Living in the Sunni Triangle

[Jobber of the Week 0]

First of a three parter:

 

 

Core of resistance

 

Perched on a rusty metal dock over the rapid green waters of the Euphrates River, Hamis al Fahdawi dragged on a cigarette and listened to the fighting in the distance.

Somewhere upstream, a heavy machine gun responded to the low thud of a mortar, a weapon of choice for Iraqi resistance fighters. Two U.S. helicopters swooped low over the palm trees on the other side of the mighty river, startling a flock of white egrets out of dusty riverside reeds.

 

"They must be shooting Americans," al Fahdawi said with satisfaction.

 

It is not that al Fahdawi, a retired army colonel-turned-fruit farmer, hates Americans. In fact, he said, "We like American people. If they come as guests, we will treat them as guests."

 

But al Fahdawi insists the Americans have come to kill his countrymen. Therefore, he says, "we have to kill them, too."

 

In this area of Iraq, Americans have been dying almost daily. Al Fahdawi's hometown of Fallujah and the surrounding villages and towns in the lush Euphrates valley west of Baghdad are the center of resistance to the U.S. occupation.

 

The area is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle, a volatile tribal heartland dominated by Iraq's Sunni minority, and home to between 15 and 20 percent of the country's population.

 

Most of the 88 American soldiers killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to "major combat," have died in the Sunni Triangle - "the most troubled area in Iraq," according to Lt. Col. George Krivo, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

 

Attacks more sophisticated

 

U.S. officials said last week that Iraqi fighters are mounting an average of 15 hit-and-run attacks daily against American troops.

 

And the sophistication of the attacks is growing. Krivo and others note, for example, that the rebels are increasingly using remote-controlled roadside bombs and devices known as "Willie Petes," mines stuffed with white phosphorus that burn through victims' bodies and cannot be put out by water.

 

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition forces, said on Thursday, "The enemy has evolved - a little bit more lethal, a little more complex, a little more sophisticated and, in some cases, a little bit more tenacious."

 

American authorities say the continuing attacks on U.S. forces are primarily the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists and hard-core Baath Party members - "members of the old Saddam regime who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows," President Bush said in a speech last month.

 

The Sunni Triangle formed the backbone of support for Hussein's rule. By overthrowing his Baath regime, the U.S.-led coalition has potentially undermined the long-standing political and economic dominance of the Sunni Muslim minority in Iraq. The U.S.-appointed 25-member Iraqi Governing council, for example, has 13 Shiites and only 10 Sunnis.

 

But Fallujah's police chief, Brig. Gen. Riyad Abbas al Karbuli, believes the threat goes beyond just former Baathists.

 

Citizens up in arms

 

U.S. military officials must realize that it is not a small group of holdovers from the Hussein government they are up against, said al Karbuli, but rather tens of thousands of Iraqis disgruntled with an occupation that has left scores of innocent civilians dead.

 

"It's true that the occupation changed the old regime," he added. "But if anyone occupied the United States by force, would you accept it? It is like a thorn. It keeps bothering you."

 

Interviews with local residents indicate that the opposition to the occupation is so widespread here that the U.S. troops may have already lost the battle for hearts and minds.

 

"Men and women will fight (the Americans)," said a Fallujah fisherman, Abu Imad. "None of us want to see them in our town."

 

Police and imams, students and construction workers interviewed for this story deny they are supporters of Hussein's fallen regime. They say their support for the resistance is a consequence of the Americans' often heavy- handed tactics, which have sometimes resulted in the death of innocent civilians. For some, opposition to the U.S. occupation is magnified by a militant interpretation of Islam and a factor that U.S. war planners may have badly underestimated - nationalist sentiment.

 

Sunni tribal and religious leaders deny that their opposition to the U.S. occupation is prompted by fear of losing their Hussein-era political privilege.

 

And they play down their religious differences with Iraq's Shiite majority. "We all read one Koran, we are all Muslims, we are all Iraqis," said Sheikh Yunnis Abdalla, an imam who had come to visit al Fahdawi from Baquba, a provincial capital 40 miles north of Baghdad.

 

Abdalla could hardly be described as a Baathist sympathizer. He was sentenced to death for draft dodging in 1989, during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran. He was later granted amnesty, but for more than a decade afterward Abdalla risked his life by urging Muslims to rise up against Hussein's rule, which he said was "un-Islamic."

 

'We will kill them here'

 

Now Abdalla has a new enemy. "Islam teaches us to fight wrong wherever you find it," he said. "So the people who fight against Americans have a right to do so."

 

"All our Muslims are so happy that the Americans are here because when they weren't here, it was difficult to travel to kill them," he said with a smirk. "Now we will kill them here. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to Iraq."

 

At a wedding party in Deshah, 60 miles west of Baghdad, as three dozen men jumped and line-danced to the traditional wailing of a kazoo as 200 other males looked on, Mohammed Turki, an elderly guest, said proudly, "During the day we fight against Americans. During the night we party like this."

