One of Ours

By the time I arrive in Kerbala, in the last week in May, the clashes between Moqtada al-Sadr's Shia militia and the Americans have been going on for weeks...
[...]
...The Shia factions, we work out, are very keen not to allow journalists to go into the centre of the city and report the activities of the other Shia factions - they are not yet fighting each other, but they don't like each other much. After all, it's a family issue, and we Iraqis don't like foreigners to mess with our affairs.
[...]
We finally come out of one alley to find ourselves face to face with three gunmen, their heads wrapped in keffiyehs, Kalashnikovs and RPGs in their hands (this is now considered the new Iraqi dress code, or the "muj style")...
[...]
...Every once in a while someone shouts, "Americans, Americans!", and one or two move into a sniping position, shout at each other, and then come and sit down again. They look tired, hungry and bored, fiddling with their RPGs and rifles.
[...]
This is the front-line elite, a bunch of badly equipped men with rusted AKs and decade-old RPG rockets. When we first arrive they are brewing tea, piles of RPG rockets stacked on the walls two feet away from the fire.

"So how long you have been here?" I ask one of them.

"Three weeks now." He says he is here because he wants to defend the shrine of Imam Ali. "I'm unemployed and have nothing else to do." He is 17.
[...]
Suddenly, there are some explosions, and three of them run towards the corner. We hear heavy machine-gun fire and I see American APCs firing at a building in the street.

"Where's the machine gun?"

"I don't know! You had it yesterday!"

"No, you had it!"

"No, no, it's there with Ali."

"Where's Ali?"

"He went home."

"So where is the machine gun?"

"With Ali."

So they decide to fire RPGs without machine-gun cover. They hop into the street, fire off a grenade, and hop back...

They can't see what they are shooting at but shout Allahu-Akbar all the same, and everyone starts giving numbers of how many Americans they have killed.

Then another man shows up, shortish and in his 40s, and while everyone is ducking or hiding behind columns, he strolls about as if he is in the park. Another fighter loads an RPG for him and the guy turns with the thing on his shoulder as if looking for the direction he should shoot in. Someone shouts: "Push him into the street before he fires it at us!" Another fighter grabs him around his waist and pushes him to the corner where he stands, bullets whizzing around him, takes his time, and - boom! - fires his RPG. He stands there until someone grips his pants and pulls him in.

His eyes are not even blinking at the sounds around him. They give him another one and he spins again and everyone hits the ground...

We wait for the fire to subside and run across the street to the other side, the same dark alleys in which the same bored fighters are sitting doing nothing but chewing over the same old conspiracy theories. The walls and the ground are varnished with fresh blood. In the market a couple of shops are on fire from earlier fighting. A man is hiding behind a pile of empty banana boxes with his eight-year-old son.

That is when we catch sight of a small boy with a stunned look on his face. He says his name is Amjad and he is 11 years old.

"How long you have been here?"

"Ten days. Since my brother was killed. There, at the end of that street."

"And why are you here?"

"To become a martyr like my brother."
[...]
"It is all because of journalists that all this is happening," says a guy dressed in black, sitting behind a big wooden table. He says that the Mahdi are manipulating the media. "They are thugs and assassins, they have paralysed the holy city of Kerbala, they have desecrated the shrines and shoot from behind them, trying to provoke a response.

"But, alhamdulillah [thank God], the Americans are very wise and respect the shrines. Our brothers, the Americans, are taking very good care of this thing, but as far as the Shias around the world and in Iraq are concerned, they hear that the Americans are fighting 'close to the shrines', and that Shias are being killed. They see the smoke on your films so they come en masse to fight and they are immediately brainwashed by Moqtada and his thugs."

If that's the case, I ask, why doesn't the Ayatollah come out publicly and denounce those people, and show his support for these "brothers"?

"Are you crazy? It's haram [forbidden by Islamic law] to support an infidel, even when he is right, against a brother Muslim."

"So what is your strategy?"

"We will pray for Allah to stop this."
[...]

Falluja is very calm by the time I arrive. I have been to Falluja once before, in April during the "great battle", as they now call it up there...

After a devastating military campaign that left more than 800 Iraqis dead, the US liberators established the Falluja brigade out of the former military, some of whom had been fighting the Americans but are now on their payroll. Falluja is now like a deja vu from the good old times of Saddam; there are so many former Iraqi military in khaki uniforms, big moustaches and bellies that I am scared...

