Darting through the darkened, pitted streets of Rutba, a small town in Iraq’s western desert, Muhammad and his Sunni guerrilla cell say that they have no intention of ending their fight against American forces until every last occupying soldier has left Iraq.

The United States-led coalition celebrated the capture of Saddam Hussein as a pivotal point in breaking the resistance, led by the former President’s Baath party loyalists, but in Rutba the arrest has made no impact. That is because, Muhammad explains, none of the 95 guerrillas in Rutba is a Baathist.

“It’s all lies that the resistance is led by Baathists. The resistance is Islamic, we are ordered by God, we have no relation to that party,” he said, driving around Rutba at midnight after being picked up at a safe house in the town, five hours’ drive from Baghdad.

He and a similarly masked guerrilla comrade refused to divulge their real names, and insisted on crawling the rutted, muddy streets after dark for security reasons. Driven by a go-between to their safe house in a nondescript back street, The Times was given five minutes to photograph three fighters with Kalashnikovs, grenades and copies of the Koran.

The men were jumpy: they had just learnt that seven of their comrades had been killed the night before in Fallujah, a town on the road to Baghdad where some of the worst fighting of the insurgency has taken place.

For them, the rationale of the struggle is simple, a credo of God and country that leaves no room for foreign troops on their Islamic soil. Far from the secular Baath party “dead- enders” being rounded up every day by American forces, they idolise Osama bin Laden, and they are well-organised.

Within two months of the US-led invasion, small disparate groups began to coalesce. Muhammad said that they communicate by specialist couriers and hope soon to form a national resistance army.

He said that he had been among the first to join the resistance. Serving in the Iraqi Army in the war, he saw heavy fighting in the town of al-Hillah south of Baghdad. When the capital fell, he shed his uniform, but kept his gun, before quickly locating his hometown cell. Since then he has seen his group expand from five people to almost 100, subdividing into specialist teams supervised by planners and three commanders for the vast western desert province of al-Anbar, which covers much of the so-called Sunni Triangle, the bloody heartland of the Iraqi resistance.

All are former soldiers from Saddam’s huge conscript army. Muhammad and his cell specialise in building roadside bombs from looted TNT mixed with the artillery shells that littered the country when the army melted away in April.Other cells focus on using mortars and rocket-propelled grenades to hit American bases.

“We want the Americans to get out of Iraq, they came here against Islam and they stole all of Iraq’s fortune,” Muhammad, in his early 20s, said. “The Americans persecuted us and humiliated us and treated us very badly. Even Saddam Hussein was not this bad.”

But Muhammad and his fellow fighters have no love either for Saddam, who “oppressed us and persecuted us”. He draws his inspiration from bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, with which the guerrillas have no contact, although they would love to work with it.

“Al-Qaeda is an Islamic group and we’ve learnt from them, and we learnt much from Osama bin Laden. He is our sheikh also,” said Muhammad, swathed in a thick coat against the freezing desert night.

He would be willing to work with Baathists if they fought in an “Islamic way” he said, quoting the many “Hadiths”, or collected sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, calling for resistance against occupiers, but forbidding attacks on civilians. “But we don’t know of any Baathists fighting. They are all at home,” he said.

Muhammad claimed to have been involved in more than 30 attacks on US convoys. Guerrilla cells tend to operate away from their home towns and many of the attacks in which he has participated were in Fallujah. But he has been active across al-Anbar province and as far away as Baghdad, travelling by car and taxi to look like a migrants seeking work in a country rife with unemployment.

He claims that he has killed as many as 25 American soldiers with his homemade bombs, hiding the explosives in the desert and modifying television or stereo remote controls as detonators. His preferred tactic is to lie in wait about 200 metres from a target, selected by a separate planner who has briefed the cell. Then they select the vehicle with the most soldiers in it, and blow it up.

He said that in smaller convoys survivors tend to speed away from an attack to seek reinforcements, making the guerrillas’ escape easier.

Fifteen of his comrades have been killed, almost all in raids by US troops tipped off by informers. He said that the resistance killed those who betrayed them and burnt the cars or houses of anyone who had business dealings with the American forces.

On the walls of Rutba’s squat houses, anti-US graffiti testifies to the depth of hatred. Local people said that they were ready to provide fighters with money, cars or guns.

It appears that Saddam’s capture this month has only stiffened the guerrillas’ resolve. “Saddam was our President. Even if he persecuted us, he represented Muslims and Iraq, so we don’t accept him being humiliated like this,” Muhammad said.

His fight may not end with Iraq’s scheduled independence next summer: any government left in place by the coalition will be a legitimate target, he said, as will US troops expected to stay behind to provide stability. “We don’t accept that the US should put any government in place, even one made up of Iraqis. They will be ruled by the devil Bush. We will fight until we are martyrs,” he said, before stepping out of the car and melting back into the streets of Rutba.

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