"All Muslims are grateful for Bush"

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Anger and faith fuel Iraqi resistance
By David Filipov, Boston Globe Staff, 10/9/2003

RAMADI, Iraq -- A few hours after he mounted his latest raid on a US
military convoy, Mohamed sat serenely in the shade of date palms on the
manicured lawn outside a relative's farmhouse, a safe place in the most
dangerous region of Iraq, and explained his decision to wage war against
the Americans who occupy his country.

President Bush has attributed the daily attacks on US forces in Iraq to
"foreign terrorists" and "members of the old Saddam [Hussein] regime."
But Mohamed said he fights neither for Hussein's former Ba'ath Party nor
for the return of the ousted dictator.

Like many residents in this Sunni Muslim stronghold west of Baghdad,
Mohamed said the heavy-handed treatment of ordinary Iraqis by US forces
and the military's quickness to use lethal force have driven them to
fight back. Residents say hundreds of accidental shootings of innocent
civilians by US troops have turned people against the occupation they
initially welcomed.

Mohamed said he has come to believe in a simple principle that has
galvanized the resistance movement and spurred a resurgence of Islamic
piety and Iraqi nationalism: Iraqi Muslims -- not "foreign infidels" --
should be running their country.

"We don't need Saddam, and we don't need Americans," said Mohamed, who
spoke on the condition that only his last name be published. "We need a
Muslim to lead us to peace."

Mohamed's words, and those of more than 30 residents familiar with the
resistance fighters interviewed in the main towns west of Baghdad --
Ramadi and Fallujah -- belie the US stance that all resistance fighters
are entrenched former Ba'athists.

Mohamed's Sunni homeland in the fertile Euphrates valley is the front
line of postwar combat in Iraq. Crouching along the highway, small,
organized groups of rebels such as Mohamed's attack US troops daily,
firing rocket-propelled grenades and mortars and detonating
remote-controlled bombs as military vehicles pass.

In an interview arranged through elders of Mohamed's tribe, the burly
28-year-old father of two offered insights into the secret, ruthless
world of Iraq's anti-American resistance, which has killed 91 US troops
and wounded more than 730 since Bush declared an end to major combat on
May 1.

As a wanted man -- the coalition offers a $2,500 reward for information
on the guerrillas -- Mohamed was unwilling to be photographed. A US
military official confirmed the details of the attack Mohamed said he
carried out on the morning of the interview.

"At first when the Americans came, many people said: `Welcome. They are
our friends.' Then most Iraqis saw how Americans kill Iraqis, day after
day. They make more and more enemies here."

Accidental shootings by US troops have fed support for rebels and the
Sunni clerics who inspire them, like Sheik Yunis Abdalla, who was
imprisoned by Hussein's regime for his ardent criticism. Now he says the
American occupation is pushing Iraqis toward the kind of devotion to
Islam, and rejection of Western values, that he and other Muslim leaders
would like to see.

"For 10 years, I couldn't get the people to fight Saddam's government,"
Abdalla said in Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad. "Now in a few months
Bush has achieved what I couldn't in 10 years. All Muslims are grateful
for Bush."

full:
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2003/10/09/anger_and_faith_fuel_iraqi_resistance/

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