Iraqis Watch With Wary Pride as Little Changes, and a Lot
By IAN FISHER and SOMINI SENGUPTA - NYT
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 3 — Zeke Nouri Arif is a talkative old man who, like many Iraqis, seems unconcerned if others speak at the same time or volume as he. He does not mind a chorus. And out of a teahouse chorus of perplexed Iraqis on Saturday, Mr. Arif piped up that he was especially qualified, because of his age, 71, and 50 years moving around Iraq as a truck driver, to weigh in on a momentous week in which little here changed and everything did.
"I have seen a lot," he said. "But I have never seen anything like this. This is such a unique situation. It's very dangerous. People can do whatever they like.
"But we feel better," he added. "We have a new government."
Unlike the momentous changes forced by the American military 16 months ago, the transfer of formal sovereignty to an interim government of Iraqi leaders seems to be working on the national psyche in more subtle ways, which have brought a measure of hope not evident here in some time.
This glint of optimism may prove to be brief, especially if the insurgency rekindles its usual intensity. But while no one really believes Iraqis will be able to overrule America's will, some things are different: The nation has a new government led by Iraqis who are certainly acting as if they are in charge. Many Iraqis say there seem to be fewer American troops on the streets and more Iraqi soldiers and police officers. Iraq woke up this morning to huge color photographs of Saddam Hussein in chains, with a smile on his face.
It is disorienting, this mix of cosmetic and real.
"I feel nothing," said Kamal Duleimi, 40, who sells used motor scooters to Iraqis who, under Mr. Hussein, would not have afforded them. "I'm happy. I'm sad. I don't know."
As the new government takes its first steps, many Iraqis seem to have resorted to their age-old coping strategy: waiting.
In its first six days in office, the government, led by a tough-talking exiled doctor, Iyad Allawi, has moved in a few big ways and many small ones. The major symbolic step was to have Mr. Hussein arraigned for the crimes he is alleged to have committed over three decades against Iraqis, going so far as to allow television coverage that showed him in a way Iraqis had never quite imagined.
The government has decided to re-instate the death penalty. It has talked about cracking down on insurgents, but also of co-opting them into the new order.
Soon it is expected to impose a state of emergency, which could include curfews, more checkpoints and limits on public demonstrations.
But the government has also set about the humdrum tasks of any sovereign state: Now visitors must receive a visa — with a new seal — before entering Iraq, rather than being waved through by an American soldier. Some 40 new ambassadors have been chosen, and soon will be announced. Local officials are discussing disassembling parts of the obstacle course of barriers and detours that American troops have used to keep them safe. The culture minister wants to move Polish troops off the ruins of Babylon, which Iraqis often cite as their proud link to the earliest of civilizations.
In the spring of 2003, as American troops rumbled up from Iraq, Iraqis waited not with flowers but with stolid frowns to see whether Mr. Hussein was truly gone before celebrating the new American order. More recently, they have been waiting to see whether the insurgency that has killed hundreds of Iraqis and Americans will chase American troops home.
Now they seem to be waiting, with a wary sense of promise, for two things: whether the new government actually improves their lives, and whether it can do so more or less independently of America.
"We have hope — anybody is better than Saddam," said Sundus Tahar, 25, who came with her extended family from the slums of Sadr City to take over a two-story, six-room flat once held by a palace secretary. "Now we are waiting to see the difference."
Squatters like her who a year ago settled into a row of riverside apartments once occupied by Hussein-era apparatchiks are waiting for something specific: whether their new government will try to throw them out as part of what may be sweeping changes to reorder the chaos of American military occupation.
Since claiming the apartment a year ago, the family has built doors where there were none. They have turned a balcony into a makeshift kitchen. They have hung curtains, moved in their furniture, adorned the wall of the back room with a glossy poster of flowers.
But who knows how long they will be able to call this home, they say. Maybe their new government will order them to leave. Or maybe they will offer them this gift, as compensation for their suffering. Already, the Tahar sisters say, they have paid 1.5 million Iraqi dinars, about $1,000, to the owner.
"We are just holding our hearts, living in worry," said Ms. Tahar's sister, Jalila, 35.
Not every Iraqi has welcomed the changes of this last week, seeing them as little more than a sly example of American manipulation.
"New government?" asked an angry Hazem Hamood, 42, an unemployed ex-army officer as he sat under the hot sun at the entrance to the Green Zone, the physical core of the American-led occupation. "What new government are you talking about? The first thing they should have done is come to the people to see how we live."
He rattled off his grievances. Why put Mr. Hussein on trial as the first order of business? Why haven't government officials announced when they will fix the electricity shortage? When will people be given back the land they lost under Mr. Hussein? Why have food rations been cut?
His most pressing concern, on this afternoon, with the sun pressing hard on his back, was having to stand in line, simply to go back home.
His house, inherited from his grandfather, lay smack inside the Green Zone, which swallowed parts of his neighborhoods as it expanded last year from headquarters to fortress. Most days, the wait at the checkpoint can last two hours. Today, he was supposed to take his 8-month-old baby to a doctor for immunizations. He skipped the appointment. He couldn't bear to keep his son in the car in the heat.
For many Iraqis, the resumption of sovereignty carried little of the drama that was evident, 72 hours later, with the courtroom appearance of Mr. Hussein. Seeing him brought to account before an Iraqi judge struck similar emotional chords, only with greater power.
A middle-aged man who was a colonel in the Republican Guard, the crack force in the old, dissolved Iraqi Army, and who knew Mr. Hussein personally, said he had waited years to hear the brief phrase that Mr. Hussein used in court.
"He said, `Please, if you'll excuse me,' when he refused to sign the papers that the judge wanted him to sign," the colonel said. "I don't think any Iraqi had heard Saddam say those words in 30 years, and they brought a tremendous joy to my heart.
"But then I looked at him again, so scruffy, and so humiliated, and I thought, `This man was the president of Iraq, he was our nation's leader, and why are the Americans doing this to him now?' "
The hearing was arranged to emphasize that Iraqis were in charge. American soldiers were withdrawn from the area around the courtroom building 20 minutes before the armored convoy carrying first Mr. Hussein, then the 11 other defendants, arrived. They were replaced by Iraqi prison guards (who nonetheless wore American-style uniforms and baseball caps stenciled with the letters ICS, for Iraqi Correctional Service.)
In the Shiite neighborhood of Shaab, people say they feel safer after the events of this week.
"Nothing has changed except one important thing," said Col. Kamel Ashimari, chief of the main police station in Shaab, who quadrupled the number of Iraqi police officers on the streets during the transfer. "Before, every single Iraqi was carrying and gun with himself or in his car. Now that we have sovereignty, no one has a weapon anymore. Seventy-five percent of Iraqis feel secure now."
The residents of Shaab have a special grievance against the presence of American troops. In October, a suicide bomber killed scores of Iraqi police and civilians at its police station. It was one of the first major coordinated attacks in which Iraqis were specifically targets, but American soldiers then, as now, worked out of the station.
Mahmood Chasib, 21, said on Saturday that he had seen 11 corpses that day, including a gas vendor, two house painters and, a lawyer. Now, he said, insurgents are less likely to attack Americans and kill Iraqis in the process.
"Now Iraqis have power," he said. "And the Americans did nothing."
John F. Burns contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
