance: "They're better co-ordinated now. They're less
amateurish and their ability to use improvised explosive devices combined
with tactical activity - say, for example, attacking [our] quick-reaction
forces - is more sophisticated."
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- Washington has been reluctant to accept that what is
happening in Iraq constitutes a guerilla war. It has repeatedly pinned
the blame for instability on Saddam Hussein and Baath Party loyalists;
and, particularly since last week's bombing of the Jordanian embassy in
Baghdad, on foreigners associated with the terrorist network al-Qaeda and
its offshoots.
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- So it fell to Abizaid to finally acknowledge the Americans
face a "classic guerilla-type campaign". But he, too, stuck to
the Washington script, insisting the critical threat to the Americans was
from "mid-level Baathists" and from an organisational and financial
structure that was, at best, localised.
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- The Pentagon, the US military and American analysts are
reluctant to acknowledge popular support for the Iraqi resistance. But
the chaos has tribal sheiks, Baghdad businessmen and many ordinary Iraqis
speaking in such harsh anti-American terms that it is hard not to conclude
there is a growing body of Palestinian or Belfast-style empathy with the
resistance.
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- If the accounts of the resistance given to the Herald
in interviews in the past 10 days are accurate, US intelligence is way
behind understanding that what is emerging in Iraq is a centrally controlled
movement, driven as much by nationalism as the mosque, a movement that
has left Saddam and the Baath Party behind and already is getting foreign
funds for its bid to drive out the US army.
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- The warm night air is so heavy that, when Ahmed exhales,
his cigarette smoke hangs just where he parks it. It is a week before the
attack, and we are in the garden at the comfortable home of one of his
relatives in a west Baghdad suburb.
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- Ahmed denies having served in Saddam's military or any
of the security agencies. He offers a peculiar account of how he avoided
military service: "I put lots of tea leaves in cold water and gulped
it down so that it filled my lungs. The tea showed up as spots in my lungs
and, after I paid the doctor some money, I was rejected on health grounds."
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- Asked why he has joined the resistance after going to
such lengths to avoid doing time for Saddam, Ahmed declares: "Saddam
was a loser. His wars were useless and he made enemies of our Muslim neighbours."
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- But this weapons dealer is uncomfortable talking war
in a family environment, so he makes a call on a satellite phone, organising
the use of a room in a nondescript hotel nearer to the city. Its ground-floor
windows and all but one of its doors are still bricked up to fend off looters.
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- Slightly more at ease, Ahmed sits in a formal armchair
at the hotel, the folds of his white dishdasha draped over the chair's
red brocade upholstery. Toying with his beard, he describes a Sunni resistance
that is a disciplined, religiously focused force. Asked where authority
rests, he says: "It's with the sheiks in the mosques. Baath Party
people and former members of the military are not allowed to be our leaders.
Baathists are losers; they didn't succeed when they worked for the party.
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- "We now have a single, jihadist leadership group
that operates nationally. Everything is done on instructions carried by
messengers. There are 35 men in my cell and I'm a leader of three other
cells. The number of foreigners who are coming to help us is increasing
- Syrian, Palestinian, Saudi and Qatari.
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- "US claims about al-Qaeda and Ansar al Islam are
just propaganda." But then he goes on: "We don't even ask the
fighters if they belong to these groups or to political parties."
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- Speaking through an interpreter, he continues in guttural
Arabic: "Our fighters are protecting our religion. We cannot allow
foreigners to occupy our country."
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- Then he repeats the argument in much of the anti-American
graffiti around Baghdad: "We suffered under Saddam and we hate him,
but we would put him in our hearts ahead of a Christian or a Jew, because
he is a Muslim."
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- This is a culture in which revenge is honourable, and
Ahmed vents his opinion freely: "The Americans do not respect us,
so we cannot respect them. They are a cancer of bad things: prostitution,
gambling and drugs."
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- Haqi: "This struggle is not about Saddam. It's about
our country and our God. Our aim is not to have power or to rule the country.
We just want the US out and for the word of Allah to be the power in Iraq."
