Life in Iraq Pinched by Nation’s Outlaw Status

The canned music plays on at the al-Rashid, Baghdad’s top hotel. But year-old trade sanctions have worn out the tapes.

They are now so thin that the strains of Richard Clayderman on pervasive loudspeakers in the hotel’s lobbies, elevators and restaurants have the ear-jarring drag of an old 45 record played at 33 r.p.m.

“We are doing our best to maintain standards,” said an assistant manager named Nahid. “But we know there are shortcomings, and if you have any suggestions they would be welcome.”

A request for the sliding strains to be turned off if new tapes were not available was met with a look of bafflement as if the concept of a hotel with no canned music was unthinkable.

After more than a year of trade sanctions over its invasion of Kuwait, Iraq’s status as an international polecat is pinching the daily lives of its people in little ways and large.

“You can get just about anything you want in Baghdad today--at a price,” said a U.N. official working in the capital for the last four months. “The only real shortage is money.”

Fruit juice from Australia, lemonade from Russia, beer from Holland and Pepsi-Cola from Germany can be seen on supermarket shelves.

Most of the goods that do enter the country come through Jordan, and heavily laden trucks heading toward Iraq make up the bulk of the traffic on the rutted road from Amman to the border.

Anyone can import what they want, with no questions asked and no payment of duty.

Asked for a pack of Tuborg beer brewed in Turkey, a shopkeeper lamented that he had had to raise its price every day that week.

“You know why prices are going up all the time? It’s because our dinar is no good. Why today in Jordan it takes 12 Iraqi dinars to buy one of theirs,” he added.

Before Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait last year, the commonly used unofficial--or black market--rate was four Iraqi dinars to one Jordanian.

The state-run Duty Free Shop, a three-story shopping plaza on the outskirts of Baghdad, had been reserved mainly for diplomats and visitors. But in May it slashed its prices and threw open its doors to all who can pay in hard currency.

A recent visit found the latest goods to have arrived included Italian washing machines, kerosene heaters from Korea and electric hot plates made in England.

Iraq under sanctions is a middleman’s paradise, which prompted a call from President Saddam Hussein recently to stamp out “the profiteers and criminals who are taking advantage of the poor and needy.”

Before the United Nations clamped a trade embargo on Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait, ample heavily subsidized rations of staples kept the private market out of the food sector.

Now the rations cover only an estimated one-third of average consumption, forcing people to buy at inflated prices to ward off hunger.

Heavy street trading takes place outside the government stores where rationed foods and other goods are sold at bargain-basement prices.

In front of one store on the banks of the Tigris river recently, a piece of cheese that had cost less than half a dinar inside swiftly fetched six dinars--$18 at the little- used official rate, but under $1 at the black market rate.

Iraq is starved of information about the outside world. Western visitors are regularly asked if they have any newspapers or magazines to give away.

Iraq has officially decreed that the “Mother of All Battles,” its name for the Gulf War over Kuwait, still goes on while the embargo is in place--at the same time presenting it to its people as a great victory.

Asked how it could be seen as a victory, a young Iraqi woman said: “Because Iraq was not destroyed 100%, only 90%,” she replied.

While Saddam seems to have firmly restored his grip on power, regular visitors to Baghdad since he began his rule in 1979 say they now encounter more open dissent than ever before.

Even the newspaper Babil, owned by Saddam’s son Uday, set a publishing landmark recently by devoting its back page to large cartoons showing a butcher closing his shop after the government curbed meat prices, a man with a broken-down car bemoaning the lack of spare parts, and a couple complaining about high prices as they shared a cheap sandwich.

Many people have also found a subtle way to blame their woes on the ill-fated seizure of Kuwait.

The Arabic for “Mother of All Battles” is Um al-Maarik , but in the tea shops of Baghdad it can be heard pronounced as Um al-Mahalik --changing the meaning to “Mother of All Troubles.”