Developments in Baghdad Hit Home for Iraqis in U.S.

From a sunbaked parking lot east of San Diego to the chilly sidewalks of a Detroit suburb, Iraqi exiles across the United States on Wednesday marked the apparent fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime with impromptu celebrations and an outpouring of emotion.

Spurred by televised images of U.S. soldiers and Iraqis toppling a statue of Saddam Hussein from its towering pedestal in a Baghdad square, celebrants waved American and Iraqi flags, sang national anthems and chanted, “Yes, yes, USA!” and “Down, down with Saddam!”

“This is the happiest moment of my life,” cried John Kalabat at a demonstration in El Cajon. “Thank God I am free today.”

Kalabat, 73, fled Iraq four decades ago. On Wednesday, he joined about 200 other Iraqi Americans who flooded the parking lot of the Kurdish Human Rights Watch center.

Women handed out chocolates, and friends hugged and joyfully congratulated each other. Several held hands and danced in a circle to Iraqi music blasting from car speakers. Nearby, two men held up a poster of Hussein standing beneath the words “King of Death,” with a bloody knife in his hands and skulls at his feet.

Kalabat, a linguistics professor at Cuyamaca College, took off his shoe and banged it against Hussein’s face. And one by one, other native Iraqis followed his lead.

Similar demonstrations were seen in cities like Atlanta, where gleeful Iraqi exiles drove a caravan of vehicles past the headquarters of CNN, and in the suburbs of Detroit, where demonstrators pelted posters of Hussein with candies and chanted, “Thank you, George Bush!”

In Pomona, plans were announced for a Wednesday evening prayer vigil.

But amid the spontaneous jubilation, some Iraqi Americans said they found no reason to celebrate. The apparent destruction of Hussein’s regime meant only that one dictatorship had been replaced with another, they said.

“This is not a liberation of Iraq. This is the occupation of Iraq,” said Hadi Jawad, 51, a heavy-equipment operator and board member of the nonprofit Dallas Peace Center. “The U.S. is going to be the new dictator. Nothing has been won yet. They have only opened a Pandora’s box.”

Jawad said that Americans were misreading the smiles of Iraqis in Baghdad.

“These people have been living under this hell of ‘shock and awe,’ and now they are seeing some relief from the bombing, from the hell, and so they are happy,” Jawad said. “First, we orphan a child. Then we toss a piece of candy to this child. This induces a smile on the face of this child.”

In El Cajon, which has 15,000 Iraqi immigrants -- a community that includes Kurds, Chaldean Christians and Muslims -- the celebration began just before noon.

Community leaders posted banners that read: “Thanks to U.S. troops,” “Iraqi people are free now” and “Bye Bye Saddam.”

The crowd marched from the Kurdish Human Rights Watch center through El Cajon to the Chaldean-Assyrian American Social Club to continue the festivities. There, a moment of silence was observed for the Iraqis who have made the “ultimate sacrifice.” While some sang and danced, others gathered around a television set to watch the developments in their native country.

Proudly holding an American flag, Sayran A. Kadir said she will never forget the American and British troops for liberating her homeland from Hussein’s brutal regime.

“This is a dream that we’ve been waiting for,” said Kadir, a volunteer translator. “God bless America.”

In Dearborn, Mich., home to the nation’s largest Arab American population, a raucous parade of cars cruised up and down Warren Avenue. Horns bleated constantly as about 1,200 celebrants marched through the streets, some bedecked with helium-filled balloons.

Arabic music blasted from vehicles, and youths leaned out of windows and sunroofs, flashing victory signs as if Iraq had just won the World Cup soccer championship.

“Now I feel 1 day old, because this is the start of my life as an Iraqi person,” said Abdul Alwan, who left his hometown of Nasiriyah in 1991 and spent two years in a refugee camp in Saudi Arabia before arriving in the U.S.

“This is my birthday today,” said Alwan, fidgeting with a sabha string of orange beads.

Alwan, 35, was a soldier in Iraq’s army in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He remembers American planes dropping leaflets urging soldiers to lay down their arms and disobey Hussein. Alwan did abandon his guns, he says. “We believed the Americans and left the army, and went with the people in the uprising, and then the Americans left us,” he said, somewhat bitterly. “This time, freedom is good.”

Alwan hasn’t spoken to his three brothers, three sisters and his mother back home for more than three months. “But I believe they are all right,” he said. “They’re not in the army, and they do not like the regime.

“Everyone is happy,” he said, watching the cacophonous stream of cars and trucks parade by. Youths beat large drums in some cars. One red sedan had Arabic slogans written on its doors in shaving cream. A green Dodge Caravan minivan cruised slowly to cheers from the crowd on the sidewalk, the front page of the Detroit Free Press taped to its windshield with the banner headline “U.S. Forces Roll Over Baghdad Defenses.”

In Atlanta, jubilant Iraqi exiles drove a caravan of vehicles past the headquarters of CNN, waving Iraqi and American flags, blaring horns and shouting “God bless America!” Most of Atlanta’s roughly 800 Iraqis are Kurds who arrived as refugees after the 1991 war.

“For the first time in my life, I’m feeling happy like this,” said Mohamad Al-Hassani, a spokesman for the area’s Iraqi community. Al-Hassani spoke in halting English, but his joy was unmistakable. “Nobody in my country is believing that Saddam was going to die. Everybody believed he was going to stay forever.”

Al-Hassani, a former student in Iraq who worked as a journalist in Lebanon, said his Shiite relatives came under repression from the Hussein regime. An uncle was killed, he said.

But the happiness expressed by Al-Hassani and others was not felt by all Iraqi Americans. Like Jawad, of Dallas, Rita Zawaideh watched the events in Iraq with a certain wariness.

“It’s still very much a time of anxiety -- so many questions about the future,” said Zawaideh, co-founder of the Arab American Community Coalition in Seattle. “Saddam was a brutal tyrant, cruel to his own people, but you have to look at the long term too: Who is going to rule now? People in Iraq are celebrating, glad to have him gone in the joy of the moment, but the future is so uncertain, and truthfully, I don’t trust this administration.”

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Times staff writers Ken Ellingwood, Scott Gold, Lynn Marshall, Christine Hanley and Monte Morin contributed to this report.