Baghdad security guard by day, insurgent by night

0 Comments | AFP, September, 2007

BAGHDAD (AFP) — By day Ahmed works for an Iraqi security company. By night the stocky 30-year-old fights the "American occupier" in his Baghdad neighbourhood.

Ahmed admits he is a member of what the US military terms "Special Groups" -- secret Shiite cells it says wage acts of "terrorism" in Iraq with the financial and military backing of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards units.

"Our mission," Ahmed tells AFP during a discreet interview in a Baghdad hotel car park: "Kill the Americans, as many Americans as possible."

He says he is proud to have been chosen, along with other fighters from his district of Bayaa, to do a one-month course on explosives and guerrilla tactics.

"I still don't know where I'll be sent. This will be communicated to me at the...