Rebels Without a Cause or a Web Site

They are highly organized and well financed. They lack coordination and are low on funds. They dress in paramilitary uniforms. They blend in with Iraqi civilians. They take orders from Al Qaeda. They have no ties to Al Qaeda. Many of them are streaming across Iraq’s borders from countries like Syria and Iran. Few have come from outside the country. They are driven by religious ideology. They could care less about the Koran. Those are just some of the contradictory statements made here and in Washington about the guerrilla fighters carrying on the war against the American-led forces. Few people, whether military officials or middle-class Iraqis, agree on the nature of the attackers. As such, people have liberally applied the term “faceless enemy.” The foreign news media has had to grope for an easy way to describe them: do you call them guerrillas, insurgents, resistance fighters, terrorists, mujahedeen, rebels, jihadists or loyalists of Saddam Hussein? On the streets here, Iraqis who support the warriors generally call them mujahedeen; those opposing them label them irhabien, or terrorists; and those somewhat sympathetic use the word muqawama, or resistance. Full Story