Baghdad's telling red banners
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
BAGHDAD - With the burial on Saturday of the elder sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, in their ancestral village of al-Auja, near Tikrit, one chapter in troubled post-war Iraq came to a close. The brothers - like their deposed father notorious for their brutality - were killed in a gun battle with US troops in the northern city of Mosul on July 22 after being on the run for more than three months.
For the people of Iraq, though, life goes on, albeit a far from normal one for many, especially in the capital city.
For a start, there appears to be an almost complete absence of traffic control. Although some traffic lights work, they are ignored with impunity as there are few policemen on the roads and motorists are a law unto themselves.
This is not the case at the remaining large hotels, the Sheraton, the Palestine and the al-Rasheed, which is home to members of the Coalition Provisional Authority ruling Iraq and military personnel. (The al-Mansoor has been badly damaged and is out of business.)The hotels are surrounded with barbed wire fencing and their entry and exit routes are heavily guarded, with all visitors thoroughly checked, as are all cars on surrounding roads.
The street passing the Palestine to the main market has been closed for almost four months, says a wine shop owner, Raad, a Christian from Mosul. Business is bad, he says, due to daily looting and plundering which has forced many other shopkeepers to close down.
In the same street a branch of the Iraqi Rafidain Bank is under construction. "It was badly damaged by looters. Now there is hope that things will return to normal as we have started renovation work and aim to resume normal functions in 10 to 15 days," says a bank worker supervising the rebuilding. Also in the same street, Haji Abbas Zaidi, the 68-year-old owner of a private tourist business, surprised this correspondent by speaking perfect Urdu (Hindi). Haji Abbas' father was an Arab from Basra in southern Iraq who ran a transport business from Baghdad for pilgrims going to the holy city of Karbala, where Zaidi's father met his mother, who came from Lucknow in India.
Haji Abbas, a Shi'ite, has some strong views about what's happening to his country. "Resentment is growing against the US and will grow further. Uday and Qusay may have been hated in Iraq for their deeds, but they belong to this land and they were killed by US troops who are considered by all Iraqis as aggressors and occupiers.
"The most powerful superpower in the world has right now failed to provide uninterrupted supplies of energy. Sometimes we have power for three hours and some days it is for six hours, for the rest of the time we have to rely on generators. We do not have contact outside the country through telephone, everybody is forced to keep a satellite telephone.
"You know, my father and mother used to talk about thieves and dacoits [bandits] in India, but I had to ask them about the meaning of these words. The last time we heard about a looting incident was near al-Najaf two years ago, now it is an everyday routine here in Baghdad," said Haji Abbass.
He maintains that people are now forced to eat into their savings. "A customer cannot draw more than 50,000 dinars [US$30] in a week from his bank account. But the cost of a chicken is 4,000 dinars, so what is the chance of operating a business," Haji Abbass asks.
A ride in a cab to al-Adhymia, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, is somewhat like driving in the scorching sun through a graveyard. Amid destroyed buildings, most shops are closed and few people are on the streets other than US patrols, backed by helicopters hovering low over buildings. This aerial surveillance and ground patrolling is a common sight in Baghdad.
Al-Adhmyia is well known for the shrine of the Imam Abu Hanifa, known in the Islamic world as "The Greatest Imam". In more recent times, on April 10, it was the scene of a fierce clash between US troops and Iraqi, Lebanese, Algerian and Egyptian mujahideen, 35 of whom died in the fighting, and the buildings in the area still bear the scars of rockets and gunfire, including the mosque itself.
Local residents pay their respects to these foreign fighters who gave their lives for Iraq, all of whom now have their own grave with Koranic verses on the tombstones and regularly decorated with fresh flowers.
After the shootout the deputy prayer leader of the mosque was arrested by US troops, then released, But the community refused to accept him and his superior, Abdul Ghafoor Qaisy, as they belonged to the Ba'ath Party and Qaisy was also a member of parliament. Now, a new prayer leader has been appointed with the consent of the local population. However, this has not changed the anti-US sentiments in and around Al-Adhmyia.
Yusuf, Ibrahim and Mohammed regularly visit the mosque for their five prayer sessions a day. They each said that Saddam's fall was a blessing for Iraqi people, but they refused to accept US rule, saying that they would like to see them booted out of their country.
Amid the desolation of the neighborhood, red banners are conspicuous, hanging from many buildings, all carrying the name of the Hizbul Islami al-Iraqi, (Islamic Party of Iraq), showing that the al-Adhmyia neighborhood has separated from the Ba'ath Party and taken a path similar to that chosen by Osama bin Laden.
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