Iraqis Find Themselves Waist Deep in New Freedoms

Bakir Ali Jabouri sat with his friend and kinsman Sheik Amar Hadi Jassem on the bank of the Tigris River, talking about freedom, when gunshots rang out over the steely green water.

“People don’t know the meaning of freedom,” Jabouri said. The shooting came from squatters who have moved into the Ministry of Defense headquarters across the river. Criminals, he said with obvious disgust, adding: “The people who are shooting now, they would say it is because we are free.”

Jabouri, a 55-year-old restaurant owner, has more reason than most to savor his freedom.

A year ago he was in prison, he said, sentenced to death for a supposedly treasonous offense after a court proceeding that lasted all of five minutes. He was among those let out in the general amnesty that then-President Saddam Hussein granted in October to bolster support in anticipation of the U.S.-led invasion.

Many Iraqis, including Jabouri, never expected to experience freedom. Now, nine weeks after the fall of Baghdad, many are having trouble understanding or even talking about freedom -- much less enjoying it -- as they emerge from 36 years of oppression to find their society dominated by chaos and crime.

The collapse of Hussein’s regime opened roads that previously had been closed to all but a few people whose last name ended in al-Tikriti.

People can go boating again on the Tigris and gather to drink beer and listen to music on its banks. Merchants can open shops or put their products out on the sidewalk, and no one will say not to. And satellite dishes have opened a new window on the world.

But in interviews, people said they do not feel safe or comfortable, and many are doubtful that the U.S.-led occupation will be benevolent or lead Iraq to prosperity and democracy.

This may explain why, even though the U.S. military has removed Hussein, many Iraqis already seem ungrateful. And when they talk about their new freedom, Iraqis almost always add an asterisk.

“This freedom is enjoyable, but it is not systematic freedom,” said Jabouri -- a graying man with a black, pencil-thin mustache -- “because American forces allowed wicked men to rob people and steal public property. Even now, they do not control the streets.

“There is no electricity. Water is not regular. We hear about food aid coming to Iraq, but it goes to the bazaars instead of to the people,” he added. “Of course we enjoy freedom, but we want security first.”

On the opposite bank and about a mile downstream from Jabouri’s Tigris Nights restaurant, Salah Maadi Khafaji, 31, a burly unemployed construction worker, stumbled down the steep, litter-strewn embankment, threw off his shirt and plunged headfirst into the muddy water. It was a part of the Tigris that had been off limits to ordinary Iraqis because it overlooked a presidential palace.

“Saddam would not allow us here; he would slay whoever came here,” Khafaji said, standing waist deep near the shore. He explained that he swims every day for about half an hour to escape the heat, which has reached 110 degrees on many recent days. “It’s freedom now!”

The list of once-forbidden activities is legion.

Newspapers with a range of political opinions are now widely available, as are satellite dishes. The right to political meetings, demonstrations and party organizing is taken for granted. Practicing religious rites and public devotions, launching businesses, drinking alcohol in restaurants, driving past and photographing government buildings, owning satellite telephones, fraternizing with foreigners and criticizing the authorities are now permissible.

The U.S. occupation authority has laid down few strictures, and those are often evaded. They include curfews in many locales, a ban on carrying weapons in public or keeping heavy weaponry at home, inciting hatred, attacks on the coalition, civil unrest and organizing in behalf of the now-dissolved Baath Party.

But overall, compared with life under Hussein’s regime, postwar Iraq is largely without rules, regulations and officials to keep order. That absence of authority is the reason for what many people see as an excess of freedom.

Khafaji, the swimmer, grew angry as he thought about it.

“As long as America is here, there is no freedom,” he said. “We want them to get out. They helped us get rid of Saddam, OK. But why are they staying now?”

“We want a government. We have no jobs. People want to kill each other for money, for nothing. We have no money,” he said, pulling out his two pockets from his dripping trousers to demonstrate the point. “Look, no money!”

Abdul Reza Abbas, 50, a nut vendor in downtown Baghdad, said that freedom has had two sides to it. In Hussein’s time, he said, the municipal authorities would not have allowed him to sell from his cart on the sidewalk, and police would harass him for bribes, beating him if he did not pay.

That is no longer a problem. On the other hand, he said, most Iraqis felt safer under the old government. “Stores used to be open until midnight or 1 a.m.,” he said. “Now they close at 8 p.m. because criminals are everywhere.”

He put the blame on the occupation authorities for not moving quickly enough to revive life here.

But the argument goes both ways. Officials of the U.S. occupation authority have told journalists privately that Iraqis were unprepared for freedom after 36 years of centralized Baath Party rule -- that it came too suddenly, after a war of only four weeks, for them to grasp.

Right after Hussein’s ouster, Iraqis seemed to be waiting, paralyzed, for the Americans to tell them what to do to get their country moving again. In contrast to Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism, there were no grass-roots movements here, like Poland’s Solidarity, that were poised to bring an instant flowering of initiative and purpose.

That is starting to change, said one veteran U.S. diplomat speaking on the condition of anonymity. After six weeks of working here with officials of a government ministry and with managers of various state enterprises, he said he sees many Iraqis starting to take reconstruction into their own hands.

The struggle for the U.S. occupation officials, he said, may be to keep up with them.

“I knew Iraqis were good people before I worked here, but, boy, do they have depth,” the diplomat said. “They’re going to do it. They can do it -- make a state that moves into the 21st century with democracy and prosperity.”

Although the United States has the final say in Iraq for now, U.S. officials are relying on free Iraqis to be full participants in putting the country back together and helping to root out Baathists and any others who would undermine democracy.

“Freedom is not just a whole lot of fun, it implies responsibility,” one top occupation official said Friday on the condition of anonymity.

Amar Salihi, 58, a garment shop owner with socialist leanings, recounted his experience of testing out his new liberty.

Several weeks after Hussein’s ouster, he said, he put up posters and scrawled slogans on a wall in Baghdad’s Khadamiya section supporting a reborn socialist party.

One day later, he went back to the same spot: The slogans were crossed out and the posters torn and on the ground.

“I said to myself, ‘This is freedom?’ ” he recalled.

“Freedom is a complicated word, and many Iraqis do not understand this word,” Salihi concluded. To enjoy it, “they must be ready to respect other people.”