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THE
ROVING EYE
The American Saddam
By
Pepe Escobar
BAGHDAD - The Iraqi resistance
against the US occupation - in the form of the first,
free popular demonstration in the country since the
1960s - was born on April 18 in front of the Abu Hanifa
mosque in the middle-class district of Aadhamiya, the
site of a fierce battle on April 7, two days before the
fall of Baghdad.
Mahmoud Wasfi is now the
president of the nine-member municipal council in
Aadhamiya, which includes two women, a suggestion from
this former wrestler who started his new job more than
three months ago - with no salary. After he was
spontaneously chosen by the locals - "everybody in the
neighborhood voted, we had free elections" - the
Americans asked him if he had been a Ba'ath Party
member. He said "of course, like everybody else. I had
to feed my family." He signed a form in English
repudiating the party, and he was in business.
Wasfi says that according to the only reliable
statistics - provided by Iraqi food agencies - there are
roughly 42,000 families in Aadhamiya, divided in four
areas. The council meets every Monday. Wasfi has to deal
with one "Captain Mike" - responsible for Aadhamiya's
security and purse strings. Any financial decision comes
from "Captain Mike". Basically, people now have just
about enough to eat, but services are slowly being
restored, electricity supply is still patchy - three
hours on, three hours off - and thieves roam the area.
Wasfi is adamant: "Our demands are not being satisfied."
Wasfi says his post is equivalent to a manager
in the Ministry of Finance. But he has to help people
with cash from his own pocket. Everybody asks him the
ubiquitous question: "Why can't we find jobs?" He
answers that there's nothing he can do about it. "The
Americans put us in a very difficult position towards
the local people. But the people understand it." He
believes a stronger United Nations presence would be
better. But if the situation doesn't improve soon, he
will quit the council this month in protest. Wasfi notes
that municipal councils in Shi'ite parts of the country,
related to the powerful al-Hawza - the Shi'ite "Vatican"
housed in the city of Najaf - are more forceful. "At the
time of Saddam, everybody had a salary. Now everybody
says the situation under Saddam was better."
Families in Aadhamiya want a soccer field for
their youngsters. Iraqi contractors came to examine a
proposed site, "but the Americans have not given their
okay". Wasfi says Aadhamiya is getting help from IRD, a
Jordanian non-government organization (NGO) that works
closely with the Americans, as well as from the United
Nations Development Program (UNDP). But he warns that
"if you are an NGO Bechtel does not help you. You have
to know an American, otherwise you don't have a chance."
Bechtel of course is making a killing in Iraq,
courtesy of the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) - the supervising body in charge of
commissioning and awarding contracts. The San
Francisco-based giant has already won projects worth
more than US$ 1 billion. Bechtel is under contract with
USAID to repair and upgrade Iraq's power grid, and its
potable-water and sewage-treating systems; the main
roads, bridges, railways and public buildings; and
building and reconstruction of schools and clinics. The
sectors considered a priority are ports, buildings,
surface transportation and waste water. What Iraqis
simply can't understand - because the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) didn't bother to explain -
is why the Americans control everything, why so many
Iraqi contractors remain empty-handed, and why
everything takes so long.
Bechtel program
directors say the company has hired 69 Iraqi
subcontractors and employs more than 27,000 people. But
subcontracts to Iraqi firms were only worth $47 million
by late September - out of a total of more than $1
billion. US companies divide practically the whole cake.
Creative Associates International will revitalize Iraqi
primary and secondary schools. The Research Triangle
Institute will be in charge of local governance
development (Wasfi had no idea about it). The public
health system will be restored by Abt Associates.
Airport administration in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra will
go to Skylink Air and Logistics Support.
Bechtel
is responsible for rebuilding 1,200 primary and
secondary schools in Iraq (600 in Baghdad alone). Most
should have been ready this week - the beginning of the
school year. In the case of Baghdad, only 43 out of 600
were ready. Ma'monia, a secondary school in Aadhamiya
originally built in 1922, was one of the lucky ones.
Ra'ad al-Juburi, the Iraqi subcontractor, said he was
able to rebuild the school with materials still found in
Iraqi markets.
Bradley vehicles and Humvees
patrol Aadhamiya every day. A teacher comments that in
six months no soldier ever talked to him "except to give
me an order". Another teacher says everybody expected to
be treated as partners in the municipal councils, "and
cultivated people could find themselves a role after 35
years of humiliation. Instead we are treated like
cattle."
Life for the municipal councils spread
across the 50 Baghdad neighborhoods is not exactly the
same. It's fair to argue that wealthier neighborhoods,
with English-speaking council members, get better
treatment. For example, in upper-middle-class Sumer the
council president, Addel Rahim Khalaf, is a former
officer who proudly exhibits the signs of a close
collaboration with the Americans: a cellular phone, a
badge and a license to carry a gun. Sumer has a monthly
budget of $40,000. Sumer already obtained, among other
things, the renovation of three schools, two roads, and
two new soccer fields. In al-Saadoun Street, one of
Baghdad's main roads, the president of another municipal
council, a businessman involved in import-export, scoffs
when he mentions that the CPA has even edited a guide to
teach the presidents of municipal councils how to behave
in a meeting: "This shows us the image that the
Americans have of ourselves - of a backward people. They
don't know that the first municipal councils here
started in 1868."
A Baghdad trader now in the
dumps says that "for the Americans, their soldiers are
more important than us. I heard this from them myself.
Under Saddam, we knew we had to be a high official in
the Ba'ath Party to do something with our lives. What
about now? Even if we wanted to, we can do nothing.
Every Iraqi is considered guilty."
This tragic
cultural misunderstanding is not enough to make Wasfi
support an armed resistance: "There are many more
important things to do - we have to try to rebuild the
country. We will wait. We trust Allah." He is in favor
of jihad in principle, but not now. "If the Americans
gave us a chance, we could have done better. But they
didn't give us a chance." Wasfi has stark advice for the
Americans - echoed by a huge majority in the Sunni
triangle: "Get your military base and give our cities
back to us, and our chance to rebuild our country."
Whatever the benefits of the US program for
rebuilding Iraq, they are being lost on the absolute
majority of the Sunni population. In middle-class
Aadhamiya, all former employees of Iraqi ministries are
now unemployed. Another refrain heard all over the Sunni
triangle is inevitable: Saddam rebuilt Iraq in 45 days
after the end of the 1991 Gulf War. "The Americans have
not kept their promises. We thought we would become the
guiding light of the Arab world, but we find ourselves
in a toilet in the back yard," says a former public
employee.
The fatal, irredeemable mistake of
proconsul L Paul Bremer and his CPA was to fire hundreds
of thousands of possibly innocent public employees. What
these residents of Baghdad are saying is that there is
simply no Iraqi face to hold and secure the country.
It's impossible to rehabilitate Iraq's institutions and
restore basic services for the population without the
managers and employees of Iraq's public sector. So no
wonder the talk in the streets of Baghdad is, "We had an
Arabic Saddam. Now we have an American Saddam."
(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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