'This is the only fun the kids get - shooting at
the U.S.
sitting ducks'

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. Apart from the scores of Shia militiamen running around the streets with RPGs on their shoulders, the streets are empty. The police have evaporated, leaving only their burned-out cars from previous skirmishes with rebel fighters.

We park our car on the outskirts of the shrine area. Normally, thousands of devout Shia pilgrims from Iran, Afghanistan and central Asia would be bustling around on buses, taxis and donkey carts, but today there are no buses, no donkeys, and certainly no pilgrims.

The main street leading to the shrine is terrifyingly empty, with shattered windows and piles of garbage everywhere. As we start along the street, a bunch of militiamen from the Badr brigade, one of the main Shia factions, demand our press passes. They are all dressed alike - in flip-flops, black T-shirts and pyjama pants - and all are carrying AK47s. "I'm sorry," says one ugly militiaman. "You are not allowed in. We have instructions not to allow journalists to take pictures of the shrine because this will compromise the safety of the shrine." As if the hundreds of Americans and militiamen shooting at each other just metres from the shrine are not compromising its safety.

We ask him to check; after a few minutes of creaking noises from the radio, he comes back with a big grin: no journalists allowed.

It takes us a little while to figure out the game that we will have to play for the next three days. 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.

So we do a big loop and sneak through the alleys, telling the guards at every checkpoint that we are not here for the fighting but have an appointment with Ayatollah X, Y or Z.

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"). They are the Mahdi army, a militia led by Moqtada al-Sadr, which, according to the US army, includes highly trained former Iraqi military officers.

I manage to convince one of them to take us to their HQ. He puts his AK on his shoulder and points at the end of the street - "Snipers. Run very fast" - and we sprint across the street.

He leads us through a maze of alleyways which make up part of the old covered souks of Kerbala, the shops heavily barricaded with steel bars, the streets piled with weeks' old rubbish, fighters sitting in groups of three to five, smoking. 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.

Finally, we arrive at the HQ, 50m from the shrine and a street corner where most of the fighting has taken place in the past few days. They take us to the "sheikh" for permission, a young guy in his early 30s with a big bushy beard who is the local Mahdi commander. I spend the next two days with these men on a clutch of street corners from where they take occasional pot shots at the Americans.

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.

Others start to gather around us. "Don't talk to them." "No, do talk to them, they must know what's happening." "Are you Americans?" "Are you spies?" "Who sent you here?" "Take my picture." "No, take my picture with an RPG." "No, don't let them photograph the RPGs - they'll sell the pictures to the Americans."

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. All the while we are squeezed behind the corner. All I can think is that I have to stay alive otherwise my girlfriend will kill me.

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. Someone shouts: "He can't hear you, go and show him!"

The deaf mute is getting support fire from a kid who shoots off a few rounds, then jumps back to fix his AK, which is falling apart. "If you take a picture of me fixing this, I will kill you."

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."

I ask him why he wants to die. "We should all die for the sake of our leader!" shouts one of the militiamen who have gathered around us.

On the last day, while I am trying to leave this crazy place, we are chased by an overheated young muj ("muj", from mujaheddin, means simply a religious fighter - since the Shia started fighting the Americans, they too have been happy to call themselves "muj"). He demands that we give him all our films. "You are foreigners working with the Americans!" We tell him it's not true. He click-clicks his AK, and points it at us. "I said, give me the films or I will shoot!"

"No, leave them alone," someone calls out, "they have been with us for the last three days, the sheikh knows about them."

Shaking, we leave, and head to the shrine to see if there are any pilgrims there. As we are sitting on the pavement, three men with AKs come over and tell us we are under arrest.

I wish I had taped the previous conversation.

They take us to the shrine of Imam Abbas, and into a marble-clad room filled with big, ugly guys with thick beards and an arsenal of automatic weapons. These men are from the Shrine Protection Force, a militia loyal to the grand Shia Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and so loosely allied with the Americans.

"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."

I decide that Allah has a few other things to solve in Iraq first.

In any case, once they discover that we are photographers and not video cameramen, the detention comes to an end pretty quickly. And I decide to stop chasing bullets and RPGs and find somewhere calm. So I resolve to head to Falluja - after all, the Americans have managed to install peace over there, haven't they?

