Category Archives: Dispatches

Greetings from Baghdad

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BAGHDAD — Well, I guess I should call this blog Back in Iraq again… I’m in Bagh­dad as I write this and glad to be here. The last few days hang­ing fire in Amman were tedious. But at least it gave me time to restock, clear my head and screw my courage to the stick­ing post. And so here I am.
First of all, the flight from Amman to Bagh­dad was start­ingly nor­mal. A cou­ple of flight atten­dants served refresh­ments and vile air­line food, just like a nor­mal flight. Except this one was in an all-white South African-registered plane (the irony should be lost on no one, there) and pop­u­lated by a bunch of Par­sons, KBR and other assorted con­trac­tors. I’m not going to call them mer­ce­nar­ies at this point, since the guys I talked to were all there to work at oil refiner­ies or on cel­lu­lar ser­vices. Hardly the mer­ce­nary types.
The land­ing was any­thing but typ­i­cal though. After a nor­mal flight, we went into a tight, corkscrew dive that sent your stom­ach up into your throat — and in the case of two pas­sen­gers, out their mouths and into their laps. It’s a vomit-comet expe­ri­ence. But if you like roller coast­ers in a sealed con­tainer where you can’t really see any­thing, it’s a lot of fun. Just don’t think about the very real threat of shoulder-mounted SAMs.
Finally, the air­port. Again, sur­pris­ingly nor­mal. Pro­fes­sional immi­gra­tion inspec­tors — Iraqis, all — used high-tech screen­ing, includ­ing dig­i­tal cam­eras and pass­port read­ers, and I finally got the Iraqi entry stamp in my pass­port. Third time’s the charm.
It’s a small air­port, how­ever, and this is pretty much the only non-military flight that comes in, so there’s not a lot for the staff and secu­rity — cour­tesy of Custer Bat­tles’ sub­con­trac­tor Biap Secu­rity from Viet­nam, I think — to do. There are no work­ing phones and the cel­lu­lar net­work doesn’t extend out to the air­port. I met a nice woman who said she works for the Defense Depart­ment at the Palace. When I asked her about Bagh­dad and the sit­u­a­tion there, she shrugged and said, “I’ve not been out of the Green Zone, so I don’t know.“
Finally, board­ing the bus to the first check­point: We all crammed on with moun­tains of lug­gage, just me and about 40 Iraqis. As more lug­gage kept pil­ing on, a very nice Iraqi woman next to me smiled and said, “You’ll see mir­a­cles in Bagh­dad,” and then she pointed to even more lug­gage some­how shoved into any avail­able space that peo­ple didn’t occupy. Oh, also there is no cell phone use allowed on the bus. Another hijabbed woman started talk­ing on her phone and the dri­ver angrily told her to shut it off. The threat of ambushes is real, even in this heav­ily patrolled route, and no one is allowed to pos­si­bly call in a posi­tion.
The first check­point is the end of the line for the bus, and peo­ple piled off in a dusty heap — along with the lug­gage — to greet friends. I hadn’t had a chance to change any dol­lars in the the new Iraqi dinars, so the mir­a­cle lady paid my “tip” to the dri­ver. “This is part of Iraqi hos­pi­tal­ity,” she said to me. I thanked her in my pid­gin Ara­bic. Shrukrun.
My dri­ver, S., was wait­ing for me. Though endear­ingly dorky, he had some pretty sweet wheels: a late-model BMW. We motored out onto the high­way after I had wedged my body armor between myself and the door. He just shrugged. Crazy Amer­i­cans.
“It’s hard to say if it’s safe or not,” S. said when I asked him about the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion. “Some­times it is, some­times it isn’t. It’s in God’s hands.“
But there were no inci­dents. There was some kind of traf­fic tie-up on the high­way to my hotel, and S. took a round­about way to get onto another high­way because he said it was safer that way, but oth­er­wise, there were no prob­lems. The Amer­i­can pres­ence is infre­quent and the parts of Bagh­dad we were in, the Mas­bah dis­trict, sported — I kid you not — many fresh bill­boards in the West­ern style for West­ern Brands, includ­ing Swatch, Dun­hill and Spring — a Euro­pean brand of tooth­paste, I think. The bill­boards are sprout­ing up every­where, and with the late model cars on the street, the adver­tis­ing, the heat and the palm trees, I felt I could almost have been in a Florida ‘burb. It was the odd­est feel­ing, one of dis­lo­ca­tion but in the wrong direc­tion.
I’m stay­ing in one of the hotels near the al Hamra, the local journo-hang. I can’t speak for the rest of Bagh­dad, but this part of the cap­i­tal is not wracked by chaos or vio­lence. There aren’t many happy glances directed my way or any­thing like that, how­ever. Instead I sensed more a resigned feel­ing. Here’s another one, they seemed to be think­ing. So far, the Iraqis are not hos­tile so much as impa­tient and annoyed.
Night is falling and things may change then, how­ever. And S. told me, as we snacked on schwarma on the street near my hotel, that tonight would be the first and last night we would eat at a side­walk cafe. “It’s too dan­ger­ous,” he said, “We will eat inside or take it back to the hotel from now on.“
Across the street, the Amer­i­cans had staked out an unfin­ished 8-story build­ing and sand­bagged it to turn it into a very tall bunker. Machine guns bris­tled from strate­gic sight­line points, and two sol­diers peered down through field glasses at us as we sipped Pep­sis in plas­tic chairs. The night air was pleas­ant and cool. I waved to my new neigh­bors up in their machine gun nests. They didn’t wave back.

