Iraqi soldiers flee as push for suicide bombers mounts
By Laurie Goering
Chicago Tribune
UMM QASR, Iraq — The young men, most in their teens, fled the Iraqi army in Basra three days ago. They abandoned their weapons and put on sweat suits, hoping to pass as students, they say.
| AMERICA AT WAR: HAWAI'I IMPACT | |
| • | Soldier killed in suicide attack has family here |
| • | Sales surging at some surplus stores |
| AMERICA AT WAR | |
| • | Allied forces inching closer to Iraqi capital |
| • | Tactics by Iraq force U.S. shift in strategy |
| • | Facts about the war |
Then, after being patted down at the British checkpoint leading out of the city, they fled south, hitching rides and walking.
On the weekend they arrived at Umm Qasr, the only city in southern Iraq in relatively firm control of the U.S.-British military coalition. There they found the first person in camouflage clothing — a journalist's Kuwaiti interpreter — threw up their hands and surrendered.
"We will accept any treatment, whatsoever," said one of the five young men, all of whom refused to give their names. "But we will not go back to the Iraqi regiment."
Iraqi conscripts are desperately fleeing Basra, the young men say, out of fear of being forced to become suicide bombers, the newest Iraqi weapon in the war with coalition forces.
The men said they had been trained in recent weeks to ride motorcycles packed with explosives into crowds of coalition troops.
"We have orders to do it," said one of the five youths who escaped from the barracks in Basra.
On Saturday, a man posing as a taxi driver near Najaf motioned American troops over to his car and then exploded it, killing four Americans and himself.
British troops operating in southern Iraq said last week they had been put on alert for suicide bombers and feared men with plastic explosives strapped to their bodies might try to infiltrate groups of Iraqis seeking food aid and water from coalition distribution sites.
But the deserters who arrived in Umm Qasr this weekend are the first indication the Iraqi army also might be planning motorcycle bomb attacks along with strikes using Iraqi soldiers as well as Arab volunteers from outside the country.
Taha Yassin Ramadan, Iraq's vice president, has promised that suicide bombings will become "routine military policy" in the country. He said that Iraq, outmanned in traditional weapons, has "the legal right to deal with the enemy with any means."
The young men in Umm Qasr said that large numbers of Iraqi conscripts are attempting to flee Basra, in part because of the push for suicide bombings, but hard-line pro-Saddam Hussein forces have begun executing soldiers who refuse to fight and have set up a special team of soldiers to hunt down fleeing conscripts.
"There are special people who go to our homes and look for us," said one 19-year-old among those who surrendered.
The men said they believe that about 500 of Saddam's hardline fighters remain in Basra, leading a fight being waged with many hundreds of reluctant conscripts.
