IRAQI RESISTANCE

UPI: Interview with anti-U.S. Iraqi cell

(Editor's Note: This is the first of a two-part series on meetings United Press International's Baghdad correspondent P. Mitchell Prothero had with a top member of an anti-U.S. Iraqi guerrilla group)


"Wait fifteen minutes," Abu Mujhid says after looking at his watch. Sipping a 7-UP soda after having broken his Ramadan fast just after nightfall in mid-November, Abu Mujhid -- not his real name -- has just been challenged by a reporter to prove he commands a resistance cell that performs violent attacks on American troops occupying his home town of Baghdad.

It's a critical question for men claiming to be part of anti-U.S. forces. Most demand money for exclusive interviews and eventually approach journalists working in Iraq. These interviews usually end with some unknown man wearing a kaffiya -- or Arabic headscarf -- around his face, holding an AK-47 and talking about some unverifiable incident in which he personally killed scores of American troops.

But Abu Mujhid has never asked a reporter for money. And he sits at a table in Western dress for this meeting -- one of four he and his men conducted with United Press International -- his round face clearly identifiable in a public place.

The conditions placed on the meetings were that UPI not use a satellite telephone -- from which a location can easily be tracked by U.S. intelligence -- or cameras and recording devices. Each of the meetings was after nightfall, in a public place and the location and timing of the interviews were never set in advance. Abu Mujahid also disclosed the neighborhood he lives and operates from but asked it not be identified in the article. He also said that he alone could be quoted for the story.

Sixteen minutes after Abu Mujhid told UPI to wait, four mortar rounds fired from a southwestern Baghdad neighborhood about 3 miles away flew overhead, landing in the compound of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority.

"God willing we hit something this time," he says, wryly smiling. "Our mortars are very inaccurate. We cannot wait to aim them, so we use timers.

"The American helicopters come too fast for us to properly use the mortars as we were trained to. But we are finding ways to fight these helicopters. Before we would shoot flares at them. But this did no good. Now some of our colleagues have SA-7s or Strellas (Soviet-era anti-aircraft missiles), but me and my colleagues have no such equipment."