Epilogue: A Question of Truth

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New York at dawn © 2002 Christopher AllbrittonNEW YORK — After a week back, I’ve man­aged to get some sleep in, say “hey” to a few friends, put up some pic­ture pages (part one and part two) and try to take stock of the after­math of this war. This is dif­fi­cult, how­ever, as the urban envi­ron­ment of New York City is so alien to the expe­ri­ences of the past month that it might as well be a dif­fer­ent planet. It doesn’t help that I’m still step­ping gin­gerly around the East Vil­lage (resid­ual fear of land­mines), look­ing for sniper posi­tions on the sky­scrap­ers and mar­veling that peo­ple aren’t all car­ry­ing AK-47s.
But that’s noth­ing com­pared to what the Iraqi peo­ple have had to go through, and what they’re fac­ing. To a cer­tain degree, the same goes for the peo­ple of Amer­ica who, it may be, were lied to about the rea­sons for this war.
Accord­ing to the Inde­pen­dent in the U.K., the Bush White House based its case for invad­ing Iraq on a “selec­tive use of intel­li­gence, exag­ger­a­tion, use of sources known to be dis­cred­ited and out­right fab­ri­ca­tion.” The weapons of mass destruc­tion that were said to have posed an immi­nent threat to the United States and the free world have yet to be found, although Bush promises they will be. Again, the Times reported April 27:

In north­ern Iraq, a mil­i­tary chemical-analysis team said today that a cache of bar­rels and two mobile lab­o­ra­to­ries found near the vil­lage of Bayji were most likely not used for chem­i­cal war­fare pur­poses, coun­ter­ing ear­lier reports from an Army offi­cer at the site.

For New York Times colum­nist Tom Fried­man, this is no big­gie. “We do not need to find any weapons of mass destruc­tion to jus­tify this war,” he wrote this week­end. “That skull, and the thou­sands more that will be unearthed, are enough for me.” He was refer­ring to a graphic and affect­ing photo the Times ran on its front page on Fri­day. This is the same man who wrote on Feb. 19:

I am also very trou­bled by the way Bush offi­cials have tried to jus­tify this war on the grounds that Sad­dam is allied with Osama bin Laden or will be soon. There is sim­ply no proof of that, and every time I hear them repeat it I think of the Gulf of Tonkin res­o­lu­tion. You don’t take the coun­try to war on the wings of a lie. (Empha­sis added.)