 

Occupation authorities have been taken aback by such hostility and say they have tried to show good faith with local residents by helping them rebuild the country.

 

Charles Heatley, spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, says the Fallujah and Ramadi areas have been provided with $4.5 million since the end of the war to finance various reconstruction projects. Iraqi contractors have repaired and equipped 1,140 schools, as well as train stations, hospitals, police stations, water treatment facilities, a television tower and a soccer stadium.

 

Confusing checkpoints?

 

At the same time, American military checkpoints pop up unannounced in towns and on highways, blocking crucial roads. Devoid of any warning signs, the checkpoints - often nothing more than a couple of U.S. soldiers standing on a rooftop or an armored Bradley vehicle parked under a road bridge - are sometimes hard to notice. But the troops nonetheless shoot at any car that fails to stop, sometimes killing innocent civilians.

 

Residents say that when the troops come under attack from resistance fighters, they respond by firing back indiscriminately, frequently causing more civilian deaths. U.S. military officials acknowledge they often kill or wound civilians by mistake during raids in search of guerrillas.

 

Afraid of being caught in the cross fire, area residents have learned to stay away from American soldiers wherever they see them. On a wall along Highway 10 from Fallujah to Ramadi, a hand-painted sign informs the locals: "We are warning you for the last time: Don't drive close to convoys. They will be attacked."

 

Iraq's 'Road of Death'

 

Iraqis call Highway 10 the Road of Death because of the frequent insurgent attacks against U.S. convoys; American soldiers call it Ambush Alley.

 

"If I see Americans, I turn around 180 degrees and walk away," said Mohammed, a 19-year-old youth fishing for bream from a rusted water pump on the Euphrates that supplies water to Fallujah's water purification plant.

 

Over the light green current, Mohammed and four other fishermen talked about the occupation in the chopped, monosyllabic language of rough-hewn men, as three small fish floated in a plastic bag they had tied to the dock, half- submerged in the river.

 

"This is our country. Their country is America," Mohammed said.

 

Another boy, Mahmud, chimed in: "Before the war we had security. Now we have thieves, looters and killers. This is what America brought."

 

After a brief discussion, the boys decided that the only thing to be done with American soldiers was to kill them. Asked how he was going to accomplish this, Mahmud's 10-year-old brother Abdullah spoke up: "We have RPGs (rocket- propelled grenades). It's not a problem to get them."

 

Al Fahdawi, his white traditional dishdasha shirt rippling in the slight wind, smiled at the bravado. He finished his cigarette and tossed the BUTT in the river, then smoothed his gray beard with a long-fingered hand. Somewhere upstream a machine gun dueled with an assault rifle.

 

"Every time an American soldier is killed we are very happy," he said. "It's their fault they came to our country and attacked us."

 

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../05/MN86744.DTL

[Guest Cerebus]

And they play down their religious differences with Iraq's Shiite majority. "We all read one Koran, we are all Muslims, we are all Iraqis," said Sheikh Yunnis Abdalla, an imam who had come to visit al Fahdawi from Baquba, a provincial capital 40 miles north of Baghdad.

 

Bullshit, tell the Shiites in the South or the Kurds in the northern Iraq (or hell the ones in Syria, Turkey, and Iran) that and they'll laugh in your face.

[Vern Gagne 0]

First of a three parter:

 

 

Core of resistance

 

Perched on a rusty metal dock over the rapid green waters of the Euphrates River, Hamis al Fahdawi dragged on a cigarette and listened to the fighting in the distance.

Somewhere upstream, a heavy machine gun responded to the low thud of a mortar, a weapon of choice for Iraqi resistance fighters. Two U.S. helicopters swooped low over the palm trees on the other side of the mighty river, startling a flock of white egrets out of dusty riverside reeds.

 

"They must be shooting Americans," al Fahdawi said with satisfaction.

 

It is not that al Fahdawi, a retired army colonel-turned-fruit farmer, hates Americans. In fact, he said, "We like American people. If they come as guests, we will treat them as guests."

 

But al Fahdawi insists the Americans have come to kill his countrymen. Therefore, he says, "we have to kill them, too."

 

In this area of Iraq, Americans have been dying almost daily. Al Fahdawi's hometown of Fallujah and the surrounding villages and towns in the lush Euphrates valley west of Baghdad are the center of resistance to the U.S. occupation.

 

The area is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle, a volatile tribal heartland dominated by Iraq's Sunni minority, and home to between 15 and 20 percent of the country's population.

 

Most of the 88 American soldiers killed by hostile fire since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to "major combat," have died in the Sunni Triangle - "the most troubled area in Iraq," according to Lt. Col. George Krivo, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

 

Attacks more sophisticated

 

U.S. officials said last week that Iraqi fighters are mounting an average of 15 hit-and-run attacks daily against American troops.

 

And the sophistication of the attacks is growing. Krivo and others note, for example, that the rebels are increasingly using remote-controlled roadside bombs and devices known as "Willie Petes," mines stuffed with white phosphorus that burn through victims' bodies and cannot be put out by water.

