Roof May Fall In on Baghdad’s Squatters

In some ways, Nasser Lafta is a lucky man. He lives rent-free in a palatial house with a four-car garage and a swimming pool.

But his good fortune has its limits: The windows of his home have no glass, the pool is empty, chickens wander inside to scratch for food, and he shares the home with 23 relatives.

Lafta, 48, a former taxi driver, is one of several thousand squatters in Baghdad who have moved into properties owned either by the Iraqi government or the country’s former elite. Some, like Lafta, were forced out of apartments by soaring costs after the collapse of Saddam Hussein-era rent controls. Others lost their homes to bombs or street battles between U.S. forces and Hussein’s army.

Now the interim Iraqi government, eager to reestablish control of publicly owned properties, is demanding that the squatters move out.

“This situation must come to an end, or it will spread,” says Jaleel Abaidy, a spokesman for the Baghdad city government. “These people must understand that they have no right to live there.” Abaidy said the city had taken steps to have the courts authorize evictions.

But with a severe housing shortage -- and rents out of reach -- many of those who have taken over properties say they have no place to go.

Few squatters think they have done anything wrong. They say that in a country with huge oil production and a strong U.S. influence, authorities have a responsibility to solve the housing problem through subsidies and new construction before throwing people out on the streets. Construction is difficult, however, because of security problems.

Lafta says the house he lives in was part of a compound built for visiting foreign delegations. He believes that it more recently was the home of a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer -- and that it sometimes was used by Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusai, “for their private pleasures and private parties.”

“I definitely feel that we deserve these houses more than them, because we are poor Iraqis and we are citizens of this country and we have no place to go,” he says.

A brother, Sabah, 39, a bakery worker who also lives in the house, adds: “We don’t want to own this land. It’s not ours. But we don’t want to be kicked out on the street either.”

Far worse off is the family of Hawli Rukais Sahi, 60, a farmer who used to live about 30 miles from Baghdad. He says his home was destroyed by American bombing during the war.

“We managed to run away, but we left behind all our furniture and clothes, because we were fleeing for our lives,” says Sahi, whose family of 10 lives in two makeshift one-room structures it built on the grounds of a former club for air force officers in central Baghdad. The Sahis’ new homes have walls made of thick reeds and roofs of cardboard with rugs on the earthen floors.

Sahi earns about $2 a day when he is able to find work as a day laborer at Baghdad construction sites or a brick factory that sometimes needs extra help. “I worked yesterday,” he says. “I bought tomatoes and eggplants with the money I got. When I work, I’m able to feed them. When I don’t, there’s no food.”

Most Iraqis receive monthly rations, a social benefit held over from the Hussein era, but Sahi and his family get nothing because they aren’t living where they are registered, he says. The Sahis hope that the government will provide them alternative housing or money to buy or rent a place.

“Whether it’s this government, the next government, the American government, or whoever is in charge, I want my share of the oil in Iraq,” Sahi says. “Give me my share of the oil. It should go to the people of Iraq.”

Expectations for housing assistance, however, may not be very realistic. Abaidy, the city spokesman, says he is unaware of any plans to offer compensation to those thrown out of public properties.

“On the contrary, the government must punish them, because they are violators,” he says. “The behavior they committed is wrong, and if we encourage such behavior we will face chaos in the future. You can’t just live in a place you don’t own and expect people to reward you. In the whole world, no laws allow that, and we will not either.”

Shukur Ubaid, 34, who earns his living shining shoes, found that he couldn’t keep up with rising rents after Hussein’s fall, so he built a tiny brick-and-stucco shack on the grounds of the former air force officers’ club and moved there with his wife and five children. He managed to wire the shack with electricity and even has a television.

“Nobody actually told us to leave yet, but we’re definitely expecting one day they’ll kick us out,” he says. “It’s logical.”

Ubaid hopes that when eviction comes, authorities will “provide us at least simple housing. This is what should happen.”

For Ubaid and his family, the U.S.-led overthrow of Hussein has brought trouble, along with bombs and gunfire, not to mention gangsters, frequently disrupting his work.

“The situation has gone from bad to worse,” says his wife, Khawla Qadir, 32. “I don’t see anything getting better. Life is getting worse because of all these explosions and the lack of security.”

Few Iraqis were happier to see the U.S. invasion than Abid al Ammar Sadhil Hussein, 43, a former dissident whose home had been confiscated by the regime. Now he squats at what had been a military intelligence compound on the bank of the Tigris River.

“During Saddam’s regime, I was in prison for more than 2 1/2 years because I was accused of collaborating with the Iranian regime and being against Saddam,” says Hussein, who ran a small food business before getting into political trouble. “I was very happy with the liberation. The Americans released me and even gave me minor surgery on my head because of the torture I had suffered.”

But the ex-dissident has been disappointed by the U.S. occupation and, now, the U.S.-backed interim government.

“This new government, instead of helping the people, has started abusing them through the Iraqi police and the municipality,” he says, citing efforts to get the squatters to leave the compound.

Police tried to evict them by force in March, he says, but relented after the squatters protested.

“Our kids were sitting in the street,” says Ahlaam Salah, 33, who also lives in the former military intelligence compound. “We gave them slogans to hold up in both Arabic and English saying, ‘Where are our human rights?’ and ‘How is the new government treating us this way?’ ”

The next day, U.S. military officials showed up. After a discussion, the Americans agreed that the squatters could stay “until a new government is formed and a reasonable solution is found,” Abid Hussein says.

But he has little hope for help from the government of interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, he says, because “they’re only concerned with their positions, their wealth and their safety.”

“Most of the Iraqi government ruling nowadays actually came from outside Iraq,” the squatter says. “They were not in Iraq during the suffering under Saddam. We were in Iraq. We were the people who suffered. They were sitting elsewhere in their air-conditioned mansions. Now they’re back here again in the leadership and abusing us in the same way Saddam did.”

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Caesar Ahmed of The Times’ Baghdad Bureau contributed to this report.