'This is jihad'
U.S. actions in Fallujah and elsewhere unite Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad.

By Annia Ciezadlo

BAGHDAD – He saw it with his own eyes: a 10-year-old boy, with a Kalashnikov in one hand and a rocket launcher in the other, fighting a U.S. tank. "He was only 10 years old," says Hussein Subhi with reverence, "but he was a man."

Subhi, only 22 himself, just got back from Fallujah. A polite, soft-spoken youth from the Shiite slum of Hurriya, he went with a convoy of cars and trucks delivering aid. But his real reason, he says, was to join the Fallujans in fighting U.S. forces. "They were counting on a Sunni-Shiite split in Iraq, but we are one hand," he says. "We will be victorious, God willing."

Subhi has no reason to fight for Fallujah. After all, the Sunni city is full of former members of Saddam Hussein's Mukhabarat and Republican Guard, both of which joined in the brutal suppression of Shiites under the Baath regime. But the attack on Fallujah has awakened a newly militant nationalism among Shiites, now eager to fight the U.S. occupation, based on Muslim religious identity and feelings of Arab nationalism.

"Don't underestimate nationalism," says Wamidh Nadhmi, a professor of political science at Baghdad University. "And don't exaggerate Shiite-Sunni differences, but remember that they are both Arabs. They have the same religion. There is no religion called Shiism and no religion called Sunnism. They are both Muslims."

The U.S. attack on Fallujah has tapped into widespread frustration simmering in once-friendly Shiite neighborhoods, where the U.S.-led occupation government is blamed for failing to bring back electricity, clean water, and jobs.

"From the beginning we supported the liberation of Iraq by Americans," says an unemployed market porter from the Shiite slum of Sadr City who chose to give his name as Abu Ali, father of Shiite martyr Ali. Ali once cherished hope of getting a government job in Iraq's new, Shiite-friendly government. But now that hope has turned to disappointment, even anger.

"Bremer, at the beginning, was a brother," Ali says, leaning against a sack of grain in Sadr City's Jamila Wholesale Market. "But now he is worse than Saddam. Saddam said about us that we are a mob. And Bremer said the same thing about us – he said that we are criminals."

Ali is referring to U.S. authorities' April 5 announcement of an arrest warrant against Muqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army has been at odds with coalition forces ever since the U.S. Army padlocked his newspaper March 28. Ali, like many moderate Shiites, is not a follower of al-Sadr. But he supports al-Sadr's opposition to U.S. forces.

Some fear the support of moderate Shiites like Ali may turn into a wider movement. "The contacts between Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fallujah resistance are not as significant as the sympathy between the Shiites and the people of Fallujah," said Adnan al-Janabi, sheikh of the powerful Janabi tribe, which like many large Iraqi tribes contains both Shiite and Sunni members. "And if it moves beyond sympathy – if the Americans continue to make more mistakes, for example if they attack Najaf – probably they will create a real organization between the Shiites of Najaf and the Sunnis."

In Shiite slums it is Fallujah, more than al-Sadr, that is the rallying cry. "This is for Fallujah," says Ali Sa'addoun Abadi, picking up a packet of cotton pads from a pile heaped on the floor of his tiny storefront on busy Hurriya Street. "Because there is no difference between Fallujah and us. They are Iraqis – there is no difference between Shiites and Sunnis. Sunni and Shia, we are fighting the Americans."

In the gloom of Abadi's store – as usual, the electricity's out in Hurriya – lie mounds of cotton pads, bandages, and diapers for Fallujah. Outside lie bags of rice, flour, and lentils. There's even money: according to Abadi, about 200 people donated a total of roughly a million Iraqi dinars – about $700, in increments of about $3.50 each. "Donations from the people of Street 39 to the mujahideen," reads one packet of grubby bills in small denominations, donations from the poor of Hurriya.

Hurriya, where Subhi lives, is a Shiite slum with a sizable Sunni minority. Mountains of rotting garbage choke the alleys where children play. Sewage still floods many streets, a testament to both Hussein-era neglect and the failures of the U.S.-led reconstruction effort. But while neighborhoods like this bore the brunt of Hussein's anti-Shiite policies, losing many young men to his execution squads, that hasn't stopped the people here from rallying to Fallujah.

"The people in Fallujah weren't responsible for what Saddam and the Baathists did," Subhi says. "We have to put all of that behind us now. We have to liberate our country."

U.S. military commanders have stayed relentlessly on-message that all Iraqis killed in Fallujah, now estimated at about 700, are "insurgents." But that is scoffed at in Baghdad, where Arab satellite channels like al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya have been beaming footage of dead and injured women and children since the conflict began. "The Americans say they are fighting al-Qaeda in Fallujah, but it is a lie," says Jabar Nadaf, Subhi's neighbor. "They are fighting all the Iraqi people."

Now that Fallujah's refugees have begun pouring into Baghdad, bringing tales of carnage, Iraqis are even less likely to think of the Fallujans as insurgents. "I saw it with my own eyes: they shelled all of Fallujah," Subhi says, collapsing into an armchair, exhausted and sweating after his return journey, on which he and others from Hurriya brought about 400 refugees back with them. Sitting under tapestries of Imam Hussein, the founding martyr of Shiism, his neighbors listen raptly. "Stores, houses – they shelled indiscriminately. We didn't see bodies in the street, but we saw many injured in the hospital."

Subhi left Hurriya April 9 at about 3 p.m., after prayers at the Allawi mosque. The neighborhood sent 22 young men, driving six trucks and four cars full of donations with black banners that read, "From the People of Hurriya to the People of Fallujah." Of the 22 from Hurriya, none had ever been to Fallujah – ordinarily about an hour's drive away – in their lives.

After they distributed the donations, Subhi and the others went to the local mujahideen and asked if they could join the fight. But the Fallujans turned them down. "They said we were their guests, and we had already done so much for them by bringing them these food and supplies," Subhi says. "They told us they had enough fighters to achieve victory."

Like the vast majority of working-class Shiites, Subhi and his neighbors look to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for guidance. For now, they believe, Sistani does not want them to rise up on their own against the occupation. Yet. "Sistani wants Iraqis to wait, to mass their ranks, to be ready to fight," Nadaf says. The others nod.

But if Sistani gives the word, they say they will be ready. "If Sayyid Sistani gives the fatwa, we will carry the tanks on our backs," Abadi says. "If we die, we will be martyrs. This is jihad."