 

Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of coalition forces, said on Thursday, "The enemy has evolved - a little bit more lethal, a little more complex, a little more sophisticated and, in some cases, a little bit more tenacious."

 

American authorities say the continuing attacks on U.S. forces are primarily the work of Saddam Hussein loyalists and hard-core Baath Party members - "members of the old Saddam regime who fled the battlefield and now fight in the shadows," President Bush said in a speech last month.

 

The Sunni Triangle formed the backbone of support for Hussein's rule. By overthrowing his Baath regime, the U.S.-led coalition has potentially undermined the long-standing political and economic dominance of the Sunni Muslim minority in Iraq. The U.S.-appointed 25-member Iraqi Governing council, for example, has 13 Shiites and only 10 Sunnis.

 

But Fallujah's police chief, Brig. Gen. Riyad Abbas al Karbuli, believes the threat goes beyond just former Baathists.

 

Citizens up in arms

 

U.S. military officials must realize that it is not a small group of holdovers from the Hussein government they are up against, said al Karbuli, but rather tens of thousands of Iraqis disgruntled with an occupation that has left scores of innocent civilians dead.

 

"It's true that the occupation changed the old regime," he added. "But if anyone occupied the United States by force, would you accept it? It is like a thorn. It keeps bothering you."

 

Interviews with local residents indicate that the opposition to the occupation is so widespread here that the U.S. troops may have already lost the battle for hearts and minds.

 

"Men and women will fight (the Americans)," said a Fallujah fisherman, Abu Imad. "None of us want to see them in our town."

 

Police and imams, students and construction workers interviewed for this story deny they are supporters of Hussein's fallen regime. They say their support for the resistance is a consequence of the Americans' often heavy- handed tactics, which have sometimes resulted in the death of innocent civilians. For some, opposition to the U.S. occupation is magnified by a militant interpretation of Islam and a factor that U.S. war planners may have badly underestimated - nationalist sentiment.

 

Sunni tribal and religious leaders deny that their opposition to the U.S. occupation is prompted by fear of losing their Hussein-era political privilege.

 

And they play down their religious differences with Iraq's Shiite majority. "We all read one Koran, we are all Muslims, we are all Iraqis," said Sheikh Yunnis Abdalla, an imam who had come to visit al Fahdawi from Baquba, a provincial capital 40 miles north of Baghdad.

 

Abdalla could hardly be described as a Baathist sympathizer. He was sentenced to death for draft dodging in 1989, during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran. He was later granted amnesty, but for more than a decade afterward Abdalla risked his life by urging Muslims to rise up against Hussein's rule, which he said was "un-Islamic."

 

'We will kill them here'

 

Now Abdalla has a new enemy. "Islam teaches us to fight wrong wherever you find it," he said. "So the people who fight against Americans have a right to do so."

 

"All our Muslims are so happy that the Americans are here because when they weren't here, it was difficult to travel to kill them," he said with a smirk. "Now we will kill them here. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to Iraq."

 

At a wedding party in Deshah, 60 miles west of Baghdad, as three dozen men jumped and line-danced to the traditional wailing of a kazoo as 200 other males looked on, Mohammed Turki, an elderly guest, said proudly, "During the day we fight against Americans. During the night we party like this."

 

Occupation authorities have been taken aback by such hostility and say they have tried to show good faith with local residents by helping them rebuild the country.

 

Charles Heatley, spokesman for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, says the Fallujah and Ramadi areas have been provided with $4.5 million since the end of the war to finance various reconstruction projects. Iraqi contractors have repaired and equipped 1,140 schools, as well as train stations, hospitals, police stations, water treatment facilities, a television tower and a soccer stadium.

 

Confusing checkpoints?

 

At the same time, American military checkpoints pop up unannounced in towns and on highways, blocking crucial roads. Devoid of any warning signs, the checkpoints - often nothing more than a couple of U.S. soldiers standing on a rooftop or an armored Bradley vehicle parked under a road bridge - are sometimes hard to notice. But the troops nonetheless shoot at any car that fails to stop, sometimes killing innocent civilians.

 

Residents say that when the troops come under attack from resistance fighters, they respond by firing back indiscriminately, frequently causing more civilian deaths. U.S. military officials acknowledge they often kill or wound civilians by mistake during raids in search of guerrillas.

 

Afraid of being caught in the cross fire, area residents have learned to stay away from American soldiers wherever they see them. On a wall along Highway 10 from Fallujah to Ramadi, a hand-painted sign informs the locals: "We are warning you for the last time: Don't drive close to convoys. They will be attacked."

 

Iraq's 'Road of Death'

 

Iraqis call Highway 10 the Road of Death because of the frequent insurgent attacks against U.S. convoys; American soldiers call it Ambush Alley.

 

"If I see Americans, I turn around 180 degrees and walk away," said Mohammed, a 19-year-old youth fishing for bream from a rusted water pump on the Euphrates that supplies water to Fallujah's water purification plant.

