"There was this young man who drove a car into an American checkpoint," he went on. "He killed lots of Americans. They found his body after three days with a little scratch on his face, though his car has totally melted in the attack."
Abu Yassir, short and heavily built, a middle-aged Iraqi with a gray beard, arrived late in the meal. He was the "emir," or commander, of the group, one of scores of such bands positioned around the city by Zarqawi's lieutenants. A more experienced fighter than the volunteers, Abu Yassir looked after the others as a father, paying for their meal, and delighting his young charges by delivering dessert: a bag of bananas.
U.S. Marines of the 1st Division take up positions on the outskirts of Fallujah as a full-scale attack against the insurgent-held city begins. American forces entered the city, west of Baghdad, late Monday.
(Anja Niedringhaus -- AP)
|
_____From Fallujah_____
•
Photo Gallery: U.S. forces began a long-anticipated urban offensive on the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah.
•
MSNBC Video: Post's Spinner speaks live from the field on the battle for Fallujah.
•
Video: Scenes of U.S. soldiers taking over two bridges and a hospital in Fallujah's western outskirts.
|
| |
|
As in most other units in Zarqawi's group, most of the commanders are Iraqis from Fallujah. They had military training in the army or security services of the government of former president Saddam Hussein. The Arab volunteers, who showed up with more eagerness than training, appear to be serving as the foot soldiers.
The hierarchy inverts the assumptions about al Qaeda in Iraq, as Zarqawi renamed his group after recently pledging fealty to Osama bin Laden, according to postings on a Web site. The group has come to represent the infusion of foreign fighters into Iraq, and in Fallujah two days before the battle such Arabs appeared to account for a substantial proportion of the fighters.
Zarqawi gives the group an international cast. But the Jordanian is famously elusive, and almost no one in Fallujah believed he was in the city this week. U.S. commanders agreed, and announced they had set their sights on his top commander, a "son of Fallujah," Omar Hadid.
Hadid represented Zarqawi's group on the mujaheddin shura, the council of holy warriors that has governed Fallujah since April, and represented the many homegrown units that organized themselves and fought independently of Zarqawi's group.
He showed up at the house the night before. The shelling was extraordinarily heavy, hour after hour of thunderous roars. A house down the street was hit and burned through the night. The fighters rushed out of their safe house and were standing on the dusty lane when a white sedan roared up, headlights off.
Hadid jumped out of the passenger seat.
"Is everyone all right?" he asked. "Take care."
Then he was gone. A kind of hum shot through the cluster of fighters, the rise in morale a visible thing. "Was that Abu Abdullah?" they asked one another, referring to the chief by his nom de guerre.
"We are not vicious bloodthirsty people, but we will kill anyone who cooperates with Americans," Abu Yassir declared the next day.
The meal was over. Most of the men had gone outside, carrying their Kalashnikovs to the bunkers and ditches that run throughout the neighborhood. One stayed inside. He was chanting from the Koran.
"All over Iraq is a battlefield and we will kill the Americans anywhere," the emir went on. "The resistance won't collapse by the death of the emir. Someone will come up and take his position.
"We don't know about ideologies," he added. "We have one goal: Liberate our countries from the Americans."
