BAGHDAD — Ehlen w’sehlehn, as they say here. (“Wel­come.”) To which I should prob­a­bly reply, “Thanks… I think.” I’m back in Iraq’s cap­i­tal after two and a half months away, and in that time I faced upheavals in my per­sonal life, and three weeks in Beirut. The two are more or less unre­lated. But Bagh­dad is almost exactly the same as when I left, despite the fact that there’s been a mon­u­men­tal elec­tion here — the full import of which has yet to be felt.
Well, it’s not exactly the same. I’ve been back a day and I’ve already received an ear­ful on the high price of petrol: 250 dinars for a liter as opposed to 20 dinars it was in the sum­mer of 2003 and the 30 dinar or so it was when I left in mid-November. Fuel sub­si­dies are being lifted and peo­ple are feel­ing the squeeze.
If only there were fuel for the city’s power sta­tions. Elec­tric­ity is down to about two hours a day in Bagh­dad, doled out in fits and spurts of 15 mins or so at a time. Some­times, glo­ri­ously, we get a solid hour, but it’s rare. Gen­er­a­tors pick up the slack, and since you have ris­ing fuel costs, you start to see the dou­ble squeeze that poor Iraqis are feel­ing.
Add on to that inces­sant guerilla attacks on the country’s oil infra­struc­ture that has left exports _below pre-war levels_ and there’s no money com­ing into the gov­ern­ment. Insur­gents have hit upon pipeline sab­o­tage as a means to cut off Baghdad’s fund­ing, so no mat­ter what the com­po­si­tion of the gov­ern­ment — when it’s finally done — it won’t be able to do much. So the new gov­ern­ment, which is still being nego­ti­ated, will prob­a­bly be viewed with the same resent­ment as the cur­rent Jaa­fari gov­ern­ment does, except we’ll be stuck with these guys for four years now.
Speak­ing of the gov­ern­ment, word is that the United Iraqi Alliance list, dom­i­nated by Shi’ite reli­gious par­ties and thought to have the bless­ings of Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali al-Sistani, is dead­locked over who will be their can­di­date for the prime minister’s office. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Da’wa Party, wants to keep the job, but cur­rent vice pres­i­dent Adel Abdul Mahdi (of the rival SCIRI party) is favored by oth­ers in the coali­tion. The Kurds are will­ing to sup­port who­ever will legal­ize their hold on Kirkuk.
The ques­tion is what will the Sunni groups do. Ally with the UIA in a national unity gov­ern­ment? Cleave to Iyad Allawi’s rump bloc in the hopes of cre­at­ing a viable oppo­si­tion? We’ll see.
The mood here among reporters, I think, is grim. Jill Carroll’s kid­nap­ping is still unre­solved, despite hope­ful rumors of her release soon. Those, so far, have gone unre­al­ized.
I arrived yes­ter­day and today did lit­tle other than get my bear­ings and plan some sto­ries with the other reporters. Tomor­row will be taken up with more logis­tics and media cre­den­tialling busi­ness. Wednes­day, I sit down in the Sad­dam Cir­cus, or should I say, “Trial.“
On the way in from the air­port yes­ter­day, I counted more mar­riage con­voys than I had in months (three.) Why? Because tomor­row is the start of the Islamic new year and the begin­ning of _Muharram ul Haram_, the month in which reli­gious Shi’ites refrain from mar­riage or other cel­e­bra­tions. (It must suck to have your birth­day this month.) So, every­one was try­ing to get their last-minute wed­ding plans in. In 10 days, we’ll be faced with Ashu­rah, the mark­ing of the mar­tyr­dom of Imam Hus­sein. Iraq’s Shi’ites in Najaf and, espe­cially, Kar­bala, mark it with bloody parades in which they beat, cut and fla­gel­late them­selves in a sign of grief for the death of Hus­sein. It’s going to be a tense month, for while fight­ing is gen­er­ally frowned upon dur­ing this month, Salafist/Wahabi Mus­lims con­sider the Umayyed Caliph Yazid, who sent the army that killed Hus­sein and his fol­low­ers, a right­eous fig­ure while Shi’ites nat­u­rally detest him. In other words, the poten­tial for vio­lence is high.
Yes, Bagh­dad is the same as always. As the tagline to “Jar­head” goes, “Wel­come to the Suck.”