Volunteers for the war

WITH something of the passion of young Europeans joining the Spanish civil war in the 1930s, Arabs are heading for Iraqi front lines. Iraqi embassies across the Arab world are recruiting volunteers armed with a passport, two photos and a ticket to Damascus. Drivers for Uday Hussein's bus company, al-Dhilal (The Shadows), say he has laid on a free service from the borders back to Baghdad. Jordanian officials, fresh from erecting refugee camps, are handling less an Iraqi influx than an outflux of the kingdom's 300,000 Iraqi exiles.

Since the war began, they say, some 4,000 Iraqis have headed home, egged on by a Jordanian amnesty for Iraqi over-stayers. Among them are scores of young Shias, boarding the 20 buses departing from Amman each day, vowing to resist American operations round the southern towns. Their parents fled Saddam Hussein's persecution, but admit that American bombing of their homeland has divided their loyalties.