On
Friday, March 14, I pulled up to the mosque of Sheikh
Dhafer al-Ubeidi, a key cleric in organizing the
resistance in Fallujah, along with Abdallah Janabi.
Hadhra Mosque lies inconspicuously across the street
from the Rahma Hospital, where two days before I had
attended a poetry festival staged to celebrate US forces
pulling out of the city after a month-long siege.
Fallujah is known as medinat al-masajid or the
city of mosques, for its 80 mosques, but Hadhra Mosque
is small and modest compared with others in the city,
its colors faded, its dome small. But if there is a
final authority for the resistance in Iraq, a command
and control center, this is it.
I had been warned that Dhafer ran
the city, and to operate in it I would need his
"clearance". Other journalists who had not done so were
held up by armed gangs. A writer for a leading US
newspaper was caught at a checkpoint attempting to
disguise his face with a woman's black veil. Another
writer for a top US magazine was held after coming out
of the marine base in an armored car, with an armed
driver, bulletproof vest, US passport with Israeli
stamps and a receipt from the Israeli-Jordanian
border crossing in his pocket. My contact in Fallujah
was asked by Dhafer to confirm whether these and other
foreigners held by local militias were in fact
journalists. I was hoping to get a piece of paper from
the sheikh that would be a license to work in the city.
As I got out of the car in front of the mosque,
a big explosion shook the city, and in the distance I
could see a large mushroom cloud growing, and then being
dispersed by the wind. Probably a mortar converted into
a roadside bomb. The police car in front of the mosque
veered off to take a look. On the tall fence lining the
mosque, a banner announced, "Sunnis and Shi'ites are
committed to defeating the Zionist plan." It did not
explain what plan was being referred to; apparently the
locals already knew. The white paint was peeling off of
the rusted gate. A sign above the gate bore the title
al-Hadhra Muhamadia Mosque and Madrassa (religious
school). The mosque's manar, or tower, was
damaged from a US shell.
Leaflets and
announcements were taped on to the gate. One said that
"the fatwa [religious verdict] council asks for
pictures and evidence of occupation forces violating
human rights and any attack on our values and our
Islamic symbols. Please give them to the council in the
Hadhra Mosque." Another one contained a long verse
dedicated to a man martyred by the Americans. An
announcement from the Telecommunications Ministry
reminded people not to pay telephone repairmen, who were
salaried by the ministry. Another one from the
qaimaqamia (an old Ottoman word for "city hall")
instructed people about what documents they should bring
"to receive compensation for martyrs, and wounded
people, and damaged vehicles". A similar one asked the
families of martyrs to go to the courts to get a death
certificate and then to the hospital to get additional
proof of death in order to process their compensation
claims.
Finally an announcement from the
Mujahideen Council declared that "imams [mosque leaders]
are responsible for their mosques and the mujahideen
have no rights to interfere in mosques after today". It
added that "some thieves go to markets, confiscating
goods and money and consider themselves mujahideen, but
they are liars and we ask the people of the city of
mosques to catch these people and educate them
[forcefully] and the mujahideen will support them to
prevent strife in our city".
Past the security
guards a tall palm tree provided a bit of shade on the
path to the mosque's office. The windows of the mosque
and its offices were still crossed with tape to prevent
shattering from fighting. Inside the office I found an
acquaintance I had known in Baghdad a year before,
Taghlub al-Alusi, a gentle elderly man, tall and dignified, with sharp
lines on his face. He was born on Alus, an island in the
Euphrates River to the north, but he had lived in
Fallujah for 42 years until moving to the United Arab
Emirates in the late 1990s, where he worked as an
engineer.
I had met Taghlub in Baghdad's Sunni
stronghold Adhamiya on a visit to the offices of the
National Unity Movement, a party established by Iraq's
most famous living Sunni thinker, Dr Ahmad Kubeisi.
