Not very good news. Something clearly needs to be done about this, but I don't think anybody knows quite what....
usatoday.com
Hostility toward U.S. troops is running high in Baghdad Casualties, crime and lack of services breed anger
By Paul Wiseman and Vivienne Walt
USA TODAY
BAGHDAD -- Having easily won the war for Iraq, the United States has yet to win the peace.
Iraqis say they view the U.S. military occupation with suspicion, anger and frustration. Many even say life was in some ways better under the regime of Saddam Hussein: The streets, they say, were safer, jobs more secure, food more plentiful and electricity and water supplies reliable.
The U.S. military -- and the civilian administration led for now by retired lieutenant general Jay Garner -- have barely begun to fill the vacuum left by the collapse of Saddam's government. U.S. troops have been reluctant to get dragged into civil affairs and local disputes. Garner's administration hasn't made much of an impact yet. A new Iraqi government seems a distant dream. As a result, many Iraqis feel they are adrift, their destination uncertain and their future bleak.
''I'm sitting here without money, without a job, without electrical power,'' says Hussein Mohammed Ali, 52, who held a variety of jobs with state-run Iraqi companies. ''How can I believe in anything the USA tells me?''
''The Americans made promises, but we have seen nothing,'' says Kamaran Abdullah, 35, a once-prosperous Kurdish merchant. His Baghdad shop was ransacked and looted when Saddam's government fell and hasn't reopened. ''Everybody's afraid to go shopping. People have weapons. They take your pocket money and threaten to kill you.''
The hopelessness is breeding rage and raising fears that frustrated Iraqis could take up arms against U.S. troops. ''We are angry,'' civil servant Mohammed Brahim, 32, says. ''All Iraqis will become bombs if we don't see something from the United States.''
U.S. officials say it will take time to restore order and government services in Baghdad and the rest of the country.
Already, however, local Muslim clerics, tribal leaders and would-be politicians are assuming power across Iraq. The slow start of the post-war effort has allowed such power grabs in many towns -- and might be difficult to undo.
''Whoever was there at the time became the administrator of that town,'' says Joanne Giordano, the spokeswoman for Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
Garner's aides defend the pace. They say Baghdad was only recently safe enough for them to move operations from Kuwait. ''Governance is a long-term process,'' says Chris Milligan, deputy reconstruction coordinator for Garner.
The process also is evolving. President Bush on Tuesday named a special envoy, L. Paul Bremer, to supervise Garner, making it clear that civilians, not the U.S. military, are in control. Bremer, who formerly headed the State Department's counterterrorism office, will oversee Iraq's transition to democratic rule.
Americans considered remote
In interviews, Baghdad residents say they regard the U.S. officials here as remote. The Americans -- military and civilian alike -- are barracked behind barbed wire inside Saddam's Republican Palace. About one mile inside the vast presidential compound, the Americans sleep on camp beds behind the palace's gold-plated doors.
With Garner's operation inaccessible to almost all Iraqis, most people see only the military side of the U.S. occupation. Dozens have tales of being shouted at by nervous young soldiers at checkpoints in a language they don't understand. A soldier pointing a gun at residents whom he suspects of either looting or perhaps planning an attack is a common sight.
''Iraqis see everything in black and white. They love and they hate, both intensely,'' says Wamid Nadhme, senior political science professor at Baghdad University. ''For years they have had to love Saddam or they hated him. Now he is gone. They see only the U.S., whom they hate.''
Nadhme says he expected anger and hatred to emerge against the war's victors. ''The thing that's surprised me is that it's taken only a few weeks. That can be put down to one thing largely: (the lack of) electricity.''
Giordano and other officials say the U.S. authority is only now shifting from a military operation to a civil government.
Garner's aides met for the first time Monday with second-tier bureaucrats (the top officials fled) from the old Baghdad city government. Most are specialists in the problems currently plaguing residents and fueling the emotions against the USA, such as lack of water, electricity and security.
