As coalition forces gain ground, Iraqi criticism of Saddam grows
By Laurie Goering, Chicago Tribune
European edition, Friday, March 28, 2003
AZ ZUBAYR, Iraq — In the first days after coalition forces rolled through this dusty mud-walled town just south of Basra, Saddam Hussein had plenty of friends. Young men waved posters with his face for the cameras. Small boys yelled "Saddam! Saddam!" The few that criticized the regime did so in nervous whispers.
Less than a week later, after a coalition raid netted the top Baath Party official in town for questioning and tanks took out some of the young men firing rocket-propelled grenades from the roadside, Saddam's public popularity is nose-diving.
"All Iraqis want to be rid of this regime. We just can't say that," said Jasser, a stout and serious older man in a blue robe who showed up at a coalition medical center Thursday looking for antacid tablets for his wife.
"Resistance is dangerous," he said. "When troops first came in they didn't demolish the party apparatus here, and that created problems. But now we feel more secure."
The process of winning Az-Zubayr is proving a lesson for coalition troops as they move toward bigger objectives such as Basra and eventually Baghdad. Surgical strikes, aimed at political leaders as well as military targets, are being combined with humanitarian aid to ease the two biggest worries for local Iraqis: that coalition forces are simply an occupying force and that they aren't serious about taking out Hussein's regime.
Iraqis "like to be on the right side, and finding out which is the right side is the hardest thing for them," said British Maj. Andy "Jock" Docherty, an Arabic-language translator working with troops of the Black Watch Regiment trying to pacify Az-Zubayr.
But military and humanitarian successes are slowly winning over southern Iraqis. Several key members of the ruling Baath Party have been found hanged in the region in recent days, Docherty said, and coalition forces hope successes in the south may fuel uprisings to the north.
"If we can crack a few nuts in Basra and Al Nasiriya, I think Baghdad could fall overnight with the right moves," Docherty predicted. If Iraqis are convinced the coalition is winning, they will attack the ruling party and "do the cleanup we can't and find the people we can't find."
From the highway passing through it, Az-Zubayr doesn't look like much. Mud-walled compounds pock the desert, and concrete buildings and bunkers — part of former Iraqi military installations — line the road. Outside town, women gather drinking water from stagnant roadside pools. At its center, Az-Zubayr is a warren of increasingly narrow streets, where young men in black robes with red-and-white-checked headscarves gather, sometimes with assault rifles in their arms.
Burned-out military trucks, hit by coalition airstrikes, sit on the edge of the main highway through town. But Iraqi militia members, now out of uniform, have fought back, firing rifles and rocket-propelled grenades at military vehicles passing through town. Even the red crosses painted on military ambulances bear bullet marks.
On Monday, British military officials in Az-Zubayr got word that a leading Baath Party official was organizing the resistance. Early Tuesday they went to get him.
At dawn they rammed tanks through the high wall surrounding the man's two-story house. As soldiers kicked open the front door, shots came from the building and a heavy firefight broke out. When it was over, 20 Iraqi fighters were dead or wounded, and the ruling-party leader was led away for interrogation.
"He was certainly surprised," said Maj. Dougie Hay, a Black Watch commander who led the raid. "It was a demonstration we could mount successful operations in the area and show them they are dealing with a highly capable force."
Coalition forces followed up with an assault on Iraqi soldiers holding a large military camp west of town. Under heavy fire, the remnants of the resistance fled or were killed, leaving behind hastily vacated buildings strewn with gas masks, military briefing books, boxes of grenades and lines of anti-aircraft guns hidden in hallways.
Since then, British troops passing through the town's narrow streets have come under limited fire and have in turn taken out men launching rocket-propelled grenades. Little by little, Az-Zubayr is coming under control.
That slowly building dominance, day by day, is changing the reception for coalition troops.
"It's obvious people have been intimidated by the militias," Hay said. Now "most of the locals have been very pleased to see us."
That was evident Thursday as British and U.S. soldiers held the town's first large-scale aid distribution outside the seized Iraqi military base. An attempt to hand out food Wednesday was aborted when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the base. But on Thursday women in black robes with blue crosses tattooed on their faces and clamoring young men and dusty children jostled to get their share of a container-load of bottled drinking water and food.
Tanks accompanied the trucks of supplies into the camp and then formed a defensive ring around the distribution site. Truckloads of armed men also sat ready, their guns pointed over the crowds. But the distribution, which lasted more than three hours, ended without incident. One female U.S. soldier even got a shy kiss on the cheek from a little Iraqi boy.
"We are afraid of Saddam's fighters. Things are better since you got here," Talia Sharfa, one black-robed woman in the crowd, told soldiers as she clutched her toddler daughter, Sara.
A few Iraqis, injured in the skirmishes of recent days, also limped into the base Thursday to visit an ambulance-sized coalition mobile hospital brought to the site for the day. Wounds were cleaned and antibiotics handed out; residents who arrived with chronic health problems also got treatment.
"There's been years here of not having appropriate treatment," said Capt. Sue Everington of the British general support medical regiment as she cleaned the ulcerated wound of a man whose foot was mangled in a 1986 car accident.
Residents said the humanitarian assistance was much appreciated, but decisive military action_like that in Az-Zubayr_was even more urgently needed.
U.S. forces "should bomb (the ruling party) wherever they are. Baghdad is the most important. When it's done everything will change," said Jasser, who agreed to an interview only out of the sight of others awaiting aid.
He asked the question everyone in southern Iraq asks: "Will the Iraqi regime remain or not?"
"If this coalition does not remove the regime, half of us will die," he said. "We will be killed just for talking to you. Saddam's eyes are all over here."
He pointed toward an area he said remained a Baath Party stronghold in town.
"The Iraqi regime kills civilians for going against it. If they even think you're against the regime they kill you," he said.
Military force, like the raids in Az-Zubayr, he said, is key to making sure that threat is erased for good in this town and others in Iraq.
"I suspect somebody will have to do more of those (raids)," agreed Sgt. John Hardy, a Scots Guards tank commander with the Black Watch. "That is what has worked."
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