Kubeisi's movement had been the great hope of Iraq's
Sunnis, and I had followed it closely since he returned
from a self-imposed exile in the UAE that had started in
1998 and ended with a triumphal Friday sermon in the Abu
Hanifa Mosque, Iraq's main Sunni mosque, in Baghdad's
Adhamiya district. For this sermon, hundreds of people
had stood and knelt barefoot outside the packed mosque.
On top of its walls young men held banners proclaiming
"one Iraq, one people", "we reject foreign control",
"Sunnis are Shi'ites and Shi'ites are Sunnis, we are all
one", "all the believers are brothers", and similar
proclamations of national unity.
Kubeisi's
sermon that followed prayers was unique for its
nationalism. Baghdad had been occupied by the Mongols,
he said, referring to the sacking of the capital of the
Muslim world in 1258. Now new Mongols were occupying
Baghdad and they were creating divisions between Sunnis
and Shi'ites. However, the Shi'ites and Sunnis were one
and they should remain united and reject foreign
control. They had all suffered together as one people
under Saddam Hussein's rule. Saddam oppressed all Iraqis
and then he abandoned them to suffer.
I
continued following Kubeisi after he formed his unity
movement. Last summer he spoke in Baghdad, condemning
the attacks against American soldiers because they were
premature and should not begin until it was seen whether
or not the Americans acted on their promise to leave as
soon as possible. Kubeisi admitted that Sunnis were
pushed aside because the United States viewed them as
hostile and that the Shi'ites were the temporary
victors. Speaking in Samara last summer, Kubeisi
prohibited attacks against Americans. "We waited 35
years under Saddam and we should give the Americans a
year before we fight them and tell them to leave," he
said. Kubeisi was based in the UAE state of Dubai and
traveled back and forth between there and Baghdad.
According to his supporters, he was informed by the
Americans that he would be denied re-entry to Iraq.
Taghlub, my acquaintance, had
worked with Kubeisi's movement for three months, but
left because "I found them inefficient". He told me
Kubeisi was now "sleeping in Dubai" after being
threatened by the now-defunct Iraqi Governing Council,
the Americans and the armed Badr Brigade of the Supreme
Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Taghlub's son
Mohammed was a religious student in the mosque and
helped his father in administering it. When I mentioned
Kubeisi's movement he shook his head. "It was a
failure," he said. Taghlub's older brother, Sheikh
Hisham al-Alusi, had once led Hadhra Mosque, but after
being seriously injured in an assassination attempt he
was confined to a wheelchair and was too feeble to move
on his own, so he appointed Dhafer as his replacement.
According to a Coalition Provisional Authority official
who met with Taghlub often when Taghlub led the
negotiations that ended in US forces withdrawing and
handing power over to Fallujans, Taghlub was a leader of
the resistance in Fallujah.
Removing my shoes
and leaving them by the door, I was escorted into a
sparse office and seated on an old sofa. I was offered a
glass of water. Taghlub completed his conversations with
callers and sat close to me, the deep lines on his face
giving him an even more distressed look than normal. He
was very worried about the Americans having entered
Karbala that day. "It's holy for us too," he said of the
shrine city containing the tombs of Hussein and Abbas,
two of the Prophet Mohammed's grandchildren. "They are
our forefathers," he explained, rejecting any hint of
Sunni-Shi'ite conflict.
A continuous stream of
visitors came to see the town leaders present in the
office, to ask for help and hold whispered
conversations. Abdel Basit Turki, the former interim
human rights minister, entered with a small entourage,
including three clerics from Samara and a local tribal
sheikh. Dressed in an elegant suit, the tall man had
come to pay his respects and receive the gratitude of
the town's leaders. Turki is from western Iraq, born in
Haditha, a town to the north of Fallujah, though when I
asked him where he was from he only smiled and
said, "I am an Iraqi."
