To Wary Baghdad Shopkeepers, ‘Liberation’ Looks Like a Jungle

For shop assistant Rafi Najih, sitting alone inside his tiny store with a Kalashnikov rifle on his lap, the anarchy of the last few days has already started to make Saddam Hussein’s iron fist look pretty good.

“They must either give us Saddam back or do something about the outrage in the streets,” Najih, 26, said Friday as he defended the store from looters.

“Look what they did to me. This is the first time I took a weapon in my hands in the entire war.”

In the days since Hussein lost his grip on power, Baghdad has moved quickly from jubilation to confusion and disorientation -- and, increasingly, bursts of violence. The rules of behavior have changed for everyone, but no one is quite sure what the new rules are or whether they want to obey them.

The result is widespread chaos. After two days of almost cheery looting, Friday saw the city slide into an unsettling mix of oddly festive crime spree and sinister unrest, as shootings, arson and vigilante justice flared across the capital.

Increasingly, gunfire crackles: defenders of property firing at looters, looters firing at the defenders, looters firing at fellow looters over the spoils.

Near a presidential palace in the Mansour district Friday, a fat, angry man in a black robe started shooting at looters with a handgun. They turned and drove away quickly.

The man screamed after them at the top of his lungs: “You sons of dogs! You are a shame for the nation. I will kill everybody who has something in his hands.”

Outside the Petroleum Workers Club in the Zoubayeh district, two groups of looters quarreled and one began shooting -- prompting Marines to go out in search of the miscreant.

But elsewhere, looters were going at it with a kind of joie de vivre -- cheerfully carting off all and sundry like lottery winners. Sometimes it’s almost comical to watch, they go at it so brazenly and with such impunity -- flashing thumbs-up at Westerners as if to say, you gave all this to us by bringing down Hussein.

The mood of entitlement was captured at one of Hussein’s palaces Friday, where ordinary Iraqis drawn by curiosity and awe came stumbling in, uninhibited by U.S. Army troops outside. About three dozen people in all ran up and down the stairs.

One of them, Haled Hashem, sat down at a huge oaken table and said in a loud, mocking voice:

“My dear people, I, Saddam Hussein, decided that all which is mine should be yours. Take it!”

His friends laughed heartily.

But in well-groomed neighborhoods, where families live in small, concrete houses, men have begun standing guard outside their homes with weapons, fearful that looters will invade.

More and more neighborhoods are building roadblocks to keep cars from traveling onto their streets.

In some areas, armed men are setting up their own checkpoints, stopping cars coming into, or trying to leave, their neighborhoods.

The mood -- and the violence -- may get worse as more and more people think that they need to take the law into their own hands to protect their lives and property.

On Arasat al Hindiyah Street, an angry crowd was on the verge of mob justice Friday after it stopped a red bus loaded with big new tires and office chairs. The crowd was about to lynch the looter driving the bus when a tall man with spectacles intervened.

Instead, the driver was dragged off to the local mullah “to decide what we should do with him,” said Ahman Issa, 46, a computer programmer.

Issa said the crowd had no choice.

“We protect our wealth. We protect our money. America promised us liberation and democracy,” he said. But “this is not liberation. This is not democracy. This is a jungle. We now live in a jungle.”

In time, the looters may become sated, or at least run out of items to loot, and the U.S. may step in and restore order.

But the Marines who are making the difficult shift from war-maker to peacekeeper say they have their work cut out for them.

Marine 1st Lt. Frank Dillbeck, of Twentynine Palms, commands a combined anti-armor team that Friday began its new mission, to guard a compound of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A few short days ago, Dillbeck said, if he had seen an Iraqi carrying a weapon he wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot to kill. But if he did that now, he said, he might be shooting people trying to defend their property.

“It’s a tough transition,” he said, explaining that the team has been told to help restore order. “We are seeing a lot of people running around with guns. Two days ago, it was OK to take them out.”

And as the initial euphoria at the end of Hussein’s rule begins to fade, people wake up each day to find themselves trapped again.

“We are so glad to get rid of our government, but we are still not safe in our own houses,” said Mohammed Amari, 25, a dentist.

“There is no control, no government. Everyone acts as he likes. Stealing. Burning. It’s chaos.”

Civilians still find that their lives are defined by matters of war. On the road leading into Baghdad, 23 miles outside the city, residents tiptoe cautiously across, fearful that they will trigger unexploded ordnance.

On Tuesday, warplanes dropped cluster bombs on this area, and since then, residents said, children have died from playing with unexploded bomblets.

“Please, please, help the children,” said Hatham Fathi, 26, asking that U.S. troops come back and clean up the road.

But for most Baghdad residents, the looting presents the greatest dangers.

Ibrahim Elias, 53, is a security guard who was beaten and shot Thursday when he tried to stop a group from cleaning out some neighborhood shops.

His friends could not even take him to a hospital because the hospitals have been looted of drugs and supplies, even of their windows.

“We’re just trying to help these people out,” Dillbeck said as he sent a medic to aid Elias. “It’s still very much a war zone.”

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.