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- THIS POCKET of the resistance calls itself the Army of
Right. Like others, including the Army of Mohammed and the White Flags,
it first came to notice in leaflets and graffiti around the fabled Abu
Hanifa mosque in Baghdad's Aadamiyah district.
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- Both Ahmed and Haqi refuse to give their real names or
any information about where they live. "Iraq is my home," Ahmed
says.
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- However, their chat is peppered with references to life
on the land and a tribal background. Ahmed tells stories of dropping explosives
into the Euphrates as a child to stun fish which he would then gather;
and of learning how to conceal weapons in his clothing from the sheep smugglers
who criss-cross the Jordan-Iraq border.
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- Estimates of how many resistance fighters are on call
run as high as 7000, but these two will not discuss numbers.
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- And just as Iraqi children are being coached to lie when
foreigners inquire about their parents or the whereabouts of their homes,
the families of resistance fighters deny their involvement in the war.
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- In a far-flung Baghdad suburb, dentist Amar Abbass insists
his "little brother" Ameer was armed only with his "student
papers and a calculator" when he was arrested six weeks ago. But neighbours
say the 20-year-old - now prisoner No. 10496 at the Baghdad Airport prison
- was carrying an RPG launcher when the Americans grabbed him from the
street.
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- Ahmed's first mission was an attack on a small US convoy
near Balad, in the Tikrit region, in June. Weeks later he was part of a
failed attempt to down an American helicopter at Mahmoudiya, 25 kilometres
south-east of the capital.
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- He adopts a worldly tone as he talks about the missions:
"First we watch the Americans to understand their movements. We know
from the way they shoot in every direction that they are afraid."
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- Usually the cells operate teams of four or five - two
to manage the rocket-propelled grenade launcher and two or three to provide
covering fire. In most cases the identity of each fighter is withheld from
the others.
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- Because the roots of Iraqi offence at the American presence
are to be found in their tribal culture as much as in the Koran, the resistance
fighters confidently rely on tribal networks for information on the Americans
and for help to get away in a hurry after an attack.
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- Ahmed says: "The people offer us hiding places when
we are in danger. They support us with words and blessings and sometimes
they hide our fighters in the boot of their cars to take them to safety."
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- Their approach is as effective as it is simple. Usually
they explode a landmine to halt an US convoy and to disorient the soldiers.
Then one group of resistance fighters opens fire from one side of the road,
drawing the attention of the Americans, while the men with an RPG take
aim from a position about 150 metres back from the other side of the road.
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- Many of the fighters draw on their experience in national
service under Saddam and they have acquired bomb-making and other manuals
from the disbanded Iraqi military. They have been having lethal success
with remote-controlled devices, including one that was floated down a river
on a palm log to explode under a bridge used by the US.
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- On the highway south of Tikrit later in the week, a US
soldier explains to me how a series of four IEDs - improvised explosive
devices - had been found on a track routinely used by his convoy. The explosives
were spaced at precise 25-metre intervals, the distance that separates
vehicles in the American convoys.
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- At one of our early meetings Ahmed is irritable. He has
just spent the day meeting colleagues to nut out a new problem: the Americans
have started jamming the radio frequencies the resistance uses to detonate
its bombs. He laughs when I ask if his group found a solution, but makes
it clear he is not going to answer.
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- The resistance missions are opportunity-driven. Local
fighters are assigned to keep up low-level attacks in their areas, maybe
three or four a week. Then new cells are dispatched to areas for ambushes
at a rate of three and four a day.
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- Ahmed claims his cells are responsible for the death
of at least a dozen Americans, but there is no way to confirm this.
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- He declares: "The Americans say they are still looking
for weapons of mass destruction. But they have found them. We are their
WMD!"
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- Resistance weapons are stashed around the country, hidden
in homes, buried in graveyards and concealed in the fringes of tall, reedy
grass that grows by rivers and irrigation canals.
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- The US makes regular announcements of success in its
efforts to block the attacks, like Operation Soda Mountain, in which, it
says, 128 raids in mid-July detained 971 Iraqis - 67 described as "former
regime leaders" - with the confiscation of 665 small weapons, 1356
rocket-propelled grenades, 300 155-mm artillery rounds, 4297 mortar rounds,
4.3 tonnes of C4 explosive and 563 hand grenades.
