BAGHDAD, 31 March 2003 — Sergeant Ali Jaffar Moussa Hamadi Al-Nomani was the first Iraqi combatant ever known to stage a suicide attack. Not even during the uprising against British rule did an Iraqi kill himself in order to destroy his enemies. Al-Nomani was also a Shiite Muslim — a member of the very group whom the Americans faithfully believed to be their secret ally in their invasion of Iraq.

The details of the 50-year-old army sergeant’s life are few but nonetheless intriguing. He was a soldier in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and volunteered to fight in the 1991 Gulf War, dubbed the “Mother of All Battles” by the Iraqi leader who believes he was the victor.

Then, overage though he was willing to partake in further fighting, Al-Nomani volunteered yet again to defend his country from the Anglo-American invasion. And so it was, without telling his commanding officer and in his own car, he drove into the US Marine checkpoint just outside Najaf.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein immediately awarded him the Military Medal (1st Class) and the “Mother of All Battles”. The dead man left behind him five children, a widow and a place in the history of Iraqi resistance to his country, spanning 2,000 years of invasions. Typically, a US spokesman said that the attack “looks and feels like terrorism” although, since Al-Nomani was attacking an occupation army and his target was a military one, no Arab would ever believe this.

Within hours of his death, Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was talking like a Palestinian or Hezbullah leader, emphasizing the inequality of arms between the Iraqis and the Americans.

“The US administration is going to turn the whole world into people who are prepared to die for their nations,” he said.

“All they can do now is turn themselves into bombs. If the B-52 bombs can now kill 500 or more in our ranks, then I’m sure that some operations by our freedom fighters will be able to kill 5,000.”

It was clear what this meant: The Iraqi leadership was just as surprised at Al-Nomani’s suicide attack as were his American victims.

But the Americans would do well to understand what this new development means. Suicide bombers — whether they be the Shiite Muslim Lebanese successfully evicting Israel’s Army of occupation, or the Palestinians destroying Israel’s sense of security — are the ultimate weapon of the Arabs. The US first understood its power when suicide bombers struck the American Embassy in Beirut in 1983, then the Marine Barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23 the same year where 241 American servicemen died.

Only when Arabs bent on a far more devastating suicide mission carried out their attacks on Sept. 11 2001, did Washington finally realize that there was no effective defense against such tactics.

In a strange way, therefore, Sept. 11 at last finds a symbolic connection with Iraq. While the American attempts to link Saddam’s regime with Osama Bin Laden turned out to be fraudulent, the anger which the United States has unleashed is real and has been met with the one weapon the Americans fear most.

The majority of suicide bombers are younger than Al-Nomani and unmarried. But someone must have helped him rig the explosives in his car, must have taught him how to set off the detonator. And if this was not the Iraqis, as they claim, then was there an organization involved of which both the Americans and the Iraqis know nothing?

There was some talk by Vice President Ramadan of “the martyr’s moment of sublimity” — an expression hitherto unheard of in the Baathist lexicon. General Hazim Al-Rawi of the Ministry of Defense recalled that the dead man bore the same name as “the Imam Ali”; and announced that the new “Martyr Ali has opened the door to jihad”.