Near the Iraqi Border

AHMED moves forward today. Like so many other Iraqis, he says his mission began in 1991. Twelve years ago last week, on March 18, 1991, he put on a business suit and sunglasses and walked the road between Basra and Nasiriyah, in southern Iraq, to surrender to the U.S. Army. “The best way to hide,” he says now, of Saddam’s agents, “is to hide among them.”

For weeks he had hidden in a more traditional way–at his sister’s house. Saddam’s regime was looking for him. A local Baath party leader had seen Ahmed agitate against the regime and notified Iraqi intelligence. They had his name.