Falluja

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. Back then it was like Apocalypse Now, with muj running in the streets and American marines firing at any house they suspected had "enemies" inside. Falluja is a peaceful town now; shops are open and cars are in the streets, and Iraqi security forces are every where: ICDC (the US-trained civil defence corps), policemen, traffic police, and the new Falluja brigade, known as the "brigade of the heroes" by the locals. You can even say that things are normal.

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 that someone will come up and ask me for my military ID card.

But, as everything in the new Iraq, the picture is totally blurred, and no one in Falluja can figure out what the new arrangement actually means. For some Fallujans, it meant that their people would get paid again and they would be in charge of their own security without being seen as collaborators. For the Americans it meant the new force would work with them to enforce law and order in the city, helping to build a new Iraq.

But 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. If you have a record shop in Falluja, it had better be selling the latest version of Koranic chanting; Britney Spears could get you flogged.

A bunch of Falluja kids, just finishing their exams, are hanging around their school when two muj trucks surround them and pick up all the kids who don't have a "decent" hair cut. They will be taken to get their heads shaved. (Bear in mind that we are talking about Falluja, which is already one of the most conservative towns in Iraq. There aren't too many funky haircuts here to begin with.)

As I arrive at the main entrance to the city, two shaking Iraqi ICDC are handing flyers to Fallujans driving into the city. The leaflets are designed to advise how to file a complaint for compensation, and to reassure them about what the Americans are up to: "The marines came here originally to help the people of Falluja, and they will work together to defeat the enemies of the Iraqi people."

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?"

I tell him that I'm a journalist and would like to meet the Sheikh.

"How did you manage to get in? Didn't they stop you at the checkpoint?"

Thinking he is talking about the marines' checkpoint, I say, "No, everything was fine."

"Did they see your camera?" I tell him I was hiding it.

"This Abu Tahrir, I don't know what kind of mujaheddin cell he is running! I told him that every car should be thoroughly searched and all journalists should be brought here!"

I am ushered inside where, surrounded by three muj fighters, the new mayor of Falluja gives me his geopolitical analysis of the American plot to control the world by occupying Falluja. "You know, we were all very happy when the Americans came, we thought our country would be better with their help, but Allah the Mighty wasn't pleased," he tells me. The Americans started making mistakes, he explains, and now, "It's all Allah's plot to stop the believers from dealing with infidel foreigners."

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.

The meeting is interrupted many times, once when a small kid comes into the room and everyone stands to shake his hand. "He is our best sniper here. He has killed three Americans, he wants to call the Americans out for a sniping competition."

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 officer who mixes bits of the Koran with chunks of nationalist and Ba'athist ranting.

Ten minutes later, another muj comes into the room complaining that different muj groups haven't shown up to take their positions. The mayor makes a few phone calls using his mobile phone - "We have cellphones now, you know" - before returning to his thesis of where the American invasion went wrong. "The Iraqi army has been staging coups and counter-coups from 1958 to 1968; it was the army who managed to get everything under control, instead of those stooges on the governing council. The Americans should have counted on the real Iraqis" - and so on, until the muj who brought me in comes back and says: "You have to leave now. The commanders of the mujaheddin cells are going to have a big meeting in Falluja in 15 minutes, and soon there will be muj checkpoints everywhere." 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 in eastern Baghdad

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.

It is Saturday, and we are driving through the streets for the second time in the day. It is late afternoon when we see a bunch of kids directing the traffic away. By now we are able to sniff trouble from miles away, but I tell my driver to head to that street. Makeshift barricades are laid in the middle of the road, made of stones, tyres and chunks of car metal. Someone's house has even been dismantled for the barricade.

"Don't go, there are Americans down the street," shouts one of the kids, so we duck into a side road. The battlefield is an empty plot of land by a mosque, surrounded by alleyways.

In one of them, 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. I am allowed to stay and take pictures, but with the usual proviso: "If we discover that you are working for the Americans, we will kill you."

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. We jump into the first open door, where a man pulls us inside and closes the door.

The house is nothing but two rooms and an open courtyard; home to two families with countless tiny kids. "So they shoot and run, and soon the Americans will come and start breaking into the houses and firing at us," says the man.

Within a few minutes we hear a Humvee pull up by the door, and - boom! boom! boom! - they start firing what sounds like a heavy machine gun. 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. After a while the Humvees go, and we hear the sound of the kids in the streets again. Everything back to normal.

That evening, after another session of shooting and counter-shooting, 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.

First published in The Guardian, June 25, 2004.

The above is available at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1246771,00.html