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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."