Just
Another Day In Baghdad
Rory McCarthy in Baghdad
The Guardian
19 June, 2003
Hussein Saber shook with
fury as he lay on a dirty hospital bed last night and told the story
of another day in Baghdad, a city torn apart by killings, misunderstanding
and the startling failures of America's military occupation.
Yesterday Hussein, 33, should
have collected a $50 (£30) emergency payment which all Iraq's
now unemployed soldiers are due to receive. The money did not arrive
and so he and hundreds of other frustrated young men poured towards
the gates of the US-led authority to protest.
Within minutes he was shot
in his right side by a young, nervous American soldier. Hussein survived
but two other Iraqis standing next to him in the crowd were killed.
Just a few miles away in
the centre of the city, gunmen in a passing car shot dead one American
soldier and wounded another as they guarded a propane gas station. It
was another strike against the US military by an increasingly bold guerrilla
resistance force intent on destabilising the reconstruction.
Neither the Iraqis nor the
Americans ever dreamed that Baghdad would be like this, ten weeks to
the day after Saddam Hussein's regime was finally toppled.
The people of this city are
still gripped with the deepening problems of poor security, interminable
power shortages and unpaid salaries. Their frustration is spilling over
into a spate of attacks on the US military, which are met with heavy-handed
raids and mass arrests which, in turn, spark yet greater frustration.
Searing midsummer temperatures
do little to cool tempers on either side.
"I hoped and I wished
that when the American forces came they would bring us democracy and
freedom but unfortunately we have seen the opposite," said Hussein,
a non-commissioned officer in the air force for the past 18 years. "The
Americans are going to get hurt if the situation remains as it is."
All the junior ranks within
Iraq's 400,000-strong military, which was formally dissolved last month,
have been promised a one-off payment and the chance to apply for a job
in the new Iraqi national army.
In reality none have been
paid since their last wages from the regime in February or March. Recruitment
for the new military has not started and, like the thousands of regular
government employees still without work, their frustration should be
evident for the US authority to see.
Hundreds of former soldiers
gathered at the national recruitment office in Baghdad yesterday morning
where they expected to receive their payouts. Similar payments have
been made by the British army in Basra.
But yesterday when officials
in the building told them they had no money to offer they poured towards
the gates of the Republican Palace, once Saddam's home and now the base
of the US-led authority.
In the eyes of the US military,
the crowd of frustrated former soldiers was a threat and they eventually
opened fire. The Iraqi soldiers see themselves very differently - as
husbands and fathers, struggling to make a living, gripped with defeated
pride and disappointment.
Khadum Hussain Hani, 32,
joined the Iraqi military aged 15 for the same reasons that brought
many of the young Americans on patrol in Baghdad into the US army -
he wanted to serve his country and he wanted a decent wage.
His brother, also a soldier,
died during the war with Iran in the 1980s. Following tradition, Khadum
married his brother's wife and took responsibility for the couple's
three young children. Last year they had another son.
Until the war he was paid
75,000 dinars a month (then worth $37). Since March he has received
nothing and has had to borrow thousands of dollars to pay the 30,000
dinars monthly rent on his small apartment. "I have borrowed and
borrowed and all I have left in my pocket today is my identity card,"
he said yesterday. Before the war he and his wife talked about whether
he would fight. "I told her I wouldn't fight. I was glad the Americans
were coming to take us away from this oppression," he said.
Now he has to explain to
his children why he has no work and no money. "Sometimes they ask:
'Did you bring home any apples today father?'" he said. "I
tell them I will bring apples one day when I have some money."
It is all too clear that
the natural goodwill that many Iraqis felt when the US and British forces
brought to an end three decades of brutality and repression is rapidly
fading. "There is a big gap between the Iraqis and the Americans
right now," said Khadum.
American troops speak freely
of their own frustrations. They patrol in heavy bulletproof jackets
and Kevlar helmets in the suffocating midday heat.
Many were first deployed
to camps in Kuwait nine months ago and have had little time to rest
or recover from the intense three weeks of combat that brought them
to Baghdad. The shift from fighting to peacekeeping has been frac tured
and slow. Still they are being targeted in guerrilla attacks and they
don't understand why.
The al-Shawaf crossroads
outside the Republican Palace, the bloodied site of yesterday's killings,
has become the touchstone of the failings of the military occupation.
Here there are queues of the articulate and the plain angry. The US
officials who should be listening to their very simple and very real
complaints are locked in a cycle of meetings from dawn until after midnight
in the palace complex, behind the heavily guarded, barbed-wire entrance
at the palace gates.
Alia Abbas Issa, 42, used
to work in the palace as a seamstress, sewing curtains for Saddam's
offices and private rooms. She took the job to help pay for English
lessons at the local British Council office. It paid her well, up to
200,000 dinars (£2000) a month. Then came the war. Her apartment
was looted of all her possessions, even her bed, and her job disappeared.
She is left caring for the two daughters of her younger brother, who
died in Kuwait during the first Gulf war. "There is nothing I can
tell them. We used to have money now there is nothing. We cry from night
until morning," she said.
"I thought the Americans
would bring us a new start. We want to like George Bush but the Iraqis
are suffering and suffering," she said.
"God will reward those
people who come here if they come here to help us."