CPTnet
30 May 2005

IRAQ: The Resistance

by Joe Carr

Recently, I met a man who told me he was a resistance fighter. I was
surprised that he would trust me enough to tell me this, and he may have
been lying, but what he said matched what the team has heard from many other
Iraqis.

He said he was from Fallujah, and had fought the Americans during their
first attack. He told me that American soldiers killed seven of his family
members during that attack in April 2004, most of whom were civilians and
not fighters. He said it was only Iraqi Fallujans defending their city, no
foreign fighters.

I asked him if he wanted Saddam Hussein back, "We hated Saddam," he said,
"and we did not fight the Americans when they came to overthrow him. But now
the Americans are just as bad so we'll fight them until they leave".

I asked him where he got his military training, and he explained that almost
all of Iraq's young men are trained. Hussein sent every high school boy to
a three-month military training camp. Then after high school, around 80%
were conscripted into Saddam's army and received more intense training. I
asked him where the resistance got their weapons, and he said that just
before the invasion, Hussein widely distributed AK47s and encouraged them to
fight. "None of us fought for Saddam," he said, "but now we'll fight for our
freedom from American occupation." After the invasion, he said a lot of
Saddam's arsenal ended up on the black market, so heavy machine guns, rocket
launchers, and even missiles are easily available to them.

I asked the fighter if he was afraid that civil war would break out if the
American forces left. He said that there may be civil war, but the Sunnis
would win (he's a Sunni) so he isn't concerned. He said the American troops
aren't doing anything to prevent civil war; indeed they're only making
matters worse. For instance, the U.S. has replaced all the high-level
administration and military personnel (Sunni) with newly-trained Shi'a.
Many Iraqis view the new Shiite dominated Iraqi Government as a U.S. puppet
and thus Iraqis working for the government are facing attacks by
highly-trained Sunni militias.

To sum up what this man told me--Iraqis are armed, trained, and angry at the
Americans and what they perceive as the Americans' puppet Iraqi government.
They're not Saddam loyalists, and they're not "foreign fighters." They love
their families, and they plan to fight American occupation to the death.