Arab volunteers gave the V victory as they left for Baghdad before the war

By Imam El-Liethy, IOL Correspondent

BAGHDAD, April 27 (IslamOnline.net) – Trembling with fear for his life after an extraordinary bitter war experience along side the now-defeated Iraqi forces, Arab volunteers find it hard to speak up their mind.

But, the 20 year-old Khaled was rather fed up not to reveal a lot from haunting memories he had formed while bracing to defend the Arab Islamic country against the U.S-British forces in the blistering firepower unleashed on March 20.

"Iraqi officials took us after putting down our names to a camp to the west of Baghdad," Khaled began his story directly with an inescapable feeling of discretion.

"We hailed from Tunisia, Algeria, Comoros, Morocco; but with a clear common determination to struggle on to bitter end and even embrace death to expel the Americans from the Arab land," the youth added with a glistening eyes as if giving a lustrous reflection of a hoped-for victory that turned away with the downfall of Baghdad with less-than-expected scant resistance.

"But they were well-equipped with the sophisticated weapons, we got the old rusty ones," Khaled said of the Saddam's Fedayeen widely touted as the most loyalists of Saddam Hussein.

He echoed a similar conspiracy theory explanation of the fall of Baghdad told by Arab volunteers safely returning to their homeland and others who believed that the Iraqi capital should not have crumbled in such fast a way while other smaller and even less fortified areas in the country put up more resistance.

"They pushed us forward to the battlefield with only two or three days of training," Khaled recalled, noting that the first battle in which he joined engaging the U.S. forces in the strategic Saddam International Airport on the edge of the Iraqi capital.    

A Bit Late

"On Friday, April 4, we were given three Rocket-propelled grenades each and backed by a guard carrying a Kalashnikov. But when fighting began we found that our weapons did not hit the U.S. tanks or any of their armored vehicles,"

Khaled knew the cause, apparently after it was a bit late.

"We found that the U.S. tanks were encircled by magnetic waves that encounter any enemy fire and send fire on them to no avail, no wonder 13 of our members returned although counted 55 before the battle"

Another volunteer has told an IslamOnline.net reporter the battle claimed the lives of 700 volunteers as the Iraqi regular forces pulled out of the area in large and organized numbers and donned civilian clothes.

But Khaled was as careful as possible not to level accusations against any one. But kept a similar extent of wonder and suspicion.

“We asked them for weapons, but they answered with ‘we have no orders’”

Khaled remembered with grieve how the Arab volunteers were pushed into the frontlines of the battle while the reportedly steadfast Iraqi Republican Guard units moved to the rear.

Further to their dismay, Arab volunteers were mostly kept in tunnels for days without ammunitions to face the invading forces or even enough foodstuffs to survive.

“We were forced to descend into tunnels, and soon the American forces opened their reserve of shells which found a return of fire from the ant-aircraft ground defenses nearby,” Khaled said, fighting back his tears.

But he remembered how the Arab volunteers put up stiff resistance in the Airport battle.

“A Saudi volunteer managed to blast a U.S. armored vehicle with an RPG, and soon the American ground forces left the airport after we damaged their military equipment,” Khaled recounted with a sigh of relief that only preceded a storm.

“Suddenly the U.S warplanes flew overhead and parachuted other larger groups of soldiers who opened intensive fire on us along other fire shot at us from other directions,”

“I saw my colleagues burning to death, and the Republican Guard officers came to us and asked for withdrawal without even transferring those of us who were injured in the battle,”

Many other volunteers saw thousands of Iraqi soldiers, dressed in civvies, abandoning their barracks allegedly under orders from their “command”.

A large number of Arab volunteers are reportedly still inside Iraq, making up some of the most determined holdouts in the fight against the U.S.-led forces. Whether they are still alive or not remained a controversial question.

In Baghdad on Thursday, April 18, U.S. Marines cleared out two mosques after determining that fighters from other Arab countries were inside.

Days before the breakout of war, Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan announced that thousands of Arab volunteers seeking martyrdom were flocking to Iraq in droves.

The Iraqi embassy in Berlin had said before the aggression that "some volunteers" -- Egyptians, Lebanese, Moroccans and Palestinians -- had obtained visas to fight in Iraq, and that some Iraqis had returned home for that purpose.

While it is difficult to confirm these figures, reports have come in from Cairo to Stockholm of Arabs volunteering to join in defending Iraq.

Iraq's state-run television later said an estimated 4,000 fighters had arrived in the country.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi army from towns and barracks a mystry not only to Arab volunteers but also to many people world-wide.

Some volunteers stood witness to such pull-outs in Mosul while they were heading for the Syrian borders.