Fear and Anger (Part II)

RealPlayer	Windows	Quicktime

A recruitment poster for the police. The sign's message (paraphrased) is: I risked my life today to build the new Iraq. What have you done today for your country? (Photo: M. Goldfarb)

The same sign weeks later. These are big billboards in the middle of a large intersection. In order to paint the picture over someone would have to climb a ladder and take a few minutes to do this. That no one stopped the vandal is an indication of how low Iraqis hold the American-created police force. (Photo: M. Goldfarb)

Cars are a major part of the post-war economy. It seems as if every vacant lot in the city has been turned into a used car bazaar.

In the spring sunshine, a group of middle aged men at Abu Mohammed's car lot kill time in the traditional Baghdad way: playing backgammon and drinking chai -- tea. The tiny lot is packed tight with German cars: not so late model Mercedes and Volkswagens. 6,500 bucks will get you an air conditioned Merc with150,000 plus miles on the clock. Abu Mohammed says business could be better. The reason: poor security. This is a cash business, and people are afraid to walk around with large amounts of money in their pockets.

Like all the other merchants in this bazaar, Abu Mohammed keeps an AK 47 in the office, with U.S. military approval, just in case an Ali Baba or thief decides to come on down and help himself to a car or to some profits.

Despite the security concerns in Baghdad you can see an economy is functioning. The great success of the American-led occupation has been the CPA's small business loan program. It gave the local economy a kick-start. Along boulevards in the nicer neighborhoods, shops are filled with new refrigerators, air conditioners, and the twin necessities of modern Arab life: satellite dishes and new TVs -- the better to watch al-Jazeera on.

People are paying cash for the goods. The Iraqi banking system can't begin to handle credit cards and there's no postal service for card companies to send out the bills.

Mansour is Baghdad's Beverly Hills, the place where the city's elite live. You could almost believe you were in LA's most famous neighborhood. Although when you look out the window at shepherds with their flocks standing on the corner it jolts you out of your reverie. But like Beverly Hills Mansour has wide palm lined boulevards filled with expensive SUVs and Mercedes. And, like Beverly Hills, it is also much cleaner than the rest of the city. This is a tribute to the workers at Mansour's town hall.

Mansour, is one district of Baghdad that works, indeed never stopped working, according to the head of the engineering department, Zahed Tahir.

But now it is becoming more difficult to keep the municipality functioning. At the start of this year the American led Coalition Provisional Authority handed over responsibility for running the city to a Baghdad city council. Its budget was considerably smaller than the CPA's and Zahed Tahir had to lay people off.

The reason public services in Mansour have been reduced are the same as in the U.S. low taxes, or in the case of Mansour, no taxes. There is a tax system, but no one is paying because there is no effective way of collecting them.

The problems of Mansour are administrative and underline the technocratic difficulties facing Iraq as Sovereignty Day approaches. But the people of Mansour, if they can avoid being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like when a rocket propelled grenade aimed at American soldiers goes awry and explodes in a traffic jam, are doing alright in the new Iraq.

On the other side of the Tigris life is not so sweet.

At 10 a.m. in bab al-Muadham Sqaure, dozens of men are standing around with construction tools. They have been standing out there since 5 a.m. looking for a day's work.

The men are from Sadr City, built by Saddam in the '70s, now home to the Shi'ite working class of Baghdad. For them, regime change has not brought much benefit. Anger swirls off them like dust from the poorly repaired buildings round about. They crowd around an American with a microphone desperate to voice their rage. Where are the jobs? Where are their human rights?

These casual workers, many former soldiers and teachers, earn about a dollar a day when they work. It just about provides for their families, but as Sovereignty Day approaches, the infusion of money from the U.S. to kick-start the economy has slowed and work is less frequent. No one knows the actual unemployment rate. When Baghdad was looted, the confetti falling from the sky was the records of the entire society. Replacing that database is not even at the bottom of the list of priorities for the CPA.

One can only assess things like the unemployment rate anecdotally, and the anecdote you take away from these fellows is they've been unemployed for so long they are happy to listen to the preachings of the son of the man for whom their neighborhood is named. Portraits of the chubby, glowering Cleric Moqtada al Sadr are prominent in shops and car windows. His anti-American sermons are directed towards these men.

The men's anger is exacerbated by their fear of the lawless society in which they live. One man says, "You get out of your house and you go to work you never sure you go back to your house."

