'Da*n the US and da*n the resistance'

[Joker]

'**** the US and **** the resistance'

Patrick Graham spent the past week travelling across Iraq, speaking to rebels, terrified civilians and bewildered US troops as the insurgency spread. Here is his compelling dispatch

Sunday April 11, 2004
The Observer

When we arrived at the bridge outside Falluja at noon on Friday, the Iraqi Red Crescent handed us an old white T-shirt, led us through the crowd and asked us to talk to the soldiers. The US Marines approached carefully, but soon opened the bridge. After a few hundred children and women crossed, crowds on both sides disappeared in less than a few minutes, leaving the soldiers alone.



'Where the ****'d they go? Hey you, where you going?' the sergeant asked as seven mortar rounds drop a few hundred yards on either side of the bridge. 'They're going to hit us - you watch.'

In the areas outside Falluja, the American army controls only what it can shoot. Everything else is up for grabs. In three days of travelling between Falluja and the nearby city of Ramadi, we saw more resistance fighters, often carrying several RPGs and heavy machineguns, than American soldiers. Few bothered to cover their faces.

On Thursday, a group of 40 fighters or so pulled us over. They were angry and aggressive, hunted by helicopters and US bombers.

The thought of being near them during an American attack was terrifying. A few minutes later, it came. The resistance sped off and we followed, passing a burning humvee and the wreckage of an SUV, leaving passports and flak jackets behind.

Last week's open rebellion in a large area around the encircled city of Falluja showed American propaganda to be just that.

For the past eight months, the American-led coalition has maintained that attacks against their forces were carried out by small numbers of disgruntled former regime supporters and foreign fighters.

But the first thing our Iraqi travelling companions yelled out when the insurgents forced guns into the car window was the name of their tribe, every sheikh they were related to and a genealogy going back generations. It was not an action that would have had much success with foreign fighters or Baathists.

The tribes that Saddam Hussein spent much of his dictatorship trying to crush have resurfaced, in a complex web of tribal fighters controlling the land around their farms. Paranoid after months of increasingly successful US intelligence work, all foreigners are considered spies.

Last month the Americans distributed leaflets in Falluja that showed a pair of eyes, with an Arabic inscription reminding the people of Falluja that they were being watched. They did not need to be told.

In the past week the area around Falluja has been turned inside out. The clandestine groups are now in charge. Our translator, who was briefly kidnapped by a resistance group outside the city, described being taken to a series of commanders working in a loose hierarchy.

When we drove from Baghdad to Ramadi on the back roads south of Falluja on Wednesday, the Americans appeared to have almost given up large areas of the countryside. At a small checkpoint near the edge of the desert, a group of eight or so marines looked bewildered.

'I've never seen anything like this,' said one. 'We told [our officers] to get us out of here. There were three mortar rounds on the first night and 12 last night. Every time we move, they are right on top of us - they are getting better.'

We asked if it was safe down the road and the marine just raised an eyebrow. A few hundred yards further on, at a small shop, we stopped to ask directions.

'Be careful,' the shopkeeper told an Iraqi journalist. 'The Americans have many checkpoints - hide your weapons.'

Outside Ramadi, the main highway was empty, save for small groups of cars that darted in during a lull in the shooting and occasional explosions. The Americans were claiming that the town was under control, but it didn't look that way. Heavy black smoke was billowing up from one part of the city and planes circled overhead. On one of the town's main squares, we saw an American patrol coming one way and resistance fighters spreading out down the alleys. A family opened their gate and let us inside.

We stayed for an hour, drinking tea and listening to the gunfire as resistance fighters ran up beside the house, shot and then disappeared.

The family said the fighting had started at 10.30 that morning - for the third day. A nearby house, they said, had been bombed.

After half an hour, we heard screaming from the next house. A bullet had gone into the house and killed Mohammed. He was 13. A woman came from the back of the house and began screaming: 'May God **** the resistance, may God **** the Americans.' The men of the house tried to calm her, but soon we were told to leave.

'We have children here - maybe the Americans will hit us or the resistance,' she began yelling. 'Why don't you leave - there are taxis outside.' There were indeed taxis, but the drivers of them were hiding inside with us.

As we left, she hesitated and asked us to stay and apologised. We left without even knowing their names. Outside the door, fresh drops of blood led to the open door of a minivan where the driver had been shot a few minutes before.

Once the fighting stops, it is hard to believe that the damage of the past week can be undone.

Perhaps the most surprising result of the fighting is the unlikely support of the poor Shias for the Sunnis. This has always been a difficult relationship for foreigners to understand. On the one hand, there is enormous distrust; on the other, they are fellow Muslims.

Before driving to Ramadi on Wednesday, we spent the night at the home of a Shia family in Sadr City. 'There is no difference between Falluja and Sadr City,' said Nassir Salman, a barber who was working late. 'They are fighting and we are fighting. Inshallah , there will be jihad. But we are jealous of Falluja. We are waiting for our leaders to declare jihad. Now, it is worse than Saddam. He killed secretly - but the Americans kill us on the streets.'

This appeared to be a common sentiment in Sadr City. At the home of our hosts, 20-year-old Abbas returned from Kufa, the stronghold of Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, where he had gone to defend his leader. As he sits down in the family's small room, explosions can be heard from a close neighbourhood.

'If the Americans arrest our Sayyid Muqtada, I will die for him,' says Abbas quietly.

The next morning, there was a funeral for a neighbour killed during the night, but our host is too scared to take us, for fear that the family will attack us.

At the hospital, several corpses lie under blankets in a car parking lot and the charred remains of a body are brought in on a stretcher.

A year ago it would have been hard for a foreigner to believe Sadr City and Falluja could make common cause against the Americans, but by Friday Shias and Sunnis were praying together and sending convoys of food and medication.

At the bridge outside Falluja, the marines tell us we are 'no go' and bar us from entering the town. As we drive back to Baghdad, men line the road handing out water, food and medicine to the refugees fleeing from Falluja. Boys direct traffic through a maze of country roads, indicating which roads are safe. Small groups of resistance fighters lounge in the ditches.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus...189837,00.html

[se0sea]

what a nightmare

[JohnRN]

Ehh, if the Sunni's and the Shi'a's are so willing to co-operate to kick out the coalition, maybe the 30th pull out date isn't such a bad idea?

[BrianK]

Shown on TV here were pictures of women & children in hospitals. Various wound dressings applied. This wasn't recently in Iraq it was when the earthquake hit Iran & 30,000 or more people died or were badly injured.

Death though could just as easily happen if I were fleeing town as to wait it out in my home. I view death as random. No guarantees at all about how, when & where your number is up. I'm happy not knowing.

Relating this to the reports coming out of Iraq I feel compassion for all those that have lost their lives. Placing value on human life is part of what makes me who I am. But I do not place myself as the person that decides that death during war is somehow worse than death by an act of nature or disease. That would mean that I devalued other lives or put those lives as less important.