On a strategic hilltop, high above the rusted tank carcasses and bombed-out bunkers of Iraq’s last ruinous war, a portly army officer trains a wary eye south to Kuwait, and the US forces massing for invasion.
”We can see the American concentrations,” said the officer at Jabal Sanam, which lies two miles from the rows of mud embankments that mark the start of Kuwaiti territory.
”We can see their armour. We can see their movement. There is a new military camp over there, and we can see their activities and exercises.”
If war comes, US forces will almost certainly advance along the desert road below this rise. They will roar out from Kuwait, past the sad and ramshackle border town of Safwan, and the handful of men at Ja bal Sanam before making for Basra, the first prize of war.
The planners in the Pentagon see Basra and its surroundings as crucial to the outcome of the war.
This wedge of land between Iran and Kuwait contains Iraq’s only port, and the city is encircled by oil fields and refineries, shooting great plumes of fire into the sky. US military strategists say its early capture could choke the regime into submission.
They also want to rule out any chance that Saddam Hussein will set fire to the oil fields in a ”scorched earth” policy, or the other possibility: a bloody rising by the Shias of the southern towns, and a savage settling of scores with the regime. The Pentagon has said it does not expect much popular resistance to an attack.
The Iraqi military has put few obvious barriers in the Americans’ way. Outside the city, a small company of Iraqi soldiers dug trenches last week. A few trucks trundled along the roads carrying large artillery pieces. The preparations do not seem on the scale of America’s massive build-up.
”We will be attacked right from the beginning — 100%,” said an engineering graduate in the town called Sajjad. ”The threat is different this time. It’s going to be much worse.”
In Basra, local authorities have started distributing double rations of flour, rice, sugar and tea in case of a siege, and the hospital is building up supplies of blood. People are hoarding kerosene for when the power stations are hit.
Some are preparing their escape. In the Fao peninsula, within view of the Iranian border, an expanse of decapitated palm trees now stands where once were abundant orchards of figs and dates.
On a recent afternoon, Majid Abid, a tug boat captain, arrived from Basra with his family to inspect the repairs to the family home, destroyed during the Iran-Iraq war, and now being rebuilt as a possible refuge.
”We hope this will be a safe area. It is not a frontier area like during the Iran-Iraq war. Basra will certainly be hit. It’s an important place for them, but here there is nothing,” Abid said. ”If Basra is attacked we will have no water, nor fuel, but here we can use the dried wood for fuel, and the river is very close.”
But so, too, are the Americans. At the Iraqi border town of Safwan, where the customs stalls have lain abandoned since the Kuwait war, they can already hear them.
”There is the sound of explosions during the night, and we can see their aircraft with our bare eyes,” said Hazim Salem, who owns the local tea shop. ”During the last war, there was a lot of shelling, and many victims. Whole families just vanished.” Moments later, a jet trail appeared in the sky over Kuwait.
As ever, people here do not readily admit to fears that Iraq could be defeated. They say the army is primed, that the people will fight, and that the Americans will encounter a ”surprise” that will overcome any advantage of their vastly better equipped forces.
”America imagines they can win a war because they will come with their weapons and occupy this land,” said Abdel Karim, a welder who spent seven years as a prisoner of war in Iran. ”But it will really be a defeat in the eyes of the world because they will be hated.”
At Jabal Sanam, the Iraqi army officer is philosophical. ”There is a proverb that says everybody has to die some time. So why be afraid?”
Basra was heavily shelled by Iranian forces during the 1980s, and abandoned by the Iraqi army during the chaotic flight from Kuwait in the last Gulf war. That humiliating retreat gave way to a doomed Shia rebellion that started Basra when the returning tanks opened fire on a giant mural of President Saddam in the central square.
The city still carries the scars. Poorer than Baghdad, it hosts little of the capital’s grandiose monuments, and hardly any images of President Saddam.
Few in Basra will openly speculate on the prospect of another uprising. Thousands were killed when the 1991 rebellion was crushed.
But there is no denying that war seems imminent, and disaster beckons.
”They are a superpower, and they are attacking a small country together with other countries,” said Ali Majid. ”What can we do? The very idea of war is frightening, and you can see the results right here on our land of the destruction of war.” – Guardian Unlimited Â