By Sophie Shihab
Le MondeDecember 6, 2003
Four Iraqis and an American soldier were killed Friday December 5 by a bomb explosion during the passage of a military convoy through Baghdad. General Mark Kimmit, number two for American operations in Baghdad, acknowledged Friday that there had been a daily average of 19 attacks against coalition forces and two attacks against Iraqi security forces in the course of the week. After a month of November that had been the most deadly for the coalition (104 deaths) since the end of "major combat operations" announced by George Bush May 1st, Paul Bremer, the American Civil Administrator, predicted an increase in attacks from now until June 2004. Resistance to the country's occupation appears more and more many-sided. From our special envoy in Ramadi
Three rank and file fighters from the mysterious Iraqi resistance, who met with Le Monde Friday December 5th, draw a picture of their organization, their actions, and the support they have that more than confirms what we know of American fears on this account.
These youths from the Sunni Triangle (a region that comprises the area between Tikrit, Baquba and Ramadi) speak quite naturally of the help Al-Qaeda and the Lebanese Hezbollah deliver, even of help from a radical group of Iraqi Shi'ites lead by the radical young Imam, Moqtada Al-Sadr, a hypothesis evoked up until now only in certain catastrophic scenarios for Iraq. Even if nothing proves the reality of what they put forward, these men's vision of their movement, their leaders, and their objective-"drive out the Americans"- is itself important. All the more so as this image differs from the more nuanced one given by the intermediary who introduced the three guerillas: a former army officer who claims to have high level contacts within the resistance.
It was regular frequentation for a month of this former officer in his city of Ramadi – capital of the vast western province of Al-Anbar – that resulted in the meeting with the fighters, described as "authorized at a high level", a week earlier. They came at the stated hour, to a house in no way isolated in this city of 200,000 residents who are largely in agreement with the resistance, while the apparent organs of power–governorship, regional council, police- continue to function there under American supervision. GIs effect regular patrols in convoys, as well as search operations in houses, generally at night, from their bases at the entry to the city. "We can only stay an hour: there are spies everywhere. We know them all, but it's not yet the time to take care of them," explains by way of a preamble the one with the most martial bearing for all of his twenty-two years, the one who calls himself "Abou Khadra".
An Opposition Past
He's the only one to come in with his face covered by a cloth, which he rapidly unties. But he doesn't respond to the officer's subsequent comment, delivered lightly: "All the same, we can't work well while there are spies…" In fact, the resistance here also is already "taking care" of diverse "collaborators" and three of the principal leaders of the organs of power have barely escaped attacks.
By all the evidence the former officer, 35 years old, from the most powerful of the local tribes, the Doulaimi, and a well-known personage in the town, enjoys the respect and confidence of the three interviewees. The only one present during the interview, he didn't hesitate to intervene when the young men stumbled over political questions. "We are members of the Army of Mohammed who want to liberate the country. We have no political objectives; we're just Muslims," "Abou Khadra" hits out. Before, he did "business, in Jordan or anywhere", which is not surprising in this province which stretches all the way to Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and known to have lived from contraband during Saddam Hussein's time.
That had also been Abdallah's work. Twenty-seven years old, he insists on his opposition past. One of his brothers was found in a Saddam Hussein charnel house and he himself had been forbidden university studies, which is also not surprising in Ramadi, theatre of a severely repressed officers' revolt in 1994. The third fighter, surnamed "Al-Bahri", says he is a blacksmith. He's the one who, about two weeks after Saddam Hussein's fall, called together a group of friends to resist the occupation.
Initially eleven, they had just formed a third unit (fasila), called Al-Ghaylania, in the Army of Mohammed, which would include sixty of them. They refuse to say how many men are in their fasila, a word which, in Saddam Hussein's army, designated a 100 man unit. Pressed to give an order of magnitude, they said "500-1000", not without laughing at their own audacity…
It's the Diyala group, from the province that adjoins Baghdad from the north, who chose this name "Army of Mohammed" to designate what would form the "essence" of the resistance. The army would have been structured during a September meeting between representatives "who came from all over Iraq, but especially from the Sunni Triangle of Ramadi, Falluja, Samarra, Baquba". Asked about the National Front for the Liberation of Iraq (NFLI) described this week by an Iraqi from Samarra to l'Humanite's correspondent, they say "It's the same thing as Mohammed's Army. There are perhaps some different tendencies, but the objective is the same." ""Abou Khadra", moreover, conducted an operation here two days ago with people from Samarra", Abdallah clarifies.
Post-Saddam Ideology
All three challenge any link with the Baath and the idea that their resistance might be led by sleeper networks installed in advance by Saddam Hussein. The "resistance", they say, certainly developed when "officers, specialists, members by necessity of the party, little by little joined isolated groups," unifying and then enlarging their ranks all the way to Mosul in the north, Hosseiba and Al-Qa'im to the west. But they get very indignant at the rumors which suggest that "Saddam's money" makes them fight: "there are enough rich merchants here for that," says "Abou Khadra". "We don't take any money; we give ours," the blacksmith specifies. "There are even women who fight, like the mother with five sons who were all arrested ten days ago," he adds.
The officer, however, had stated to Le Monde that "certain leaders" are "directly financed by Saddam Hussein, even if everyone knows he's finished forever." And that "the resistance is actually directed by Baathists, but these affiliations of the past no longer pose any problems," at least not in the Al-Anbar province, where in the heart of almost every family both "obligatory" Baathists and Islamists could be counted. The latter subscribe to a new post-Saddam ideology specific to Sunni tribal regions, composed of fear before the American-Shiite alliance that breaks their historic domination and to which they see no other answer than armed resistance under the cover of religious nationalism, with the objective of bringing Washington to negotiate, which is already happening, according to the ex-officer.
He is less loquacious on the role of Al-Qaeda, the presence of which he does not, however, deny. Abdallah, asserts that "thirty of their members came shortly before Saddam's fall; now they are almost 150, organized separately, even if one or two may participate in our operations and then go elsewhere." But all three consider it "impossible" that Al-Qaeda be responsible for the attacks against the UN, the Red Cross, and the Baghdad police stations. "It's the work of those who want to divide Muslims, probably Americans or Israelis," they say. They finally assert that the Lebanese Hezbollah "helps the resistance with materiel ever since Baghdad's fall," as do even the "Iraqi Shiites from Moqtada -Al-Sadr-‘s movement, since a Baghdad meeting held eleven days before Ramadan." They won't say more about this fact which could, if confirmed, overwhelm the Iraqi landscape.
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