Iraq: a View from the Streets

This personal memoir from a seasoned journalist in the Iraqi capital addresses how tensions are building between the locals and US forces

By Magnus Macedo in Baghdad: 8 May 2003

With summer approaching the daytime temperature in Baghdad rises nearly every day. So too do the tempers of the Iraqi people.

The recent events in Fallujah, a town thirty miles west of Baghdad on the banks of the Euphrates, did not help. In a confrontation between an Iraqi crowd and US soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, at least 13 locals were killed and 100 were wounded. It turned public opinion, at least in part, against the Americans.

Of course, the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein killed perhaps 75,000 political opponents in the last five years alone. But today, even with the new freedom of speech they enjoy following the US-led invasion, the Iraqi people still face many hardships. A few days ago I spoke to Dr. Ghasan Kamal, a physician who practices at the local hospital in Fallujah. Dr. Kamal was at the demonstration outside the former Ba'ath party headquarters, which had been occupied by US troops. He said that the Americans just fired into the crowd without being fired on first. The Americans say the fire came first from the crowd. No one seems to know for sure. But this kind of occupation is unwanted.

"When are the US troops going to leave?" asks Dr. Kamal. "When are they going to give my country back? We don't have enough medicine to treat our patients, we don't have clean water. Our children still cannot go to school. Yes we are happy Saddam is gone, but still, we're not better off than before." Others, more radical than him, say they may fight the Americans if the occupation goes on much longer.

Dr. Kamal's feelings are not uncommon. In a middle-class neighborhood in Baghdad I met a woman buying a bicycle for her child. I asked her if she was happy the war was over. "The war is not over," she replied. "We have no government, no security, we're still living in fear."

On the other side of town, in a poor Shi'ite district where Saddam brutally oppressed people for so many years, things are not that different. Arriving to film the neighborhood, we are quickly encircled by many angry people desperately wanting to make their case heard. A local man comes to us and shouts in Arabic: "we need electricity, water, food, jobs, security. What have the Americans done? They're pumping the oil to Israel and the Iraqis are still hungry." That is what many people believe here these days.

You can see why. In a mile-long queue at a petrol station tempers are rising again. The station manager says that thugs with knives and guns threaten him if he won't let them fill their jerry cans. The price of petrol here has soared - from a previous official price of just 20 dinars per liter under the old regime to 500 today.

A teacher in the same Shi'ite neighborhood tells us he wants to teach again with modern textbooks. No more Saddam books, he says. A new age of education but when will it begin? When will there be a new government? We don't know what to tell them.

Chaos is everywhere. At another petrol station the staff celebrated the return of electric power by firing shots in the air. But one of the bullets fell into a petrol tank causing a massive explosion killing four people and seriously injuring 10 others. The horrific scene soon drew hundreds of angry people shouting at us journalists and the soldiers who came to re-establish order. The sound of the anti-American chants was overwhelming. People already blame the Americans for the lack of security, even in an incident like this.

Tempers are rising by the day. Businesses still cannot run properly, shopkeepers are afraid of looters and thieves. I saw a shopkeeper's wife boiling water to wash her baby's milk bottles. She tells me there is no chlorine in the water anymore and it's not safe. She says she'd like Saddam to come back if he's still alive. Why? "Because I would feel safer then," she says. That's how bad things are.

You can understand her feelings. Today, Iraq is home to some 66 emerging political parties. There is no government, no security, and the cities are occupied by foreign troops who seem to have no clear agenda for the future.

It's a bizarre setting. Our hotel is protected by eight US tanks as the demonstrators grow angrier every day. Many here are happy they've got rid of their dictator, but impatience is running high.

One day we visited Baghdad's Rajeed theatre. It's the first time since the war began that a play has been performed there. The play is called "They Passed by Here". It tells the story of a dictator, a deserter, an angry mother, a surrealist sculptor and an abstract painter. The stage was lighted in a moody way with whatever was left after the heavy bombing. The theatre used to belong to Uday, Saddam's son. One actor told me that it was his life's dream to perform there. Now he does so but the place lies in ruins. Yet another cruel irony.

The Najeen group, the actors putting on the play, read a prepared announcement. They said: "we survived the war, but the war is not over. Only one phase of it is over, and what is left is much larger. The remote-controlled bombing war is over. What has now started is the other side of the war - the spiritual war of love against hatred, of tenderness against cruelty. Our war began when we survived their war, and we found ourselves face to face with each other. Are we really liberated? What is liberty? We are the survivors of a fake truth."

After the play, the actors celebrated with the audience on the stage with both laughter and tears. The director of the play says to me: "they destroyed our buildings, our schools and our whole infrastructure, but that doesn't matter. What really matters is that they destroyed our souls, the soul of the Iraqi people. And that's why we are here today, to start to reconstruct it."