Fried­man wasn’t talk­ing so much about WMD in that ear­lier col­umn, but the point remains the same. In mat­ters of start­ing wars, you bet­ter have the moral high ground, and you don’t get there by climb­ing a lad­der of false­hoods.
For peo­ple wholly sup­port­ive of the war, how­ever, the tonic of tri­umphal­ism is sweet indeed. Many are now say­ing “I told you so” to those of us who opposed it. A reader — I can’t find the email now — asked some months ago if I would change my mind on the war if it was proven that Iraq was devel­op­ing weapons of mass destruc­tion. I answered that no, I wouldn’t, since I didn’t — and don’t — believe that the war was about WMD or an evil tyrant but about realpoli­tik plans for pro­ject­ing Amer­i­can power into the Mid­dle East. My response to this reader is to flip the ques­tion: “Do you still think this war was nec­es­sary since it may very well turn out that there are no WMD to be found?“
(Mind you, I’m sure the U.S. will find some cache of chem­i­cals or a few war­heads, but Pres­i­dent Bush repeat­edly invoked a clear and present dan­ger to the sur­vival of the United States as a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for war. A few dozen litres of mus­tard gas or even VX does not strike me as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for shred­ding the U.N. Char­ter, demol­ish­ing NATO, harm­ing fur­ther the United States’ image abroad and increas­ing the risk of ter­ror­ism at home.)
Still, some very real good occurred from the top­pling of Sad­dam. There is no doubt the future of Iraq will be much, much brighter with­out him. The war was pros­e­cuted fairly well with rel­a­tively low civil­ian casu­al­ties, there was no urban war­fare and at least some Iraqis in the Arab parts of the coun­try cheered the U.S’s entry into Bagh­dad. (The Kurds were, nat­u­rally, ecsta­tic, but the warm wel­come I received should not be taken as indica­tive of the mood of the coun­try as a whole. Many, many Arabs are angry over what hap­pened to their coun­try and the Kurds are ready to bolt from Iraq if they get the chance.) But the after­math of the war could be more dam­ag­ing to Amer­i­can inter­ests and the Iraqi peo­ple. U.S. sol­diers today fired into a crowd of civil­ian pro­test­ers at Fal­luhaj, about 30 miles west of Bagh­dad. The direc­tor of the local hos­pi­tal said 13 peo­ple were killed and 75 injured. This is the third such inci­dent such as this, with the other two occur­ring in Mosul.
Trigger-happy troops, Sec­re­tary of Defense Don­ald Rumsfeld’s cav­a­lier atti­tude toward the rape of a nation’s cul­tural his­tory — with jour­nal­ists and sol­diers tak­ing part — as well as dis­turb­ing but totally uncon­firmed sto­ries I was told by troops about atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted by U.S. forces against pris­on­ers all point to one thing: the need for a skep­ti­cal and close exam­i­na­tion of America’s role in a post-war Iraq.
This exam­i­na­tion is not going to come from the net­works, obvi­ously. CNN’s news head Eason Jor­dan, already fac­ing crit­i­cism for the arguably morally bank­rupt pol­icy of not report­ing Saddam’s thug­gery in exchange for 12 years of access, revealed to Howard Kurtz on “Reli­able Sources” last week that the retired mil­i­tary per­son­nel used on air were all approved by the Pen­ta­gon! (L.A. Times, reg­is­tra­tion req.) “I went to the Pen­ta­gon myself sev­eral times before the war started and met with impor­tant peo­ple there and said, for instance, at CNN, ‘Here are the gen­er­als we’re think­ing of retain­ing to advise us on the air and off about the war,’” he said. “And we got a big thumbs-up on all of them. That was impor­tant.” Cozy arrange­ment, there.
By and large, the tele­vi­sion reports were uni­formly awful, in my opin­ion, with a rah-rah patri­o­tism that tele­vi­sion excels at. Print reporters were bet­ter, how­ever, with crit­i­cal reports and unfil­tered quotes from troops, includ­ing New York Times reporter Dex­ter Filkins quot­ing a sergeant as say­ing he shot an Iraqi woman because “the chick got in the way.“
This crit­i­cism is not to take away from the courage of the reporters in the field. I was a chicken and mainly stayed away from the rough stuff so I don’t include myself in that pre­vi­ous sen­tence. Twelve jour­nal­ists died in this war, out of about 1,500 cov­er­ing it. None of those 12 peo­ple had to be there; they chose to be there. Their moti­va­tions, I’m sure, ranged from the noble ded­i­ca­tion to the story and the peo­ple of Iraq to the base lust for glory and a col­lec­tion of war sto­ries. Most likely it was a com­bi­na­tion of both. I am includ­ing myself here and speak­ing from per­sonal expe­ri­ence.
So what comes next? For Iraq, no one knows. Pres­i­dent Bush says the U.S. will install democ­racy but that doesn’t include a Shi’a-led Islamic state — a wise choice, even if it does leave the United States open to hypocrisy. We’ll see to what degree democ­racy really does come to the new Iraq. But I know this: The Amer­i­can peo­ple, in whose name this war was waged, need to hold this administration’s feet to the fire. It’s obvi­ously too late to stop this war, but we as a demo­c­ra­tic nation still have a respon­si­bil­ity to make the after­math as ben­e­fi­cial to the Iraqi peo­ple as pos­si­ble now that it’s over. That means that cor­po­rate crony­ism that seems to be the pre­ferred method for award­ing lucra­tive rebuild­ing con­tracts needs to be protested — loudly. Any back­slid­ing on demo­c­ra­tic actions or a dis­con­nect between admin­is­tra­tion actions and rhetoric have to be com­bat­ted as vig­or­ously pos­si­ble.
The anti-war crowd would be crim­i­nally irre­spon­si­ble if it just washes its hands of the mat­ter and con­sid­ers the bat­tle to halt mil­i­tary action in Iraq a failed cause and moves onto the next cause cele­bre. And if the pro-war peo­ple think they now have a right to say, “We told you this war would go well,” they damn well also have a respon­si­bil­ity to hold the peo­ple they sup­ported to their word. It’s time for them, the “win­ners” in the “Should we go to war or shouldn’t we?” debate, to put up or shut up.
I per­son­ally don’t plan on sit­ting back and let­ting things just hap­pen, on let­ting Iraq slip from the con­scious­ness of an eas­ily dis­tracted peo­ple. I’m work­ing on a book pro­posal exam­in­ing the three acts of this drama — build up, the war itself and its after­math. I’ll be return­ing to Iraq as soon as pos­si­ble to research the rebuild­ing and to explore those dis­turb­ing sto­ries I heard. Most impor­tant, I’ll be keep­ing the voices of the Iraqi peo­ple front and cen­ter, some­thing the main­stream media tend not to do.
Do keep in touch. Things are get­ting com­pli­cated — and inter­est­ing.