From the day Saddam's statue came down and the looting of Baghdad began, the lack of security has been the greatest complaint against the U.S. in the capitol and throughout the country. The failure to deal effectively with the criminal chaos has cost the U.S. virtually all the goodwill that existed in the first days after the overthrow of Saddam.

Security problems for the Bush administration's team at the Coalition Provisional Authority mean the constant lethal harassment of American soldiers and civilian contractors on a daily basis. Security problems for Baghdadis mean fear of pure crime on a daily basis. All are potential victims, although some have greater potential than others.

By the banks of the Tigris, people in white robes are going through an ancient ritual. They are Mendaeans, descendants of a Gnostic sect who revere John the Baptist. Each year at the Vernal equinox they go to the river to be re-baptized. There are around 100,000 Mendaeans who have survived almost two millennia of history here. They are Baghdad's goldsmiths and jewelers and prime targets for one of the city's growth industries: kidnapping.

The Mendaeans are trying to get out of Iraq. And they aren't the only ones.

Every place in Baghdad is safe up until the moment it isn't. But if you want to tempt fate you can be part of a crowd in the vicinity of the entrance to CPA headquarters. Yet every day, a five-minute walk from the CPA entrance, crowds queue into the street by the passport office. Their mood hovers between patience and panic.

Most are just trying to get into neighboring Arab countries, where they hope to find work. But the Arab countries don't recognize travel documents issued by the American-led occupation force. So people are trapped inside Iraq.

Between the occupied and the occupier, watching the situation with alarm sits the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council. The IGC was appointed by the U.S. as an advisory council, although, Council member Mahmoud Othman claims, the American administrators of the Coalition Provisional Authority don't listen to much advice. "I think the big mistake made by the Americans was that they didn't let Iraqis have self determination and rule their country."

Mahmoud Othman, says the security crisis in Iraq can be traced back to this error made in the first month after Saddam was overthrown. This was compounded by a critical error of American Ambassador Paul Bremer. Othman says Bremer's program of de-Baathification was too wide: "They disbanded the Army of 400,000 people, creating 400,000 enemies. These people, regular army, they didn't fight Americans. They didn't fight the war."

This is true. Along the roadsides of Iraq at the end of major combat operations you could see the proof. Many soldiers simply took off their uniforms and walked home rather than die for Saddam. Their boots lined the highways.

The fact that the liberators became the policemen also gave Iraqis a "negative" view of America, says Othman. It is hard to underestimate just how negative that view in the street is.

In the holy Shi'ite city of Karbala, two hours south of Baghdad, gratitude to the United States is almost impossible to find.

No group benefited more from the overthrow of Saddam than Iraq's majority sect, the Shi'a. In Karbala, the site of two Holy shrines, Shi'ites are free to worship in their way and grow an economy based in religious tourism, something forbidden under Saddam.

Along the wide streets leading up to the golden domed shrines to Abbas and the great Shi'a martyr, Hussein, merchants sell religious kitsch and tapes of Shi'ites singing of the death of their saint. On one side of the bazaar are songs about Hussein in Arabic, on the other songs in Farsi, for tourists from Iran. In March, this year, for the first time in decades, Shi'ites were allowed to celebrate the Feast of Ashura. Pilgrims came from all over the Middle East to celebrate and sing of Hussein's martyrdom. Two suicide bombers walked into the crowds simultaneously and detonated themselves. Around 140 people were killed.

That seems to be fact, but three weeks later in the streets leading to the Golden Shrines a different theory of the crime has taken hold: America did it. Why would they, you ask people. Because the U.S. wants to make people fearful for their security so Iraqis will ask the U.S. to stay.

In Karbala, Sheikh Muslim al-Tai is regarded as the representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, spiritual leader of Iraq's Shi'a, in the city. Sistani is probably the most powerful Iraqi in Iraq. That makes Sheikh Muslim al-Tai a very important man in Karbala.

Ask Sheikh Muslim what he tells his people when they say the U.S. set off the Ashura bombs and he says that he needs proof from both sides about what happened. But does he really think the U.S. would bomb such an occasion? He responds, "Time will tell who is coming to serve and who is coming to ruin."

Who is coming to serve? Who is coming to ruin? A year after overthrowing the tyrant Saddam and with just weeks before handing over Sovereignty to the Iraqi people, that is a lukewarm endorsement of the Bush administration's actions in Iraq.

» Continue reading "Fear and Anger: Inside Out (Part III)