 

Over the light green current, Mohammed and four other fishermen talked about the occupation in the chopped, monosyllabic language of rough-hewn men, as three small fish floated in a plastic bag they had tied to the dock, half- submerged in the river.

 

"This is our country. Their country is America," Mohammed said.

 

Another boy, Mahmud, chimed in: "Before the war we had security. Now we have thieves, looters and killers. This is what America brought."

 

After a brief discussion, the boys decided that the only thing to be done with American soldiers was to kill them. Asked how he was going to accomplish this, Mahmud's 10-year-old brother Abdullah spoke up: "We have RPGs (rocket- propelled grenades). It's not a problem to get them."

 

Al Fahdawi, his white traditional dishdasha shirt rippling in the slight wind, smiled at the bravado. He finished his cigarette and tossed the BUTT in the river, then smoothed his gray beard with a long-fingered hand. Somewhere upstream a machine gun dueled with an assault rifle.

 

"Every time an American soldier is killed we are very happy," he said. "It's their fault they came to our country and attacked us."

 

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../05/MN86744.DTL

The more sophisticated attacks are the result of foreign terrorist coming into the country. These so called normal Iraqi's are nothing more than terrorists. Their doing nothing but hurt their countries process into a Democratic gov't. As unfortunate has it is, having these terrorist come out and attack US forces gives the miltiary a better chance to fight these terrorist, and in the long run makes Iraq safer.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Part Two:

Iraqi raids fostering fresh enemies

Once-supportive, critical villagers now openly anti-American

 

Fallujah, Iraq -- Five months after President Bush declared the end of "major combat" in Iraq, the war may indeed be over for most of the country.

 

But not for Sheikh Mishkhen al Jumaili. Last month, American troops killed nine of his relatives, including his son, in the span of just four days.

 

"They mean to kill as many Iraqis as possible," said al Jumaili, weeping silently as his younger relatives quietly lowered Beijiya's coffin into the parched yellow cemetery ground.

 

Bowing slightly over the red velvet cloth that draped the coffin of his cousin Beijiya, al Jumaili said a solemn prayer and wiped his eyes. Then he turned his back and stepped away, unable to watch yet another member of his extended family vanish under heavy chunks of dry clay.

 

That morning, al Jumaili, an elderly man clad in a long white dishdasha robe, had already buried Beijiya's daughter Amal and son-in-law Zamil, and their 1-year-old son, Heidar.

 

All were killed the night before, Sept. 26, driving toward Baghdad when American soldiers opened fire at Beijiya's car after it failed to stop at a temporary checkpoint that was preceded by no warning signs.

 

Two days earlier, he had buried two cousins, Abdul Nasir and Abdul Khadi, apparently caught in the cross fire when U.S. troops shot at suspected resistance fighters. Their bodies rested a few yards away from Beijiya's grave, in two identical tombs draped with Iraqi flags and marked with palm fronds.

 

The day before that, an early morning U.S. aerial attack on a farmhouse in the village of al Sajr, near Fallujah, killed al Jumaili's sleeping son, Ali, his nephew, Salem, and Salem's son, Saadi. Locals said American officials apologized for the attack, saying it was a mistake.

 

"Lately they killed too many al Jumaili in Fallujah," said al Jumaili. "All the tribes are suffering. This is murder."

 

 

EROSION OF TRUST

A tribal leader himself, al Jumaili sits on the 22-seat City Council in the town of Ramadi, 60 miles west of Baghdad. He is the kind of influential Iraqi the U.S. occupation authorities need as an ally if Washington's dreams of a stable, functioning country are to be realized. Instead, al Jumaili has become one of America's growing number of enemies, especially in this volatile region known as the Sunni triangle.

 

A potential hotbed of resistance from the start -- former dictator Saddam Hussein enjoyed most of his support in this part of Iraq -- the postwar death toll among local civilians has eroded whatever trust local people had for the U.S. troops that overthrew Hussein's regime. Important members of the community, like al Jumaili, went from being supportive of the U.S.-led alliance to being openly anti-American.

 

The killings of civilians, said Brig. Gen. Riyad Abbas al Karbuli, Fallujah's police chief, "destroyed everything we had built before, the trust between people and the American force."

 

American officials say the price being paid by ordinary Iraqis, while unfortunate, is simply unavoidable collateral damage. They say their forces are responding to hit-and-run attacks by guerrilla fighters who stage an average of at least 15 assaults daily on U.S. troops in the Sunni triangle.

 

"Troops of every level engage in what is called 'proportional response,' " said Lt. Col. George Krivo, U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "For example, it's most likely inappropriate to bring an air raid to an urban area where you have one sniper. But we always defer to the judgment of the commander on the ground."

 

American soldiers interviewed for this story said they do not hesitate to return fire when they are attacked.

 

"When they're shooting at you, you shoot right back," said Christopher Hollis, a soldier from the Army's 1st Infantry Division at a temporary checkpoint under a road bridge in Fallujah.

 

"We get real uptight real quick," said a sergeant, who refused to give his name, manning the turret gun of a Bradley armored vehicle at the checkpoint.

 

But Iraqis living in this region of rich and influential tribes -- largely spared the repression of Hussein's government because it sought to win their loyalty -- are outraged by the scale of the U.S. shootings. They say hundreds of innocents have been killed since Hussein was deposed.

 

That claim cannot be corroborated because no one is counting. Lt. Kate Noble, a spokeswoman for alliance troops, said soldiers who are engaged by guerrillas almost never stop afterward to see if they have accidentally killed any civilians.

 

"Wherever something happens we respond. . . . We don't keep an estimate of civilian casualties," Noble said. "There may be twice as many (as first appears), or there may be none."

 

Al Karbuli, the Fallujah police chief, also offers no estimate of victims, except to say that there are "too many."

 

'THEY SHOOT 360 DEGREES'

 

"Many people are not guilty. Bad luck brought them near the Americans when they start shooting," said al Karbuli, who lost eight of his officers in a Sept. 12 accident when U.S. soldiers mistakenly opened fire at Iraqi police on a highway. "Any small accident that happens to the Americans, they shoot 360 degrees around them."

 

Now, a large black banner with the names of the slain police officers adorns the gate of the city's main police precinct, and police officers speak scornfully about the U.S. soldiers with whom they are supposed to cooperate.

 

"At first, the Americans were very helpful. Now, they are committing a crime," said al Karbuli.

 

Stories about what the Iraqis regard as American atrocities spread from household to household within hours in this tightly woven tribal society, sowing fear and anger at the occupiers.

 

In Deshah, a tranquil farming village on the outskirts of Ramadi, about 10 miles west of Fallujah, relatives of Shaker Mahmud al Fahdawi are still coming to grips with the July incident that killed one family member and left two missing.

 

According to their accounts, it was 3:30 in the morning when a terrible blast shook al Fahdawi's low stucco house, jolting his sleeping family out of their beds. One by one, they ran out of their dark rooms into the walled-in patio to see what had happened.

 

Two American helicopters roared overhead, shining blinding spotlights at the small compound, family members recalled. A giant hole gaped in the green metal door of the patio where U.S. troops had blown it up. Standing in the doorway, several American soldiers trained their guns at the disoriented people inside and opened fire.

 

 

One by one, the wounded fell: first Shaker, then his wife, Talha, then his two daughters, Sheima, 23, and Ala, 9. When Shaker's son, Natik, 24, appeared in the doorway of his room, the Americans shot him in the stomach, Sheima said.

 

"My brother Sadik tried to stop them," she recalled. "He said, 'Don't touch my sisters.' They handcuffed him, put him on the ground and put a foot on his head. They handcuffed me and two of them trained their guns at my head."

 

Yasir Juma, one of Shaker's sons, said: "When they searched our house they found no rocket-propelled grenade launchers, no guns. But we think they decided we were resistance fighters."

 

Sheima said the soldiers took her, Natik and her parents to a military base, then put her and Talha on a helicopter bound for a hospital. There, Talha, wounded in her chest and legs, died. The coroner's report states the cause of death as "right heart failure."

 

No one knows where Shaker and Natik are, but Shaker's brother, Ali, fears they are dead.

 

 

'I FEEL SO MUCH PAIN'

The U.S. military press office in Baghdad says it has no knowledge of the incident or of the fate of the father and son.

 

Ali said it was yet another case of mistaken identity.

 

"An American officer told me that Shaker was an electrical engineer who makes remote-controlled bombs resistance fighters use to blow up American soldiers," he said. "I told him that was impossible. Shaker was a farmer who had finished three classes in elementary school."

 

The officer apologized, Ali said, but that is cold comfort. Dabbing his eyes with the backs of his hands, he added, "I feel so much pain. These foreigners . . . don't respect us.

 

"I am like a child, I can't do anything to find out about my brother and his son. If they are dead, they should respect the dead and return them to us."

 

Carefully, the men passed around the few pictures of Shaker, Natik and Talha found in the humble farmhouse -- a small photograph of Natik, smiling at the camera with his friends; a black-and-white portrait of Shaker and Talha from long ago; a blurry copy of a photograph of Talha's dead face from the coroner's report, which rested in a pink manila folder.

 

In the patio, Sheima went through her own memories of her parents and her brother. Pointing at different parts of the concrete floor, she recalled where each of them lay when American soldiers shot them, puddles of their blood glistening black in the eerie shine of helicopter spotlights. Then she broke down in tears.

 

"Leysh?" she said, in Arabic. "Why?"

 

Everyone in the patio went quiet as Sheima cried silently.

 

Slowly, Ali shook his head, contemplating his feelings toward the American soldiers.

 

"It's possible to forgive them if they tell us about our relatives," Ali said.

 

His cousin, Hamid Abdullah, interrupted. "It's impossible to forgive them."

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...06/MN310013.DTL

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Bitter Iraqi vents anger by killing U.S. troops

Out-of-work father protests occupation

 

Deshah, Iraq -- Last of three parts.

 

Every day, he tries to kill American soldiers.

