United States soldiers have proudly spray painted the words “widow makers” across the huge army tank that guards the Baghdad zoo.
The US forces are everywhere in Baghdad. They guard the empty shells of former government administrative offices and many other buildings, and conduct random searches on the streets.
The soldiers are mostly young men, some barely out of their teens. With their bullet-proof gear over their army uniforms, they sweat in the unrelenting heat of about 40°C.
Many buildings look as though they are about to collapse. Apart from an occasional protest about the US presence, the city is relatively quiet and the US presence is ubiquitous.
A young Iraqi who was recently a soldier for Saddam Hussein’s regime is one of the few who accept the new rulers. Mohammed Shakir (20) helped put up the last stand defending the international airport before the regime fell.
“I was in the army for three years. But as the US army advanced, my superior officer told me to go home because the war was lost. I abandoned my uniform and the weapons and headed straight home.”
Shakir now guards cars outside the British headquarters in Baghdad. “I want the Americans to stay so that they help us make a new government.”
But his is not a popular opinion. “Saddam bad, but Bush very, very bad,” say most Iraqis.
“The war was never about weapons of mass destruction. It was always about plundering the Iraqi riches as well as controlling the world,” says Isaac Tom, who makes a thriving living as a translator for Westerners.
“They have taken young unemployed men in the US and put them into the army to come and take our oil. They claim they came to free us, but they destroyed everything we had. Now there is no water or electricity and no jobs.”
Paul Bremmer, leader of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), has assured journalists that job creation is the top priority. He says job creation depends on foreign investment that will not be forthcoming unless security is guaranteed.
Peace is still far off, but Bremmer says his administration has injected $500-million in salaries, which is expected to revive the economy. Journalists giggled when Bremmer said that it would take time to revive administrative services because many government buildings had been destroyed by looters.
Iraqis say many buildings had been bombed unnecessarily, such as theatres, Baghdad’s international fair, the Olympic sport building and many private homes. The Oil Ministry, however, stands intact and is guarded by US troops.
Besides the lack of water and electricity supplies, crucial services such as health and policing do not function properly. Only 7 000 of 18 000 police are back at work. The process is being delayed as all police officials are screened for Ba’athist connections. Iraqis blame the absence of police for the wanton destruction of property and increasing theft that now mark the city.
The screening is delaying the provision of all services as the US tries to eliminate anyone with the remotest connection to Saddam’s party.
In a hospital just outside Baghdad, Jamal Abdulla condemns not only the unhygienic conditions but the lack of law and order. His hospital is situated near one of Saddam’s former palaces and attended to many bombing victims, but it lacks basic facilities and medicines, and the doctors have to make do with outdated equipment.
“The Americans came here and promised to help us out, but that help has not materialised. They froze 150-million Iraq dinars of hospital money and most of our staff have not been paid their salaries. I think we need a powerful government that will provide for us and also protect us.
“People have looted from the hospital and we are no longer safe both here and at our homes,” Abdulla says.
The doctor thanked South Africans who brought medicine and medical equipment to Iraq. The South Africans, organised by the Gift of Givers Foundation, took emergency assistance worth R7-million to Iraq last week. The assistance included food, water purification tablets, medical equipment and medicine.
The lack of law and order is symptomatic of the general situation in a vast country of 22-million in which no one is sure of what is going on. While the US struggles to set up an interim administration, most civil servants and officials have been pulled out of their jobs until further notice.
Ordinary Iraqis were suffering even before the war, for they bore the brunt of 12 years of United Nations economic sanctions that prevented the country from exporting oil. Most of the country’s infrastructure was devastated by the Gulf War in 1991, the nine-year Iran-Iraq war and sanctions.
Most people are poor. Oil production declined by about 85% and gross domestic product by two-thirds after the first Gulf War, but the country’s elite continued to live in luxury.
The country owed foreign debt of more than R300-billion when Saddam was toppled. Political parties are mushrooming to take up the political space. Some exiled Iraqis with little contact with or knowledge of the country are positioning themselves as Iraq’s true representatives to the US administration, which is trying to find leaders to negotiate with.
The administration has refused to say how long the it will stay, stating only that it will be “for as long as it is necessary to set up a new government”.
US soldiers say they understand they will be around for the next year or two. Peter Arnett, the NBC journalist who was fired for criticising the US war plans, believes the US will be there for at least another six years. Arnett is in Baghdad working on a book on Iraq.
“There is nothing here,” he says. “No administration, no money, no voters’ roll, no basic infrastructure. So if the US were to leave now there would be total chaos. I don’t think the Americans will leave this place until they know that another Saddam Hussein will not emerge or another fundamentalist government.”
However long the period, it will seem longer to US troops who have to put up with marches from irate Iraqis who want them to leave the country. The campaign has sometimes amounted to active resistance with suicide bombers blowing themselves up at army checkpoints or firing rocket-propelled grenades at them.
Captain Jennifer Newlan, one of the young troop commanders, is baffled by the Iraqis’ attitudes: “It makes me very sad that they don’t realise that we are here to help them. If you look at all the gold, the palaces and the beautiful things that Saddam and his friends had, I don’t understand how Iraqis can look at us as enemies.
“I want them to realise that we are just laying the ground for them to rule themselves by peaceful means.”
But at a fountain in the middle of Baghdad where Saddam’s statue was toppled in a defining moment of the brief war that was celebrated by a cheering crowd, there is a message on the shattered plinth written in red: “You donne [sic]. Go home now.”