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THE
ROVING EYE
A
(mis)guided tour of Baghdad
By Pepe
Escobar
BAGHDAD - The Godfather's black
box with the three-part Francis Ford Coppola saga lies
under the sun in front of former deputy prime minister
Tariq Aziz's house facing the Tigris River, not far from
the discarded cover of Bob Marley and the Wailers'
Uprising. The (Shi'ite) uprising didn't happen in
Baghdad, but the (Iraqi) Godfather is gone.
Much of the world media have focused on the
anarchy that took place in the days after the first US
soldiers entered Baghdad, and with some justification,
although people such as US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld would prefer to concentrate on the liberation
angle. Should Rumsfeld visit the capital, though, he
would not be able to visit Tariq, with whom he met on
December 20, 1983, when he was Ronald Reagan's special
envoy for the Middle East.
Aziz's house has been
thoroughly looted. Where is Tariq? "He's here in my
pocket," says one of his neighbors in this affluent part
of riverside Baghdad. Sifting through the rubble, under
the smell of cauliflowers rotting in the kitchen,
stepping over torn group photos of the Ba'ath Party
leadership, one learns, among other things, that Aziz
was a great fan of former US secretary of state Henry
Kissinger and of Italian operas on Russian vinyl and was
fond of swimming in his own private pool. But now, in
the immortal words of Mohamed al-Douri, Iraq's
ambassador to the United Nations, "the game is over".
No one can possibly argue with a Daisy Cutter, a
J-DAM, a MOAB, an Abrams tank or an Apache helicopter.
The most vivid evidence of overwhelming US firepower,
and probably the highlight of any tour of the shattered
city, is the main presidential palace, hit in the early
stages of the "shock and awe" campaign. The marines are
now camped inside the presidential grounds, in a
building identified as "employees' restroom". The
entrance to the complex is guarded by an Abrams - the
marines' pet dark-brown camel which, according to a
connoisseur, is "a very rare breed" and could fetch as
much as US$1 million in the weapons markets of the
Middle East. The destruction inside - a sequence of
mini-September 11s - is a graphic message addressed to
any so-called rogue government that falls foul of the
US. Saddam indeed lived in the lap of luxury:
18th-century French furniture, crystal chandeliers, gold
fittings in the bathrooms, and even a 300-seat cinema -
now a roomful of distorted metal. This is where he used
to watch his favorite movie over and over again, the
first part of The Godfather trilogy, starring
Marlon Brando.
The Americans have been in town
for just over a week now. They face an extremely
ambiguous popular reaction - totally dissimilar to the
nervous excitement displayed in Shi'ite Saddam City when
the tanks occupied the National Parade Ground. Baghdad
itself may be the only place in the Arab world where
people don't ask themselves in disbelief why Baghdad
fell in only two days. And as they contemplate their
newfound wasteland, Baghdadis are now asking themselves
how they are going to survive.
The Palestine
Hotel - home to many journalists - poses in Baghdad as a
safe area. In a sprawling, scarred city torn by anarchy,
strife and much bitterness and desperation, the
Palestine is an island protected by Abrams tanks,
Bradley vehicles and barbed wire - a Manhattan in the
middle of a giant Liberia. Its concentration of
high-tech audio video equipment is worth more than the
gross national product of whole Iraqi provinces.
This not-so-splendid isolation only fuels the
resentment of Baghdadis - inevitably subjected to
endless searches and checks. For them, the Palestine
could as well be in off-limits Israel. Samir is a
mechanical engineer who had to walk for five hours to
get to the hotel. He would like to find a job repairing
damaged plants, but he doesn't know whom to address. An
elderly Shi'ite woman is worried that a weapons cache
was left in her garden: she sobs and complains that she
doesn't know whom to talk to. Democracy is taking root
in Baghdad: there are daily demonstrations in Ferdows
Square, near the Palestine. People scream: "We want
Iraqi leaders!" and hold banners decrying the lack of
stores, universities and hospitals.
For the
Americans, security has become something of a nightmare.
On Monday, the Ministry of Education building was on
fire. A geologist, visibly desperate, told us to warn
the Americans that the ministry was very close to a
giant gasoline depot, and the consequences of the fire
spreading could be devastating. Back at the Palestine,
the marines kind of manning the public information
office were asking "What city is that?" It was just a
10-minute drive away.
