Iraqis
Wait For US Troops To Leave
By Jonathan Steele
The Guardian
05 July, 2003
A group of doctors sits round
a table in an air-conditioned side room of Balad's only hospital, enjoying
a late lunch and respite from the sweltering summer heat. These days,
some of their sickest patients are whisked off to the US air force base
which has sprung up a few miles away. "They've been very co-operative.
They established a military hospital there and help us," says Mustafa
Mahmoud, 30, an ear, nose and throat specialist.
Medicine was taught in English in the best Iraqi universities, and many
doctors speak it well. So it was natural that professional contacts
with their uniformed new neighbours turned into social get-togethers.
The Iraqi doctors occasionally ate at the base and invited the Americans
to restaurants in town.
Not any more. "We can't
invite them to eat with us now. People wouldn't like it, and they might
accuse us of being collaborators," says an older doctor at the
end of the table. "I won't give you my name because I'm afraid
to. I'm an Arab and I will not accept disrespect. Tell them please.
The American people must know that Iraqis no longer trust America".
Vehemence
None of his colleagues matches this unexpected vehemence, but there
is no dissent from his views. The doctors' attitudes changed three weeks
ago, they explain, when the US army conducted an offensive north of
the town, allegedly to hunt down armed remnants from Saddam Hussein's
regime but killing and wounding several farmers. They were rushed to
the hospital for treatment.
Operation Desert Scorpion,
as it was called, gave a huge push to a mounting wave of quiet disappointment
here. "It's not true that only pro-Saddam people are attacking
US troops. I don't think it's only that. When a man has lost everything,
his job, electricity, fuel, and water, he may develop feelings against
them," says Dr Mahmoud. "The US response to any attack is
very violent, even brutal."
Yesterday's killing by US
troops of 11 Iraqis who tried to ambush a military patrol near Balad
will harden such attitudes in the town.
By any standard, Balad ought
to be a place where acceptance of the US is high. Situated 50 miles
north of Baghdad, its 60,000 people are the only compact Shi'ite community
in the belt of Sunni towns and villages between the capital and Saddam
Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
An old government office
has been converted into the headquarters of the "Freed Prisoners'
Assembly". In one room, set out as a shrine with flowers resting
on a black-draped table like an unburied coffin, a hauntingly sad collection
of photographs recalls the 359 people who went missing, presumably executed,
between 1981 and 1984. A young man proudly seated on his motorbike looks
out from the wall beside elderly men in white robes and headdresses.
The first attempt to assassinate
Saddam Hussein took place on the main road near Balad in 1981, when
he was still a western ally. The dictator wrought a terrible vengeance
on the suspect Shi'ites, destroying all the farmhouses beside the road,
evicting their owners, and rounding up scores of others. Since his regime
fell in April, a new team of people has taken over in the police station.
Auday Hatem Mohammed shows his fresh credentials, issued by a Colonel
Rudesheim of the Fourth Infantry Division.
Cell
"The old police left during the war, but the mosques and tribal
leaders organised security volunteers, and we had almost no looting,"
he says before leading the way upstairs to a cell where he claims he
was tortured as a suspected Shia militant for a week last year.
The tribal chiefs or sheikhs
urged people not to take revenge on the town's Ba'athist leaders, and
none did, he says. A few Ba'athists still live locally.
He is a veteran of the war
with Iran, and this military experience was his main qualification to
be a policeman, at least on a temporary basis. "We got a one-off
payment of $50, but have had no regular wages," he says. Life is
hard for him, his wife and their children. Electricity supplies were
better a year ago, and the water is about the same.
The big problem is economic.
Before the war the old Iraqi government handed out three months' rations
under the Oil for Food programme but Mr Mohammed says he has had nothing
from the new authorities.
"Our living situation
was better a year ago. The US and the UK have toppled Saddam but we
want them to fulfil their promises and provide jobs and an economy."
The town used to survive
mainly on catering for tens of thousands of pilgrims who visited a famous
Shi'ite shrine nearby. In the last years of Saddam's rule, when life
in Iraq generally improved, according to several people in Balad, the
government organised buses for the pilgrims.
The war stopped the pilgrimages
and since then lack of funds, plus poor security on the roads, has kept
numbers down. The only industry, a factory making tomato paste, has
lost a huge amount of business thanks to the opening of Iraq's borders
to cheaper imports.
Balad's biggest optimist
is Sheikh Ahmed Ebrahem Hassan, who was elected in May as mayor of a
130-person council at a poll conducted among tribal members.
Sitting in his living room
in dignified light-green robes over a long white jalabiya, he quotes
Major Michael Bogmenko of the US Army's 308th Civil Affairs Brigade
as saying the election was "very democratic". Unabashed by
the colonial presumption of a foreigner authorising his new post, he
asks an aide to produce his certification on an army letter with Maj
Bogmenko's signature and an address in Illinois.
Jobs
"You've come for the dawn of freedom. We wish you had come when
we wanted our voices heard," he says. "Unemployment is high
since Saddam fell and most young people are without jobs. But the US
gave salaries to some people and that provided relief. The coalition
forces are very necessary in Iraq at this stage to give security."
Few people in Balad want
the Americans to leave now, but many say they should go when an Iraqi
government is in place, which they hope will be soon. Dr Mahmoud says
people are too impatient, though he also feels disappointed. "Iraqis
thought the Americans would provide protection but when looting got
out of control they realised they had come to oust the regime and not
to protect democracy.
"In the past we had
a bad system. Now we have none," says another angry doctor who
also does not want to give his name. "The United States has moved
Iraqis from one extreme to another, from excessive control to chaos."