Some sta­tis­tics on B2I
Num­ber of donors: 316
Total amount raised: $13,834.16
Largest dona­tion: $2,500 (anony­mous)
Small­est dona­tion: $1
Aver­age dona­tion: $43.78
Median dona­tion: $20
Total num­ber of unique vis­i­tors since Jan. 16, 2003: 462,036
Peak day: March 27, 2003 with 23,328 unique vis­i­tors
Num­ber of coun­tries rep­re­sented: 140, includ­ing almost every coun­try in the Mid­dle East.
Who’s read­ing?
B2I has been accessed by every branch of the U.S. mil­i­tary as well as Cen­tral Com­mand, Pacific Com­mand, South­ern Com­mand and Euro­pean Com­mand. It was also accessed from the CIA, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, NASA and the United States Supreme Court. It has been men­tioned in the Boston Globe, Jim Lehrer’s New­sHour, Time Out New York, Reuters, NPR, CNN and many other media outlets.

Back in USA

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NEW YORK — Greet­ings all. I’ve returned to New York safely after a jolt­ing car ride across Iraq and Jor­dan and an unevent­ful — if long — plane ride from Amman to NYC. This is just a short note, as peo­ple had asked to be noti­fied. I will post a longer epi­logue in the very near future as well as a pre­vi­ously unpub­lished fea­ture.
Thanks again to every­one who read. I’ll be back soon.