Any visitor will need
transportation for a tour of Baghdad. One could of
course drive around in a Humvee or a Bradley - but
that's not a good way to make Iraqi friends. Or one
could go for the least unsafe option. He could choose
between GMC Suburbans and Japanese vans with huge black
lettering splashed on all sides, or a plain, simple
red-and-orange 1970s made-in-Brazil Volkswagen Passat
Baghdad taxi. Nader's Chevrolet Celebrity would be even
better. Nader drives like he's about to finish the final
lap at a Grand Prix, and he knows Baghdad by heart. He
used to trade dates in the United Arab Emirates. A big
fan of all of Brazil's world-champion soccer squads, he
is also willing to do anything for a visa, especially if
it is Danish, so that he can visit his brother, who
apparently works for IBM.
There are no-go areas
aplenty in the capital. Although the first white Iraqi
police cars took to the streets on Monday, escorted by
Humvees, and are already in hot pursuit of bank looters
armed with AK-47s, most of Baghdad still resembles Kabul
or Mogadishu. Abu Ragheb, in the western limits of
Baghdad, is definitely a no-go area. That's where we
were stopped by a nervous, sweaty Fedayeen clutching a
rocket launcher. He asked for our passports. The driver
engaged him in conversation and after some hesitation he
waved us on. An Abu Dhabi TV crew was not so lucky: when
stopped by the Fedayeen they had their tape, camera and
press credentials confiscated.
Driving around
Baghdad beats any Hollywood version of urban wasteland.
Apart from the sequence of charred tanks, anti-aircraft
artillery and pickup trucks, there's a gallery of Soviet
155mm guns under flyovers. Smoke still billows from the
odd ministry. Legendary Sharia al-Rashid, old Baghdad's
main street with its charming colonnades, seems to have
reverted to Sierra Leone status. On the other hand,
civilians now step out of their cars and become instant
traffic controllers. Only a few buses, red
double-deckers that sound like cranking metal, are back
into service.
Casual visitors wouldn't find a
single taxi driver willing to take them to Saddam City,
the huge northeastern slum populated by at least 2
million Shi'ites. Nader says its "full of thieves, very
dangerous". Last week in Saddam City, pent-up anger
mixed with deep religious fervor provided the world
media with those cherished images of liberation. Today,
a Bedouin in Saddam City is emphatic: "The old regime
was bad. The new one will be bad. We, the poor, we
always lose."
Visitors will soon run out of
sightseeing, because there's not much left to see. The
Olympic Hospital - former property of Uday Hussein,
Saddam's son - has been looted. The Aluya Pediatric
Hospital is barely functional. The Oil Ministry is still
on fire. The main HQ for weapons - whose director,
General Amer Saadi, surrendered last Saturday - has been
bombed. Saddam Tower miraculously still stands, beside
the bombed-out telephone exchange that qualifies as
Baghdad's conceptual contribution for the Venice
Biennale exhibition of contemporary art.
But a
certified highlight of a city tour would be the remains
of what everyone refers to as "the CIA of Iraq". The
sprawling Mukhabarat complex, home of the Iraqi secret
police, with dozens of buildings, has been thoroughly
bombed - and is still being looted, although some
satellite dishes are still available. We took a
mesmerized Bassan, a chemical engineer, for a drive
inside the walls that for all Iraqis meant only one
thing, forever and ever: Terror. "I am dreaming," Bassan
kept repeating, glued to his seat. "I am dreaming."
Then there is the "desolation row" tour. There
are 85 people, from ages 10-35, at the al-Hanan home for
the disabled - but there are no doctors: either they are
afraid to leave their homes or they can't find
transportation. Visitors from the nearby Buratha Mosque
bring some food and water for these poor souls. Disabled
children in wheelchairs perform as de facto human
shields at the entrance, discouraging looters. Their
stony faces don't appear to reflect pain or sadness.
They want security. But most of all, they say, they just
need a water pump.
Saeed Muhamad Salman's sister
died at the bombing of the al-Sa'a restaurant in the
Mansur district. She was one of the 14 fatalities among
two Christian family houses destroyed by four misguided
900-kilogram laser-guided bombs - only two houses away
from the Libyan ambassador's residence. The crater
behind the al-Sa'a is big enough to engulf Tariq Aziz's
house. Salman says "the Americans missed their target.
He [Saddam] was here three hours before, smoking and
drinking coffee."
An over-excited Muhamad, 18,
who lives around the block, insists: "No one respects us
like American soldiers. They kiss us! The Arab socialist
Ba'ath Party, they kicked our asses." He guides the
visitor around the rubble to the table inside a
relatively intact house nearby, where he says a
disheveled Saddam wearing reading glasses recorded his
speech in the morning after the "decapitation strike" at
the start of the war. At the bottom of the crater behind
the al-Sa'a, Muhamad displayed a single red rose: "There
are no flowers in Iraq. Saddam Hussein cut them all."
