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Captured insurgent in Iraq: `I will fight again'
He told his family he was going on a pilgrimage to Mecca.Instead, the second-year college student packed a vinyl travel bag and left home in Saudi Arabia for a trip that would take him on a smuggling route across the Syrian border and into the heart of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq. So began the underground life of safe houses, aliases and hit-and-run attacks of another Islamic foot soldier recruited to battle the U.S. military and its Iraqi allies. The story recounted to The Associated Press in a rare interview with a captured foreign fighter is not one of extraordinary daring or singular cunning. It's about one of the anonymous trigger-pullers in alleys or roadsides in this case, an ordinary history major who became a rank-and-file gunslinger for insurgent commanders. The journey of Mohammed Abdullah al-Obeid offers a window into how extremist networks manage to replenish their ranks by combing campuses, markets and mosques for those willing to take up arms in Iraq and now increasingly in Afghanistan. Even with violence in Iraq tailing off, authorities are concerned that the same clandestine channels used to bring the young al-Obeid into Iraq in late 2005 are still in operation and can be expanded at any time. Posted by: ed 2009-10-12 |
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