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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ajax99 who wrote (16877)	3/7/2003 3:53:52 AM
From: PartyTime	Respond to of 25898

Defiant Iraqis prepare for battle . . . and martyrdom March 7 2003 By Paul McGeough Baghdad Picture: JASON SOUTH Members of a special "suicide squad" march through Baghdad, part of a parade designed to show Iraqi military strength. The first attacks could come within days and suddenly the Iraqi capital is filled with the tension of last-minute preparations for war. As thousands of troops marched through city streets behind a unit of white-shrouded suicide "martyrs", raw-faced students queued at regional enlisting posts to sign up for compulsory military service and foreign reporters were confined to Baghdad. The city that had been casual about the distribution of weapons, fuel and supplies now has helmeted police and military units crowding street corners. At the Red Cross, labourers yesterday worked feverishly, fortifying the city office block as they stacking bagged sand higher than head height. There is also an urgency about outstanding debt. The Al Rasheed Hotel, where most of the 500-strong foreign press corps is lodged, has demanded that bills be paid today. And the Iraqi Information Ministry has ordered reporters to settle accounts for the service fees - hundreds of dollars a day - they are obliged to pay when reporting from Baghdad. Money talks in different ways. The value of the Iraqi dinar is edging down by about 30 dinars a day against the US dollar - the rate now is 2350 dinars to the dollar. But land prices are soaring and the Baghdad Stock Exchange is buoyant - stock prices here held in the face of US bombing in 1998 and, despite the pre-war tension, share prices have risen 5 per cent in the past three months. As 1950s-style screens flicked with the latest prices, trader Ali Ahmed Wahab said this was a vote of confidence in the leadership of Saddam Hussein. But he did not dispute that canny investors were trying to position themselves for profit in a post-Saddam economy. In the past few weeks prices for Saddam kitsch dipped at the frenetic Ali Baba Market in downtown Baghdad. But yesterday trader Khalid Mohammed said that watch prices had trebled on last year as what many presume to be the last supplies in this line of memorabilia sold fast. Food prices are rising and the cost of water-storage tanks and portable generators are soaring. Small power plants that sold for $US250 ($405) last week now fetch $US350. Despite Iraqi attempts to head off war in the wrangling at the UN, some senior Iraqi officials expect an attack as early as this weekend. But the indicator for most observers is the staff of the UN humanitarian and weapons inspection agencies. About half of the humanitarian staff is out of the country - "on holidays" - and all of them have an evacuation plan under which they can be on the road to Jordan, within hours of an order to evacuate. And the thin ranks of Baghdad's diplomatic community are thinner. Only a small crowd ventured into the streets for yesterday's parade, a few of them showering the young soldiers with sweets and chants of loyalty to Saddam. After the march past and much organised hoopla, Interior Minister Mahmoud Diab al-Ahmed said that the men in white - replicating Muslim funeral shrouds - said they had chosen martyrdom "for the sake of the nation's glory and dignity and for the sake of humiliating the invaders". One of them, a 22-year-old who declined to be named, told The Age: "I will die defending Iraq, Saddam Hussein, the Tigris and the Euphrates. We will go to death in the way that our Palestinian brothers do." theage.com.au