Any visitor is regaled with such stories of a
Saddam sighting. In the Zayuna neighborhood, residents
swear Saddam was in a house for 30 minutes on Wednesday
morning, April 9, fall-of-Baghdad day. The house,
protected by a high wall, belongs to Mudar Khairallah, a
member of Saddam's family. This information is certainly
more credible than insults now commonly hurled in a
typical Baghdad day, such as "Saddam was a Jewish
agent", "Saddam was gay" or "Saddam is in America".
In the al-Qadissiya neighborhood, middle-class
families are terrified. Gaida Yousef spent 12 years in
France. She lives practically next door to Yarmouk
Hospital with two daughters and a cat - and she confirms
that a US missile landed on the hospital. "The war, it
was over there," she says, pointing to the farther end
of the street. She still cannot sleep: "We need
psychologists, for us and for our children." Her
neighbor, an elderly Kurdish woman with a white scarf
and beatific smile, still afraid of having to survive
alone in her house, says, "Saddam was a dog." Another
neighbor says that Iraqi soldiers have left everything
they had - clothes, weapons - in her son's house: the
same worry is reproduced by the dozen in front of the
Palestine to marines and their blank stares. Gaida
Yousef still expresses the feelings of many Baghdadis,
that Saddam remained an American Frankenstein to the
end: "Saddam and the Americans, it was already designed,
for the oil. Every time the Americans attack, he escapes
before."
In the Adhamiya neighborhood, Quarter
308, residents say that the Americans came through the
main road, the Corniche al-Adhamiya, guns blazing. On
the other side of the avenue lies another one of the
presidential palaces, bombed on the 10th day of the war.
Adel Hussein, head of a family of 10, and Dr Salman, a
PhD in economics, tell the visitor that on April 9, the
day of the fall of Baghdad, four Abrams tanks, from
4:30am to 11am, struck more than 20 houses. They point
to a carpet of spent cartridges in the main road and
then take the visitor around, showing any possible
configuration of bullet holes in an array of houses in
all sort of angles, and a white Volga splattered in
blood: "The whole family died inside," says Dr Salman.
"You see the houses. This is real evidence." A
neighborhood crowd congregates to deliver a "message"
for the Americans, who are less than half an hour away:
"Please, we need water and electricity."
Chardagh Street in Adhamiya was the scene of a
fierce battle that started in the square facing the Abu
Hanifa Mosque. The whole Abu Hanifa square has been
converted into a ghastly wasteland: civilian homes,
banks, pharmacies, bakeries have been hit, shelled,
burned. A woman in front of the only functioning bakery
in Chardagh says, "George Bush is the enemy of God. He
killed the Iraqi people. What I say? You see around for
yourself." For Muhamad, 19, a college student, "The
[Saddam] government is not good and it's not bad. We
have a lot of oil. Some people in Iraq have a lot of
money. But you see people wearing no shoes. Why?" He
knows that American troops will stay "for one year only,
and to protect the Iraqi people". He's sure that Iraqis
will be better off because of it. But an American
government? "Absolutely not."
Ayad Tarik Helal
was driving back home at 11am on Thursday of last week
in Mansur when his car was hit by a tank shell. He
survived, pulled out of the car through one of the
windows, but his wife and two sisters were killed. "All
the cars on the road were hit and burned," he barely
whispers. A relative quietly slips a piece of paper with
a London number: "Please tell them that the family is
OK. But don't tell them he is in the hospital."
An elderly Shi'ite woman all in black wants to
tell the story of what happened to her son. At midnight
on April 9, fall-of-Baghdad day, Munib Abid Hassawi was
at home near the Balkis school in the Ashab
neighborhood, asleep with his wife and son, when a stray
missile hit his house. He looks the visitor in the eye,
his face contorted with pain, his torso sprayed with
shrapnel, his legs two reddish lumps of flesh: "Every
day I die a little," his mother whispers. "The house is
destroyed, we have no place to go." Munib needs six
injections a day: he's getting only two. The hospital
badly needs medicine, needles, oxygen, and is running
out of anesthetics and painkillers. Munib's mother
stoically murmurs, "The doctors are lying. There is no
medicine left in this hospital."
There will come
a time in their tour when the visitors will be hungry.
Apart from the Palestine, the only other realistic
option for a daily fix of kebab is at the al-Lathicia
restaurant - if one is prepared to wait two hours for a
mixed grill. One can always steal from the kitchen - a
favorite pastime of certain Italian freelance lensmen.
American soldiers occasionally patrol the street - which
is one the safest in Baghdad. They wouldn't be exactly
welcomed inside the Syrian-owned al-Lathicia, though.
