Voices From the Streets of Baghdad

Ask a resident of this capital what people really think of Saddam Hussein, and your answer lies in the emotions that cross the person’s face.

First, there is a look of sheer panic. Next comes the quick, nervous glance around to see if anyone is watching. Finally, an equivocal answer--”This is a very difficult question”--is followed by an ironic smile.

In Baghdad, more can be gleaned from what is not said: the wistful expression on the face of an adult looking at a laptop computer for the first time, the hush that falls on the street when a procession of infant coffins goes by, the eagerness with which any foreigner who lands here is embraced and courted.

In the continuing test of wills between the United States and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, both claim to be on the side of the Iraqi people.

Yet aside from the virulent anti-American demonstrations staged inside Baghdad and the fierce anti-Hussein rhetoric of opposition leaders in exile, the Iraqi people themselves are seldom heard.

What do these 22 million people, who have lived through 20 years of tragedy including two disastrous wars and seven years of an international economic embargo, really think about Hussein, the U.S. pressures on their country and their own future?

Granted, it is difficult for foreign journalists to get unimpeded access to ordinary Iraqis. The Iraqi security services are highly effective--one diplomat here ranks them with the old East German secret police, “a good Stasi system with an Oriental flavor.”

But interviews over the course of seven days, some in the presence of Iraqi government representatives and some in private, yielded an image of a deeply unhappy nation.

The picture that emerged was of a proud people toughened by circumstance, tired of the suffering they have had to endure and eager to get U.N. sanctions lifted and their country restored to what they consider its rightful place. It is a population that appears to feel powerless to effect change but is seething with a strong sense of grievance--at times directed toward its leader, Hussein; at times toward the United States; and often toward both.

‘There Is Far Too Much Pain’

Although the successful diplomatic mission of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last month gave a temporary lift to the country’s mood by postponing the threat of a U.S.-led military strike, economic stagnation and the limbo of no-war, no-peace since 1991 have taken their toll on spirits.

“If you see that we’re having fun, we’re not having fun,” said plastics company owner Delair Mohammed Khidiar. He was at a private restaurant eating seafood and drinking illicit whiskey--in a nod to Islam, the government has made public consumption of alcohol illegal. “There is far too much pain, far too much suffering, for that.” (It emerged that one of his dining companions had recently lost a son to an infection and had a second in the hospital.)

While people tend to hide their private attitudes toward the regime, there is no need to mask the anger and frustration they feel toward the United States. Washington’s policy since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, as they see it, has only added to the misery of their lives.

Post-Gulf War economic sanctions designed to force Iraq to relinquish its remaining weapons of mass destruction have barred the government from making regular oil sales since 1991 and restricted most other international commerce. As a result, the national economy has collapsed.

For the many who have lost relatives due to lack of medicine--the government says it can no longer afford sufficient drugs or to maintain its health facilities--and who have anguished over how they were going to feed their families, and who have been saddened to see their once-prosperous land reduced to a pauperized state where children beg in the streets, it simply does not cut it to put all the blame on Hussein.

“They wanted to come and bomb Baghdad for just one person?” exclaimed one woman from Baghdad’s nouveaux pauvres--as she described it, the “people who used to be somebody but who have now lost everything.”

“This is not fair,” she said.

Restaurateur Zaki Abadi, who is trying to bring back elegant dining with his Cafe de Capitaine, asked, “Who gave [the Americans] the right to harm a whole people? . . . Who gave them the right to decide for us what we want and what we don’t want?”

And yet, when news came that the expected U.S. bombing campaign had been averted thanks to Annan’s diplomacy, not everyone in Baghdad was elated. “Perhaps it would have changed something,” said a 28-year-old service worker who has never had the chance to travel outside Iraq because of the prohibitive cost the Iraq government now charges for an exit visa. (In contrast, in the oil-boom ‘70s, even middle-class Iraqis could afford travel, and the regime subsidized foreign university studies.)

The Iraqi people are neither with the United States nor with their government, explained one intellectual who considers himself part of the unorganized opposition inside the country.

The United States, by fighting for nothing loftier than the rights of U.N. inspectors to gain access to a few “presidential” sites, has lost the confidence of those Iraqis who were hoping for American help to deliver them from Hussein’s regime, he said. And Hussein, by cutting a last-minute deal to avoid a military clash, may have gained a measure of appreciation from his people.

“To be fair . . . even his enemies would suggest he’s learning,” the intellectual said. But if the Clinton administration really wants to win support inside the country, it should put its emphasis on promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq rather than trying to track down the last Scud missile, he said.

Island of Affluence in a Sea of Poverty

The streets of Baghdad are paved with misery, except for one: Arasad el Hindiyeh has bright boutiques with imported clothing, elegant restaurants, neon-glow ice cream emporiums and a garden restaurant misnamed the Black and White Casino, where there is no gambling but couples can dine stylishly next to a roaring fire.

Here members of Hussein’s ruling Tikriti clan rub elbows with the “war rich”--merchant princes who have piled up profits through smuggling and currency operations made possible by economic sanctions. As one store owner put it: “Our customers are those who have stolen.”

Arasad el Hindiyeh is an island of affluence in a sea of poverty, but it represents a glimpse of what Iraq could aspire to if sanctions were lifted and the threat of war removed.

Iraq’s propaganda machine works overtime to win worldwide sympathy for the suffering Iraqi people--”SIPs” in the jargon of some jaded U.N. workers--so it is an embarrassment to point out that a tiny, well-connected elite here lives well.

