Backlash by busloads in Arab world

By JUSTIN HUGGLER in Amman

The young men waiting on board the grubby bus that was taking them home to Iraq were adamant. "We are going back to fight the Americans and the British," one of them said.

"We are going back to fight for our homeland."

The dingy car park in central Amman has become the scene for an extraordinary phenomenon. Every day, young Iraqi men are turning up here to take buses back across the border.

Some 400,000 Iraqis live and work in Jordan. Those who are going back to Iraq are giving up safety to face the bombs. Some are giving up their jobs as well.

They face an eight-hour drive to Baghdad along a highway that is already under attack from US and British planes, and the city has come under ferocious bombardment.

But the young Iraqis seem undeterred.

"If the Americans want to come to Iraq, they had better bring body bags with them," said the most talkative of them. "God willing, it is the Iraqi people who will win this war."

His choice of words was interesting: The "Iraqi people", not Saddam Hussein. None of them mentioned the Iraqi President once.

They are part of an unexpected twist to this war. The refugee camp the Jordanian authorities have allowed to be put up is empty.

Some of the 500 or so guest workers - Sudanese, Somalis, the odd Egyptian - who have fled Iraq say they believe the authorities are not allowing Iraqis to leave.

But if Iraqis are not coming out, they are going back in. And there are unconfirmed reports that buses of Syrian volunteers have set off to fight alongside Iraqis.

There is an extraordinary anger seething in the Arab world. In police states where public protest is rarely tolerated, there have been some of the largest - and most violent - street demonstrations in years.

For now, most of the anger has led to little but protests. But some, like the Iraqis on the bus to Baghdad, are on their way to do something about it.

- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq