Living Under Constant Siege in Baghdad

At dawn, Leith Hassan went to pick up bread for the family’s breakfast. Jumping on his red bicycle, the 14-year-old whizzed down the street, passing the carpet store at the corner. Just then, a driver detonated a bomb hidden in his car. One red-hot piece of shrapnel severed the boy’s left leg.

Later, from his hospital bed, Leith tried to reassure his father.

“Don’t worry, Daddy,” he said. “I’ll be OK.”

Leith, who had dreamed of becoming a pilot, died that afternoon.

His story is sad but, in Baghdad, not out of the ordinary. Zahra Hamood Issa, a 69-year-old grandmother, and at least 14 others died as a result of bombings in Baghdad’s Karada neighborhood that day. In Iraq’s capital, every life has been touched by brutality.

Between Aug. 29 and Sept. 16, there were 26 attacks daily on average in Baghdad, ranging from shootings to complex, coordinated suicide attacks, according to U.S. military statistics. Although American troops remain under fire, the assaults increasingly have been directed against civilians, especially Shiite Muslims.

The recent violence, seemingly aimed at provoking civil war, culminated Sept. 14 in bombings and assassinations that left more than 140 people dead. Within a day, Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab Zarqawi had declared a “full-scale war on Shiites all over Iraq, wherever and whenever they are found.”

On Monday, insurgents dragged five Shiite teachers and their driver into a classroom in the village of Muelha, 30 miles south of Baghdad, and shot them to death.

Despite the wave of attacks largely targeting them, there have been no calls for revenge among the Shiites in Baghdad. Pummeled by violence, many appear groggy and in despair.

“I lost more than my son -- I lost my life,” said Majid Hassan, 44, tears streaming into his salt-and-pepper beard as he recalled the June day his son died. “When others died after Leith, it increased my bitterness.”

But he didn’t blame Sunnis, nor did he want to avenge his son.

“It’s not a matter of blaming, it’s a chain of consequences,” he said.

Saddam Hussein’s regime led to the American troop presence, which in turn brought about terrorism, he said.

“Things have definitely gone from bad to worse. Today is better than tomorrow.”

Shiite clerics appear to be keeping their followers’ outrage in check.

“It is very clear that the terrorists are aiming to trigger a civil war, otherwise how would you explain the latest statement by Zarqawi?” asked 20-year-old Abbas Najam, who is studying to become a teacher. “But our clerics have realized the real intention behind Zarqawi’s call.”

Last week, in the wake of the bloodiest day of bombings, Habib Abbas was still clearing away the remains of glass shelves from his mobile phone shop near Uruba Square, where an explosion had been triggered. It was one of the Sept. 14 blasts and killed at least 114 people.

The insurgents, he said, “want to create sectarian hostility between the Shiite and Sunnis. But, God willing, things will not reach a civil war.”

He paused in contemplation. “Actually, they might succeed if they go on, pressing like this. Whenever you ride in a minibus you hear people talking about such things. The other day I heard people saying, ‘What has become of our Shiite people. Why don’t they retaliate and carry out revenge against these Sunni attackers?’ The clerics are like the safety pin.”

Outside his shop, Adel Sahab, a Nasiriya native, stood in a crowd of laborers.

“There is a state of panic among the workers here,” the 18-year-old said. “When someone asks me, ‘How are things?’ I say, ‘We are depleted.’ The workers are trembling.”

Instead of hustling for work, they hide behind the pillars when a car pulls over at the square. Some have left the capital for their villages, others are getting ready to do so.

“I’m wrapping my tools up to go back to my hometown and never come back,” said Salam Gassad, a laborer.

Shiites have borne the brunt of the latest violence, but lawlessness reaches across society.

Besides insurgents, civilians fear ordinary criminals, rogue Iraqi security troops and the checkpoints where many Iraqis have died, mistakenly shot by soldiers.

“It’s not becoming better at all,” said a Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The chaos is so big you cannot plan civilian life here.”

“You can’t work, you can’t learn.... You can’t walk anywhere, you can’t go to a cafe.”

The most recent Shiite pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala drew far fewer participants than last year. Not many of those brought their wives and children, fearing attacks. Some parents also refuse to send their children to school or university.

“Over the past year, things have only gotten worse,” said Hiam Kahdem, a mother of two who lives in the largely Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya in Baghdad.

“Families are living in fear. I see horror in the eyes of all children.”

In the view of the Western diplomat, the citizens of Baghdad have become strangers in their own city.

Bustling Rasheed Street in central Baghdad now “becomes blindfolded and silent as soon as the sun goes down,” columnist Hadi Jaloo Marii recently wrote in the Iraqi daily Azzaman.

Unable to visit friends or talk to relatives because of the curfew, he wrote, “the Baghdadis retire to their houses, chatting with the darkness.”

*

Times staff writers Shamil Aziz, Caesar Ahmed, Zainab Hussain and Saif Rasheed contributed to this report.