Gun
Gangs Rule Streets
As US Loses Control
By Ed Vulliamy in Baghdad
25
May , 2003
The Observer
As the blood-red sun sinks
below the Baghdad skyline, the shooting begins. It is the sound of the
anarchy into which the Iraqi capital has spiralled since the war's end:
the rasp of machine-guns accompanied by arcs of red tracer fire across
the sky. Throughout the city, fires burn, their flames licking the night.
Now, with the United Nations Security Council having formally sanctioned
America's military occupation of Iraq, a massive operation is being
prepared to catch up on a month of default and negligence in dealing
with chaos and desperate need, with newly admitted international organisations
hoping it is not too late.
Having been diplomatically
brushed aside over the war, the UN is set to arrive under the leadership
of the Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was for years responsible
for the UN protectorate in East Timor.
The World Food Programme
has pledged to buy this year's crops, allowing Iraq's farmers to sow
for next time around. A relaxation of all customs duty is bringing in
a flood of imported goods aimed at boosting a collapsed and workless
economy.
But the massive task may
be doomed: International Red Cross spokeswoman Nada Doumani says it
is necessary 'to fill a vacuum created by war and a lack of infrastructure
caused by sanctions'.
Iraq is now a society of
either predators or prey, fully armed with weaponry looted from military
stores the Americans failed to secure after the war. 'We all have guns
now,' says Abdul Ahmed Hasan, 25, surveying the charred remains of his
looted photo laboratory. 'Some have guns to attack, some have guns to
defend their families. I have four at home.'
Baghdad is being carved up
by armed gangs. Towns in the south - apart from the port city of Basra,
under British control - are even more dangerous. In the city of Hilla,
near Babylon, the poor quarter of Nada, where scores of civilians were
killed by cluster bombs during the war, is out of bounds to strangers
and US troops alike. Both The Observer and Human Rights Watch were warned
not to enter without an armed escort.
In the grim wards of the
hospital at Hilla, Dr Satar Jabel says victims of war are now outnumbered
by those of gang warfare - wounded, if not with guns, with swords.
In Hilla, as in Nasiriyah
further south, the arrival of any strange vehicle immediately attracts
crowds of children pleading for water and food. 'Before, we had no freedom,
but we had security,' muses Kadem Hashem - in the ruins of the house
in south Nasiriyah, where he lost all 14 members of his family during
a bombing raid. 'Now, we have freedom, but no security, no work and
no income.'
A government for this maelstrom
is ever more elusive, with a total disconnection between the optimistic
language of US press briefings at Saddam Hussein's old palace and the
anarchic reality on the street.
The Americans are even split
over whom to back: the Pentagon is still committed to its pet politician,
the formerly exiled businessman Ahmed Chalabi, who has no particular
constituency in Iraq. The State Department, which has always distrusted
Chalabi, backs a moderate Sunni Muslim leader, Adnan Pachachi.
Militant religious and political
leaders from the downtrodden Shia majority manoeuvre and prepare for
power, and Kurdish leader Mahmoud Barzani has quit in disgust the US-appointed
commission tasked to form a government, returning to Kurdistan in the
north with his militias.
Since the war, say workers
for several aid organisations, the Pentagon's administration has systematically
hindered the reconstruction and the distribution of medicines and other
supplies. At the root of the problems, says Pascal Snoeck of Médecins
Sans Frontières, was the Pentagon's insistence, in the face of
mass looting, on sole hegemony in supervising the humanitarian aftermath
of war, refusing to allow non-governmental aid organisations to operate
except under direct authority of the occupying force.
While the US demanded such
a role, says Snoeck - a logistics co-ordinator for the Paris-based group
that invariably spearheads relief efforts worldwide - they were also
thoroughly unprepared for the needs of the people. Their idea was that
Iraq would be 'liberated - problem solved'.
'Now,' says Snoeck, 'they
are saying they cannot manage, and the Americans have reversed their
position, asking the NGOs, "Please come and help," having
ignored what we have been saying ever since before the war.'
The US is 'in breach of its
obligations under the Geneva Convention,' says Alex Renton, spokesman
in Iraq for Oxfam, in failing to prevent the looting, particularly of
medical supplies.
'The question of security
is fundamental,' says Renton, 'as is the problem of looting. We did
actually manage to repair the water system in Nasiriyah, only to see
it looted a couple of days later.'
'The Americans say now they
could not have foreseen the problem of looting medical supplies,' says
MSF's medical co-ordinator, An Willems. 'But we had been telling them
about this risk since just after the war.'
On the ground, the needs
are plain to see in such places as the paediatric ward of the Khadessia
Hospital in Thawra City, a teeming shanty of four million - all of them
Shia - on the edge of Baghdad.
This is one of many hospitals
into which the clerical authorities have moved, to provide security
and medicine, and to become the only force of social cohesion by default
of any alternative.
Here, Dr Hamas Assad Walid
does his rounds through a thicket of beds filled with waifs suffering
from diseases invariably associated with water contamination and the
accumulation of stinking garbage, through which children pick for anything
they can sell.
'We have been seeing some
1,000 patients a day,' says Walid, 'and taking in about 60 to 70 - turning
away hundreds of children a day.' The hospital is full, with the first
children now dying from chronic dehydration and gastroenteritis, and
the first cases of jaundice and suspected cholera.
Her eyes yellowed, Hawra
Abdullah came in seven days ago. Now she stares into oblivion and is
unable to hear or speak. 'She was always a quiet girl,' says her mother,
Kader, trying to smile, 'but not like this.'
One of the hospital's problems,
say the doctors snatching a quick lunch in their shabby common room,
was the American-backed reinstatement of Dr Ali Sultan, their old director
under Saddam. Sultan was one of a layer of Saddam-era managers put in
place by the man appointed by the Americans as Health Minister, Dr Ali
Shnan Janabi, despite his record at the apex of the old regime. Doctors
across Iraq rebelled against the Americans' first Ministerial appointment
and Janabi resigned after 36 hours.
The removal of the neo-Baathist
tier has started in Baghdad, with doctors demanding the election of
new managers but, in the countryside, the supposed de-Baathification
has created just the opposite result.
In towns such as Hilla, there
have been demonstrations against reinstatement by the Americans of Saddam's
old guard: in the town hall, hospitals and even the Red Crescent. These
cronies are the only citizens in town blindly loyal to the American
occupier.
Meanwhile, US tanks grind
through the streets of Hilla, and the children still wave cheerily.
The tank commanders duly wave back, but do not understand what is being
shouted at them from behind those mischievous, smiling young faces:
'My father is with your sister!' Or: 'While you are in Iraq, your wife
is becoming a rich woman in bed!'