Asian
Times
June 25, 2004 Our website's
correspondent writes: THIS is an Asian Times exclusive
interview with self-proclaimed leaders of
the Iraqi resistance, including two of
Saddam's former generals.
They claim to have
prepared meticulously for the
post-invasion war for liberation, rather
than it being a largely ad hoc affair.
They claim possession of
50 million weapons (perhaps including
bullets?). More plausibly, they claim 75%
of the population is behind them, and they
have 5,000 volunteers ready as suicide
bombers.
And they specifically
declaim any responsibility for the death
of Nick Berg. They also claim not
to have been involved in the bombing of
either the UN mission or the Red
Cross.
Perhaps the hysterical/
conspiratorial claims of "false flag"
operations in Iraq are truer than we
realize. |
'The liberation
of Baghdad is not far away' By Alix de la
Grange Editor's
note: Coordinated attacks and skirmishes in
several Iraqi cities on Thursday killed at least
66 people and wounded more than 250. Forty-four
people were killed in a series of car bomb
blasts in the northern city of Mosul and 216
wounded. Fighting in al-Anbarprovince, where
there were clashes in Fallujah and Ramadi,
killed at least nine people and wounded 27, and
fighting around Baquba killed 13 and wounded 15.
BAGHDAD -- On the eve of the
so-called transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi
caretaker government on June 30, former Saddam
Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the
Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their
clandestine positions for a while to explain their
version of events and talk about their plans.
According to these Ba'ath officials, "the big
battle" in Iraq is yet to take place. "The Americans have prepared the war, we have
prepared the post-war. And the transfer of power on
June 30 will not change anything regarding our
objectives. This new provisional government
appointed by the Americans has no legitimacy in our
eyes. They are nothing but puppets." Why have these former officers waited so long to
come out of their closets? "Because today we are
sure we're going to win." Secret
rendezvousPalestine Hotel, Tuesday, 3pm. One week
after a formal request, the prospect of talking
with the resistance is getting slimmer. We reach a
series of dead ends -- until a man we have never
met before discreetly approaches our table. "You
still want to meet members of the resistance?" He speaks to my associate, a female Arab
journalist who has been to Iraq many times. Talk is
brief. "We meet tomorrow morning at the Babel
Hotel," the man says before disappearing. Against
all expectations, this contact seems to be more
reliable than the ones we have previously
tried. Hotel Babel, Wednesday, 9am. At the
entrance of the cybercafe, mobbed by foreign
mercenaries, the man we saw the day before lays it
down: "Tomorrow, 10 o'clock, al-Saadoun Street, in
front of the Palestine. Come without your
driver." We arrive at the meeting place on Thursday
morning by taxi. The contact is there. After a
brief "Salam Alekum" we get into his car. "Where
are we going?" No reply. We drive for more than two
hours. In Baghdad, even when traffic is not totally
blocked by military checkpoints, traffic jams are
permanent. In one year, more than 300,000 vehicles
have been smuggled into the country. Every other
car has no license plate and most drivers don't
even know what "driver's license" means. "We'll be there soon. Do you know Baghdad?",
asks our man. The answer is clearly no. To get
oriented in the sprawling city, one must circulate
freely, and on foot. With criminal behavior
spreading like a virus, a wave of kidnappings, the
50 or 60 daily attacks against the occupation
forces and the indiscriminate response of the
American military, there's hardly any incentive to
do any walking. The car stops in an alley, near a minibus with
tinted windows. One of its doors opens. On board,
there are three men and a driver carefully
scrutinizing all the streets and houses around us.
If we don't know at all what we are confronted
with, our interlocutors seem to know very well who
they're talking to. "Before any discussions, we don't want any
doubts on your part about our identities," they
say, while extracting some papers from inside a
dusty plastic bag: identity cards, military IDs and
several photos showing them in uniform beside
Saddam Hussein. They are two generals and a
colonel of the disbanded Iraqi army, now on the run
for many months, chased by the coalition's
intelligence services. "We would like to rectify some information now
circulating in the Western media, that's why we
took the initiative of meeting you." Our discussion lasts for more than three hours. Back to the
fall of Baghdad"We knew that if the United States decided to
attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with
their technological and military power. The war was
lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In
other words: the resistance. Contrary to what has
been largely said, we did not desert after American
troops entered the center of Baghdad on April 5,
2003. We fought a few days for the honor of Iraq --
not Saddam Hussein -- then we received orders to
disperse." Baghdad fell on April 9: Saddam and his
army where nowhere to be seen. "As we have
foreseen, strategic zones fell quickly under
control of the Americans and their allies. For our
part, it was time to execute our plan. Opposition
movements to the occupation were already organized.
