Many See Iraqi Sunni Group as U.S. Enemy

B A G H D A D, Iraq, Sept. 17 -- — To his followers, Sheik Tahma Aboud Khalif is a loving father of four; a poor and harmless Islamic ideologue whose only fault is his "temper."

But for the American soldiers who caught the sheik red-handed attempting to ambush their convoy, early one June morning south of Baghdad, the sheik is a Wahabi terrorist — and deserves to be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

"We very literally dodged a bullet that day," says a U.S. military intelligence officer, who asked not to be named. "That group has a lot of influence and conducts a lot of attacks, but they are not the only ones. When this is over, you will see that this was a hotbed."

Tahma's case offers a rare window, say U.S. officers and local clerics, into the way some adherents of the Wahabi faith — a puritanical branch of Sunni Islam that calls for the expulsion of foreign infidels — figure in anti-U.S. violence in Iraq.

Repressed during the era of Saddam Hussein, Iraq's Wahabis are finding a new voice among people distraught by the insecurity that has accompanied the U.S.-led occupation, and the postwar failure to improve Iraqi lives. But the sheik's case is also an example of the way U.S. forces are working with local clerics to defuse anger.

Failed Bomb Attack

The result, in the case of Tahma, was a rare step beyond preaching anti-U.S. rhetoric — common enough in both Iraq's Sunni and Shiite mosques — into the realm of taking action.

The sheik and three accomplices, on the morning of June 14, hid a homemade roadside bomb made of two 122 millimeter artillery shells in a bit of sacking, and then lay in wait for a U.S. convoy to pass.

The bomb failed to go off, and U.S. troops aboard the convoy spotted the four beside the wall of the building, holding antitank weapons and assault rifles. They gave chase, and three of the attackers disappeared into tall elephant grass.

But the sheik was too slow. Cornered by U.S. forces, he raised his weapon directly at them, and was tackled. The photograph taken during interrogation shows an intense, scuffed up middle-aged man with a thin moustache, a beard, and a head bandage.

U.S. troops who dealt with Tahma during the failed attack and after, say they were shocked by the sheik's anger that he was such a poor bombmaker.