 

Sometimes, from a hideout in the rattling reeds and bulrushes of the fertile Euphrates valley, 28-year-old Mohammed and a small group of fellow guerrilla fighters launch rocket-propelled grenades at passing American vehicles. Other days, they hide in the shadowy grid of dusty date-palm forests, firing mortars at improvised U.S. checkpoints.

 

On the day of this interview, Mohammed, who did not give his real name, said he and his friends had fired RPGs at a convoy of two U.S. Bradley vehicles on Highway 10 outside the town of Habbaniyah, about 30 miles west of Baghdad.

 

"We saw their vehicles burning. We think we killed some of them," Mohammed said matter-of-factly as he sat in a white Formica chair in a friend's fragrant periwinkle garden in Deshah, a village on the outskirts of the volatile city of Ramadi, some 60 miles west of the capital.

 

Mohammed's damage assessment was a bit off. Lt. Kate Noble, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led coalition force in Baghdad, confirmed an attack that day on a convoy of 82nd Airborne Division vehicles along Highway 10, known to American soldiers as "Ambush Alley." But she said that only one American soldier had been wounded.

 

 

DANGER PRESENT AND GROWING

But for the Americans, the danger is ever present and growing, as more and more Mohammeds decide that they are willing to give up their lives if necessary to protest the takeover of their country.

 

The restive valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates have for months been the staging grounds of relentless guerrilla warfare against the U.S. occupation. Every day, rebels stage an average of 15 attacks on coalition troops -- lobbing mortars at the soldiers, firing from semiautomatic rifles, machine guns and RPG launchers, and blowing them up with remote-controlled explosive devises, said Lt. Col. George Krivo, a U.S. military spokesman.

 

Contrary to assertions by American officials, including President Bush, Mohammed said neither he nor the rebels he operates with were either foreign militants or supporters of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein. He said he wanted to kill American soldiers simply because "they occupied our country."

 

"They are Satan," he said. "They became our enemy."

 

 

TIGHTLY KNIT TRIBAL FAMILIES

Frustration and anger with the occupation runs deep in this part of the so- called Sunni Triangle, a part of Iraq west and north of Baghdad where most of the country's Sunni Muslim minority reside in large, tightly knit tribal families.

 

In stuffy roadside cafes, in smoky living rooms, at funerals and weddings, ordinary Iraqis mull over the fate of their country and extol the resistance fighters, whom they refer to as mujahedin, or holy warriors.

 

For Mohammed, the turning point came when American soldiers killed 15 Iraqi demonstrators in Fallujah in April, two weeks after Hussein's regime fell.

 

 

'KILLING OUR RELATIVES'

"We didn't start fighting against Americans until they started fighting against our people," Mohammed said. "First we were so happy because we thought they would get rid of Saddam and leave immediately.

 

"Then they showed their real face. They started killing our relatives and friends and our brothers, and of course we had to start to give it back. We started after the demonstration."

 

Every man and woman interviewed for this story said they knew of or were related to someone who had been killed or wounded by U.S. soldiers during raids in the area.

 

Mohammed said he is a member of a clandestine group of several fighters who use weapons they looted right after the war from abandoned military bases "just in case" they were needed.

 

A man who had manned a mortar during his mandatory service in the Iraqi army helps Mohammed and other guerrillas aim their weapons, he said.

 

His group has no name, he said. It does not communicate with other guerrilla groups, of which, Mohammed believes, there are many. It does not accept any new members out of fear of "American spies" -- Iraqi informers who might report rebel activity to U.S. troops. Coalition forces promise a $2,500 bounty for any information leading to arrests of rebels who had attacked coalition fighters.

 

 

NO LOSSES SO FAR

So far, he says, Mohammed's group has taken no losses, and no one has been arrested. They attack American soldiers wherever they can, often having to wait for hours for the troops to show up.

 

"We have no intelligence, just patience," he said. "When we find them at a checkpoint, we shoot."

 

Krivo said the structure of the resistance movement Mohammed described matched the information he had.

 

"There are no large-scale conventional organizations," he said. "Attackers work in individual groups of one to three attackers, usually no more than that. "

 

When he is not fighting, Mohammed helps his wife raise their two children, aged 2 and 3, and looks for work. Before the war, he was a construction worker, but now, he says, jobs are scarce.

 

Mohammed does not know how many Americans he has killed, because checking for casualties right after an attack is too risky. "When we attack, they start shooting like blind people, in all directions," he said.

 

That often means more Iraqi civilian deaths, but Mohammed said he was willing to sacrifice a few of his compatriots for the cause.

 

"This is also psychological, because then the Americans make enemies," Mohammed said. "People will not like them again."

 

Wearing a white long dishdasha shirt and a pair of ripped rubber flip-flops,

 

Mohammed could have been just another Iraqi man drinking orange soda. He looked around at the beautiful country he wants to make his own again. In the afternoon sun, mourning doves perched daintily on palm trees heavy with sweet dates. Two cows brushed their way through a small cornfield. An egret flew toward the Euphrates.

