I had to travel for around an hour to meet real volunteers on the front, to al-Azim, 100 kilometers (62 miles) from Baghdad. There, under a burning sun, I met Lt. Mortada Mousawi, who had a bandage over his eye after being wounded last week by a roadside bomb. “I have some 500 volunteers with me here. They are very brave and ready to do anything,” he said. “It’s the fatwa that prompted these people to leave everything behind them and raise guns to fight the enemies of God and the nation.”
During our visit to the area, an operation by the army, along with Shiite militias and the volunteers, was taking place. Gunshots could be heard clearly, and every five minutes a mortar shell would hit an open space in the area around us.
The main militias fighting in the area were Badr and Asaeb Ahl al-Haq, both known to be back in the are and supported by Iran, yet we met no Iranians at the scene. Mousawi, when I asked him about the militias, said, “Iraqis don’t need anyone to fight for them; we need expertise, we need weapons, logistics, but not people, therefore you won’t find any foreigner on our side.”
Very close to al-Azim, a training camp was built to serve hundreds of volunteers who started joining two weeks ago to take part in the fight. Sajjad Hasani, a 45-year-old veteran, was one of them. He said he came from Diwaniyah, southeast of Baghdad, to fight ISIS. “I’m here to defend the religion and the sect. They came to attack Karbala and Najaf,” he said. “I fought against the Baath party in the ’90s, and after 2003 I joined the resistance against the Americans. Today I’m ready, more than any time before, to become a martyr. This is the holiest war.”
(Picture Credit - James Gordon)
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