An Iraqi student's story "Why I Attacked US Troops"

The following articles are by two different reporters and newspapers. one from the US and one from the International Press. Interesting to compare them.
-----BumbleBeeBoogie
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IRAQ: An Iraqi student's story "Why I Attacked US Troops"
By Ferry Biedermann - IPS 8/16/03

BAGHDAD, Aug 15 (IPS) - The shy young man in the cafeteria of a Baghdad hotel hardly seems the type to carry out attacks on U.S. soldiers. But Walid (not his real name), a student of English Literature at Baghdad University, has a story to tell that is compelling and detailed. A fellow student confirms that the account tallies with what his friend told him at the time.

Walid says he belongs to a "resistance group" in the area around his
birthplace Fallujah, where many of the attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq have taken place.

Some two months ago he and five other fighters set out through a field towards a road along which they were informed a U.S. army convoy would be travelling. Walid carried an RPG-7 rocket launcher and two grenades. He wore a blue track suit. "No, not because of camouflage, it is my favourite colour," he told IPS.

Once they arrived at the road, Walid and his five comrades spread out and waited for the convoy to arrive.

"We must resist anyone who insults our Arab tradition," Walid says by way of justifying the attack.

On the day of the attack, "a friend" came by to call him up about 9pm. Most of the others were informed via satellite telephone. Walid knew only two of his fellow fighters. They carried three RPGs and two mortars.

"I was anxious and worried about the outcome," Walid says. He recalls
lying in wait for about 90 minutes. "I was not afraid to die," he says. His main worry was that he would fail to hit his target, the last vehicle in the convoy.

When the five American Humvees and three or four Bradley fighting vehicles reached the spot of the ambush, Walid's fears proved well grounded. "I missed and we had to call off the whole operation," he says.

His RPG exploded against some rocks and the U.S. troops opened fire. The group scrambled to get away and Walid saw two of his comrades
getting hit; he thinks they were wounded. He has not seen them again but he says he is sure everybody got away.

After the botched attack Walid was not called up again. He thinks that the group is observing a cease-fire. "Many of the operations went bad, they caused problems for the people," he says.

Walid had been called up for training with a group of other newcomers just four or five days before the June attack. He had never handled an RPG before but that day he fired two grenades "in an open area."

The group has plenty of weaponry and ammunition, says Walid. Besides
the RPGs he talks about mortars and even anti-aircraft missiles, some of them bought from ex-army officers. "We had a variety of weapons that were well- hidden after the war."

Walid does not conform to the picture that has emerged over recent months of the typical new Iraqi guerrilla fighter. He dislikes the old regime, he is not a Muslim fundamentalist and he is not even unwaveringly anti-American. A fervent handball player, he has an athletic figure and huge calluses on his hands.

The handball player positively welcomed the demise of the old regime. Its minions had frustrated his dream of playing the game at the highest level when they demanded a bribe of 3 million Iraqi dinars, at the time 1500 dollars, to try out for the national team.

"Most people didn't respect the old regime, and don't want it back," says Walid. That is why he thinks that the leaders of his resistance group are not Baathists or supporters of Saddam Hussein. But he is not entirely sure -- he has never met them. His friends in the resistance have told him they are "good people".

He offers up some generalities about why he personally dislikes the U.S. presence. "They constantly pass by in their uniforms and with their weapons and they treat everybody badly, men and women," he says.

Like many other Iraqis, Walid says he is particularly upset at the way some soldiers treat women during raids and searches. "They touch women and grab them," he says.

What finally seems to have turned Walid against the U.S. was a stint as a translator at a U.S. military base near Fallujah. As an undergraduate student of English literature, his language skills are supposed to be reasonable but in fact they are weak. He insisted on speaking Arabic throughout this interview.

When he recalls his time with the U.S. soldiers he grimaces, and bitterness fills his voice. "They said we are non-believers, savages, that we have no right to live," Walid says. He recalls that a sergeant said the Iraqis are "unbelievable people" and that "they can go to hell." He lists every insult.

After three days Walid stopped going to the camp. He says the soldiers wanted him to come on patrol with them in their Humvees. "That would have put me in a dangerous position."

After quitting his job at the base he provided the resistance group with the identity of several Iraqi informers, "traitors", whom he had seen talking to the U.S. troops.

