Yemeni tells how he left family to join fighting
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in FallujaThursday November 11, 2004
From inside a room in one of Falluja's safe houses came a beautiful voice reciting verses from the Qur'an and choking with tears. "If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your wives, your tribe, your fortunes and your trade are more dear to your hearts than God, his prophet and the jihad in the name of God," chanted the voice, "be fearful of God then, he will never talk to the wrongdoers." The room was half-lit, the walls were bare except for one picture of Mecca. The only piece of furniture was a prayer mat in the middle of room twisted at an angle to face the south. A Kalashnikov rifle and an ammunition pouch were laid against the wall. A pair of old trainers stood at the edge. On the mattress sat a man with a small Qur'an in one hand and a set of prayer beads in the other. Sometimes his voice would be drowned out by the sounds of explosions rocking the city. As he finished his prayers he stood up, held his hands high and started
praying: "Oh God, you who made the prophet come out victorious in his wars against the infidels, make us come out victorious in our war against America. Oh God, defeat America and its allies everywhere. Oh God, make us worthy of your religion." The man - tall, thin with a dark complexion, black eyes and a thin beard
- arrived in Falluja six weeks ago. He spent a few days sharing a room with other fighters until they were distributed among the mujahideen units in the city. He was with a group of the Tawhid and Jihad stationed in the west of Falluja in the Jolan district where heavy fighting has been raging for the last two days. Living with other Arab and Iraqi fighters, he was given the honour of leading the prayers because of his beautiful voice. Anxiously waiting for the Americans outside a makeshift bunker, he told his story. He said he was not here because he loved death as death but because he perceived martyrdom as the most pure way in which to worship God. He was, he said, a Yemeni religious student from the the capital San'a, who had been studying sharia law for six years, while working as minibus driver to support a pregnant wife and five children. He first tried to come to Iraq to fight the Americans during the war 18 months ago. "I wanted to come and fight for Islam. I met a Jordanian merchant who provided me with tickets to Syria and $100. He even drove me to the airport himself." Sent back But once there, he was prevented from going any further by the airport police. "I was wearing my jalabiya 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." He pointed at his cheap cotton trousers and said: "This time I learned the lesson and bought these." For a year he went back to his studies and his family, forgetting Iraq and jihad. But the scandal of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib woke him up, he said. His wife, a religious student working on her masters thesis, urged him to leave everything and go for jihad in Iraq. "She told me they are doing this to the men, imagine what is happening to the women now. Imagine your sisters and me being raped by the infidel American pigs." He suddenly realised his mistake, he said, and spent the night crying. The next day he borrowed money for another journey - one that he described as his last. He was given a contact name in Aleppo, a city in the north of Syria, who would arrange for him to be smuggled across the border. "I didn't tell anyone, I just told my wife. I borrowed a car from a friend and we went out to do some shopping. She bought me two trousers and a shirt. We went then to my father's house. I told my mother, forgive me if I had done anything wrong. She said, why? I told her nothing, I just want forgiveness from you and dad. "She asked me if I was going to Baghdad. I said no. She hugged me and cried." The fighter told how he went back home and sat with his wife and children, who had no idea that this was their last dinner with their father. "My favourite daughter came and sat in my lap and slept there. She opened her eyes and said, 'Daddy, I love you'." Weeping as he spoke, he said: "You know these memories are the work of the devil trying to soften my heart and bring me back home. The only place I am going from here is heaven." When he arrived in Damascus, he learned from other jihadi networks that the Syrians had tightened security on the border. Other would-be mujahideen were waiting in small apartments in Damascus, Aleppo and Hams. After a month he realised that the cleric who was running the smuggling network was working with the Syrian mukhabarat, the secret service, handing over the mujahideen to the police. He fled, but in a small mosque in Aleppo, he met a young cleric who promised to help him reach Iraq. The Yemeni was handed to another group which placed him in a small house with other jihadis for two weeks. One night he was taken to a village on the Syrian side of the border in the north. "They came and said we are crossing today. It was a very scary journey. We had to lie still in the desert if we heard American helicopters. "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" - a town north-west of Baghdad. There he joined a minibus filled with Arab fighters, driving through the night. They were escorted by two cars, he said, including a police car. He produced his Qur'an from his pocket. "When I was in Syria, I bought seven copies of this, wrote the name of my wife and my five children on each and left the seventh empty - I didn't impose a name for the newborn on my wife. She called me later when I was preparing to cross and told me she has written on it 'shahid' - martyr."
