An interview with an Iraqi insurgent

The night before Jill Carroll was released, Abu Nour, her chief captor who claims to be a leader of the Sunni insurgency, ordered her to do one final interview. He'd done about a dozen previous interviews, covering similar topics, but had later destroyed those notes. What follows are excerpts from his last interview, in broken English, with Ms. Carroll.

Fallujah 1 [the first battle for Fallujah in April 2004] was a point of change in the war between America and mujahideen [holy warriors].... All Muslims in the world ... asked themselves, 'How [did] they win a war against the American army? It was impossible.... [Afterward] Muslim babies [were] named Fallujah.

Why [did] we lose Fallujah 2 [the second battle for the city in November 2004]?

[Too many bad Muslims joined the insurgency.] If you have a few mujahideen [who are] good [Muslims, it] is better than [to] have a lot of the bad kind [of Muslims]. A good mujahid enters the war [expecting that] if he dies, he goes to heaven.... Muhammad told us that heaven is not all the same place. It is divided into many places. The martyrs take the top [spot] in heaven.

Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, is a very important leader in war. To make his soldier enter the war he tells him about martyrdom – he will go directly to heaven. A martyr takes 72 women ... different from the women on Earth. The women on Earth are not perfect.... The Prophet said if the sun were to shine on the [women of heaven, they would be] more beautiful than the sun.

A good Muslim prays five times a day, he reads the Koran, he is good in dealing with his wife, with his mother and father.... He doesn't lie, and he makes his work in a good way.... This is a good kind of mujahid.

We think this is a very important point to win a war. If we lose the help of Allah we cannot [achieve] anything [against] American soldiers, because this is a very strong army.

The American soldier comes from America. He left his country, his family, his children, his wife. He cannot see them, maybe six months or more. This is very big problem because they are men.... The mujahideen, [we] can [leave] our homes for 20 minutes, hit the American soldier, and come back home. So we [have fought] continuously now three years, and we can continue 10 years or more. But Americans cannot continue one year. It is impossible.

I have maybe 2,000 mujahideen in all Iraq, in all towns.... If I divide this into groups of 20, I have 100 groups. So this means I have 100 operations in a week. So in a month I have 400 operations. So if in every operation I kill only 2 soldiers, I kill 800 soldiers in a month. So [President] Bush is very tired because of this number of operations ... so we are sure that the American army cannot continue in Iraq.

When the American army took me they hit me. They hit me all over my body. They took my money.... The problem is how the American soldiers are dealing with the people.

Why [does the] American government say the mujahideen are terrorists? Sometimes when we try to hit the American soldier, or Iraqi soldier, sometimes we kill women and children in this operation. We don't want to kill the women or children, but this is war....

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