To show some concrete progress, the U.S. administration pushed for schools to reopen last Saturday and called on Iraqi police officers to return to their jobs last Sunday. There was some cooperation, but not full compliance.
Taking longer than expected
Americans admit they could have moved faster. U.S. Army Capt. Todd Clark, 30, of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment, says the U.S. military underestimated the amount of looting and lawlessness that would follow Saddam's fall. The anarchy left schools, government offices and utilities badly damaged.
Fixing them is taking longer than expected.
Meanwhile, distrust of the United States seems to be running high. Last week, for instance, a U.S. military helicopter dropped leaflets over the Zafaraniya neighborhood in south Baghdad. Most blew away before anyone could retrieve them. So few people actually saw what they said. But that didn't stop the local rumor mill from churning out theories about the mysterious missive. Soon many Zafaraniya residents had convinced themselves that they were about to be thrown out of their homes by the U.S. military -- a striking example of their willingness to assume the worst about American intentions.
Zafaraniya is a working-class neighborhood with a wide, well-integrated ethnic mix. Sunni and Shiite Muslims interact and intermarry and live side by side with Christians, Kurds and other minorities. The streets are unpaved and dusty. Stone walls surround dust-colored two-story homes made of concrete and conceal well-tended courtyards with flower gardens.
Over cups of thick Turkish coffee, Zafaraniya residents are eager to discuss the U.S. occupation and share their more fanciful theories.
Among the theories rampant in Baghdad and Zafaraniya:
* That Saddam was an American agent all along and is now safely in CIA custody. Or, alternatively, that he's still in hiding and preparing to return to power.
* That Kuwaitis, in cahoots with the United States, were behind the widespread looting and the fires that swept through Iraqi government offices this month. Many believe the alleged arson was revenge for the destruction Iraqis visited on Kuwait in 1990.
* That the United States plans to steal Iraq's oil.
* That U.S. troops are allowing criminals to run free and withholding food and medical supplies in a deliberate attempt to terrorize or even exterminate Iraqi citizens.
The residents of Zafaraniya have particular reason to distrust Americans. U.S. troops had assembled an ammunition dump in the fields a few hundred yards outside the densely packed neighborhood and were detonating old Iraqi munitions there. Residents say the explosions were rattling their walls, shattering their windows and frightening their children, and that U.S. officials were unresponsive to their complaints.
''I told the Americans, 'If this doesn't stop, we might have a revolution,' '' says Sheikh Abdul Rahman Abdul Jabbar, 30, the imam (cleric) at a local Sunni mosque.
Then, April 26, a fire broke out in the ammo dump, igniting a missile that slammed into the neighborhood, destroying four houses and killing at least six people. U.S. officials say the fire started when unknown attackers fired a flare into the ammo dump.
Fatin Khalid, 18, a student, lost a teacher and one of her best friends in the blast. ''I don't want to go back to school,'' she says.
Sanaa Jasim, 28, is bitter and worried, too. Marines shot and wounded her husband in an apparent misunderstanding after he went outside to join the crowds welcoming them to Baghdad April 9, the day the capital fell to U.S. forces. The U.S. flew him to Kuwait for medical treatment. He is expected back soon.
Word is that her husband, who had been a welder in an Iraqi government workshop, won't be able to walk for two years.
Jasim wonders how they will support their two young boys. Already, they've sold furniture for money to live on. ''We hate Americans,'' Jasim says. ''We lost our living. They destroyed our life, our happiness. Saddam Hussein was an unjust man, but he never did this.''
Saddam's regime did provide basics: rations of rice, vegetable oil, tea, sugar and other necessities. His government dominated the economy, providing steady work (usually with miserly wages) to millions. It also policed the streets and kept traffic running smoothly.
Now Iraqis must find their own food. Most workplaces and government offices have shut down indefinitely. Criminals prey on those foolish enough to venture out at night. And, without street lights, traffic is anarchic.
''Saddam made many mistakes,'' Kamaran Abdullah says. ''But in his time, I could live in safety.'' |
