Last month, Yasser Harhoush said, he fought with
the armed insurgents battling U.S. Marines.
A week ago, the wiry, clean-shaven 28-year-old dusted
off his old olive-drab Iraqi military fatigues and joined Fallujah's
new army brigade under the command of a former general who served under
Saddam Hussein's regime.
Now he carries a shiny black assault rifle as he
patrols Jolan, a neighborhood where some of the fiercest fighting took
place. He mans military checkpoints. And he says he and his comrades
in the 1st Fallujah Brigade are the solution to the monthlong fighting
between the insurgents and the Marines.
"We are protecting the city so the coalition forces
cannot come here again," Harhoush said.
...
Many brigade members said they had fought the Marines in almost daily
battles beginning April 5, when the Marines laid siege to the city
to force residents to hand over those responsible for killing and mutilating
the bodies of four civilian contractors March 31.
"Every one of us participated in defending Fallujah," Omar
said. "Everybody had weapons."
"I also fought," Harhoush said.
...
But prominent members of Iraq's Governing Council objected to Saleh's
military past and high rank in the Baath Party, and he was replaced
with another commander in Saddam's army, Gen. Mohammed Abdul-Latif,
whose tribe is from Fallujah.
...
In an old theater that became a makeshift hospital during the siege,
metal cots and mattresses still filled the stage. Seats were piled
with boxes of medical supplies, including cough syrup, gauze and syringes.
Surgical caps were scattered on the floor.
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