Letter
from Baghdad:
The Progress of Disaster
By
Christian Parenti
In
These Times
09 September, 2003
The
air in Baghdad is potent stuff. Plastic-rich garbage heaps burn in empty
lots. Massive diesel generators run round the clock. More than a million
vehiclesold cars, trucks and fuel-guzzling U.S. tankscreep
through the streets belching fumes. On the horizon, beyond the looted
and bombed out office blocks, looming above the low-rise residential
sprawl, is a giant smokestack; its massive black plume hangs over the
city constantly. Add to this haze the soot of building fires, the stench
of sewage, and the ubiquitous dust from countless rubble heaps; then
cap and seal the mixture with the 115-degree hostility of a desert sun.
But forget the poisonous
air. The really pressing issue in Baghdad is escalating chaos. The 6
million people living here want electricity, water, telecommunications,
and security. As of yet they have none of these in sufficient supply.
On the ground it seems that this American adventure is spinning out
of control. Most Iraqis want peace, but a terrorist war of resistance
requires only a small and determined minority.
Here the criminal
is king. Saddam emptied the prisons and the United States disbanded
the police, while 60 percent of people are unemployed. As a result,
carjacking, robbery, looting, and murder are rife. Marauding men in
misery gangs kidnap and rape women and girls at will. Some
of these victims are dumped back on the streets only to be executed
by their disgraced male relatives in what are called honor
killings.
Many women and girls
stay locked inside their homes for weeks at a time. And increasingly
those who do venture out wear veils, as the misogynist threats and ravings
of the more fundamentalist Shia and Sunni clerics have warned that women
who do not wear the hijab should not be protected.
According to the
city morgue, there were 470 fatal shootings in July, up from 10 the
year before. Not surprisingly, most people in Baghdad are armed and
edgy. Under such conditions community solidarity takes on strange forms.
Irish peace activist Michael Birmingham, who works with Voices in the
Wilderness, witnessed the new vigilantism first hand.
Three carjackers
took a vehicle in midday. In response, the crowd on the streets started
throwing stones while shopkeepers started firing AK-47s. Before long
the crowd had dragged one of the carjackers out onto the street and
started beating him. They were jumping on his head and his chest.
I dont think he made it, explains Birmingham in a deadpan
Dublin brogue.
As for the American
troopswhom Iraqis call the kuwat al-ihtilal, or forces of occupationthey
are stretched too thin to deal effectively with such crimes. And they
have little understanding of Iraqi culture or politics. They are adrift
in a sea of unintelligible Arabic, where even the street names are a
mystery. At crime scenes they can just as easily arrest the victims
as the perpetrators. Their small convoys are under constant assault.
Officially there
are, on average, 13 attacks on Coalition Forces in Baghdad every day.
Since May 1, when the war ended, more than 404 U.S. soldiers
have been permanently removed from action due to wounds, while more
that 60 have been killed in attacks.
I relay these numbers
to a grunt in the field, a young GI with the first armored division.
He has no clear picture of how the counter-insurgency war is going other
than that someone shot at the gate he is guarding a while back and missed.
But hes sure of one thing. Whatever they tell you is a lie.
It is bullshit. Theyre camouflaging.
--------------
Even journalists
are getting killed. A Reuters photographer, Mazen Dana, was recently
taken out by U.S. troops. Before that, a young British freelancer named
Richard Wild was murdered by an assassin who probably thought his victim
was a solider. Three GIs had died the same way: at close range, in the
neck, from behind, with a pistol.
May Ying Walsha
stellar American reporter who now works for Al Jazeerawas almost
killed, as she recounts with an air of blank serenity. I was interviewing
some soldiers and a grenade fell right in between us, like a ripe piece
of fruit. Everyone ran, but I just froze. The grenade rolled under a
Humvee and when it blew, somehow, the shrapnel missed me. I think I
was behind the tire or something. Her film crew and two GIs
were not so lucky; all of them were wounded, one of them very badly.
Baghdad also suffers
from the less dramatic structural violence of epidemic poverty. War,
sanctions, and Saddams greed have left a large destitute class
with no work, medicine, or schooling. Exploring the rubble of some government
ministry, two colleagues and I meet Ibrahim Kadum, who lost his foot
in the Iran-Iraq war, then he lost his home and now squats in these
ruins with his wife, nine children, and a shaggy and bleating ewe.
