Love and revenge

The Sunday Times today publishes a gripping account of Abu Fahed, a loving Iraqi father of a three-year-old daughter Noor. Overcome by grief when his wife is killed by American snipers while taking their sick baby to hospital, he is determined to become a suicide bomber, hoping to kill as many Americans as possible. In the end he only manages to kill a few Iraqi police and innocent civilians, hoping his daughter will become the mother of brave sons, who will take part in the liberation of Baghdad. (Suicide revenge of the loving father)

First of all, it is an emotional story, because you feel sympathy for the father, but it also points to the limits of the Iraqi resistance in the absence of a unified and strong, determined leadership. Let's first quote a few passages from the story:

“On the evening of September 21, 2004, when Noor was approaching her first birthday, she fell ill. Her temperature rose so high that her parents thought she needed to go to hospital. The hospital was only just down the road. As [Ahlam, Noor's mother] walked in pitch darkness, someone must have mistaken the bundle in her arms for something more sinister than a sick child. There was a shot. Ahlam crumpled to the ground. Nobody could help her. She died where she lay.”

This is how the American occupiers are “winning hearts and minds”, murdering a mother carrying her sick baby to hospital, shooting first and not even bothering to asks any questions afterwards. Abu Fahed now only has a single aim in life: kill as many American soldiers as possible to avenge the death of his wife.

“The suicide bombers sent by insurgent groups that have never been identified drove up to their targets in cars packed with explosives. They blew up Iraqi police and civilians but no Americans. Abu Fahed’s dying wish for revenge evidently went unfulfilled.”

While the Iraqi police were perhaps not totally innocent as they prop up the regime of the occupiers, among the dead was a little three-year-old girl, just like Abu's own.

The Americans will never win in Iraq, no matter how many “surges” they execute, and no matter how many additional soldiers they sent, because they are creating new enemies every hour of every day. Honest men, whose only worry was how to feed their families, become suicide bombers, or terrorists as the Americans would call them.

But Abu's act of revenge missed its target, as no American soldiers were killed. Blind rage will only lead to more bloodshed. There is no leadership that protects the people and targets the root cause of Iraq's misery: the U.S. occupation. Compare this to the liberation struggle of the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese who were lucky to have the leadership of the Vietnamese Communist Party to guide their struggle.

In the absence of a capable leadership to guide them, the liberation struggle of the Iraqi people will be long and tortuous. But let's leave the last word to Abu Fahed when he addresses his daughter: "I want to meet you in heaven, God willing, as a mother of men who liberated Baghdad."