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Iraq waits blissfully for the bombs to
drop
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
BAGHDAD - Travelling from Amman in Jordan
to Baghdad, there is not much to suggest that one
is entering a land threatened by imminent invasion by
the most powerful nation the world has known. From
first contact at the immigration counter to the last
conversation with a vendor on the street, there are only
the smallest of suggestions that this is a city on the
brink of destruction.
Not that Baghdad is a
normal city, however. Far from it. For one thing, in the
era of globalization, Baghdad is a land cut off from the
rest of the world.
Mohammed sits
idle and worried in his Royal Jordanian Airlines office,
where continuous Internet disruptions have kept him out
of touch with company headquarters, as well as the rest
of the world. He tells this correspondent that this has
been the routine for the past several weeks.
Ditto a local businessmen named Saad, who says
that his only contact with the outside world lately has
been by telephone. He hasn't received an email for at
least two weeks because the government checks every
email at the local server and blocks whatever it finds
suspicious - and some things that it doesn't.
Most ordinary Iraqis seem unconcerned with the
imminent war. Apparently, there are two reasons for this
strange-seeming nonchalance. First, there is virtually
no satellite transmission for general Iraqi people.
Mobile telephones are banned. The government has banned
email websites such as Hotmail and Yahoo. The only
access to email servers is through local services that
are heavily monitored. Quick action is taken against any
suspect.
The media are bound at every step to
ask and receive permission to use email; otherwise,
authorities spare no time in deporting them. These
extraordinary actions are not meant to be rude, say
officials at the Iraqi Media Relations Ministry, which
is responsible for enforcing them; they are merely
reflections of the national emergency that prevails in
the country.
For the foreign press in Iraq,
there is not much to report beyond the occasional
handout from Saddam's presidential palace. There are few
official events or attractions.
One showcase for
the foreign press is the 15-member US team sponsored by
the non-governmental organization Global Exchange that
has come to Baghdad to act as a human shield against
bombing. A woman named Trish, along with other 15 other
activists, tried to draw the attention of dozens of
reporters all over the world in Baghdad when they
displayed a banner saying, "WE HAVE FOUND THE SMOKING
GUN" along with a drawing of a petrol pump nozzle.
"Had the US been sincere in a desire to take
action against chemical weapons, it should have taken
North Korea first," Trish said. "But as North Korea is
not sitting on huge oil reserve, the US doesn't bother."
She
mentioned that group members come from all over the
US and every segment of society, from costume designers to
church ministers. She said that they had stayed in
Iraq for the past 10 days at their own cost. They visited
Basra, where they saw the effects of depleted uranium
on human lives and witnessed deformed newborn babies
radioactivity. This was all the result of US bombing
in the last Gulf War in 1991; but today, said Trish,
nobody in the West even cares.
(©2003 Asia Times
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