Ordinary Iraqis Among Guerrilla Movement

"Random road checks and house-to-house searches, often based on inaccurate information, make a bad situation worse. Culturally inappropriate behavior -- male soldiers body-searching women, for example -- and collective punishment have further alienated the population and helped entrench popular support for resistance," reported Arab television journalist, Zaki Chehab in London's The Guardian on October 13.

Recalling interviews and encounters with various factions of guerrilla fighters, including Hussein loyalists, Muslim theocrats and Iraqi civilians demanding liberation from both the old regime and the new authority, Chehab warns that resistance groups are overcoming their opposing motives and banding together.

"In the back streets of Mosul, soon after the fall of the city, I came face to face with a group of armed men, shouting and firing shots in different directions. I asked who they were: some introduced themselves as former Ba'athists, others said they belonged to Islamist organizations. Though ideologically worlds apart, they explained that they all took their orders from the same committee in the city, which was headed by a group of religious leaders. I later found there were similar relationships in Falluja and Samarra."