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A Fighter From Afar: Seeking Salvation In City of Insurgents
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- He first tried to get to Iraq in April 2003, when U.S. troops established control over the country and jihad became a place on a map.
"I wanted to come and fight for Islam," said Abu Thar, who started the journey from the capital city of his native country, Yemen, across the Arabian Peninsula. "I met a Jordanian merchant who provided me with tickets to Syria and a hundred dollars.
"I wanted to come and fight for Islam," said Abu Thar, who started the journey from the capital city of his native country, Yemen, across the Arabian Peninsula. "I met a Jordanian merchant who provided me with tickets to Syria and a hundred dollars.
"He even drove me to the airport himself."
Abu Thar arrived at the airport in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, with a group of other Yemeni students, a flock of would-be jihadis forming a neat line at the immigration counter. Abu Thar was wearing a traditional Arab robe and a small turban.
"And when the police asked me why I was going to Damascus, I said, 'To work.' They asked me what kind of work. I said, 'To work for the salvation of my soul.' And they sent me back."
A thin young man with an ascetic manner and a gentle voice, Abu Thar fingered the fabric of his cheap cotton trousers. By his reckoning, the Western clothes were what finally got him started on the smugglers' road to Iraq, in time for the showdown in Fallujah.
"This time," he said, "I learned the lesson and bought these."
If foreign fighters are the primary stated reason that 10,000 U.S. troops this week commenced the largest combat operation since the fall of Baghdad, the journey of Abu Thar sheds rare light on their presence in Fallujah. Arab fighters poured in when Marines first laid siege to the city in April. At the time, many Fallujans welcomed the foreign fighters as reinforcements against an occupation force that many felt was punishing an entire city for the actions of the few who had mutilated the bodies of American contractors days before.
But in the six months that followed, by many accounts, a coolness developed between hosts and guests. The Arabs were blamed for beheadings, car bombs that killed civilians and for imposing their strict notions of faith on a local population with traditions of its own.
In the end, the stubborn presence of foreign fighters scotched efforts to return control of Fallujah to Iraq's interim government. By Monday night, when U.S. tanks rolled into a city largely emptied of civilians, American commanders estimated that Arabs from countries other than Iraq accounted for at least 20 percent of the 3,000 or so fighters who remained.
This is the story of one.
Read More
http://www.ccmep.org/2004_articles/iraq/111104_a_fighter_from_afar.htm
Abu Thar arrived at the airport in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, with a group of other Yemeni students, a flock of would-be jihadis forming a neat line at the immigration counter. Abu Thar was wearing a traditional Arab robe and a small turban.
"And when the police asked me why I was going to Damascus, I said, 'To work.' They asked me what kind of work. I said, 'To work for the salvation of my soul.' And they sent me back."
A thin young man with an ascetic manner and a gentle voice, Abu Thar fingered the fabric of his cheap cotton trousers. By his reckoning, the Western clothes were what finally got him started on the smugglers' road to Iraq, in time for the showdown in Fallujah.
"This time," he said, "I learned the lesson and bought these."
If foreign fighters are the primary stated reason that 10,000 U.S. troops this week commenced the largest combat operation since the fall of Baghdad, the journey of Abu Thar sheds rare light on their presence in Fallujah. Arab fighters poured in when Marines first laid siege to the city in April. At the time, many Fallujans welcomed the foreign fighters as reinforcements against an occupation force that many felt was punishing an entire city for the actions of the few who had mutilated the bodies of American contractors days before.
But in the six months that followed, by many accounts, a coolness developed between hosts and guests. The Arabs were blamed for beheadings, car bombs that killed civilians and for imposing their strict notions of faith on a local population with traditions of its own.
In the end, the stubborn presence of foreign fighters scotched efforts to return control of Fallujah to Iraq's interim government. By Monday night, when U.S. tanks rolled into a city largely emptied of civilians, American commanders estimated that Arabs from countries other than Iraq accounted for at least 20 percent of the 3,000 or so fighters who remained.
This is the story of one.
Read More
http://www.ccmep.org/2004_articles/iraq/111104_a_fighter_from_afar.htm
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