"We spent two nights on the border in a village, then we were taken to another village to be given military training. Most of the brothers with me have never used a weapon in their life. I knew how to use an AK-47.
"After a few days they came and said, 'We need fighters to go to Hit,' " an Iraqi city on the Euphrates River halfway to Baghdad.
Abu Thar rested Sunday. He didn't plan to return to Yemen, where his wife and six children live. "The only place I am going from here," he said, "is heaven."
(Ghaith Abdul-ahad -- Getty Images)
|
_____Live From Fallujah_____
•
Transcript: The Post's Jackie Spinner answers questions on how the battle for Fallujah is progressing.
|
| |
_____Battle for Fallujah_____
•
Maps: U.S. Marines and Army troops regained control over much of Fallujah on Wednesday, but Iraqi insurgents launched a wave of attacks and kidnappings in other cities.
|
| |
|
In Hit, he found himself in a trench beside other Arab fighters, believing his dream of martyrdom was within reach. But a cease-fire was called, and the Arabs were ushered into a minibus and smuggled east. Of the two vehicles serving as escorts on the night drive, he said, one was a police car.
In Fallujah, Abu Thar was assigned to a group called Monotheism and Jihad. The group is headed by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has asserted responsibility for many of the most extreme terrorist strikes in Iraq, and who last month allied his group with al Qaeda.
Abu Thar was assigned to a platoon with 11 other men, only three of them Iraqis. They were stationed in a safe house in the Jolan neighborhood of Fallujah's northwest corner, where Marines later entered behind M1-A1 Abrams tanks.
Two days before the battle, Abu Thar read aloud from a small Koran in a half-lit room with walls bare but for a picture of Mecca. There was no furniture, only a prayer mat twisted at an angle to face south toward Mecca. A Kalashnikov assault rifle and an ammunition pouch were laid against the wall.
When he finished reading, he held his hands high and prayed: "Oh God, you who made the prophet victorious in his wars against the infidels, make us victorious in our war against America.
"Oh God, defeat America and its allies everywhere.
"Oh God, make us worthy of your religion."
He spoke with the calm air of an ascetic. And, indeed, of the 12 fighters in the house, Abu Thar seemed the least martial by far. Some of the men spoke as if they loved death, but he spoke of dying on the battlefield as something more like devotion. To him, martyrdom was the purest way to worship God.
"When I was in Syria, I bought seven copies of this,'' he said, pulling a pocket-size copy of the Koran from his jacket. "I wrote the name of my wife and my five children on each and left the seventh empty."
He said he did not want to impose a name on the child his wife was carrying when he left. But just before he crossed the border from Syria, she called and told him she had given the child a name: Shahid. It means martyr.
