Armed with pen, pad on front line

BAGHDAD -- For freelance Iraqi journalist Uthman Mohammed al-Qaisi, the battle for Fallujah climaxed before dawn Wednesday. Hunched beneath an air conditioner in an abandoned house, clutching a dead cellphone, he heard the shouts and shots of US Marines and Iraqi insurgents just yards away.

He was trapped in a no man's land that allowed no safe territory for independent journalists. Most Iraqi journalists had quit Fallujah the week before, when insurgents accused them of spying for the CIA. Qaisi covered the battle from the insurgents' side until he fled to Baghdad on Wednesday, fearing for his life. His harrowing tale offers a glimpse into the mind-set of the Iraqi and foreign mujahideen fighters who ran Fallujah.

Qaisi had spent the better part of the last year in Fallujah, winning the trust of insurgent leaders.

On Monday night, he took shelter in the Hadra al-Mohammadiya mosque, which had been converted into a field hospital for the rebels.

"Everyone was hysterical," he said. "They considered everyone who did not carry a gun a traitor or a spy for the Americans."

Another Iraqi journalist was taken away and rumored to have been killed because he smoked cigarettes during the Ramadan fasting period.

"I felt I was being strangled," Qaisi said. "I was between the American gunfire on one side and the Arab and Iraqi fighters on the other."

Omar Hadid, the top lieutenant to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Fallujah, issued a fatwa at the onset of the battle, declaring anyone who did not carry a weapon an enemy. Qaisi requested a letter from insurgent leaders to permit him to report from the city.

As Qaisi awaited the decision, a Saudi fighter berated all reporters, and then bragged that victory over the Americans was inevitable. "We will massacre them," he said.

Ultimately, the head of a group called the Army of Mohammed gave Qaisi an authorization letter.

Qaisi said he returned to the mosque at sunset to report on the fighters from the Army of Mohammed who were based there, and to spend the night.

Fighters from the Army of Mohammed advised him to leave Fallujah immediately. He napped in a broken chair in the part of the mosque being used as a hospital, but started awake when US forces attacked at 1 a.m.

Tuesday. As fighters moved weapons out of the mosque, Qaisi took shelter behind the blast barriers near the mosque. Insurgent fighters on foot rushed an oncoming barrage of American attacks in an apparently suicidal charge.

A freelance Iraqi cameraman who had also decided to spend the night at the mosque stood outside filming the clash. Qaisi warned his colleague to hide, but the cameraman did not budge. He was shot and killed in the cross fire.

At dawn Tuesday, Qaisi ventured back onto the street and saw dozens of dead bodies, mostly those of insurgents. He continued reporting, venturing to another mosque more securely under insurgent control, the Firdous mosque.

Insurgents used the major mosques as headquarters, with one area set aside to treat the wounded, another to store weapons and ammunition, and a third to plan attacks. At Firdous, wounded insurgents screamed from bullet wounds or phosphorus burns.

After midnight Tuesday, horrified by the scene, Qaisi fled to an abandoned house, taking shelter from the bombardment under an air conditioner.

Within a half-hour, he said, the front line shifted, and the house lay square in the middle of the fighting. A shell struck the house.

"I thought, this is it, I will die."

He immediately thought of his parents and .ancée, who had abandoned their home in Fallujah months ago for the comparative safety of Baghdad. "I tried to call my family to tell them what happened," he said. "I wanted them to know who owes me money and whom I owe, so that I could die with a clear conscience."

But he could not get through.

At dawn Wednesday, climbing from yard to yard, he managed to reach his family home in an area under US control.

With another Iraqi journalist, he walked 2½ miles to an American checkpoint.

There, soldiers searched him carefully but were convinced that Qaisi was a journalist after he provided business cards and phone numbers of Western colleagues.

Farther down the road, a group of Iraqi soldiers also searched him, striking him on the back with a rifle butt, and threatened to arrest him. All the people of Fallujah, they told him, were guilty of harboring terrorists.

Outside the cordon, dozens of Fallujah residents were fleeing.

Qaisi saw the police chief, Brigadier Sabar al-Janabi, in civilian clothes driving toward Baghdad.

"There is no place left for me in the city," Janabi said.

At the main highway, Qaisi hitched a ride in a pickup to Baghdad, where he went to meet family members.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2004/11/14/armed_with_pen_pad_on_front_line/