Reporter’s Notebook : Iraq’s Leader Man of 1,000 Faces

From the moment a visitor touches down at Saddam International Airport, there’s no mistaking whose town this is.

“Welcome to Baghdad,” says a large sign, “the capital of the Arabs’ Saddam.”

Saddam, of course, is Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. If one were to list his faults, being camera shy would not be one of them.

Hussein’s cleft chin and jowly cheeks are seen virtually everywhere in Iraq--on buildings, around intersections, outside towns and alongside roadways. He appears in photographs and paintings, on billboards and murals.

There are pictures of Hussein the statesman, Hussein the general and Hussein the desert chieftain. In an effort to suggest that he is all things to all Iraqis, there is even Hussein the scholar, wearing doctoral robes outside Baghdad University and Hussein the farmer, swinging a scythe at the Agricultural Workers Federation.

The pictures are but one manifestation of a personality cult so pervasive and all-embracing as to be without parallel in the Arab world. Not even Libya’s Moammar Kadafi or Tunisia’s Habib Bourguiba, who also have set themselves up as larger-than-life figures in their respective countries, outdo Hussein in this respect.

On television, musical groups sing songs about Hussein and poets recite odes dedicated to him. Over at the April 28th Shopping Center--April 28 is Hussein’s birthday--a window display features oriental rugs with the Iraqi leader’s face woven into the design.

Want to see how the ordinary people of Baghdad live? Take a taxi out to Saddam City--that’s right off Saddam Square. Or, if culture is more your thing, check out the new exhibition of portraits at the Saddam Art Gallery.

No need to guess who the portraits are of.

Passers-by still do double takes, and with good reason. Not far from the sprawling Ministry of Information is one of Baghdad’s most unusual sites--a building flying the Iranian flag.

Although they have been at war with one another for more than six years, Iran and Iraq still have diplomatic relations and each maintains an embassy in the other’s capital.

Entrance to the walled-off and heavily guarded Iranian Embassy is barred to those without special Iraqi government permission, and the three Iranians inside rarely venture out and won’t talk to reporters on the phone.

“Once a week, they emerge in a guarded convoy to do their shopping, but otherwise nobody sees them,” a Western diplomat said.

Wisam Zahawie, Iraq’s deputy foreign minister, said the two sides have virtually no official contacts except for when Iraq has reason to believe that its embassy in Tehran is threatened. “Then we call in their man here and warn him,” Zahawie said.

Given the bitter mutual hatreds that have built up during the course of the long and bloody Persian Gulf War, diplomats in Baghdad still find it “very strange,” in one’s words, that formal relations exist at all.

However, Zahawie notes that Egypt and Iraq have “close and cooperative” relations without formal diplomatic ties. That Iran and Iraq should have formal relations, even if they have nothing to talk about, “just goes to show that diplomatic relations have come not to mean much any more,” he adds with a shrug.

Every story of this sort is supposed to contain a quote from a taxi driver and this one is no exception. Herewith the proverbial taxi driver quote:

“Americans very good. Americans the best. Better than the French, English and Russians,” one Baghdad cabbie really said.

“Lin-co-lin. Abraham Lin-co-lin and Kennedy very good. But Reagan no good. Reagan cra-zy,” he added, shaking his head.

The cabbie said he could not understand why President Reagan had authorized the sale of U.S. weapons to Iran. His passenger responded that he was not the only one mystified by that decision.

Western reporters are not often admitted to Iraq and when they are, they often find it a tough place in which to work. In the past, for instance, a trip to the battlefront meant waiting around for days in a hotel far from the scene of any actual fighting. Sometimes a press conference would be held. Sometimes it wouldn’t.

However, when Iraqi officials offered to take foreign reporters to the southern front over New Year’s, it was apparent that a decision had been taken to be more open and cooperative. “You can go anywhere you want and see whatever you want,” one official said.

The reporters were taken to the front all right, but there were still problems with the new open information policy, as illustrated by the following conversation, printed verbatim, between a journalist and a general:

General: I know you don’t believe we killed 30,000 Iranians, but we will show you the bodies to prove it. You can go to see them now, if you want.

Journalist: Thank you very much. Now would be fine.

General: Now? Ah, now it is late. Tomorrow would be better. Now or tomorrow?

Journalist: Now.

General: It is very far from here. Better to go tomorrow, OK?

Journalist: But I have to write a story tonight. Now would be better for me.

General: Good, we go tomorrow.

The next day, reporters were taken to a field where they were shown freshly plowed ground.

“Here is where the bodies are buried,” said an escort officer. “If you had asked to come yesterday you would have seen them. But here are the very shovels we used to bury them, so you know we are telling the truth. You have seen it with your own eyes.”