A Farewell to Arms

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(From left) Mala Shakhi, PUK member of Parliament, Brig. Gen. Jalal Aziz, myself and Brig. Gen. Rabar Said, pose in front of the command center in Taqtaq the day before Kirkuk fell. (c) 2003 Christopher AllbrittonBAGHDAD — This is the farewell note, both to Iraq and to you, the read­ers. Tomor­row I will drive to the Jor­dan­ian bor­der through Bagh­dad and thence to Amman.
The war here is wind­ing down, and the long, labo­ri­ous process of rebuild­ing has started. Much of the activ­ity in Bagh­dad involves the U.S. com­mand look­ing for qual­i­fied peo­ple to help get the city back on its feet. Water and power still have to be restored. A state econ­omy now lacks the state, so peo­ple have no jobs; no one is there to pay them. Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen in Kirkuk are a hair’s breadth away from Yugoslavia-style eth­nic clashes. Mosul is still sav­age, with lit­tle order. One reporter who returned from there yes­ter­day described it to me as “like Mogadishu” with the city divvied up into ter­ri­to­ries for armed gangs and almost no civil author­ity. There are fewer than 300 Amer­i­can troops for a city of two mil­lion peo­plel. This has gone almost com­pletely unre­ported from what the journos in Arbil are hear­ing from edi­tors back home. No one seems to care about Mosul, they say.
“They [the Amer­i­cans] have given up on Mosul,” said one reporter, who asked to remain anony­mous. “It’s ter­ri­fy­ing.” He could have been talk­ing about his edi­tors, too.
At the same time, other cities are calm­ing down — at least dur­ing the day. Kirkuk sports traf­fic lights that work, cops in the street and a bustling street mer­chant com­mu­nity. At night, how­ever, there is still shoot­ing and thug­gery.
All of this will set­tle down even­tu­ally — or explode into civil war — but the ques­tion is how long will it take? I think the vio­lence will con­tinue at a low throt­tle for months, but even that would be a wel­come con­trast to 35 years of Ba’ath Party sys­tem­atic ter­ror and three wars since 1980.
Whether Iraqis gets the gov­ern­ment they deserve, how­ever, is a dif­fer­ent story. Their neigh­bors don’t wish to see a new Amer­i­can client state in their midst and can be expected to med­dle most mis­chie­vously. Also, the frac­tured nature of Iraqi soci­ety, thanks the Ba’ath Party’s repres­sion and play­ing one group off another will take a long time to heal. Free-wheeling democ­racy is not in the cards for quite a while, if ever, thanks to the major­ity Shia pop­u­la­tion and the eth­nic divi­sions in the north. If elec­tions were to be held in the next few months (not likely) they would prob­a­bly bring to power a gov­ern­ment friendly to Iran and hos­tile to the United States and every­one else in the region. The Kurds would walk out and demand _de facto_ — or even _de jure_ — inde­pen­dence. The United States can not allow this.
Still, many Iraqis are opti­mistic about the future. “We are happy,” said Hoshang Sadraddin, 22, a Kurd in Arbil. “We want a demo­c­ra­tic gov­ern­ment, a future. And for all the peo­ple in Iraq to live in peace.“
“I look for a bet­ter life in the future,” said Jasim Khid­hir, 18. “I look for­ward to suc­cess in life, get­ting an edu­ca­tion, that is my dream.“
And in Bagh­dad, an Arab who wouldn’t give his name smiled at me and said in halt­ing Eng­lish that he was happy that democ­racy had come to Iraq. The sen­ti­ment was gen­uine, if a lit­tle pre­ma­ture.
We’ll see. The Kurds I’ve talked want the United States to stay “for­ever” as Assan Ahmen Awla, 30, a taxi dri­ver, told me. Amer­ica is seen as the Kurds’ insur­ance against con­trol by Bagh­dad and Arab vio­lence. The marchers in Bagh­dad demand­ing a quick end to Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion, he said, were incited by Ahmed Cha­l­abi and the INC to stir up trou­ble against the Amer­i­cans, so they will leave and the INC can seize com­plete con­trol. Cha­l­abi, obvi­ously, isn’t pop­u­lar up here. Nei­ther are Arabs in gen­eral.
“I think for­ever I will chose Amer­i­can troops to keep us away from the Arabs,” said Taha Muhammed Has­san, 30, a fruit ven­dor. “We know what the Arabs will do if they have con­trol.“
Sen­ti­ments like these, as well as threats against Kurds in Tikrit, Bagh­dad and the south­ern part of the coun­try are omi­nous signs, both for a coher­ent coun­try and a demo­c­ra­tic future. Delshad wrote me to tell me his thoughts:
“The heavy her­itage of more than three decades of dic­ta­tor­ship and oppres­sion will need many, many years to be over­come and Iraqis to get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of what is lib­er­a­tion and its lim­its. And if the Amer­i­cans keep in their cur­rent role [of] being only observers stand­ing aside then things can’t get bet­ter!!“
