Ignoring Iran’s Artillery, Basra’s Citizens Go on With Life

The downtown section of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, is eerily empty these days. Even the usual complement of stray cats seems to have disappeared.

A few Egyptian migrant workers linger on, brewing tea in a restaurant where the windows have been shattered by shelling from Iranian artillery about 12 miles away. In the last year, whole rows of once-patrician houses have been knocked down by the shells, leaving uneven piles of bricks, iron rods and cables.

Yet, despite the hazard of the artillery--which thumps in the distance with monotonous and terrifying regularity--only a few miles from the deserted downtown, college students stroll to classes at Basra University and street repairs are under way outside a crowded housing development.

After nearly eight years of conflict with Iran, Iraqis in Basra and elsewhere have learned to live with the war. It is a burden, they seem to say, but life must go on.

The mood among Iraqi officials and diplomats encountered during a recent two-week tour was more upbeat than in the past. In addition, there is gathering momentum in the United Nations for the imposition of an arms embargo against Tehran for failing to agree to a Security Council resolution that mandates a cease-fire in the conflict. And fundamental changes in the Iraqi economy are benefiting the average Iraqi.

“As for the people of Basra, I am really confident that even if the war goes on for 20 years, things will be the same,” Anwar Hadithi, the southern Iraqi city’s governor, says. “They have lived through a lot already.”

Remarkably, one businessman whose hotel in central Basra was wrecked by a single Iranian rocket is talking about rebuilding.

“I’m not ready to move out of the city yet,” the hotelier, Bedai Jabbery, said. “I don’t have any place else to go.”

The city of Basra, once a playground for wealthy Arabs with a prewar population of 1 million, has a particularly crucial role in the history of the Persian Gulf fighting. In January and February, 1987, Iranian forces came within eight miles. But Iraq’s intricate system of fixed defenses--a sort of modern Maginot Line using tanks, fighter aircraft and helicopter gunships--held back the onslaught.

In the convoluted politics of the gulf war, for Iran not to win such a high-stakes battle was tantamount to a major defeat. And in the aftermath, the war appears to be swinging in Iraq’s favor.

“Ever since the Basra campaign failed, there is a sense that the worst is over,” one Western diplomat said. “They seem sure they can handle the worst that comes now.”

The fighting has come close to Basra again in recent days. Heavy fighting was reported on the Faw Peninsula, whose closest point is only about 20 miles southeast of Basra. On Tuesday, Iraq reported recapturing the peninsula, which Iran had held for the last two years.

Although Basra’s current official population of 782,000 clearly does not reflect the full extent of emigration from the city, it is far from empty, even during the worst shelling.

While Iran reportedly struggles to meet its manpower requirements at the war front, Iraqi divisions are at full strength, completely rearmed with the latest Soviet and French equipment.

Western analysts say they believe that Iraq’s high state of readiness was instrumental in persuading Iranian leaders to call off a planned offensive this year near Basra. Another loss like last year’s could prove disastrous to the Tehran regime.

The central front east of Baghdad is open desert--ideal territory for Iraq’s Soviet-supplied tanks--so an Iranian offensive there would be easy for Iraq to repel.

The only area left for the Iranians to pursue is the hilly north of Iraqi Kurdistan, where Iranian forces have scored some territorial gains fighting alongside Kurdish rebels seeking autonomy from Baghdad. But even in the north, no strategic area is seriously threatened, according to diplomats, suggesting a drawn-out war of attrition.

“The fighting in Kurdistan bleeds the Iraqis, which is the whole point of the exercise,” one diplomat said. “But Iran also has a Kurdish problem of its own. So the Iranians have to calibrate what they do to bleed Iraq--but not give the Kurds too much, or it will backfire on them.”

Apart from the fighting itself, a number of other factors are contributing to Iraq’s adjustment to life with the war.

For one, Iraq has succeeded in finding ways to get its oil exports--90% of its foreign income--piped to the world through Turkey and Saudi Arabia, thus avoiding the risk of a cutoff in the Persian Gulf route. A new line through Turkey opened last September, and exports rose accordingly, from $7 billion in 1986 to $11.5 billion last year.

But the conflicting demands of the military and civilian sectors have taken their toll:

At the start of the war in 1980, Iraq had $35 billion in oil reserves and was regarded as one of the Middle East’s wealthiest nations. Since then, the reserves have vanished and the country is now an estimated $25 billion in debt.

“It’s not easy to manage a ‘guns and butter’ economy at the same time,” Iraqi Finance Minister Hikmat Omar Khalif said in an interview. “The military will always take priority--we have no choice but to defend Iraq. But now everyone is talking about the economic costs of the war, and that is a good thing. I’m optimistic about the future.”

Nearly as important as the oil exports are the structural changes in the economy taking place under Iraq’s officially socialist government--much like the perestroika occurring under Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the Soviet Union.

Government bureaucracy is being de-emphasized and private enterprise encouraged. The first major change was selling off all government farms and agricultural institutions and placing them in the hands of private business. At the same time, price controls were abolished on a range of goods.

The result has been a remarkable improvement for consumers, who now choose from a large supply of fresh fruits and vegetables. Just two years ago, the shops were barren, but now, even luxury items such as refrigerators and washing machines are available--although at prices that are burdensomely expensive in a country where the average income is 200 dinars a month (about $100 at the unofficial exchange rate).

Nonetheless, said one Baghdad intellectual: “Economically, things are much better now. Necessities are available. Everyone can find food, clothing and housing, which is not bad for a country after eight years of war.”

A remaining major burden on the country, however, is the demand for manpower. Virtually all men between the ages of 17 and 46 are in either the regular army or a national guard force known as the Popular Army. Gangs regularly circulate in the big cities searching for “recruits.”

Increasingly, women are filling the gap left by the absent male population in factories and offices. Working hours have increased to match demand, and productivity has risen three to four times, according to government statistics.

On another front, the unsuccessful Iranian siege of Basra last year appeared to prove that the population of southern Iraq would remain loyal to President Saddam Hussein--even though most of the area’s residents are Shia Muslims like the regime in Iran and unlike the predominantly Sunni Muslim government in Baghdad.

Both regimes are ruthlessly authoritarian, but the Iranian shelling directed against Basra’s mainly Shia population appears to have stiffened the resistance rather than finding converts to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“The Iranians’ hopes of winning over the Shias of southern Iraq seems to have failed miserably,” one diplomat said.

The war has strained Iraq’s normally close relationship with the Soviet Union, since Moscow alone of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council seems uncommitted to an arms embargo against Tehran.

One theory advanced for Iraq’s decision to resume its so-called “war of the cities”--the bombing of civilian targets--was that by firing Soviet-supplied missiles at Tehran, Iraqi was hoping to force a rupture in Iran’s relations with Moscow.

In fact, the onslaught of more than 100 ground-to-ground missiles initially produced a backlash against the Soviets in Iran. But Moscow then advanced a new U.N. resolution that appeared to delay consideration of an arms embargo, and relations warmed again.

One Western diplomat in Baghdad offered another explanation for Iraq’s resumption of attacks on cities seven weeks ago.

“The average Iraqi is less war-conscious,” this diplomat said. “The government has to remind people there is a war on, to justify all the sacrifices.”

On Thursday, both countries were observing an unofficial truce in the bombardment of the cities. Iran and Iraq have had several such cease-fires in their long war, but the shooting usually resumes after a short period.

Wallace was recently on assignment in Iraq.