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Jill Carroll's kidnappers claimed 'home-field advantage'Hostage: The Jill Carroll story, Part 7
Editor's note: The following is a content summary of Part 7 of the Jill Carroll series on The Christian Science Monitor.  Journalist Jill Carroll says she learned a lot about the way her captors operated. (The Christian Science Monitor The house was so new that the mujahedeen were still building it around me. No family lived here. This was a house built by Abu Nour, my lead captor, solely for the use of the mujahedeen. It was a meeting house, a bomb factory, and, for me, a jail. In my head, I called it "the clubhouse." By this point, I had learned much about the way the mujahedeen operated. To me, at least, some of their tactics were surprisingly clever. Take transportation. Men with beards, and cars with only one or two men, drew too much attention from patrols and checkpoints. So they shaved their beards and drove around as families, kids and women included. They played Shiite music in their cassette decks. As insurgents, they knew how to not look like an insurgent. They have the home-field advantage. As Abu Nour, the leader, told me more than once: "I can go out, plant my bomb, and go back and have a homemade dinner with my wife. What are American soldiers going to do? They go back [to their base] and do not have good food or get to see their family." Abu Nour ("Ink Eyes") began coming to see me almost every day. He also appeared eager to have me "interview" him. He seemed to have begun to view me as a messenger -- an idea I had been pushing, hoping it would give them a reason to set me free. Among other things, Abu Nour said that some people joined the mujahedeen because they were angry about the treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison or raids on their homes at night. Abu Nour added that too many of these new recruits had impure motives. That, he said, is why they lost Falluja to U.S. forces in November 2004. "A good mujahid enters the war so [that] if he dies he goes to heaven," Abu Nour insisted. Secular insurgents were useful allies, but wouldn't be allowed to take part in the Iraqi government after the mujahedeen's final victory, he said. Sunni politicians participating in the current U.S.-backed government were traitors to Islam and should be killed. My captors were angry about being labeled "terrorists." But the deaths of innocent people caused by their activities -- such as the murder of my interpreter Alan Enwiya -- didn't taint the purity of their jihad. "Sometimes when we try to hit the American soldier or Iraqi soldier, sometimes we kill women and children in this operation," said Abu Nour at one point. "We don't want to ... but this is war." One day Abu Nour arrived and said that five women detainees had been released. This was important, and good news, he said. "This is Step 1," he said. "Now we have to go to Step 2." Click here Coming tomorrow: Part 8: The new enemy Copyright 2006 The Christian Science Monitor 
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) -- It was late January the next time we moved. It wouldn't take much to prompt a move: a helicopter overhead, wild dogs barking at night, a U.S. patrol in the vicinity.
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