Oth­ers sug­gest democ­racy isn’t that big a deal to them, that jobs are a pri­or­ity rather than self-government. “We choose jobs, not democ­racy,” said Hemin Sul­tan, 28, a trans­la­tor.
Given that much of the coun­try is work­ing at sub­sis­tence lev­els, even in the rel­a­tively pros­per­ous cities of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan, his opin­ions are under­stand­able. But I worry that unless the Iraqis demand democ­racy for them­selves the United States won’t give it to them… I believe the White House would pre­fer a docile Iraq to one that can say no to Amer­i­can inter­ests. But of course, I’m con­sti­tu­tion­ally inclined to oppose the idea of an Amer­i­can empire based on com­mer­cial ties, so I do hope the Iraqis real­ize that real democ­racy — unruly, net­tle­some and untidy — is in their long-term best inter­ests.
But while the Iraqis have just started a long jour­ney into the future, the Back​-to​-Iraq​.com jour­ney is com­ing to an end. B2I has suc­ceeded beyond what I expected or envi­sioned when I began writ­ing it in Sep­tem­ber 2002. Through the months, the site has man­aged to pro­voke, enter­tain and — hope­fully — enlighten peo­ple. It’s gar­nered some atten­tion and peo­ple have said it’s a new form of jour­nal­ism and that it’s his­tory mak­ing.
I don’t know if it’s all that, but I’m cer­tainly flat­tered by the com­pli­ments and the acco­lades. This was jour­nal­ism with­out a net (although it was on the Net.) I’ve stum­bled a few times, almost los­ing my bal­ance, but look­ing back over the site, I hope it was good enough.
Now I’m going home. The sto­ries that I’d like to do require money and time that I sim­ply no longer have. The loom­ing eth­nic con­flict in north­ern Iraq, the role of the Turks, the treat­ment of women, the fate of the polit­i­cal pris­on­ers and the new government’s fal­ter­ing first steps are all sto­ries that I would love to pur­sue, with the style and tech­niques I’ve devel­oped on the site. I’d also wanted to find Salam Pax.
As for the future of B2I, I’m work­ing on that. The site and list­serv will remain up for as long as the server has power, but I’m still unde­cided on what to do next to push for­ward the con­cept of inde­pen­dent, reader-funded jour­nal­ism. I will use the site and the pre­mium email list to announce any­thing new, so stop in every now and then to say hello.
I do plan on return­ing to Iraq in a few months to check in on how things are going. Those dis­patches will also be pub­lished here and on the list­serv. Donors who have donated will con­tinue get pre­mium con­tent and pho­tos when­ever the site is active.
A note about dona­tions: I am no longer actively solic­it­ing them. The mis­sion is over — for now. Save your cash or donate it to other indy jour­nal­ists. It’s impor­tant to develop this genre of jour­nal­ism, and reader con­tri­bu­tions are key. We all proved that this kind of endeavor is pos­si­ble. I may be the first, but I sin­cerely hope I’m not the last. I believe other inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists will soon strike out and cover major events along­side the major media. I hope they break more sto­ries than I did, and chal­lenge their main­stream col­leagues to keep up.
A few of those main­stream­ers here — most enthu­si­as­ti­cally from Fox News, oddly enough — think the ideals that B2I brings to the table are grand and think some­thing like this site could be the future of the craft. They bemoan the top-down edi­to­r­ial con­trol and like the idea of read­ers’ input in decid­ing what to cover.
That can wait for a bit, how­ever. For now, I must bid you farewell. I’m dis­ap­pointed and sad to do so, as I feel like I’m leav­ing early. The real­ity of a lim­ited bud­get is an incon­ve­nient fact of life, how­ever. I hope you all don’t hold it against me.
It’s been a truly fan­tas­tic jour­ney and I am sin­cerely grate­ful to every­one who donated, read, sent in feed­back, argued on the com­ment boards or wished me well. While truth may be the first casu­alty in war, I hope I was able to save a small shard of it. But it’s hard to say. Many times since I’ve been here, lis­ten­ing to the claims of Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Turkomen or Assyr­i­ans, I’ve thought that there is no such thing as *Truth,* only myths that peo­ple tell their chil­dren to get them through to the next gen­er­a­tion. His­tory doesn’t exist here, at least not in the Amer­i­can sense; the past is never really past and his­tory isn’t some­thing that hap­pened long ago; it’s very much alive and kick­ing. In this ancient place, a land of empires, gods, gar­dens, wars, blood and beauty, at the heart of it, you will find only sto­ries. I hope I’ve been able to bring a few of them home to you.
Sin­cerely,
Christopher

