IRAQ: Resistance to the US occupation of Iraq is growing. Tracy Wilkinson writes of attempts to recruit a mortar expert
The men attempting to recruit Abu Fulla, a former soldier in the Fedayeen militia of the old regime, for today's war against the Americans took him to a bearded sheik seated in a pick-up truck.
They appealed to the mortar expert's sense of nationalism, and then to his sense of religious conviction. The Americans have done nothing for Iraqis. They defile the homeland. Attacking the American occupiers is the only way to make them leave, the recruiters argued.
Despite the US government's insistence that Iraq has become the new battlefield of global terror, most of the resistance is home-grown.
The guerrillas are militants from the deposed regime but they are also ordinary Iraqis opposed to occupation, according to more than a dozen interviews with Americans and Iraqis.
Added to this mix of Iraqis are the Islamic fundamentalists, especially Sunnis, who have stepped into the power vacuum created by the war and its aftermath to take leadership roles in the resistance.
Foreign fighters from Syria, Yemen and Saudi Arabia have infiltrated in significant, if small, numbers, working with or alongside some of the Iraqi groups.
The Najaf attack and the bombings at the UN headquarters and the Jordan embassy, all within 22 days of each other, reflect a newer and more detailed level of co-ordination.
For the dozen or so daily ambushes targeting US troops, however, there is little indication of an overarching co-ordination uniting cells. Instead, the cells remain largely localised, and their weapons of choice remain readily available from leftover arsenals, according to Iraqis familiar with the resistance and US field commanders.
Bombs are dynamite or plastic explosives planted in discarded canisters, bottles or, more recently, the bodies of dead dogs left on the side of the road and detonated by remote control.
A guerrilla fighter from Fallujah, 60 miles west of Baghdad, said his cell was not working with foreign fighters but was willing to do so in the future. For now his unit was adequately equipped and trained.
"The former regime left behind a huge military arsenal, and it's enough to fight for tens of years."
Criminal gangs in many cases have struck a temporary marriage of convenience with the groups. An alliance with Islamic extremists also allows guerrillas to cast their fight in religious terms, which also helps them distance themselves from the discredited Saddam regime.
The puritanical Wahhabi brand of Islam, for example, is especially anti-Western. They believe that any kafir, or non-Muslim, who treads on Islamic land by force is an invader who must be repelled.
Abu Fulla (26), the mortar expert being recruited by the resistance, said the bearded sheik who admonished him to join the movement was a Wahhabi, probably from central Iraq.
"He spoke to me like officer to soldier, master to slave," said the man who uses the name Abu Fulla to hide his identity. "We want you to teach your brothers how to use the mortar," the man told him. "Money is no object."
Abu Fulla said he refused to go along with his recruiters when they approached him a final time on July 22nd, the day after Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusai, were killed by US soldiers.
Angrily, the sheik branded him a traitor who deserved to die.
He has gone into hiding and fears for his life. - (Los Angeles Times)