Chaos, Crime Reign In Baghdad
By Mitch Potter In Baghdad
The Star
09 May, 2003In the crush of foot traffic crossing the temporary bridge into the southeastern city limits yesterday, nobody noticed the Iraqi with the plastic bag.
Nobody thought twice as he strode brazenly up to the nearest U.S. soldier, pulling a handgun from the bag.
One shot to the throat. One dead American. One more body bag weighing against the triumph of liberation.It has been a month now since the historic toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue. A month marked by growing frustration, as the citizenry of the Iraqi capital await the still incomplete restoration of electricity, gas supplies, food and medication — and, more than anything else, basic law and order.
But as recently as last week this busy crossroads at Diyala Bridge, marking the only direct route from Baghdad to the southern cities of Kut and Nasiriya, was a picture of calm. So much so that a captain with the U.S. 2nd Armoured Cavalry Regiment gushed in a chat with passing journalists: "They really love us. I feel just great about what we're doing."
By yesterday afternoon, that calm had curdled beneath searing sunshine.
Hair-trigger tension blanketed the scene as jittery soldiers closed the bridge. These young Americans could see the anger building in the faces of the crowds on both sides.
But like so many other checkpoints where coalition troops interact with Iraqis, they had no translator to tell them why.
It was left to the Star's own translator, Amir Mohsen, to bridge the gap. Pressed into service by the nervous soldiers, Mohsen was handed a loudspeaker to appease his frustrated countrymen. The Iraqis, in turn, demanded Amir explain the problem.
"They're angry because they need to cross," Amir explained to the soldiers, over the din of helicopter gunships circling overhead. "They want to get to their homes, their families."
But the bridge remained closed. Unable to delineate between Iraqis with moustaches and Iraqis with moustaches who want to kill them, the soldiers erred on the side of caution, awaiting orders from above.
Iraqis on the scene described casualties of their own. The gunman got away, they said, but not before a Humvee-mounted gunner sprayed the crowd into which he melted. It was impossible to determine an injury count in the melee.
It would be unwise to overstate the import of yesterday's killing at Diyala, and the confused aftermath that followed. The war, to which no formal end has been declared, continues to cost lives, as can be expected.
In a second attack yesterday, a U.S. Army 3rd Infantry Division soldier was killed when a sniper shot him in the head in east Baghdad, said Capt. Tom Bryant, spokesman for the Army's V Corps, which is based at Baghdad's airport. He had no further details.
Also yesterday, an American Humvee hit a "probable land mine" while crossing a median in a road near Baghdad's airport, Bryant said. Details were sketchy, but at least one U.S. soldier was injured in that incident.
"I have an expectation that we will see rough behaviour in this country for the foreseeable future," Gen. Tommy Franks, who commanded the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, said in Washington of the attacks.
One month along, there is an undeniable erosion happening, as Iraqi patience evaporates in the face of the chronically slow resumption of normalcy. Whether it is the electricity, which continues in rolling blackouts leaving Baghdad three-quarters in the dark at any given time, or the lack of petroleum, in a country possessing the world's second-largest oil reserves, that leaves cars lined up by the hundreds at gas stations across the city, the lack of basic infrastructure is eating away at U.S. credibility on the ground.
But even these annoyances pale in comparison to the lack of security, far and away the issue that galvanizes the populace. A plan earlier this week to put Iraqi policemen back on the street is still just that, a plan. Few other than traffic cops have shown their faces.
All of which leaves the lawless among Baghdad's more than 5 million residents free rein to continue the now familiar four-week pattern of gutting the city by day and firing up a storm by night. Looting in broad daylight continues, although with the meat now shorn from the city's bones, the plundering has devolved to the full dismantling of buildings, wire by wire, brick by brick.
Carjackings, crimes never before known in Baghdad, are being reported with growing regularity, to a coalition presence that has numbered only 12,000 since the fall of Saddam, but will now be augmented by 4,000 additional troops in a bid to stem the chaos.
The stock defence for the slow pace of recovery — "These are early days" — is increasingly falling on deaf ears in Baghdad, as residents demand in louder tones something, anything, to indicate U.S. commanders are relating to the crisis.
Yesterday, retired U.S. Gen. Jay Garner, soon to be supplanted as the leader of postwar reconstruction, maintained that the situation is improving, if only incrementally. He singled out the Shiite Muslim south as the area in greatest need.
"The south was the victim of three wars, a rebellion and absolutely torturous treatment by Saddam Hussein for over 30 years," Garner told a Baghdad news conference. "So it is in terrible straits. And what you're going to see is, we'll put the bulk of our effort in the south, because everything in the south is broken."
Standing at his side, Lt.-Gen. David McKeirnan, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, acknowledged the wider problem of security affects all of Iraq.
"There is a lot of work to be done to create the right environment of safety and security," he said.
"There is still crime. There is still looting. There is still a large percentage of young ex-military Iraqis that need to be put back to work, need to earn a salary and be part of the solution."