Kadum, who cant
work, says he lives off the meager wages of his children, some of whom
do odd jobs in a local market. Mostly he survives on World Food Program
donations of flour, legumes, oil, salt, sugar, and tea. These allotments
feed 27 million and are a direct continuation of the oil-for-food program
of Saddams era, which is scheduled to end in November. The scale
and form of any new system is as yet unclear. As we talk, a bleary-eyed
child approaches with a very realistic toy pistol and levels it at my
colleagues head.
At the Palestine
Hotel, now a huge fortified camp where highly paid TV journalists are
guarded by the razor wire and tanks of the U.S. Army, one can find yet
more forms of the wars violence and desperation.
A young woman, through
a translator, explains the details of her work. She sells herself to
American soldiers for $15 a session. Shes seventeen, wants to
go to college and leave Iraq.
Do you use
protection with the soldiers?
She blushes and
pauses. She says she takes the pills, explains our translator
Ahmed. Does she know about AIDS? No condoms? I ask. She
blushes even more deeply and answers directly in English. Sometimes.
In the center of
this sprawling war zone is a clean and air-conditioned oasis, the Coalition
Provisional Authority headquarters. Situated in one of Saddam Husseins
old palacesa huge complex of high-modernist trophy architecturethe
CPA is where L. Paul Bremer III and his army of freshly minted MBAs
brainstorm on vital topics like competitive bidding and privatization.
Somewhere else in this fortress sits the Coalitions handpicked
Interim Governing Council of Iraq.
Every afternoon
at 3:00, the CPAs spin-doctors address the press in a large auditorium.
In Vietnam style, we call these confabs the follies. The
ritual begins with a slew of statistics about the good progress
being made. But the numbers are often mumbled like a Latin mass, and
one begins to feel that the driving force here is faith, not reason
or planning.
In the last
24 hours, coalition forces have detained 149 individuals, conducted
over 1,000 patrols and 20 raids. The pale and pudgy Col. Shields
is presiding today. We have confiscated 110 diesel-smuggling tanker
trucks, and destroyed more than 20 IEDs [improvised explosive devices].
Coalition forces completed four civic action projects in the Basra area
and
On and on it goes until the colonel gets stuck on the
word adjudicated.
Several of
these cases will be
edjuda-rated, that is educated, I mean
Ask Shields how
many Iraqis have been killed by U.S. troops and, despite his reams of
stats, he doesnt know. How many women raped by gangs? No number.
How many U.S. soldiers committing suicide? Any troops busted for looting?
Cant say.
Then from the auditoriuma
loud snore followed by snickering laughter. The L.A. Times man, just
in from Jordan, has passed out cold. He didnt nap last night during
the dangerous 13-hour drive in and obviously the combination of Shield
nattering on and the wonderful air-conditioning have had a powerful
soporific effect.
--------------
Smoke is rising
from Karrada Street, an electronics district popular with U.S. troops.
An American humvee has just pulled up on the median and been blown to
pieces by a remote activated mine.
The sidewalks are
packed with refrigerators and air conditioning boxes. In the street
sit a military transport truck and another humvee, beyond that are remains
of the burning humvee. A few U.S. soldiers are crouched behind the truck.
There are two wounded
GIs on the ground and now a medivac helicopter circles just overhead.
But theres no way the chopper can land because of overhead wires.
An on and off firefight ensues for the next two hours until Bradley
Fighting Vehicles start pounding the targeted building with 25-millimeter
cannon shells. Whoever was inside has either left out the back or they
are now definitely dead.
Two Iraqi civilians
lie dead and one or two are wounded. A cigarette stand has been knocked
down, its packs of smokes strewn on the street. An Iraqi shopkeeper
leans on a wall and sobs as his store goes up in flames.
The GIs next to
us among the refrigerators seem neither scared nor brave, just weary
and numb. They are no longer driving the situation but rather riding
it. And from this vantage point, crouching among the smashed merchandise
and empty shell casings, one can feel the war taking on its own momentum.
Christian Parenti
is the author of The
Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the Patriot Act,
to be published in September by Basic Books.