Our strategy was not improvised after the regime
fell." This plan B, which seems to have totally eluded
the Americans, was carefully organized, according
to these officers, for months if not years before
March 20, 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi
Freedom. The objective was "to liberate Iraq and expel
the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and
install a secular democracy, but not the one
imposed by the Americans. Iraq has always been a
progressive country, we don't want to go back to
the past, we want to move forward. We have very
competent people," say the three tacticians. There will be of course no names as well as no
precise numbers concerning the clandestine network.
"We have sufficient numbers, one thing we don't
lack is volunteers." Fallujah
The lethal offensive of the American troops in
Fallujah in March has been the turning point as far
as the resistance is concerned. The indiscriminate pillage by American soldiers
during their search missions (according to many
witnesses) and the sexual humiliation inflicted to
prisoners, including Abu Ghraib in Baghdad, have
only served to magnify the anger felt by most
Iraqis. "There's no more trust, it will be hard to
regain it." According to these resistance leaders, "We have
reached the point of no return." This is exactly the point of view of a Shi'ite
woman we had met two days earlier -- a former
undercover opposition militant against Saddam: "The
biggest mistake of the occupation forces was to
despise our traditions and our culture. They are
not satisfied with having bombed our
infrastructure, they tried to destroy our social
system and our dignity. And this we cannot allow.
The wounds are deep and the healing will take long.
We prefer to live under the terror of one of our
own than under the humiliation of a foreign
occupation." According to Saddam's generals, "more than a year after the beginning
of the war, insecurity and anarchy still
dominate the country. Because of their
incapacity to control the situation and to
maintain their promises, the Americans have
antagonized the population as a whole. The
resistance is not limited to a few thousand
activists. Seventy-five percent of the
population supports us and helps us, directly
and indirectly, volunteering information, hiding
combatants or weapons. And all this despite the
fact that many civilians are caught as
collateral damage in operations against the
coalition and collaborators." Whom do they regard as "collaborators"? "Every
Iraqi or foreigner who works with the coalition is
a target. Ministries, mercenaries, translators,
businessmen, cooks or maids, it doesn't matter the
degree of collaboration. To sign a contract with
the occupier is to sign your death certificate.
Iraqi or not, these are traitors. Don't forget that
we are at war." The resistance's means of dissuasion led to an
ever-shrinking list of candidates to key government
posts proposed by the coalition, and this in a
country ravaged by 13 years of embargo and two wars
where unemployment has been a crucial problem. The
ambient chaos is not the only reason preventing
people from resuming professional activity. If the Americans, quickly overwhelmed by the
whole situation, had to take the decision to
reinstate former Ba'athists (policemen, secret
service agents, military, officials at the oil
ministry), this does not apply to everybody. The
majority of victims of administrator L Paul
Bremer's decree of May 16, 2003 applying the
de-Ba'athification of Iraq is still
clandestine. The network
Essentially composed by Ba'athists (Sunni and
Shi'ite), the resistance currently regroups "all
movements of national struggle against the
occupation, without confessional, ethnic or
political distinction. Contrary to what you imagine
in the West, there is no fratricide war in Iraq. We
have a united front against the enemy. From Fallujah to Ramadi, and including Najaf,
Karbala and the Shi'ite suburbs of Baghdad,
combatants speak with a single voice. As to the
young Shi'ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, he is,
like ourselves, in favor of the unity of the Iraqi
people, multiconfessional and Arab. We support him
from a tactical and logistical perspective." Every Iraqi region has its own combatants and
each faction is free to choose its targets and its
modus operandi. But as time goes by, their actions
are increasingly coordinated. Saddam's generals
insist there is no rivalry among these different
organizations, except on one point: which one will
eliminate the largest number of Americans. Weapons of
choice"The attacks are meticulously prepared. They
must not last longer than 20 minutes and we operate
preferably at night or very early in the morning to
limit the risks of hitting Iraqi civilians." They anticipate our next question: "No, we don't
have weapons of mass destruction. On the other
hand, we have more than 50 million conventional
weapons." By the initiative of Saddam, a real arsenal was
concealed all over Iraq way before the beginning of
the war. No heavy artillery, no tanks, no
helicopters, but Katyushas, mortars (which the
Iraqis call haoun), anti-tank mines,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other
Russian-made rocket launchers, missiles, AK 47s and
substantial reserves of all sorts of
ammunition. And the list is far from being extensive. But
the most efficient weapon remains the
Kamikazes. A special unit, composed of 90% Iraqis and 10%
foreign fighters, with more than 5,000
solidly-trained men and women, they need no more
than a verbal order to drive a vehicle loaded with
explosives. What if the weapons' reserves dwindle?