Turki was an economics
professor who never left Iraq under Saddam's regime. He
served as minister from August 30, 2003, until April 8
this year, when he resigned to protest US actions in
Fallujah. "I resigned because the American military used
force to solve problems that could be solved by
referring to the Iraqi people," he told me, adding,
"Their attitude to the Iraqi citizens makes the future
of human rights in Iraq insecure." He complained about
"Americans using Apaches to raid Sadr City, besieging
Fallujah and even using fighter jets against the city,
converting homes into mass graves. As minister of human
rights I had to resign to show the people I identified
with them." He complained that his challenge had been
twofold, dealing with "the former regime's human-rights
violations and the violations resulting from the
occupation by foreign troops. My main challenge [is] to
educate people about human rights during an occupation.
You cannot educate people about human rights when they
are being bombed and killed." He added that he had
received pressure from the Americans to deal only with
human-rights violations of the previous regime.
Turki's companion, Sheikh Ahmad, from the mosque
of Risala al-Muhamdia in Samara, a city to the north of
Baghdad, had also come to pay his respects to Iraq's
first liberated city. "What happened in Fallujah is
expected to happen in other cities in Iraq," he told me,
predicting an intifada shaabia (people's
uprising). "All
the people of Iraq will erupt in
revolution, and at that moment it will make no
difference if you are Sunni or Shi'ite," he said.
A
12-year-old boy entered the room, to the delight of the
mosque's leadership. They introduced him as
Saad, a brave boy who had fought as a capable sniper
during the battle with the Americans. He was hugged and
kissed by all the men in the room, who congratulated him
for being a batal, or hero. Already a seasoned
scrapper, he smiled proudly, and thanked them in a
hoarse adult voice with the confidence of a grown man.
He was insolent to the older and bigger boys, who seemed
scared of him. I was nervous around him too - he
reminded me of a rabid pit bull. After prayers I saw him
lingering outside the mosque, slinging a Kalashnikov
with the magazine inside, providing security.
Sheikh Hisham al-Alusi was wheeled in and the
men came over to kiss him on the head, and praise Allah
for his recovery. He explained that he had been shot
three months before. "They shot 30 bullets at me, but
only one entered my body," he explained. It was his
first day back at the mosque, and Dhafer deferred to
him, letting him take the desk. Hisham was pale and
spoke in a whisper. He had been a member of the
US-backed town council and had eschewed incitements of
violence. Two masked men in a car pulled up next to him
when he was leaving the Hadhra Mosque and shot him. The
people in the mosque told me he had been shot by the
resistance, apparently either out of a desire to hide
the fina, or internal strife in their community,
very typical of Muslim clerics, or simply to pin the
blame on the Americans. When I confronted a source about
having been lied to, he told me implausibly that the
assailants were in fact US agents.
Soon after,
General Jassim Mohammed Salih of the Fallujah Brigade
walked in, wearing a white dishdash and white
scarf. After exchanging greetings with the guests in the
increasingly crowded office, he briefed them on the
latest political events, barking gruffly in clipped
military style, his jowls shaking, as he fingered yellow
prayer beads. "I spoke to Brahimi yesterday and he says
hi to all of you," he said, referring to United Nations
representative to Iraq Lakhdar Brahimi. He then defended
the need for the Fallujah army he did or did not
command, depending on whether one listens to Fallujans
or Americans. "Everybody else has militias and it's not
called terrorism," he said, "but when an army defends
its city this is called terrorism." Jassim stressed the
central role of the army, explaining that "the army is
the people's, not Saddam's, and anybody who comes in and
attacks the institution of the army finds half a million
people carrying guns against him". "Even Saddam," smiled
Dhafer. I left to allow the unofficial town council to
meet in private.
Returning to the mosque for
Friday prayers, I removed my shoes again and walked over
the prayer mats spread outside to accommodate the crowds
overflowing from inside the mosque, and sat in the small
garden beneath a palm tree. Taghlub's son Mohammed
informed me that I was not allowed to record Dhafer's
khutba, or sermon. "It is a special khutba
for the people of Fallujah only," he explained. It was
the first time in 13 months in Iraq that I had been told
not to record a sermon.