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- The figures are impressive. But they pale against the
reality that under Saddam there were estimated to be more than 5 million
AK-47s alone in the country - in a recent US-run amnesty, fewer than 100
were surrendered - and against the suggestion implicit in the figures that
much of the seized weapons are from unmanageable prewar stockpiles put
in place by Saddam's military which subsequently fell into the hands of
the resistance.
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- Haggling in the country's illegal arms bazaars, the resistance
never pays more than $US100 ($154) for an RPG launcher while hand grenades
sell for as little as $US2. In the days after the fall of Baghdad, AK-47s
could be bought for as little as $US3; today they cost about $US40.
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- Ahmed, whose illegal weapons business grew out of his
teenage hobby of restoring guns, says: "We thank God the gun stores
of the Iraqi army and the Baath Party were opened for us. But we get donations.
The other day a rich man gave us an expensive SUV which we will use for
carrying weapons or for observing the Americans - or we can sell it to
buy more weapons.
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- "But we also get weapons from outside Iraq. We allowed
some of the fighters to appear on the Arab TV channels because we knew
that would make wealthy Arabs send aid and encourage Arab mujahideen to
join us. It was a very intelligent and effective operation.
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- "They didn't just send money. They send fighters
and ammunition; and they give us good intelligence and ideas for dealing
with the Americans."
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- Ahmed and Haqi laugh as they describe the ease with which
they are able to move weapons around Baghdad and beyond.
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- Ahmed: "Once I passed through three American checkpoints
in a pick-up that was half-filled with explosives and weapons. They didn't
even look."
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- Haqi: "One night I was driving during the curfew
hours with a box of grenades in the car. The Americans stopped me and I
told them that my wife was in the hospital. 'Go, go,' they yelled without
searching the car. We thank God they are so stupid."
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- Despite thousands of Iraqi detentions, the Americans
are still hit by a dozen or more attacks a day.
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- US commanders are buoyed by their history. With the glaring
exception of Vietnam, they have always managed to best guerilla movements.
However, the outcome of America's 16 attempts at nation building is more
sobering. Germany, Japan, Panama and Grenada succeeded. But the seeds planted
in 11 others, including Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, were
overgrown by dictatorship, corruption and autocracy. Afghanistan remains
a cot case.
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- And, for now, the Americans' inability to deliver the
security, political and economic miracle implicit in the promised liberation
of Iraq is playing into the hands of the resistance. Public anger at the
US is morphing into popular support for the guerillas, creating the likelihood
of a descent into prolonged cycles of violence.
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- Few Iraqis are present when the Americans reopen a refurbished
school or hospital. But all are deeply aware that their "liberators"
live a world apart, in well-provisioned, little-America bunkers, and that
every time they come among the Iraqis they do so behind armour plating
and with guns at the ready.
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- Challenged about the chaos this week, US administrator
Paul Bremer urged his questioners to consider the new freedoms that Iraqis
have, before firing back: "The north is quiet and the south is quiet.
There is a small group of bitter-end people resisting the new Iraq. We'll
deal with them.They will be killed or they'll be captured."
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- Ahmed loves that kind of talk. Relishing the challenge
as he sits in the evening cool, beneath a date palm heavy with fruit, he
says: "Before the war I was a hunter; we'd shoot pigs. Now I can't
go hunting but the pigs are coming to me."
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- As a US surveillance helicopter flies high above us,
he instantly adopts the pose of firing an RPG. "Our country has been
occupied for only four months," he says, "this is just the beginning."
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- What seems clear is that the US has not begun to grasp
the depth of Iraqi resentment and continues to feed the anger, as I note
following my first meeting with Ahmed.
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- I have just returned to my Baghdad hotel, on Abu Nuwas
Street which runs along the east bank of the Tigris, when a US Humvee roars
past. Blaring from a block of six big speakers strapped to its rooftop
is John Mellencamp's 1980s American anthem Pink Houses: Ain't that America?
You and me! Ain't that America? Something to seeeee!
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- Copyright © 2003. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/15/1060936052309.html
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