But he says also that the political situation has improved because of the appointment of the Iraqi Governing Council, a first step to re-establishing a full- fledged Iraqi government. In the meantime, says Walid, the group is using its time to build up its strength.
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The making of an Iraqi guerrilla: one man's tale
By Cameron W. Barr | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD - One night at the end of June, a young Iraqi man goes out to
ambush an American convoy near the central Iraqi town of Fallujah. He is wearing his favorite blue tracksuit. He is a small guy, solid and compact, with cropped dark hair and a chin that juts out slightly. He likes tough sports, especially handball. He can stub out a cigarette on the calluses of his left palm. It will be his first time in combat.

Although he has trained only fleetingly for what he is about to do, he is not afraid. "If I die for a reason, that's a nice thing," he says later.

Since President Bush declared major hostilities in Iraq over on May 1, a rising tide of ambushes, explosions, and small-arms attacks has killed 60 Americans.

The man's motivations for attacking the convoy are simple: to resist the American "insult to Iraqi and Arab tradition."

His remarks, during a two-hour interview at a Baghdad hotel, convey a
sense of betrayal and trampled dignity. "They might have helped, but they destroyed things," he says of the Americans in Iraq. "They provoked."

He mentions the "unfulfilled promises" of the Americans (to bring
democracy, to make things better), their mistreatment of Iraqis (especially when male US soldiers encounter Iraqi women in raids or at checkpoints), their unwillingness to stop looting, help Iraqis in need, maintain stability. "Now nothing is under control," he says.

Beyond individual accounts, the origins of the anti-American guerrilla war are obscure. US officials and officers have long blamed the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. They have also begun speculating about the possibility that "foreign fighters" or even Al Qaeda are participating in the Iraqi resistance.

But the man in the blue tracksuit is no Baathist; he complains about the old regime's corruption and other failings. He cites his two years as an Army conscript. For enlisted men, he says, military service was like living in a jungle full of lions - the rapacious, bribe-soliciting senior officers. His career as a handball player stalled because he wouldn't or couldn't pay a bribe to get on the national team.

He does not deny that he is part of an armed group fighting the Americans. But he seems to know - or is able to say - very little about it. The group is nameless, he says, and so decentralized that he is not certain who is behind it. He says he doesn't think foreigners are involved, but he admits he might not know it if they were.

His experience is impossible to corroborate independently, but the details of his account offer some reassurance that it is genuine.

That night in June, the man and five like-minded Iraqis arrive separately at a prearranged spot along a country road. He has never met three of the others. The organization is divided into cells for the sake of security. Between them, they have three rocket-propelled-grenade (RPG) launchers and two mortars. The men with the shoulder-fired RPGs spread out along the road, hiding in the scrub. The mortar men pull back to gain some distance on the road and calibrate how far they will have to lob their shells. This is their plan: The man wearing the tracksuit will hit the convoy's rear vehicle with an RPG. Then one of the others will do the same to the lead vehicle, boxing in the Americans and making them vulnerable to repeated strikes from RPGs and mortars. It will be a bloodbath.

At about 11 p.m., the US convoy rolls into view: Five Humvees and three or four Bradley Fighting Vehicles.

The man has seen a Humvee up close, thanks to the three days he spent
in early June as an interpreter for a US military unit in Habaniya, not far from Fallujah. Although he studies English literature at university, his language skills are weak, so it is no surprise that he did not last long in this work. But he says he was the one who decided not to return to the American base. He applied for the job "so that I would be close to them and know about their vehicles and see whether [the Americans] have good intentions." They do not, he concluded. "American soldiers have a lot of hatred for the Iraqi people," he says.

At the base, he helped US soldiers question Iraqis who had come to tell the Americans about those organizing attacks. The man says he passed the names of these informers to his underground organization, but adds that he doesn't know whether any action was taken against them.

The man says the experience of being among the Americans turned him
against them.

Crouching in the bushes by the side of the road, gripping the handle of the RPG launcher, the man in the blue tracksuit hesitates, unsure whether he can hit his target. He has only used the weapon twice before, at secret trainings conducted by his organization just four or five days earlier.

This is his moment. He fires.

The grenade shoots past the target and explodes against some rocks. The Americans don't stop their vehicles, but they begin firing their
weapons.

The Iraqis abort the attack, fleeing separately into the darkness. The man says, two of them were wounded by US fire.

The man in the tracksuit is disappointed by the experience. He says he was not well trained. He has risked his life in the attack, and he has failed. He remains part of the underground group, but its leaders have not asked him to take part in another mission.

Later he hears that the Americans came to the scene the next day and
interrogated everyone who lives in the area, looking for weapons and
those who carried out the ambush. For these Iraqis, the attack only
worsened the US occupation's imposition on their lives.

Failed missions such as these, he says, have caused his group to pause in their attacks. Perhaps the Americans, he says, "might fix something." In case they do not, the group is recruiting more members.