http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=36754HAWIJA (IRAQ)/DECEMBER 6: The man was in the car for less than two minutes when he pulled out a hand grenade. He had been carrying it, like an apple, in a little red shopping bag. He smiled. The other passengers winced. ‘‘If you don’t pull the pin,’’ he explained calmly, ‘‘it won’t explode’’.
The grenade was not, apparently, a threat but the man’s way of establishing that he was, as he claimed, a member of the ‘‘resistance’’. Little is known about these forces except that they keep killing anyone associated with the US-led occupation and are making the American mission in Iraq very dangerous and difficult.
It was unclear why the man, who said he was a former soldier, and appeared sturdy and fit, perhaps 35 years old, was willing to talk to a Western reporter. His account could not be verified. He readily agreed to an interview after being introduced by a man who identified himself as a local reporter. The local reporter offered to make contact with what he termed the local resistance in this city in the Sunni Muslim heartland, the centre for violence against Americans in Iraq.
American commanders say, the people fighting them appear more brazen. Grenade still in hand and with a nerve-racking politeness, this fighter steered the car’s driver to a cemetery here where he said many of his comrades, killed by US soldiers, were buried.
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