National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) March 26, 2003
Only death will stop Fedayeen: 'Men of sacrifice': Saddam's militia putting up greatest resistance to allies
By Isabel Vincent
The most-feared fighting force in Iraq is not the Iraqi army but a small group of irregulars known in Arabic as "Saddam's men of sacrifice," many of them recruited as children and prepared to fight to the death for the Iraqi leader.
U.S. military sources confirm the Fedayeen Saddam have been providing the greatest resistance to invading allied troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders say the paramilitary group has been set loose among the Iraqi army units, intimidating Iraqi commanders and refusing to allow them to surrender.
Experts cannot agree on the size of the group, and estimates put it at anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000.
Although Fedayeen members normally dress in black and sport black balaclavas, they have been known to wear civilian clothes. One of their current ploys is to travel in buses and taxis to welcome U.S. and British forces, before turning on them with machine guns and grenades.
In a speech televised this week, Saddam Hussein praised the Fedayeen for their work.
"The [Baath] party, the people, the clans, the Saddam Fedayeen and national security forces alongside our brave armed forces have done great things," he said.
When a U.S. convoy got lost last weekend near Nasiriya, Fedayeen paramilitaries ambushed one of the trucks. Seven soldiers died and five others were taken prisoner.
"The majority of the resistance we have faced so far comes from Saddam's Special Security Organization and the Saddam Fedayeen," said Peter Wall, chief of staff of the British military contingent in Iraq at a recent news conference.
"These are men who know that they will have no role in the building of a new Iraq and have no future."
Originally organized by Saddam's elder son Uday in 1995, the members of Saddam Fedayeen are recruited from areas of the country loyal to the Iraqi leader. Many come from Saddam's own al-Bu Nasser tribe and other Sunni-dominated tribes from the area near his hometown in Tikrit.
In 1996, command of the group passed for a short time to Saddam's younger son Qusay. This followed an incident in which high-tech weapons were transferred to the Fedayeen from the elite Republican Guard without the Iraqi leader's knowledge, the Global Security think-tank says.
The force was "once a strange cross between a goon squad and a kamikaze brigade," said Iraqi military expert Kenneth Pollack in his recent book The Threatening Storm.
The group reports directly to the presidential palace, bypassing the armed forces chain of command. They are completely separate from the Republican Guard, which Saddam reportedly stopped trusting after the 1991 Gulf War.
The Fedayeen played an important part in pre-war Iraq, including providing security for the Iraqi leader and political enforcement.
In Baghdad, they control main intersections and patrol sensitive areas of the capital. They have also been used to enforce night curfews in Iraq's largest cities. (The curfews have been a feature of Iraqi life for more than a year.)
Group members are also known for their brutality and ruthlessness. Their "death squadron" specializes in executing the regime's opponents in their homes.
Like Arkan's Tigers, a Serb paramilitary unit responsible for some of the most horrific acts of ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war and the Kosovo campaign, the Saddam Fedayeen operate completely outside the law.
According to a recent U.S. State Department report, the paramilitary organization is responsible for numerous human rights violations.
One of their leading commanders is Mezahem Saab Al Hassan Al-Tikriti, named recently by the U.S. government as one of the Iraqi war criminals who will be hauled before a military tribunal after the war.
The Fedayeen specialize in public beheadings. Over the past three years, the death squad has targeted 200 women under the pretext of fighting prostitution. After the executions, the victims' families are forced to display the heads on the wall outside their homes for several days.
Witnesses say the Fedayeen arrive at the victim's home and drag her out into the street. She is then stretched out on an iron bench in front of her children, other family members and local people. The executioner, who is dressed in brown, cuts off the victim's head with a sword.
"These barbaric acts were carried out in the total absence of any proper judicial procedures and many of the victims were not engaged in prostitution, but were targeted for political reasons," the State Department report says.
"For example, Najat Mohammad Haydar, an obstetrician in Baghdad, was beheaded after criticizing the corruption within health services."
Wives of Saddam's political opponents have also been targeted, the report adds.
In the early days of the Saddam Fedayeen, members were recruited from local toughs. But over the last five years, the group has drawn on the Ashbal Saddam, or Saddam's Lion Cubs, boys aged 12 to 17 who belong to what military experts describe as the Iraqi version of the Hitler Youth.
Founded to "arm the child with an inner light," the Ashbal Saddam's main function is to recruit boys to be loyal security guards for Saddam and his family.
"Families are forced to send their children to the camps to fill up the vacancies, and parents have no say over their children's future because when you put them through such training and indoctrination, you don't know what kind of child you'll end up having," said Haidar Ahmed, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an Iraqi exile group based in London.
GRAPHIC: Black & White Photo: Karim Sahib, Agence France-Presse; Iraqi boys take part in summer camps for Saddam's Lion Cubs, north of Baghdad, in 1999. The camps prepare young volunteers for the Fedayeen militia force.; Black & White Photo: Saddam Hussein's elder son Uday originally organized the Fedayeen in 1995.
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