 

Then, Mohammed looked at his watch.

 

"I have an appointment," he said, rising to his feet and walking away.

 

Half an hour later, a thump of mortar fire sounded from Highway 10, a mile away.

 

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...10/07/MN953.DTL

 

 

Countdown to someone taking the phrase "We have no intelligence" out of context in 5....4....

[Firestarter 0]

I Was Wrong by Ken Joseph Jr, an Assyrian minister who, from Japan, agitated against the war until he went to Iraq himself. Pre-war, but enlightening and moving, despite the less than perfect English.

 

"We are not afraid of the American bombing. They will bomb carefully and not purposely target the people. What we are afraid of is Saddam Hussein and what he and the Baath Party will do when the war begins. But even then we want the war. It is the only way to escape our hell. Please tell them to hurry. We have been through war so many times, but this time it will give us hope."

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Oh, I'm sure there were many that were looking forward to this. The rebellion that got so close and yet so far last time proved it.

 

I don't take what everyone in these articles said as the gospel truth, but there does seem to be one theme in their interviews, and it is a concern that troops are not looking out enough for innocents.

 

This is much like watching news on TV. CNN and FNC show you young men firing machineguns and armed troops huddled down, while the shows that give us glimpses of what the rest of the world is seeing shows us mostly streets smeared in blood and Muslims screaming at one another and crying, etc.

 

Neither side is everything that's happening in this war, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

[Guest MikeSC]

Oh, I'm sure there were many that were looking forward to this. The rebellion that got so close and yet so far last time proved it.

 

I don't take what everyone in these articles said as the gospel truth, but there does seem to be one theme in their interviews, and it is a concern that troops are not looking out enough for innocents.

 

This is much like watching news on TV. CNN and FNC show you young men firing machineguns and armed troops huddled down, while the shows that give us glimpses of what the rest of the world is seeing shows us mostly streets smeared in blood and Muslims screaming at one another and crying, etc.

 

Neither side is everything that's happening in this war, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The interviews you quoted were basically from the same source over and over. People whose only goal is to make it look like all of Iraq wants U.S soldiers dead (which is CLEARLY not the case) and wish to see American resolve dissipate (which is quite possible).

 

The "other" side is considerably more in the wrong than us here. They are inventing a story (much like they did with the Jenin "massacre") where all of these "innocents" are dying when it just is not the case. They wish to portray Iraq as vehemently anti-U.S when it is not. They are creating a story to feed the anti-U.S sentiment that many in the world hold and will do anything to foster the image that this mission, which has been a success overall, is an unmitigated failure.

 

I will trust our word over anybody else's. God knows our government is spectacularly incapable of actually NOT smearing people, so there is not much of a chance of "massacres" being hidden for many, many years.

-=Mike

...Heck, how long did My Lai stay a "secret"? And we, in the end, did admit to it with NO international pressure to do so.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

They are inventing a story (much like they did with the Jenin "massacre") where all of these "innocents" are dying when it just is not the case.

How are you sure of that!? Even the US people they talked to admit that they don't inspect for civilian casualties, probably because they don't have the time. You have no evidence that they AREN'T accidentally killing civilians more than you know (and we know that these accidents happen at least sometimes. The incident involving the police officers appeared on national news over here)

 

And no, not everybody loves us. Here, a taste of things on our side:

 

To shoot or not to shoot?

 

Suddenly, it was a life or death decision Private Christopher Hollis had to make. Someone had just fired at his 1st Infantry Division checkpoint under an overpass on Highway 10, and now, crouching behind a guardrail, Hollis was scanning some rickety roadside soda stands 200 yards away for the sniper through the scope of his M-16 rifle.

 

He could fire back at the dusty desert, risking the lives of the Iraqi children who had scattered from the kiosks as soon as they heard the shot. Or, he could not respond, risking his life and the lives of the dozen other U.S. soldiers at the checkpoint.

 

This is a call GIs in Iraq have to make every day. With Iraqi guerrillas mounting between 10 and 20 hit-and-run attacks on U.S. troops daily, U.S. soldiers admit that the pressure of constantly being a target has made them jumpy.

 

The only way to respond, they say, is by following new, merciless rules of engagement stated one night last week by Lt. Peter Katzfey in front of 299 Engineer Battalion soldiers preparing for a night patrol in Tikrit:

 

"Shoot to kill. No questions asked."

 

Major Robert Isabella, a public affairs officer of the Fourth Infantry Division based in Tikrit, elaborated. "This is war. Someone shoots from a window, we're gonna put 100 rounds in it. Somebody runs a checkpoint, we're gonna fire on that vehicle."

 

Since May 1, when President Bush declared an end to "major combat," 95 U.S. soldiers have died in hostile fire. Most of them were attacked in Baghdad, near Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, or here on Highway 10, about 30 miles west of the capital.

 

U.S. authorities insist they have little choice but to respond, in self- defense. But Iraqi critics and some Western human rights organizations say dozens of innocent bystanders are getting killed in cross fire or as a result of mistaken raids by overaggressive U.S. troops.