"No worries, for some time we have been making our
own weapons." That's all they are willing to
disclose. Claiming
responsibility"Yes, we have executed the four American
mercenaries in Fallujah last March. On the other
hand, the Americans soldiers waited for four hours
before removing the bodies, while they usually do
it in less than 20 minutes. Two days earlier, a
young married woman had been arbitrarily arrested.
For the population of Fallujah, this was the last
straw, so they expressed their full rage against
the four cadavers. The Americans, they did much worse to living
Iraqi prisoners." The suicide attack which provoked
the death of Akila al-Hashimi, a diplomat
and member of the Iraqi Governing Council on
September 22, 2003, was also perpetrated by the
resistance, as well as the car bomb which killed
the president of the Iraqi executive body
Ezzedin Salim in May 17 this year at the
entrance of the Green Zone (which Iraqis call the
Red Zone, due to the number of resistance
offensives). They are also responsible for the kidnapping of
foreigners. "We are aware that the kidnapping of
foreign nationals blemishes our image, but try to
understand the situation. We are forced to control
the identity of people circulating in our
territory. If we have proof that they are
humanitarians or journalists we release them. If
they are spies, mercenaries or collaborators we
execute them. On this matter, let's be clear, we
are not responsible for the death of Nick
Berg, the American who was beheaded." As to the attack against the UN headquarters in
Baghdad on August 20, 2003: "We have never issued
an order to attack the UN and we had a lot of
esteem towards the Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello
[special UN representative who died in the
attack], but it's not impossible that the
authors of this suicide attack come from another
resistance group. As we have explained, we don't
control everything. And we must not forget that the
UN is responsible for the 13 years of embargo we
have endured." What about the October 27, 2003 attack against
the Red Cross in Baghdad? "This had nothing to do
with us, we always had a lot of respect for this
organization and the people who work for them. What
would be our interest to attack one of the few
institutions which has been helping the Iraq
population for years? We know that people from
Fallujah have claimed this attack, but we can
assure you they are not part of the resistance. And
we also add: for political and economic reasons,
there are many who have an interest in discrediting
us." After June
30 "Resolution 1546 adopted on June 8 is nothing
but one more web of lies to the eyes of many
Iraqis. First, because it officially ends the
occupation by foreign troops while authorizing the
presence of a multinational force under American
command, without stipulating the date of their
removal. Second, because the Iraqi right to veto
important military operations, demanded by France,
Russia and China, was rejected. Washington has conceded only a vague notion of
partnership with the Iraqi authority and did not
think of anything in case of disagreement. Iraqis
are not fools, the maintenance of American troops
in Iraq after June 30 and the aid money they will
get from the American Congress leave no doubt over
the identity of who will really rule the
country." What about a possible role for the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)? "If NATO
intervenes, it's not to help our people, but to
help the Americans leave this quagmire. If they
wanted our well-being, they would have made a move
before," say the three officers while looking at
their watches. It's late and we have largely
exceeded our allotted time. "What American troops cannot do today, NATO
troops won't be able to do later on. Everyone must
know: Western troops will be regarded by Iraqis as
occupiers. This is something that George W
Bush and his faithful ally Tony Blair
will do well to think about. If they have won a
battle, they have not won the war yet. The great
battle is still to begin. The liberation of Baghdad
is not far away." | ![[]](../../std/dings/list.gif){kind=small}
write to David
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