“We too are suffering,” protested one patron being fawned over in a restaurant where a meal can cost the equivalent of eight months’ pay for an ordinary Iraqi. If not for sanctions, he asserted, he would be even richer.

Iraq has been quite successful at convincing the world that it is cruelly affected by sanctions, but the reality is more nuanced. When pressed, people will admit that they are living better than they did a few months ago.

Stores have more goods on sale because of an endless stream of small-scale traders bringing foodstuffs and consumer products from Turkey and Jordan. (The commerce is two-way, with traders modifying cars and trucks to carry out extra tankfuls of Iraqi gasoline or diesel fuel to be sold abroad. Technically, this is a sanctions violation, but the international community has looked the other way.)

Other entrepreneurs sense that Iraq has hit bottom and now is ripe to rebound. They are sinking money into new shops and restaurants.

Under the $4-billion-a-year oil-for-food program that was accepted by Hussein in December 1996 and began providing large quantities of food to Iraqis in May, the average person now is being given the bulk calories to survive.

But the population remains hungry in other ways. Iraqis often speak of their wish to escape their post-Gulf War isolation and to resume their place in the front ranks of Arab states. The country’s potential is great--endowed as it is with large amounts of oil and water--and for centuries Baghdad, fabled site of the Arabian nights, was the crossroads of the exotic Orient.

Now, however, Baghdad looks sterile and dead. It’s like Stalin’s Moscow transposed to the Fertile Crescent: blocks of concrete buildings; wide, mostly empty boulevards traveled by battered, broken-down cars or carts pulled by skinny horses; huge, oppressive war monuments and omnipresent portraits of the Great Leader in a range of poses, costumes and moods--some with him smiling endearingly, others looking stern and foreboding.

One joke goes: What’s the population of Iraq? Answer: 40 million--20 million Iraqis and 20 million pictures of Saddam Hussein. Hint: Don’t tell it to a police officer.

In fact, Hussein is not so very out of step with the region. It’s customary in almost every Arab country to put up a generous number of public portraits of the head of state. Similarly, any respectable Arab leader is expected to have a lot of palaces.

The government has continued to put up palaces even as it bemoans the privations and deaths caused by the sanctions. Western observers see a contradiction in this, but many Iraqis just shrug and answer that their country is rich--with huge oil reserves--and should be allowed to have both food and palaces.

Solitude Breeds Ignorance for Most

Hussein’s rule is intact, but his hold is brittle. People want change but fear turmoil.

“People here are only survival-oriented,” said one diplomat with three years’ experience in Baghdad. “They may say that they do not like the system here, and in the next minute they will deny it. Of course, they are doing that to survive. They know that they cannot do anything to change anything.”

Spending time in Iraq, one gets the feeling that Iraqis themselves don’t know what they think. They are cut off from information, except what the government permits. They are worn out by the struggles of daily living. They fear the security apparatus. And they are bitter that the country that they once admired, the United States, seems to have turned against them.

A nagging fear among many Iraqis is that their country, which once was highly modernized compared with other Middle Eastern countries, is falling behind the times. With its tangled recent history, the country has been missing out on the technological advances sweeping the developed world.

“How can you make up for that gap?” asked Murtaza Khafaf, 58, who described her consternation when, while staying at a friend’s apartment in Jordan, a telephone caller asked to be connected to the fax machine.

She was flummoxed. She had never seen a fax machine.

“You feel pity for yourself. What is a mobile phone? What is a fax? What is the Internet? I feel so ignorant. See how we have become backward.”

“The information blockade is worse than the economic blockade for us,” said Salah Mukhtar, editor of the government newspaper Al Jumhuriyah. The newspaper once subscribed to newspapers, magazines and wire services from around the world. Now it is reduced to taking its information off the airwaves free. Reporters listen to foreign broadcasters, including the BBC, Israel Radio and the Voice of America, to find out what is happening in the world.

With his perfect command of English, Mukhtar is a persuasive spokesman for the official viewpoint.

There is no doubt that the regime is bound to survive, he said. “I can assure you . . . we can control the situation inside,” he said. “We can avoid any political changes. We have guarantees, which is basically the support of Iraqis.”

But others see signals that the regime had been concerned that a U.S. military strike might trigger a popular revolt. According to one intellectual, that was the most obvious explanation for the government’s decision to enlist 1 million Iraqis in a “popular army” during the face-off with Washington.

Male and female, young and old, the “volunteers” could be seen all over Baghdad marching haphazardly, training with aging, unloaded Kalashnikov rifles and shouting patriotic slogans supervised by regular army officers.

According to the intellectual, everyone knew such a force would be useless against U.S. warplanes--but it might well discourage anyone thinking of starting an insurrection.

Concerns for the Younger Generation

Where is Iraq headed? Denis Halliday, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator in Baghdad, said he believes that Iraq’s isolation could be having a corrosive effect on the generation of young adults, whose entire life experience has been two wars fought back-to-back against Iran and the U.S.-led coalition, followed by the prolonged period of sanctions.

These youths, the future leaders of Iraq, are bitter toward the world and could take the country in the direction of extreme nationalism and xenophobia, he warned.

But on the campus of the University of Baghdad, Saad Hasseni, an assistant professor of modern English literature, sees the new generation differently. They appreciate the “yawning gap” in understanding between their country and the rest of the world, he said, and they would like to close it.

“They would like more openness. They would like to know more about the world, and [for] the world to know more about us,” he said.

Ali Abdul Amir, a 19-year-old geography student, agreed, even as he clutched a rifle en route to militia training. “We have no enmity against any country,” he declared. “But we would like to have the embargo lifted and to live decently.”

Daniszewski was recently on assignment in Baghdad.