Muhammed is in charge of transportation at the Al-Khoei Islamic Center, which includes a school with several hundred students, but he'd like to go back to school to become a teacher. He's married, but he doesn't have any children, not yet anyway. He has his green card and hopes to become a U.S. citizen soon.

Muhammed has mistrusted Saddam since 1981. That's the year his oldest brother, then 31, was shot in the Iran-Iraq War and left paralyzed from the waist down. And that's the same year his second-oldest brother, then 18, was executed after he deserted his regiment on the front lines, saying he didn't want to kill anyone. A few years later, his third brother was jailed for five years -- for no apparent reason.

Muhammed also has eight sisters in Iraq. He hasn't been able to talk to his four sisters who live outside of Baghdad since the war started because they don't have phone service. But he was able to get through to his 34-year-old sister, Zanab, who lives in a neighborhood on the eastern end of Baghdad, a week ago. The siblings didn't talk about much. They can't.

"I just asked how they were. Told them to be careful, please. Told them to stay in a room with fewer windows and make sure they have enough food and water. That's what I talk to them about. That's what we can talk about. We can't touch on other things, because it's dangerous."

Muhammed says Zanab told her brother she had stocked rice and beans and other foodstuffs that don't need refrigeration and can keep for a long time. He doesn't think Zanab is frightened about the approaching battle of Baghdad as much as she is resigned to it. During the Gulf War, he says, the U.S. dropped thousands of bombs on the city in 42 days of bombing. So, she's familiar with the sound of cruise missiles flying through the air and the blast and concussion of explosions. But, he says, it's different this time because U.S. troops will enter the city.

"This time it'll be harder," he says. "I'm not sure why. That's what I feel. There are troops coming, so Saddam has recruited the people to be ready. They're really nervous. They don't know how to receive the coalition forces. What will Saddam do to the people? He might do anything. He might hurt them first because they are not army. The people are not ready for anything. They are not prepared."

Muhammed doesn't talk to his sister about the Fedayeen, or Martyrs of Saddam. They can't talk of such things. But he says he has heard that there are more Fedayeen in Baghdad than there are in southern Iraq. "Saddam is more prepared to fight the civilians than he is to fight the Americans. If there is an uprising, he's very ready to kill anybody and everybody, if necessary. He's much more ready to face any uprising than he is to fight American troops."

"They are between a rock and a hard place," he says. "If they fight Americans, they will be killed. If they don't, Saddam will kill them. What do you call that situation?"

Fadhel Al-Sahlani

Al-Sahlani left Iraq in 1978. He was 25 and had recently finished studying Shi'itism in Najaf. He decided to leave his country because the Baath party was pressuring Shiite religious leaders to show support for the government. "I don't believe in it, so I couldn't do that," he says. He went to Egypt to get his master's in Islamic studies at the University of Cairo. Then he went to Kuwait, Pakistan, England, Lebanon and then Syria. In 1989, the late Ayatulla Ul-Uzma, the marja of the Shiite sect, appointed Al-Sahlani imam of the mosque in Queens and he's been here ever since. The marja's position in the Shiite sect is similar to the Pope's in the Roman Catholic Church.

His family is still in Iraq: his mother, two brothers, three sisters and several nieces and nephews. His tribe is also there, the Al-Sahlani tribe in Nasiriya. When he called his brother Kamal last Tuesday, most of his family was in Basra. His mother moved from Najaf to Basra in the last several weeks to be with her family. Kamal told Al-Sahlani about not having any water, but he didn't say a word about the Fedayeen and the Republican Guard patrolling Basra's streets. He couldn't.

Al-Sahlani says Saddam has been preparing for more than a decade to suppress any thought of insurrection among the Shiites in southern Iraq. After the Gulf War in 1991, the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north rebelled, overtaking 14 of the country's 18 provinces. The first President Bush had encouraged opposition groups to rebel, but once they did, the U.S. abandoned them, and Saddam crushed their revolt. Thousands were killed and Saddam retained control of the country. But he learned a vital lesson: Never let Iraqi dissidents gather enough force to be a threat.

Since then, Sheikh Al-Sahlani says, Saddam has concentrated on stamping out any opposition, especially in Basra, the revolt's epicenter. Saddam's Baath party extended its reach and influence in the city. If someone wanted a good job, or wanted to attend a sought-after university, he or she would have to join the Baath party. And no one knows who is a Baathist, but they suspect everyone.

"Saddam controls the country in a very strange way," Al-Sahlani says. "Sometimes it reaches a level when a brother can't trust his brother. He will feel that he may be working with the government as a spy in the intelligence forces. By losing that trust even between family members and neighbors, there is no way a movement can rise up against him."

Al-Sahlani has spoken out against Saddam for years and it hasn't gone unnoticed. Saddam's intelligence forces call his family in Iraq and tell them to warn him to stop. His relatives then call Al-Sahlani and ask him to be less strident, to be more careful. But he never stopped. Sure, he fears Saddam's regime may harm his family, but he believes someone has to condemn the government. "Yes, I'm afraid, but somebody has to sacrifice," he says. "Somebody has to say the truth."

Ultimately, it may be the Iraqis, and the American and British who make the sacrifice to topple Saddam. The sheik doesn't want war, but he hopes that this bloodshed may finally rid Iraq of Saddam. "Nobody wants the war, nobody likes war," he says. "I share that with the peace movement. But as a last solution to remove this cancer from the Iraq body, it is justified. Saddam cannot be removed without this war. Not only Saddam, but also his system. For the last 30 years there have been three wars and millions and millions of people have been killed and still he hasn't been evicted. When will it end?"

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