Portrait of an Iraqi rebel

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Portrait of an Iraqi rebel
He is a handball player. He hated life under Saddam. But now, as a foot
soldier in an enigmatic resistance movement, he wants the U.S. out of Iraq.
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By Ferry Biedermann, salon.com

Aug. 16, 2003  |  BAGHDAD, Iraq -- One night late last June, a muscular
young Iraqi dressed in a blue tracksuit lugged an RPG-7 rocket launcher
through a field near his birthplace of Fallujah. From his shoulder hung a
leather bag that he had tailored himself to carry two extra grenades. He
and his five comrades-in-arms reached the long, straight country road where
an American convoy was expected to pass later that night. They spread out,
prepared their ambush and settled into a long wait.

"I was anxious, I was worried about the outcome," recalls Walid (not his
real name) almost two months later in the safety of a cafeteria in a
Baghdad hotel. Though he'd done two years of service in Saddam Hussein's
army, this was to be his first time in combat and he felt ill prepared.
Only days before had he received training in the use of the
rocket-propelled grenade launcher, after having joined what he calls a
"resistance group" in the area around Fallujah. But he insists he was
unafraid: "If I die for my cause," he says, "that's good."

More than any other city in Iraq, Fallujah has become a byword for
resistance to the U.S. presence in the country. The city lies close to the
main road connecting the capital of Baghdad to Jordan. It is where the
first incidents took place, shortly after President Bush on May 1 declared
an end to combat. Since then, 59 American soldiers across the country have
died in attacks. Not far from Fallujah, Ramadi has become the bane of many
a traveler. That is where heavily armed gangs stop whole convoys of
foreigners and relieve them of their money and valuables.

Welcome to the so-called Sunni triangle, the area north and west of the
capital where Saddam Hussein and his Baath party were most firmly
entrenched. Running roughly from Baghdad on the southern tip to Ramadi in
the west and then north to the deposed dictator's hometown of Tikrit, this
is the region where most attacks on U.S. soldiers have taken place.
Southern Iraq, where the majority Shiite population lives and which is
partly controlled by British troops, has been quiet by comparison, although
the past week has seen a rise in tensions there as well.

Anger at power outages [!!!] and fuel shortages exploded into riots in the
southern port city of Basra and one Iraqi was killed when troops opened
fire. On Thursday, a British soldier was killed in an explosion that may
have been a revenge attack. But the security problems facing the south,
including in the U.S.-controlled holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala,
pale in comparison with the steady, seemingly coordinated and often deadly
attacks on U.S. troops in the center of the country. Many of the attacks
have been carried out by small bands of guerrilla fighters carrying RPGs;
in other cases, explosive devices have been placed on the roads where U.S.
convoys pass.

Walid is a tough-looking, compact little man with a stubble beard and the
universally short-cropped hair of young Iraqis. He has thick calluses on
his hands from playing handball and he says that he used to stub out
cigarettes on them. But he is not all bravura, and in many ways he does not
seem to conform to the picture that has emerged of the typical Iraqi
resistance fighter. He is no friend of Saddam or the Baath regime, he is
not a Muslim fundamentalist and as a student of English Literature at
Baghdad University, he is not anti-Western.

In fact, throughout the interview, Walid takes great pains to emphasize
that he is tolerant, a man of the world. "You see," he tells a reporter, "I
drink cola with you, even though my group has issued a call to boycott all
American products." His tale, however, is one of gradually increasing
opposition to the presence of U.S. soldiers in the countryside and finally,
of a decision to join the resistance. The account cannot be independently
verified, but a fellow student from Baghdad University confirms that Walid
told him about the same events at the time when they happened over the past
few months.

full: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/08/16/sunni/index.html

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