The Hindu : A land under siege

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Sunday, Oct 12, 2003

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A land under siege

Signs of anger at the American occupation are visible all over Baghdad, writes Atul Aneja who was there recently.

American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad.

AT THE crack of dawn, residents of Baghdad routinely wake up to the rumble of U.S. trucks, troop carriers and occasionally tanks scooting back to their bases after a night out on the streets. The Americans fear the half-light of daybreak as their vulnerability increases to hit-and-run attacks by Iraqi fighters firing rocket-propelled grenades. During the night the sounds of gunfire and an odd explosion are common in the Iraqi capital.

After the night curfew, Baghdad rises to another day of violence, crime, and loud street protests targeting the U.S. occupation forces. Signs of anger at the American occupation are visible all over Baghdad. There are staggering numbers of individuals who have lost their jobs after the Americans decided to purge the Baathists — sacking all those, especially in the security services, suspected of having affiliations to the ousted President, Saddam Hussein. Some of them, part of Iraq's growing army of the jobless, can now be seen, black banners in hand, demonstrating outside buildings where the U.S. occupation authorities live and work. But many are not petitioning and are part of the growing armed resistance to U.S. rule in Iraq.

The U.S. decision to sack thousands of oil workers and engineers has further swelled the anti-American ranks. Many of these personnel are now on the side of the resistance and are advising it on how to effectively cripple Iraqi oil pipelines. Not surprisingly, the main northern Iraqi Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey has been blasted several times in the recent past.

Behind the rising tide of opposition to the U.S. lies a wounded sense of Iraqi nationalism and pride. "There were tears in my eyes the day Baghdad fell to U.S. forces," recalls Abu Mariam, a veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war who now runs a taxi service in Baghdad. "When my seven-year-old daughter asked me why I was crying, how could I explain to her how humiliating it was for an Iraqi to live under alien occupation?"

For some ordinary Iraqis, the lawlessness that has descended on Baghdad after the unseating of the Baathist regime is unbearable. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), the name acquired by the U.S. occupation forces, and its head, Paul Bremer, are the obvious target of their anger. Most Iraqis are convinced that it is the duty of the occupation forces to maintain law and order.

Despite the churning that post-war Iraq is experiencing, some people, mostly traders and businessmen, all over the country have their own agenda and are undeterred by Baghdad's post-war convulsions. They are taking risks in the hope of quickly making a fortune. Baghdad's shops are overflowing with consumer goods, especially television sets, air conditioners, and washing machines. Giant container-trucks, which bring in this cargo, are prominent on Iraq's first-rate highways that link it with its neighbours.

While telephones rarely work and Baghdad's terrified elite hesitates to share those provided by a restricted U.S. wireless network, Internet cafes are surprisingly abundant in the city. So are restaurants, which have begun to do reasonable business.

But Baghdad is far from normal and shuts down by sunset, for that is when looters and extortionists, called "Ali Baba" by the local people, surface. Visitors to the city are advised to carry no more and no less that $200 on their person. Anything less and the looters in their disappointment can cause physical harm and anything more would be foolish.

Baghdad's streets and the maze of flyovers that Saddam Hussein's regime constructed are choking with traffic. This is because cars of all kinds are emptying into post-war Iraq where import duties are unheard of. Most are second hand models from Jordan and Dubai. In Baghdad, partially-painted and barely pliable wrecks, some with a door or two missing, rattling along with the gaudy new entrants is a common sight. Most new cars do not have registration plates as the traffic department is yet to wake up from its war-enforced slumber. Signal lights in some parts of the city are functioning, and policemen are beginning to make a reappearance. But many more are required to regulate Baghdad's burgeoning traffic.

Notwithstanding its hustle and bustle, Baghdad remains a violent place. The U.S. military presence is conspicuous and Rashid Hotel, a prominent landmark in the city, has emerged as the icon of the occupation. A high security fence encloses a km-deep brown expanse of barren land from which the hotel building sticks out. Patrolling in the zone is intense with U.S. Army Humvees and armoured vehicles all around. Yet the Iraqi underground targeted the fourteenth floor of the Rashid hotel with rockets recently.

Iraq's interim governing council, handpicked by the CPA, is finding itself extremely vulnerable. Most Iraqis dismiss it as a U.S. puppet, though some individuals like the former Iraqi Foreign Minister, Adnan Pachachim, are respected and others like the Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani, have a mass following in parts of the Kurdish highlands of northern Iraq. Exiles like Ahmad Chalabi, who, for years stayed in cushy environs abroad and are known to have been cultivated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon, are the subject of much derision in the streets of Baghdad.

After the recent assassination of Aqila-al-Hashmi, a prominent governing council member, some of the leaders are taking added security precautions. They frequently change their residences, and establishing contact with them inside Baghdad is now virtually impossible.

On the banks of the Tigris, the blackened ruins of Government buildings stand out. Wrecked by the intense waves of bombing, they were later hollowed out by armies of looters. The wrath of the invading forces was especially unleashed on the former Iraqi Olympic Committee building — the nine-storey headquarters of Saddam Hussein's slain son, Uday. Blasted by a barrage of missiles, only its charred frame of concrete remains.

As Baghdad struggles to cope with the post-war chaos, its massive Shia underclass slum called Sadr city is stirring energetically. The Shias believe their time has come with the exit of Mr. Hussein from power. Their desire to emerge as Iraq's new rulers after decades of Sunni governance is evident all over Iraq.

In Sadr city, formerly Saddam city, this emotion is even more pronounced. Sadr city, named after the Shia leader Ayatollah Sadeq al Sadr who was murdered in 1999, is in the grip of what is called the Sadrist movement. Led by the young firebrand Muqtada al Sadr, son of the late Ayatollah, the Shias here, as in few other parts of the country, are clamouring for an Islamic state.

The forces influencing the residents of Sadr city are complex. Muqtada al Sadr is believed to be a follower of Kazim al-Hussein al-Hairi who resides in Qom in Iran, but his message is also tempered by his occasionally fractious interaction with the supreme Shia collegium, the Hawza, that sits in Najaf and exercises an influence over Shias all over the globe. The revered Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani who is disinclined to involve the higher Shia clergy in politics heads the Hawza. Shia political and religious aspirations often find expression during Friday congregations at Baghdad's crowded Kadhamiya mosque.

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