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THE
ROVING EYE
The mean streets of
Baghdad
By Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD - Ahmad, a 23-year-old Jordanian
student, stepped out of his apartment in Haifa Street
this past Saturday morning to hail a taxi, but he was
confronted by a US checkpoint. "Move your ass from
here," a GI ordered him. "Don't talk to me like that.
I'm not your slave," answered Ahmad. "Aren't you?
taunted the GI. Ahmad rose to the bait and answered
back, so the outcome was inevitable. He was arrested.
Ahmad was kept in a Hummer for two hours, and
then taken to the main building at Baghdad (former
Saddam) International Airport. A translator said to him,
"Are you crazy? Never talk to these people, whatever
they say to you." Ahmad finally managed to show the
translator his Jordanian identity card. The Americans
were not convinced. "What are you doing in Iraq? Are you
a fedayeen [paramilitary]?" Ahmad replied that he
was a student, and showed his university papers. The
Americans said these might be fake.
Ahmad was
then taken to a big hall inside the airport crammed with
about 400 people. "They look like killers, or probably
looters," Ahmad thought to himself. The "killers" then
began talking behind his back: "He looks like a
fedayeen. There's no future for him." Ahmad
remembered that many foreign fedayeen -
especially in Basra and Najaf - had been killed by
Iraqis.
Then a soldier arrived in the hall and
read a list of 10 names: these people were taken away.
After a few hours, an Iraqi soldier came to talk to
Ahmad. "You're lucky they [other detainees] didn't hurt
you. Because they don't care. You're Jordanian, you have
no family here. If they kill you, who cares about you?"
Ahmad argued that he was not carrying his passport
because there's no security in the city, and muggings
are rife. The Iraqi soldier went out to plead Ahmad's
case to the US commander. He came back half an hour
later: "You can go. But don't do this again. And if you
see an American tank or vehicle driving in the street,
don't go near them."
Ahmad's experience is
positively mild compared with what happens daily to
others in Baghdad - and he managed to get away just
because he is a foreigner. A curfew in the capital
starts every night at 11. But in many places everything
has stopped by as early as 2 in the afternoon because
there's no security in the city.
Last month,
Nudir, a young engineer, was arrested with two friends
in a BMW because GIs found a revolver in the glove
compartment: practically every Iraqi carries a gun for
self-defense. Nudir says he was beaten up by the
soldiers and then spent 16 days in Camp Cropper, the
prison inside the airport grounds that Ahmad was lucky
not to see.
US repression is relentless. Red
Cross officials confirm that more than 20,000 people
have been arrested in Baghdad in the past few months.
Most come and go - but there's no way to keep tabs on
all the cases: there are no functioning courts and
judges. Amnesty International has already denounced
cases of "torture", and an unknown number of Iraqi
civilians have been gunned down by US search patrols.
The bunkered-down Coalition Provisional Authority simply
refuses to mention how many Iraqi civilians are being
shot or killed every day - either victims of crime or
victims of US repression. Like the Iraqi interpreter
killed by an American soldier in the front seat of a car
occupied by Pietro Cordone, the Italian diplomat who is
the official adviser to the new Iraqi Ministry of
Culture. Baghdadis take for granted that American
soldiers are now free to shoot civilians in any Iraqi
civilian vehicle if they look even remotely suspicious.
Iraqi police now man several checkpoints in
Baghdad - but they don't seem to have been trained well
enough. On Saturday, two "Ali Babas" - thieves - stole a
battered Toyota and managed to cross a checkpoint close
to the Palestine-Sheraton hotel complex, slaloming
through a hail of bullets from the agitated guards. They
were only stopped near the hotel entrance. Cynics
speculate that this was a trial run for a car bombing,
as the Palestine remains a key target for the Iraqi
resistance.
But while ordinary Iraqis may be
treated like cattle, VIP Iraqis - for propaganda
purposes - receive red-carpet treatment, even if they
are included in the US 55-most-wanted pack of cards.
That's the case of General Sultan Hashim Ahmed, the
former minister of defense, who surrendered to
Major-General David Petraeus. This US general in charge
of northern Iraq has written a letter to Hashim
describing him as "a man of honor and integrity".
That's not the word in Baghdad. It's an open
secret that Hashim was instrumental in Saddam Hussein's
bloody repression of Shi'ites and Kurds immediately
after the 1991 Gulf War - a repression that the
Americans did nothing to prevent. And many know that
Hashim was the northern coordinator of the so-called
"Saddam network" - the Saddam-sponsored faction of the
resistance that includes "remnants of the regime" and
disgruntled, unemployed former army officers. The Iraqi
perception is that by treating Hashim with velvet
gloves, the Americans may expect to defuse at least this
faction of the resistance. "They are desperate. Now they
are doing deals with anybody," says a retired army
officer.
The more exalted factions of the
resistance are far from being appeased. And they proved
it by their assassination attempt on Akila al-Hashemi, a
woman, a Shi'ite, a diplomat and one of the only members
of the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council actually
enjoying the respect of the general population. The
council is called "the imported government" by
practically everybody in the bazaars and kebab shops of
Baghdad. Hashemi, shot in the abdomen, is in critical
condition in a US Army hospital. She would have been one
of the members of the Iraqi delegation attending the
United Nations General Assembly that opened in New York
on Monday.
The only possible way out for the
Iraqi quagmire lies at the United Nations. The US draft
resolution to be presented to the UN in essence means
that President George W Bush needs money and blue
helmets - but is unwilling to surrender any US control
of Iraq. France, on the other hand - followed by
Germany, and in a certain measure by China and Russia,
and arguably by most of the UN - wants a swift transfer
of sovereignty to an Iraqi provisional government: not
in the next few years, but in the next few months.
That's exactly what the Iraqi Governing Council itself
demanded last week in Baghdad.
France wants a
key role for the UN Security Council (the United States,
Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France). And it
wants a constitutional convention for Iraq, as soon as
possible, followed by general elections in the spring of
2004. If the plan is approved by the UN, the European
Union, as well as Muslim countries such as Turkey,
Pakistan and Indonesia, would certainly participate in a
UN-mandated, perhaps US-led peacekeeping force.
Baghdadis tend to consider this a rational, sensible
plan - although they would prefer the UN totally in
charge.
But the hardcore faction of the Iraqi
resistance has once again made clear that it will not
compromise. That's the message of the car-bombing on
Monday against the already badly damaged UN headquarters
in Baghdad, which killed two and injured eight.
Practically everybody in Baghdad heard the blast - which
is nothing but a metaphorical warning to both Bush and
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who insists on security
guarantees for UN staff in the event of a more
substantial role in Iraq.
The car-bombing proves
once again that the Americans cannot guarantee anyone's
security. A solution for the Iraqi situation might be
around the corner, this week in New York. But many in
Baghdad see the future as nothing but bleak, even in the
unlikely event of Bush and the Pentagon seeing the
light.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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