The lessons of war
The way to Jerusalem was blocked, so they took a detour via Baghdad, only to land in a dead-end. Karim El-Gawhary, in Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, talks to survivors
Abu Bakr kept his mother in the dark about his plans right up until he was due to leave. When she saw him standing in front of her holding his bags, she knew what her 27-year-old son was planning. "I wanted to prevent him from leaving," she remembered, "but all he said was 'mother, I'm joining the jihad in the name of God; do you really want to stop me?'" How could Kamila defy God's commandment. She let her son go.
A few weeks later, Abu Bakr and seven other Palestinian volunteers received orders to defend, at all costs, the bridge over the river Tigris in the southern Iraqi village of Maufiqiya against the advancing US Marines. It was his last mission.
"It was not for Saddam Hussein that my son died in Iraq, but in defence of his Palestinian homeland," declared his mother, Kamila, defiantly, in her small apartment in the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmuk, located in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Hers is the logic borne of hopelessness, which drove numerous Palestinian volunteers to take part in the Iraqi war. The way to Jerusalem was blocked, so they took a detour via Baghdad, only to land in a dead-end; the point of no return for many. Nobody knows how many young men from Yarmuk, which is home to 100,000 Palestinian refugees, volunteered to fight in Iraq against the American forces. Several hundred volunteered for duty in March, to be transported in buses from the Iraqi Embassy in Damascus to the neighbouring war zone. Five dozen failed to return; 19 have been confirmed dead and have been honoured as "martyrs" in the refugee camp.
Kamila's family has had more than it's share of martyrs. "It's almost like a family tradition," she explained. Every generation pays its dues, and death each time came a little further away from her homeland, the Palestinian village of Balad Al-Sheikh, near Haifa. Kamila's father died defending his village in 1948, the year in which Israel was born. Her husband died in the ranks of the PLO defending Lebanon during the Israeli invasion, and now her son, Abu Bakr, has fallen in Iraq.
Abu Bakr's family is trying to come to terms with the situation; his sisters Amal and Zuhair are nothing if not divided on the issue. Kamila has not questioned the fact that her son sacrificed his life in the name of Palestine on the banks of the Tigris. His sister Amal, however, thinks differently. Before he left, she said, she had a raging argument with her brother. "I told him 'if you want to fight, then do it in Palestine, and nowhere else'." Her mother disagrees: Americans or Israelis, she argues, are both aggressors who steal Arab land, and they all help each other. Amal stands her ground. "My brother had no business being in Iraq." Her sister, wearing a hijab, has her own opinion, which has nothing to do with either Palestine or Saddam Hussein. She maintains her brother fought in Iraq to defend Islam against the crusaders. After leaving home, Abu Bakr rang his family twice from Baghdad. "If I don't come back, mother, don't cry," was how he finished the second conversation. Kamila becomes quiet, tears coursing down her face. "Of course, I thank God that he died a martyr, but I would prefer if he had come back alive," she continues after a long pause.
When her son failed to return home, she initially cherished hope that he had been captured by the Americans. But then came the return of Abu Bakr's friend Munir, the sole survivor of the seven Arab volunteers whose job it had been to defend the Maufiqiya bridge on the Tigris. Swearing on the Qur'an, he said that he had seen Abu Bakr die in a volley of enemy machine-gun fire.
Munir has returned to his normal life in Damascus and is now working at an Internet cafe. He and his Palestinian friend Badr, also 26 and also a survivor of the war, described their experiences in Iraq. Neither had been to Iraq before the war. Just before the invasion they applied travelled to Baghdad, where they registered as volunteer fighters with the Ministry of Defence. They were initially used for propaganda purposes, to show the world that Iraq had the entire Arab world on its side. "I wanted to return home," said Badr, but as Arab volunteers continued to arrive, they were finally included in the planning for military manoeuvres. They were given their orders by the fedayeen, Saddam's troop of elite forces, and were eventually stationed in various parts of the country.
The Iraqi forces retreated gradually during the course of the war. "We thought we would be used in the major battle for Baghdad," remembered Badr. Munir and Badr were stationed in different places -- their job, to halt the advance of the American troops. It was like a suicide mission. "We were convinced we'd die, which was why we had come," they both agree. Reality, however, gradually caught up with both young men. Munir was the only survivor of the Tigris bridge operation, and was reunited with Badr in the southern city of Kut, by which time the inhabitants of Kut had negotiated a cease- fire with the advancing American troops. The Arab volunteers were then sent to Baghdad, which had already fallen by the time they arrived. They continued on to Kirkuk, sleeping in mosques along the way, and spent several days in a hotel in Kirkuk while a handful of Kurdish peshmerga fighters, in the face of nominal resistance, managed to take over the city. A Turkoman hid them for a week in his house on the outskirts of Kirkuk, and they were finally smuggled over the Syrian border via the north Iraqi city of Mosul.
There were thousands of volunteers in Iraq from almost all Arab countries, each with his own reason for volunteering. "Some Palestinians volunteered to fight in Iraq for their Palestinian homeland, while others wanted to defend the Umma, [the Arab nation]. Some were not so sure why they had joined up, but most were motivated by the Islamic cause," summarised Munir. All used the jihad argument, as well as stating their wish to die as "martyrs".
"Right now I'm happy to be alive, if only for my mother's sake," said Badr. His friend Munir nods in agreement. He is glad to be a survivor, while remaining fully behind the notion of jihad. "Victory was our goal. Not having achieved this, I'm glad to be alive so I can go and fight again."
However, no longer will these young men naively allow themselves to be taken in, as in the past. "The moral of this story for me is: trust no one, and scrutinise not only the government, but also the people," explained Badr. "We went to Iraq to prevent its occupation. We didn't want the Iraqis to go through the same thing that the Palestinians went through." We Palestinians were collectively taught a lesson by what happened in the Jenin refugee camp, continued Badr. Residents defended the camp for several days against the Israeli army with only a handful of weapons, until finally, after the Palestinians suffered many losses, the camp fell under Israeli control. When the US wanted to treat that issue in the aftermath as a humanitarian problem, residents subsequently refused to accept American aid deliveries. "We discovered in Iraq that we weren't the only Arab school of thought."
Both Munir and Badr are bitter towards the Iraqis. "We fought on two fronts: against the Americans and against a large proportion of Iraqis who didn't want to fight against the Americans." Both stressed the fact that they were not laying their lives on the line for Saddam Hussein, but for an Arab country. "We would have had a lot more respect for the Iraqi people if they had managed to get rid of Saddam themselves. Twenty three million people didn't manage this, nor did they fight against the Americans. They got what they deserved." Badr can scarcely mask the rage he feels towards his former hosts. Wild horses would not drag him back to Iraq, not even as a tourist.
At the end of the day, these jihad veterans have become more realistic. "We learned what we could and couldn't achieve," commented Badr. Despite the fact that so many Arabs came together in Iraq to fight, they were unable to stop the Americans, incapable of defending one single Arab country.
Not only the new generation of jihad fighters has learned something from this war. "If I could turn back the clock, despite all the arguments in favour of jihad and despite his strength and bulk, I'd lock my son in his room and throw away the key." says Kamila, whose son is buried somewhere in Iraq. Badr too, says his mother would "tie his shoelaces together" the next time. Only Munir remains sure that nobody at home would try to prevent him from taking part in another jihad adventure. "After all," he says, "our family has something that the Americans want to impose on the entire region: democracy."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 12 - 18 June 2003 (Issue No. 642)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/642/re12.htm