Iraqi peasant women wearing long black gowns over their brightly-coloured dresses pick tomatoes along the border with Kuwait within easy range of the big guns of the US army.
Kneeling alongside the plants grown under plastic covers which sparkle in the sun, the agricultural workers are about the only sign of life in this arid, ochre landscape which may soon turn into a new battlefield if Washington declares war.
The rusted wrecks of tanks, blown-up troop transporters, and metal barrels stamped ”Beware Bombs” lie as remnants of the 1991 Gulf war littering this Iraqi outpost.
”Twelve years ago American tanks crossed through our fields and smashed some of our buildings and equipment but we have rebuilt now,” says Ali Hindi (45) who lives with his extended family of 21 on the farm closest to the border.
”If war breaks out again, we will protect our land, we will stay on it and if they destroy our greenhouses we will rebuild because it’s all we have,” adds his son Salem as he selects tomatoes before putting them into boxes to sell at the market at Zubeir, some 30 kilometres away.
Further east, stands Sinam hill, known locally as Salam (peace) hill since the Gulf war ceasefire agreement was signed atop it. Today a red, white and black Iraqi flag flutters there above an army position.
In the foreground, a three-metre high mud embankment marks the border, beside which runs a white jeep of the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission (Unikom) on one of 52 daily patrols to keep the peace.
A US warplane and the noise of explosions invade the tranquility of the place, but it is unclear exactly what is happening.
”They are bombing on Zubeir side,” says Khaldun, an Iraqi official, adding that the day before two F-15 jets penetrated Iraqi airspace nine times.
US and British aircraft flying from Kuwait and ships in the Gulf to monitor a no-fly zone over southern Iraq, set up after the Gulf war to protect Shiites, clash almost daily with Baghdad’s air defence forces.
Ahmad Hossein’s farm has a well to irrigate the fields just like the 250 other farms in the area. Indoors the furniture might be chipboard but a television has pride of place.
”The television talks a lot about American threats, but I can hear them on their manoeuvres when they are firing from their tanks,” he says.
The US army is training on the Kuwait edge of the 200-kilometre long demilitarised zone (DMZ). Weapons are forbidden within a 10-kilometre wide area on the Iraqi side of the DMZ and five kilometres in Kuwait.
The first major exercises took place on January 6 involving 16 tanks and were followed by 42 tanks firing live rounds about two weeks ago, says Mahmud, an Iraqi officer attached to a Unikom liason unit at Um Qasr, 80 kilometres from the southern capital Basra.
”The firing was so intense for four hours that it shook two Unikom observation posts in the northern sector of the DMZ. The tanks are still in position with their guns pointing against our country,” Mahmud says.
Unikom representative Daljeet Baga said the manoeuvres were ”increasing and intensifying with artillery fire and infantry exercises.
”But until now the manoeuvres have taken place outside the DMZ, even if sometimes they are very close, less than a kilometre from the territory we control in Kuwait.”
A total of 194 soldiers of 31 nationalities who serve in Unikom occupy 14 observation posts under a mandate to monitor and prevent violations of the DMZ. They are part of a 1 327-strong force which reports to the UN Security Council any violation by either side. – Sapa-AFP