 

"As attacks against them continue, U.S. soldiers are sometimes resorting to deadly force in a reckless and indiscriminate way," Joe Stork, acting executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, said in a statement last month.

 

 

CIVILIAN CASUALTIES INCREASE

In the past two months, civilian casualties have been mounting. On Sept. 17, U.S. troops killed a teenage boy in Fallujah, a hotbed of Iraqi resistance, having mistaken celebratory shots at a wedding for an attack against them. Nine Iraqi policemen and a Jordanian guard, who were chasing local bandits, died on Sept. 12 in Fallujah after an 82nd Airborne Division patrol fired on them, thinking they were rebel fighters. A Sept. 23 air strike on a farmhouse, which the military thought was a rebel hideout, killed three sleeping civilians. A Reuters television cameraman, Mazen Dana, 41, was killed Aug. 17 by tank fire, when U.S. troops thought the camera Dana was using outside an Iraqi prison was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. In that incident, at least two other journalists were shot at.

 

Lt. Col. George Krivo, the U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, called the shooting of Dana regrettable, but said the soldiers acted within the rules of engagement.

 

No one knows how many Iraqi civilians have been accidentally killed or wounded by U.S. soldiers. Lt. Kate Noble, a spokeswoman for the U.S.-led coalition forces, said the troops do not keep a record of civilian casualties, and many Iraqis interviewed for this story said they did not know where to file complaints over alleged misconduct of U.S. soldiers.

 

Human Rights Watch has criticized the lack of transparency in relation to U. S. investigations of such incidents.

 

 

IRAQIS FILING CLAIMS

Shatha al Quraishi, a Baghdad lawyer, said she represents 158 Iraqis who have filed claims for financial compensation since May. She said most of her clients have been wounded or maimed or had their loved ones killed by U.S. troops. Some, she said, had their property destroyed in cross fire.

 

One of al Quraishi's clients, Anmar Dawood Salman, said a U.S. soldier killed his brother Fahad when Fahad's car backfired at a busy rotary in downtown Baghdad Sept. 27. Salman said the soldier, who was crossing the square on a humvee, had apparently mistaken the sound for a gunshot.

 

"He fired one bullet, and it went through the windshield and straight through his neck. He died on the spot," Anmar said, serving his guests the bitter black coffee Iraqi mourning traditions require. "Fahad was a civilian, a shopkeeper. He did not even have a weapon."

 

Although in his claim Anmar demands compensation for the killing of his older brother, he said it was not the money he wanted.

 

"I want Americans to realize how much harm they bring and to pay attention to people they kill," he said. "We hope that American commanders will pay attention and tell their troops not to act so hastily."

 

 

ASSERTIONS ANGER U.S. TROOPS

U.S. military officials say the troops are trained to minimize civilian casualties, and GIs on the ground angrily dispute assertions they are overreacting or firing indiscriminately.

 

"We do not fire on anybody unless we feel that our life is threatened," Joshua Matthews, an infantry soldier with the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, wrote in an e-mail. "We don't just kill for the fun of it. Have you ever killed anybody? It sucks!

 

"But, we all plan to go home one day and I'll be damned if some ignorant, brainwashed Muslim extremist is going to get in my way of seeing my family again," Matthews wrote. "I have lost two very good friends of mine in an RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] attack a few months ago. Having to help put them in body bags is an image I will never forget."

 

The frequent attacks, in which the rebels rely increasingly on remote- controlled roadside bombs, have made many soldiers suspicious of nearly every Iraqi they see.

 

As he rode through the garbage-strewn outskirts of Tikrit in the passenger seat of a humvee, Sgt. Derek White of the 299 Engineer Battalion held his M249 machine gun at the ready. A boy squatting by a roadside soda stand waved tentatively. Then, as the humvee sped by, the boy lifted his chin, squinted and spat in the direction of the passing vehicle.

 

 

'THEY SMILE . . . TRY TO KILL YOU'

"I don't need friends like this," White remarked. "They smile in your face during the daytime and they try to kill you at night."

 

The Iraqis "seem to have gotten pretty aggravated with us being around," said Private T.J. Knight, the driver of White's humvee. "I asked my interpreter if the Iraqi people are mad at us. He said that 90 percent of Iraqis hate us, and the other 10 percent have left Iraq."

 

In this jittery atmosphere of contempt and violence, force protection sometimes takes priority over the need to minimize civilian casualties.

 

"If you see someone and he looks like he's going to hurt American soldiers, it's shoot and kill," Knight said. "Hard decisions gotta be made in a few seconds."

 

"Of course, the margin for error is pretty wide," he conceded.

 

Under the overpass on Highway 10 in Fallujah, Private Hollis saw no signs of the sniper. He lowered his weapon.

 

"What I really don't like is when they just cap off a round like that," Hollis said, his face covered in dust. "When they're shooting at you, you shoot right back. But when they just shoot like that you don't know what to do. "

 

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../13/MN20680.DTL