...the picture is totally blurred, and no one in Falluja can figure out what the new arrangement actually means...

...for other Fallujans, he who works with Americans is seen as the enemy of God. Which means that we now have Falluja versus Falluja in the biggest stand-off of the year: who really controls Falluja?

The city is now like a loose federation of Sunni mosques and mujaheddin-run fiefdoms. These have become the only successfully functioning "civil society" institutions, although the only form of civil society they are interested in is a 1,400-year-old model.

So they raid houses where sinners are believed to be drinking alcohol, and insist on forcing their own version of the hijab...
[...]
I head towards one of the mosques where people are going to get aid and charity donations. A guy in his 40s approaches me with the famous welcoming smile of the Fallujans - a look of, "What the fuck are you doing here?"
[...]
He opens his drawer and pulls out two sheets of paper: the demands and the strategies of the resistance. One details an American-Shia plot to kill the Sunni clerics, technocrats and former army officers. "Be careful, oh brothers, because the Americans and their traitor allies, the Kurds and the Shias, are planning to come after your leaders." The other is a letter sent by the joint committee for the Iraqi resistance to Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the UN envoy working to form a new government. Its demands can be summarised as a request to hand Iraq to a bunch of wacko Sunni army generals.
[...]
One of the local muj cell leaders, Abu Tahrir ("father of liberation"), is complaining how part of the muj corps has deserted and joined the Americans. He is in his late 30s, overweight and a bit grim; a typical former Mukhabarat [Saddam's secret police] officer who mixes bits of the Koran with chunks of nationalist and Ba'athist ranting.

...As we leave the mosque, he waves to a passing police car and orders them to follow, so that we drive out of Falluja escorted by both the muj and the police.

Sadr City is an easy job for a journalist: all you have to do is cruise around looking for trouble. It is a Soweto kind of slum: rubbish-filled streets, ponds of sewage, and thousands of unemployed kids.
[...]

...a dozen teenagers, three or four of them wearing Arsenal T-shirts and flip-flops, are emptying a car boot of a mortar tube and a sackful of shells...

The target is a police station and three Humvees parked in front. Masked like a western cowboy, the shooter, or the "expert" as they call him, takes measure of the angle and shouts to another fighter: "Give me one!" The other guy produces what looks like a rusted, 2-ft long shell. The fighters here are also Mahdi, and the fighting in Sadr City often feels like one big carnival. All the kids are by now doing their cheering chant: "Ali wiyak, Ali!" "Ali with you, Ali!" If I were an American soldier, I would be expecting a flying shell every time I hear kids cheering in Sadr City. After all, this is the only fun they get, shooting at the sitting ducks.

The expert tosses the shell into the barrel, and a big explosion follows. "Right a bit!" shouts one of the kids at the end of the street. "It fell on a house!"

The second one falls much too far to the left. "It fell on another house, move to the right a little bit!"

The third one falls something like 10 metres away from us, but doesn't explode. The fourth lands by the Americans, and detonates. "Ten dead, I saw it with my own eyes!" shouts another kid. The fifth doesn't leave the tube, and he has to up-end the tube and shake it.

In all, the firefight lasts for an hour, at which, after a few more rounds and a few more civilian houses destroyed,the fighters jump into their car and drive away.

Then the RPG session starts, kids aiming at the Americans and hitting whatever target they fancy. As one prepares to fire his RPG, the rusted rocket doesn't launch.

"Come, you can use mine," says a man who is standing by, watching. Helpfully, he goes to his nearby home and returns with his RPG, as if he were lending a neighbour his Hoover.

Then, "They are coming, they are coming!" and everyone starts to run; the 50 or so kids who have gathered to watch the game, break into a sprint...
[...]
...Everyone jumps to the ground, and Ali is asked once again to show his mercy upon us. "This has been our life for the past few weeks; we don't know when we will be killed and who will kill us," says the father...

...we are sitting with the fighters by the office of Moqtada al-Sadr. We are prepared for a long night waiting for American mortar shells. I think to myself, here we go, another dozen houses gone.

A young muj extends his hand and says: "Do you want a beer?" I am stunned, and what remains of my religious belief rapidly evaporates. But the beer is good and I sit all night with the great religious fighters, drinking beer and waiting for the shells that never come.