Clutching for Answers in Baghdad

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Iraqis protest the use of former police officers to provide security in Baghdad. (c) 2003 Christopher AllbrittonBAGHDAD — The streets of Bagh­dad are prickly with pointed ques­tions, as res­i­dents pick at my sleeve and beg me for answers I can­not give.
“Why is there no water?“
“The river is too high and will soon flood. When will the Amer­i­cans do some­thing?“
“We need elec­tric­ity and secu­rity, where is it?“
“Where are the pris­on­ers?” asked a man who gave his name as Muhammed. “It’s a sim­ple ques­tion. What is the answer?“
All of these are asked of me, as I pick my way through the crowd out­side the Hotel Pales­tine in down­town Bagh­dad. Each time I am forced to give the same answer: “I don’t know. I can’t help you. I’m sorry.“
Two pho­tog­ra­phers, Jason and Juan Car­los, and I have dri­ven down for the day. The drive in is pleas­ant, with the occa­sional T-72 Iraqi tank parked by the road, seem­ingly aban­doned by the crews. Once we get to the out­skirts of this sprawl­ing city, how­ever, the tanks and other mil­i­tary vehi­cles are bombed out and destroyed.
Bagh­dad itself, low-slung and dusty brown, is bustling with activ­ity. A haze of dust clings to the ground, and mixes with the auto exhaust from the thou­sands of vehi­cles on the street. Icons of Sad­dam are mostly lack­ing; I’ll bet they have been removed by U.S. troops and Bagh­dadis. The few posters and murals that remain are largely untouched, though. Dri­ving in, we can see the effects of the loot­ing and the bomb­ing dam­age. Build­ings marked with the Ba’ath Party eight-point star show scorch marks or are par­tially col­lapsed. Much of the city seems intact, how­ever. Even down­town, a target-rich envi­ron­ment, seems more or less intact. The “pre­ci­sion bomb­ing” seems to have been more or less aptly named.
The occu­pa­tion is not mak­ing many friends among the Iraqis, how­ever. In marked con­trast to the wel­come and friend­li­ness we always receive in the north and in Kirkuk, the looks here are guarded and even cold. We smile and wave at peo­ple in the cars next to us when the traf­fic grinds to a halt, but our fel­low dri­vers look at us and don’t smile back.
There seems to be a con­stant demon­stra­tion going on in front of the press bal­cony of the hotel and as I pass, one man holds up a sign that reads, “The Amer­i­cans are Lyers.” Another hands me a note in both Ara­bic and Eng­lish that reads:

