“He kept his word and never curried favor. He was trying to walk a fine line, staying independent of the Americans while avoiding a blood feud with the hard men in town.”
That’s how Bing West records Lt. Col. Muhammad Suleiman in his book, No True Glory.
You’ve almost certainly never heard of Suleiman, but you should know his name. He was not a servant of America, but a servant of honor in pursuit of a better life for his family and his people. For that, he paid dearly.
It was 15 years ago this summer in the sweltering Iraqi city of Fallujah. Fallujah was falling under the control of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s Organization of Monotheism and Jihad, a group which would become al Qaeda in Iraq a few months later. Thus, for the U.S. Marines assigned to Fallujah under the command of Col. Toolan and one Maj. Gen. James Mattis, the city was Iraq’s rising capital of Salafi-Jihadism. A Marine operation to secure Fallujah that spring had been suspended when President George W. Bush acquiesced to pressure from allied leaders.
By the summer, with the city’s Anbari tribal leaders scared into submission, and few Iraqi security officers courageous enough to stand up to the zealots, Fallujah was in crisis. Those most responsible for the chaos were a senior Zarqawi lieutenants, Omar Hadid, and a crime lord, Abdullah al-Janabi.
But a few good men, such as Lt. Col. Suleiman of the Iraqi National Guard, resisted the chaos.
One day in summer 2004, meeting with Zarqawi’s local troublemakers, Suleiman became infuriated by their lies and insults. He left, but was tricked into a new meeting shortly thereafter. From there, he was kidnapped. Bing West records what happened to the family man: “Several days later Suleiman’s pulverized corpse was dumped on a road south of the mosque.”
West continues, “The usual beating had begun — bamboo canes lashing the soles of his feet, then proceeding up his legs. Instead of whimpering and agreeing to a confession, Suleiman had cursed his torturers who responded by pouring boiling water on his chest. They then propped him up and videotaped his halting monologue that he was an American spy, working for [the Marines]. Hadid then sawed off his head. The next day the videotapes circulated in town, showing a weeping Suleiman, moments before his death, begging forgiveness for betraying the Iraqi people …”
The brutality is the familiar marker of Salafi-Jihadism’s disgusting reality. But West explains what was happening: “Terror had spawned its own bio-genesis, the malevolence passing from Zarqawi to Hadid to Janabi, who had mutated from business opportunist to gangster to zealot torturer.”
Violence had become the only possible response to the enemy. And so, from October to November, the Marines would fight a bloody battle to wrest back Zarqawi’s control over the city.
Many costly victories have since occurred, but the battle with al Qaeda in Iraq’s successor, ISIS, continues.
But we should always remember honorable warriors such as Suleiman. They struggled for a better world for their children, and in that, they are the opposite of our shared enemies.
