‘Good omens’

As US and British forces suffered their first setbacks on the battlefield Sunday, officials and fighters in Iraq took heart and asserted wit...

As US and British forces suffered their first setbacks on the battlefield Sunday, officials and fighters in Iraq took heart and asserted with fresh conviction that the US would be bogged down and defeated by their steadfast resistance. ‘‘I knew it before, but today I know it for sure: They will never reach Baghdad,’’ city policeman Muayad Shumari said.

After enduring three days of devastating bombings and reports of rapid US and British advances in the south, with no notable Iraqi successes, Iraqi officials at last felt they had a few things to brag about. At Umm Qasr, a city thought to have been subdued three days ago, Iraqi resistance suddenly sprang back to life. And after a sharp battle at Nassariyah, Iraq was able to broadcast images of five American captives and photographs of slain US troops.

Iraq claimed that about 25 allied soldiers were killed. In central Baghdad, when word spread that a British plane may have been shot down, authorities and members of the public searched in a frenzy, believing that two pilots had ejected and were hiding in reeds next to the Tigris river. In addition, the accidental downing of a British jet by a US Patriot missile, the grenade attack on US troops by an American serviceman in Kuwait and the continuing anti-war demonstrations abroad all were taken as good omens here.

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‘‘They made a mistake coming here to fight a people who have faith and who are not afraid to die,’’ said Ahmed Aziz Ahmed, a 38-year-old grocer turned Baath Party militiaman who said he can’t wait for his chance to confront US and British invaders. ‘‘They think that they can kill Saddam Hussein and rule us,’’ he said with a laugh. ‘‘But we are all Saddam Husseins.’’

Speaking to a large assembly of journalists Sunday night, Defence Minister Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai gave a view of the war quite opposite to military briefings from the US and British sides. Iraq continued to hold all the main cities in the south of the country and had kept the allies forces bottled up at the port of Umm Qasr and on the Al Faw peninsula, the minister said.

Attempts to take Basra and Nassariyah had failed and numerous enemy tanks and armoured vehicles had been destroyed, he continued. And he could not even specify the number of POWs Iraq had collected, he said, because they were still being held and counted after the various engagements.

Sultan acknowledged that US and British forces had moved as far north as Najaf but said that was only because they kept avoiding battles with the Iraqi troops and instead are racing through the empty desert. ‘‘In the end, wherever will they go? They will have to come to the cities if they want to achieve their objectives,’’ he said. And when they do, he said, they will be surprised by the Iraqis’ ‘‘endurance and will to fight and resolve to protect the country.’’

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The Iraqi government has been driving home a message that the war is a matter of patriotism and Islam, rather than being about WMD or removing Saddam from power. ‘‘It is easy for us to fight. We know what we are fighting for. What are they fighting for — Bush?’’ said Shumari. Dressed in a blue police robe and a camouflage helmet, he was guarding an intersection in downtown Baghdad. (LATWP)