Let­ter to Con­fer­ence, Bagh­dad.
Dear Lead­ers, USA and Iraq: We are Al Shaab Native Free Party. We wanted to [attend the] meet­ing in Iraq with the lead­ers USA and Iraq. Thanks, Best.
Saeed Ali­faashmi
Leader, Al Shaab Party
16÷4÷2003

It seems an oppo­si­tion move­ment to the yet-to-be-installed interim gov­ern­ment is already tak­ing root.
The Marines here have a tough job. The pop­u­lace is angry at the lack of ser­vices — no phone, water, elec­tric­ity or work — and the troops are get­ting increas­ingly aggres­sive in the face of mount­ing pub­lic anger. Every­one is on a hair-trigger. The Pales­tine is an armed fortress, ringed by con­certina wire, about 150 troops and a dozen LAVs or so. The Marines push the Iraqis back — not always gen­tly — as they press for­ward to tell their sto­ries to a trooper, the press … some­one who might lis­ten.
At one point, a group of Iraqis began shout­ing at the Amer­i­cans guard­ing the press entry point to the Pales­tine. The Marines began shov­ing the Iraqis back as they chanted louder and louder in Ara­bic. Then, the crowd sat down on the side­walk. “No Sad­dam! No Sad­dam!” they yelled out. They were protest­ing the use of Iraqi police offi­cers and demanded the Marines pro­vide secu­rity instead of the organs of the old regime.
“We want the Amer­i­cans to coop­er­ate with us,” said Muham­mad Abdul-Rasul, 46, an inter­preter. “We need work. Who is in charge?” He then demanded “Mr. Bush” to turn on the pub­lic ser­vices within 48 hours.
The city is awash with con­spir­acy the­o­ries, the pre­ferred method of analy­sis in the Mid­dle East.
Ehsan Abud denied that Iraqis were the ones respon­si­ble for the loot­ing and instead it’s the Kuwaitis com­ing up to take revenge for the 1990 inva­sion. And Arabs, not Iraqi Arabs, went into the Uni­ver­sity of Mustem­srya in Bagh­dad and burned all the books. And Amer­ica has trained 500 Iraqis and other Arabs in the United States, para­chuted them into Bagh­dad (nee Sad­dam) Inter­na­tional and turned them loose on the city to burn and pil­lage.
The Marines based around the hotel declined to com­ment on these accu­sa­tions.
The Amer­i­cans are “use­less” because they have been here for 10 days and they have done noth­ing for the city, said Abud. He said secu­rity in some neigh­bor­hoods is pro­vided by armed vol­un­teers guard­ing the streets.
There’s no doubt Bagh­dad is wooly at night. Marines told me they “took a guy down” last night when he was attempt­ing to break into a media truck. Iraqis tell of the pop-pop of auto­matic weapons fire from all direc­tions when the sun goes down.
The Inte­rior Min­istry is also a favorite source of rumor. This was the dreaded nexus of Sad­dam Hussein’s secu­rity state, and many peo­ple think there are under­ground pris­ons where loved ones who dis­ap­peared 20 years ago suf­fer still.
“Why don’t they dig under the Secu­rity build­ing?” asked Ali Abid Khafaji. “Amer­i­cans are guard­ing it and not let­ting the pris­on­ers out.“
Muham­mad, the man who asked about the vic­tims of Saddam’s regime, said thou­sands of peo­ple are wait­ing to hear about their rel­a­tives and friends. Where are they? They have dis­ap­peared. “We want to know where they are,” he said. “You are the media. You can tell the world. Please, help us.”