Insurgents in Latifiyah eager to battle British

THE WASHINGTON TIMES

LATIFIYAH, Iraq — Anti-government forces in this city just south of Baghdad say they are preparing a grim welcome for Britain’s Black Watch regiment when it moves north from Basra as early as this week.

“It’ll be easy to beat the British because the British are weaker than the Americans,” boasted Abdullah Al-Ashiq, the reputed head of resistance fighters in this city, the U.S. Marine defenders of which are being shifted for an anticipated offensive in Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold.

The British “are used to fighting against pathetic forces like the Mahdi’s Army of Muqtada al-Sadr,” he scoffed. “That means they haven’t got good experience in real fighting. Just wait. The British will discover the difference between us and them — the hard way.”

Preparations to fight the British are at fever pitch, with the positioning of booby traps, roadside bombs and mortars.

Some of the British forces are expected to hunker down in the city’s main police station, which is fortified with huge concrete slabs. But the extremists said they have infiltrated the Iraqi national guard, and that their spies within the police will provide them with precise information about British troop movements.

Mines also are hidden in tunnels and underpasses, while the area’s orange groves and palm trees provide ideal cover for guerrilla fighting. The insurgents repeatedly have blown up the rail line that brings supplies from Baghdad. No trains are running now.

Any substantial casualties among the 850 Black Watch soldiers would bring more political trouble for British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whose Cabinet approved the deployment last week despite harsh criticism at home.

Four senior members of previous Conservative Party governments renewed the attacks yesterday, with former Defense Secretary Michael Heseltine saying the transfer of the Black Watch was far too big to be a purely operational matter.

The move was “militarily extraordinarily ill-judged” and appeared linked to the Nov. 2 U.S. presidential election, Mr. Heseltine said.

In Latifiyah, thought to be the place where terrorists held and decapitated Briton Kenneth Bigley and two Americans, some residents said the British troops might be given a short period to “prove themselves.”

“I think the situation will be sorted out peacefully, because the British have a good policy to negotiate,” said Abu Rashid, a 55-year-old farmer. “The Americans don’t.”

The extremists’ main bases are an oil storage and processing depot on the outskirts of Latifiyah, and a mosque called Al-Masraa.

A reporter who entered the mosque found many fighters who spoke in a Syrian or Jordanian dialect. Some of them were reading from the Koran, while others intoned the afternoon prayer. The foreigners refused to be interviewed.

There are 22 mosques in the city, all dominated by Sunni hard-liners who follow the same Salafist philosophy as terror mastermind Osama bin Laden and Iraq’s most feared terror leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi.

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