According to the Iraqi Embassy in Amman, 5,700 Iraqis have left Jordan to go and fight what they believe is an invasion and potential occupation of their home country.

“We have catered to these 5,700 Iraqis to get their documents in order,” said Jawad Al-Ali, the Iraqi Embassy’s press attache, in an interview with Arab News. “Some have lost their passports or their papers have simply expired,” Al-Ali added. “On the first day of the war, we processed the papers of 2,500 Iraqis, and they are still coming.”

Large groups are taking buses from midtown Amman for $17 per person in order to make their way back to Baghdad.

But what of the past? “I’ve lived in Jordan for the last 10 years,” Azziz Alzumaan, 42, who owns a small kabab shop in downtown Amman, told Arab News. “I left for political reasons and to find a peaceful life, but those things are not important anymore.”

“I’m going home to be with my family and to fight the invading aggressors, and God willing we will win or die trying,” he added. Azziz left on the morning bus to Baghdad. A 12-hour ride to his past, present and future.

Also, the first free bus to Baghdad left here yesterday, courtesy of one of Saddam Hussein’s sons, with 50 Iraqi men on board.

“It was too expensive for me to leave before, but now the trip is free and I’m going back to fight for my country,” said Samir, a 35-year-old construction worker.

He added that he was going back to Basra, the main southern Iraqi city partially controlled by the US/UK forces where pockets of Iraqi resistance still remain.

Also yesterday, dozens of “volunteers” left Beirut to take up arms in Iraq, proclaiming they were ready to embrace death to expel US and British forces from Arab land, witnesses said.

The mostly Lebanese young men, enraged by gruesome television images showing Iraqi civilian casualties of the 12-day-old war, left by land via Syria to join the fight. Witnesses saw 36 volunteers cross the Lebanese border into Syria in a bus. They said they were on their way to Iraq.

And some 15 young Algerians gathered yesterday outside the Iraq Embassy in Algiers, proclaiming themselves ready to die as martyrs to defend the “honor and dignity of Arabs and Muslims” as the “enemies of humanity” wage war on Iraq.

“I don’t know the first thing about using weapons, but I learn quickly,” said Ali, who, judging by his peace-fuzz beard, couldn’t be a day over 20.

Next to him, a self-assured Samir piped up: “I know how to use a Kalashnikov and an RPG (rocket launcher). I did my military service. The Kalash is a great weapon.”