He came out of a street of white dust curving between mud brick houses, where hobbled, put-upon donkeys gnaw on scraps, scrawny chickens dodge trouble and huge, old date palms make shade: a rare individual in US-occupied territory, a member of the Iraqi middle class.
He would give his name only as Hamza. Dressed in a plain, grey tunic, he said he had fled Baghdad to his old home village to escape the bombing. He had a baccalaureate in English and a diploma in public health. He had honed his almost flawless English by listening to the BBC and Voice of America and scavenging newspapers from embassies in Baghdad.
”We don’t think this is a good way for the Americans to do what they want to do,” he said, looking over at the M1 tanks with their gun barrels pointing down the street of the village, known in Arabic only as Bridge District after the nearby motorway flyover. ”There are many ways to do what they want to do.”
The US Marines 5th Regiment overran this area on Monday after a leap forward out of the desert into Babil province, on the edges of the Iraqi heartland, close to the site of ancient Babylon and little more than an hour’s drive from Baghdad.
Here the invasion is looking more hopeful for US forces. They are being welcomed with flowers, but neither is there much sign of resistance stiffening, or civilian hostility intensifying, as they approach the capital. Iraqis are showing the same mixture of deference and diffidence, fear and enthusiasm, that they have shown ever since US and British troops invaded.
They are sitting on the fence. And, infuriating as that may be for war planners, it is something the troops can cope with, particularly when military resistance remains ineffectual.
”Fifty-fifty,” was Hamza’s response when asked what he thought of the invasion. ”If the consequences are as Bush promised, very good, but if the Americans stay, the consequences will be very bad.”
Yesterday morning US military medics offered basic treatment to the locals, accompanied by a marines foot patrol. They treated a young boy, the son of a veteran of the 1991 Gulf war who had been taken prisoner by the US, who had fallen off a wall and broken his arm.
Hamza said it was good that the medics had come. The invasion had caused deaths too he said. A few days earlier a helicopter gunship had shot and killed a local man. True, the man had been carrying a machine gun; true, he had shot at the helicopter. But he had been carrying the gun because he was involved in a blood feud, and he had shot at the helicopter in a moment of anger.
”The difference between an armed helicopter and a small bullet coming out of a gun is a big difference,” said Hamza. ”The pilot must think of forgiveness. I believe forgiveness is a Christian quality. The pilot behaved like a cowboy.”
Hamza was reluctant to criticise Sad dam Hussein and his regime. It was not clear whether he genuinely felt President Saddam was an acceptable leader or whether he feared informers.
A few miles away, a terrified farmer was creeping back to his farm to fetch a torch and feed his chickens. Two days earlier, Iraqi troops had parked a trailer with two banned Samoud missiles outside the farm. They were still there, being crawled over by specialists from the US army.
”I said to them: ‘Please don’t put it here, I’ll get bombed,’ but they didn’t listen,” said the farmer, Hmoud Radi Sultan.
A group of marines guarding the area asked about a nearby home where they had found documents suggesting the owner was a lieutenant in the Republican Guard. Sultan said that the owner was his brother, but that he had long since deserted from the guard. This was the second time in two days the Guardian had come across evidence of desertion from the guard, supposedly the elite outer ring of President Saddam’s inner defences.
The marine force which secured this area on Monday, a reconnaissance unit in light vehicles, met little resistance when it plunged into what was supposedly solid Iraqi-held territory. Lieutenant Colonel Stacy Claridy, commander of the battalion, said they had come under fire from anti-aircraft cannon for about two hours, after which the Iraqis fled.
”They don’t fight very well,” he said. ”They’re setting good ambushes, they pick a good site, prepare their weapons, have plenty of arms, but they can’t shoot.” – Guardian Unlimited Â