Inevitably visitors will be approached by dozens of
families clutching small pieces of paper with written
Arabic numbers. These numbers - most in London and the
United Arab Emirates - are the only, elusive lifeline to
their relatives abroad, if the foreigners take the
trouble to make the calls in their satphones.
A
visitor may want to check out a mall. But there are no
options left. The Mustansariya shopping center has been
thoroughly looted - and some sections were burned. For
simpler pleasures, what used to be another one of Uday
Hussein's monopolies - cigarette smuggling - is now
flourishing at the Palestine entrance. A carton of
Miamis sells for about US$20. Marines kill for it. For
booze, it is imperative to be acquainted with one of the
security middlemen, who will be most obliged to find a
bottle of Black and White for $50.
Visitors will
have problems if they want some culture - and this in
the land that invented writing. There are no functioning
cinemas. No theaters - such as the official theater in
the TV building in front of the former five-star
al-Mansur hotel (still being looted), where it was
possible to attend classical-music concerts.
Al-Mustansariya University - the oldest in the world,
founded before the Sorbonne in 1234 - has been looted.
Students soon might have to resort to "benzin" selling:
looters do their business near the university grounds,
at 2,000 dinars a liter (less than $1).
Looting
of extreme seriousness took place on April 10 at the
Iraqi Museum, built by a German architect and
inaugurated in 1966. Dr Doni George, director of general
research and studies at the State Board of Antiquities,
asked the Americans to protect the museum: he says a
marine lieutenant-colonel named Zarcone even gave him a
pass. And then nothing. Dr George says, "The whole
administrative compound was completely destroyed and
looted. The first point is that there were people who
knew what they wanted. They've taken the precious vase
of Uruk, an Akkadian bronze statue from 3200 BC, Abbasid
wooden doors. Before they started looting, there were
American armored cars outside, and people inside. They
asked for the American troops to intervene, but they did
not. On Sunday, the chairman of the State Board of
Antiquities went to the American HQ and explained the
situation. But they sent no help."
The book
souk (market) at Moutanabi Street is totally
deserted these days - after all, the whole area is now a
charred wasteland. According to Arab legend, every 100
years a man - not a hero, not a martyr, but a sort of
secular prophet, a wise man full of lucidity and justice
- arises to wake up a people in a dreamlike state,
anesthetized by a cruel fatality breeding fear and
passivity. For educated Baghdadis, there's nothing
irrational about this - either from a religious or
nationalistic point of view. They wonder who that man
will be, but they know it will not be the new proconsul,
retired General Jay Garner.
Baghdadis know that
Iraq - since Assyria and Mesopotamia - needs a
charismatic and authoritarian father figure. Former
Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser was such a figure
for the Arab world, as well as Muammar Gaddafi of Libya
and Saddam Hussein - who was more dangerous, clever and
cynical than Gaddafi. Ali, a civil engineer who may or
may not have not been a member of the ruling elite,
coldly analyzes Saddam as the product of the political
brutality that took over Iraq after the monarchy was
deposed in 1958. He also points out that Saddam's model
was really his worst enemy: Hafez Assad, the clever
Syrian strategist.
At the Abu Hanifa Mosque a
tank shell has blown an enormous hole in the clock
tower, built in 1937. Actually, says a man named
Khudaier, this was due to two missiles shot from an A-10
tankbuster. In the grounds of the mosque, 12 Iraqi
Fedayeen and 20 mujahideen from Syria and Algeria are
buried, for "defending Islam", as a resident put it, on
Wednesday morning, April 9.
Khudaier says that
he saw them destroy four US Abrams tanks with twin
rocket-propelled grenades stuck together with nylon.
Other locals take the visitor inside the mosque and
point to a pock-marked wall very close to the tomb of
Abu Hanifa himself, an important Sunni imam. "This
missile hit could have destroyed a tank. But Allah has
blessed this place." Shrapnel hit the silver embroidery
around the tomb, and the shelling destroyed the delicate
100-year-old wood-framed windows. But the real surprise
is in the mosque's back yard. That's where 11 fighters
from Syria and Algeria are discreetly buried, with a
single palm leaf over their graves. A small Iraqi flag
identifies another tomb. It's perhaps the only peaceful
place in Baghdad at the moment, away from the mayhem,
birds singing in the background.
Most of
Baghdad's mosques remain closed - as the majority of the
population is still very much afraid to leave their
houses. After so many betrayals and humiliations, such
everlasting despair, millions of Iraqis cannot but take
refuge in religious faith - even in a cosmopolitan
Baghdad reduced to appalling economic underdevelopment
and intellectual regression.
The true test of US
greatness is now. The American soldiers have come, and
they will be gone. Baghdad, with its broken heart, will
stay.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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