Dhafer stood at the
mosque's pulpit and from outside I could only hear him
on the loudspeakers. His raspy voice was angry and
high-pitched from the beginning. As is the convention,
Dhafer began with a general discussion of religion, then
became increasingly specific and political. "We told you
last Friday and we are still telling you that after God
gives you victory and safety you have to fight
fitna," (internal strife, the
greatest evil in the Islamic community). Using an
interesting metaphor since Islam prohibits card-playing,
he told his
followers, "We have seen all of our enemy's cards." He
condemned the Iraqi Governing Council members "who sit
with the Americans".
"Everybody hates America
now because of the policies of President [George W]
Bush," he said, "and his own people condemn him, so what
can we do? What can we say? What are the limits of our
response? What are the rights of the Iraqi people?" He
then answered his queries, saying there was no action
the Iraqis could not take against the Americans. "They
slaughtered the Geneva Accords that we were insisting
upon every Friday in our mosques, and they killed human
rights. This is the tragedy of the Islamic world that we
experience here in Iraq, but the gates of victory for
all the Islamic world have been opened in Fallujah and
victory will never stop as our Prophet has predicted.
All the world can recognize now that Fallujah beat the
US. This is Islam our religion and state, this is the
Islam of Mohammed." Dhafer warned that "after the enemy
lost his battle with us he has begun planting strife and
spreading rumors".
Referring to an issue of great
concern in the city, as demonstrated by one of the
leaflets on the mosque's gate, Dhafer turned to the
unruly mujahideen. "Some people are surprised sometimes
with mistakes that some people make," he said, "but I
swear by God the mujahideen are innocent from those
mistakes. It's a big shame on some people who claim they
are mujahideen yet they make many checkpoints in several
places and steal cars or kidnap people in those places.
They are not mujahideen. It looks like they were
educated by our enemies [the Americans]. They went into
a neighborhood in our city and they did
what the Americans did, forcing people to lie on the
ground, spreading their legs and putting their feet on
their heads: what religion is this?" Dhafer urged the
mujahideen to be more pious.
Alluding to the
extrajudicial killings of alleged spies for the
Americans, whom he called "the traitors who sold their
religion and their honor and their land and they became
apostates", the sheikh reminded his people that "the
accused is innocent until proven guilty". He urged
people to support the town's security forces. "The
police must take more authority than they have until
now," he said. "Policemen should not be lazy and civil
defense should do their jobs, as should the elected
army." Dhafer concluded with a prayer for the mujahideen
and martyrs in Najaf and Karbala.
TOMORROW: The tongue of the
mujahideen
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PART 4: All power 
and dignified, with sharp
lines on his face. He was born on Alus, an island in the
Euphrates River to the north, but he had lived in
Fallujah for 42 years until moving to the United Arab
Emirates in the late 1990s, where he worked as an
engineer. 
Taghlub's son
Mohammed was a religious student in the mosque and
helped his father in administering it. When I mentioned
Kubeisi's movement he shook his head. "It was a
failure," he said. Taghlub's older brother, Sheikh
Hisham al-Alusi, had once led Hadhra Mosque, but after
being seriously injured in an assassination attempt he
was confined to a wheelchair and was too feeble to move
on his own, so he appointed Dhafer as his replacement.
According to a Coalition Provisional Authority official
who met with Taghlub often when Taghlub led the
negotiations that ended in US forces withdrawing and
handing power over to Fallujans, Taghlub was a leader of
the resistance in Fallujah. 
was from he only smiled and
said, "I am an Iraqi." 
the people of Iraq will erupt in
revolution, and at that moment it will make no
difference if you are Sunni or Shi'ite," he said.
he told his
followers, "We have seen all of our enemy's cards." He
condemned the Iraqi Governing Council members "who sit
with the Americans". 
