A Battered Baghdad Showing New Life

Maybe it was the hucksters selling arak, a strong licorice-flavored alcohol, on the sidewalk, or the entrepreneurs waving hand-held satellite phones to allow Iraqis to contact relatives abroad at a mere $8 a minute, but this city seemed to turn a corner toward peace and normality Saturday.

U.S. Marines, who bulled their way into the city April 7 and sent the government of President Saddam Hussein scurrying, were on their way out, letting the Army take over the east bank of the Tigris River. Also almost gone were the looters, their weeklong rampage of plunder finally quelled by a combination of popular disgust, vigilante justice and U.S. military might.

Traffic jams reappeared, restaurants and stores reopened, and Iraqi police officers were on the job -- notably, finding and turning over former Finance Minister Hikmat Mizban Azzawi to the Americans, the fifth major Baath Party figure to be apprehended.

For Iraqis, Saturday is, in effect, the first day of the week, following prayer day on Friday. And after the trauma of a war that started one month ago, there was an almost palpable need for people to pick up the strands of their lives and start over.

Their world has been changed. The city bears the scars of buildings bombed into rubble by U.S. planes and rockets, or charred into blackened husks by the arsonists who took part in the looting. Families have been scarred too, still mourning civilians killed or maimed in the brief but bitter fighting.

“Saddam Hussein left this city as a rubbish heap, both when he was here and when he left,” said Salah Talib, a resident of southeast Baghdad, who lost two close relatives in the war.

But on the positive side of the ledger, people were now free to demonstrate and protest, as did several hundred who gathered for the fifth or sixth straight day at Firdos Square -- where a massive statue of Hussein was pulled down earlier -- to demand a quick departure of U.S. forces. Some linked hands and others held up banners reading “No to occupation” as they faced a pair of U.S. tanks and a platoon of gun-toting American soldiers guarding the perimeter set up at the Palestine Hotel.

But unlike a few weeks ago, there was no need for the demonstrators to fear that the people with guns would fire, or that secret agents were noting them for execution or torture.

People are now more free to practice religion, and thousands of Shiite Muslims began the 50-mile pilgrimage from Baghdad to Karbala to observe the anniversary of 40 days of mourning for the grandson of the prophet Muhammad who died a martyr’s death in Karbala about 1,300 years ago.

Shiites predicted that hundreds of thousands, even millions, of them would be in Karbala by Tuesday -- the first time such a large gathering of Shiites has been allowed to observe the anniversary since Hussein became president nearly a quarter of a century ago.

But most of the changes were less dramatic: Women hurried across streets, shopping bags in hand, carrying vegetables and fruit bought at farm stands that had begun to offer their wares again. Young men loitered by the occasional kebab shop that had lighted its charcoal, and money exchange shops were doing a brisk business.

The day before, imams in the city’s many mosques had urged worshipers to return to their jobs. And many government employees did so Saturday.

For the first time in weeks, both the traffic police in their blue trousers and the green-uniformed Interior Ministry police were visible in downtown Baghdad.

And at some of the ministries that were not destroyed, roughly two-thirds of the workers appeared to be returning to their jobs, said Abu Kamal, a clerk in the Transportation Ministry who went back to work.

In the sprawling Saddam City district -- now called Sadr City in honor of a slain Shiite religious leader -- business of another sort was taking place. Young men who had acquired guns looted from police stations and army bases in recent weeks were selling them at a market. Customers were given the chance to fire a few rounds into the air to test them, and many of them did. (Men, women and children shopping nearby were nonplused by all the racket.)

A thieves market was visible along one of the main streets of the New Baghdad district. An odd assortment of booty -- lighting fixtures obviously ripped from government buildings, freezer compressors, medical monitors and a bottle of Bell’s Scotch whiskey -- were being hawked.

The changeover from Marine to Army control in downtown Baghdad and the eastern districts of the city has been going on slowly for several days, necessitated by the Marines’ lack of civil affairs troops needed for the vital task of restoring order and repairing the capital’s crippled electrical and water systems.

Two battalions of Marines, about 1,800 troops, pulled out slowly, their tanks and assault vehicles rolling through the same streets where they were greeted with waves and victory signs 10 days earlier.

The Army’s 3rd Division, which already held the west bank of the Tigris since its assault on Hussein’s main palace complex April 7, will take over from the Marines on both sides of the river.

As frustration with the lack of basic services grew among Iraqis, the U.S. official named interim administrator of the country, retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, was to arrive in Baghdad as early as today with his team of nation-building experts. They will begin the task of stabilizing Iraq and reconstituting it as a sovereign, democratic nation.

In addition to the seizure of Azzawi, a former deputy prime minister who was among the individuals on America’s most-wanted list, U.S. troops took custody of one of Saddam Hussein’s top chemical weapons experts, Hussayn Abdullaj Ani, who turned himself in.

Azzawi’s capture could help the United States discover the whereabouts of the vast sums of wealth that the ruling family is believed to have moved out of the country. U.S. officials hope Ani will help locate weapons of mass destruction, which were one of the reasons cited by the Bush administration in its decision to go to war.

The World Food Program, meanwhile, dispatched the first convoy of food aid from Jordan. Sixty percent of Iraqis had become dependent on monthly government food rations under Hussein, and the convoy was the first step by the United Nations to get a new food-distribution system set up until the Iraqi economy recovers.

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Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Baghdad and Times wire services contributed to this report.