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Drunken_Ninja

Drunken_Ninja

Turbo Monkey
Aug 25, 2002
1,094
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Hangin' with Riggs and Mertah
Iraqis resigned to threat of war `There's nothing left to do but carry on'BAGHDAD—It is a jagged paradox, when war appears inevitable and its recipients oblivious, but such are the streets of the Iraqi capital today.

The end of a ruthless 35-year kleptocracy may be but a heartbeat away, soon to be displaced by foreign foot soldiers. The U.S. may be poised to invade, with global repercussions no one can yet confidently predict.

But here in Baghdad, ground zero for the coming bombardment of precision-guided grief, a semblance of calm prevails that is nothing if not surreal.

For a people whose fate now dangles on a final tattered strand of diplomacy, the nearly 6 million souls of this ancient city have assumed a state of blind fatalism.

As hot spring winds blew in the first dusty hint of summer, Baghdadis yesterday went about the Muslim day of prayer betraying barely a single sign that calamity could be imminent.

Families picnicked in the parks, uniformed soccer teams dashed in the pitches, the thrum and bustle of the city's battered but persistent economy sallied forth as ever it does. Most shops were open, even those selling big-ticket appliances — washing machines and the like. But such purchases are rare on the eve of a big-ticket war.

Just outside the hotel balcony from where these words were written last night, a cacophony of car horns converged on the street below: a spontaneous protest of some kind?

No, a wedding party, one more joyous than most, replete with a marching band that burst from a shiny Mercedes — one bugler, two drummers — to lead the bridal couple and families into the lobby for a waiting feast.

In the old city of Baghdad yesterday, hawkers hawked and beggars begged amid the usual cluster of traditional activity. Friday here is famous for its book market, where sanctions-stymied intellectuals gather to exchange titles.

The sheer heft of more than 600 media types on the ground has outweighed the Iraqi government's ability to shadow journalists with individual "guides," thus enabling the occasional Iraqi to whisper honestly into Western ears.

Yesterday, seeing no minder in sight, a Christian bookseller leaned in close and spoke these startling words: "Every night, I pray at my church for an end to this regime. We know the day is near and many of us welcome it.

"Saddam Hussein may tell the world Iraq is unified, but it is not — Sunni, Shi'a, Christian and Kurd — we are divided in our misery."

Asked about the apparent normalcy of the city, the bookseller, a British-educated Iraqi who says he was "cleansed" from his job as a government clerk along with the rest of the Christians in his department, shrugged.

"What do you expect? We have suffered a kind of incremental despair for so many years, from both the sanctions and our own government that there is nothing left to do but carry on.

"We have been bombed before. Deep down, we are braced for the worst. But still we must live our lives."

Overt signs of preparation are rare, save for the occasional mound of military sandbags and slightly more police muscle on the streets. A window here and there can be seen crossed with tape to prevent the glass from shattering inward.

Donkey carts laden with battered canisters crisscross the city, selling stove gas for the equivalent of $9 a pop. A month ago, each cost 13,000 Iraqi dinars, now, nearly 15,000. "I have eight cans of cooking gas buried in my yard and a well five metres deep," said one elderly Iraqi man yesterday. "We will boil the water, we will eat rice. We will stay indoors and suffer this war. What choice do we have?"

A far greater degree of anxiety is apparent among increasingly dour Iraqi government officials, among whom the heavily bureaucratic chores now seem akin to shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic.

Embassies already shaved to essential staff are now closing outright. The Japanese left yesterday. The single largest contingent of foreign workers, an estimated 400 international staff based at the United Nations compound known as Canal Hotel, is also on a hair-trigger.

"We've been ordered to pack 15 kilos of personal belongings and be ready to go," said Véronique Taveau, spokesperson for the U.N.'s humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, which oversees the oil-for-food program.

"Right now we are waiting and praying for a miracle. But if the order comes to evacuate, it could be done in a matter of hours."

Perhaps the clearest signal that war is all but inevitable is the dissolute state of the Human Shield movement, which appears to be falling apart. Faced with widespread ridicule from the right-wing press and growing tensions with Iraqi government apparatchiks over the sites they seek to occupy, the ad-hoc collection of international protesters hemorrhaged numbers throughout the week. The crisis culminated Thursday night when the Iraqi government ordered the expulsion of five Shields, including ex-U.S. Marine Ted O'Keefe, who conceived the scheme.

Yesterday, more than a dozen haggard Human Shields flopped on couches in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, each agonizing over whether to continue the sit-in.

Walter Schauer, 61, of Vienna said he will leave for Jordan as soon as possible.

"I still consider it one of the best decisions I ever made. I did what little I could to stop this war, but now it is coming anyway. I know I am old, but I feel I have a few years left. I'm not prepared to stand in the middle of an Iraqi civil war, which is what I fear will come next."

Schauer said the Iraqi decision to try to aggressively control the anti-war protesters speaks to the authorities' fear that their brand of insurrection will spread to the general population. "We are seen as dangerous here because we are showing Iraqis a kind of open protest that hasn't been seen in a very long time, if ever," said Schauer. "That's why they want us out."

John Richardson, 56, of Coventry, England, vowed to remain for the duration at his post inside the sprawling al-Dora oil refinery near the city's southern edge. "We are down to a core group now who can't stomach the idea of going home and watching this play out as another Hollywood/CNN extravaganza," he said. The anxiety of the moment has given life to a rash of runaway rumours among the burgeoning press corps here, where the whispers range from the expectation of imminent expulsion by a nervous Iraqi regime to the likelihood of a similar fate once U.S. troops arrive in Baghdad.

With an estimated 500 reporters "embedded" amongst coalition forces, there is a growing sense the Bush administration may prefer this story to be told by those riding shotgun under the tight supervision of the troops, rather than the fractious and free-ranging bunch in Baghdad. The Pentagon has already served warning to journalists in-country that its target list may include Rumour Central — the fabled journalist hangout at the al-Rasheed Hotel.

The rumours, as various as they are nefarious, extend to the possibility of a chemical and/or biological stockpile in the hotel basement, to the probability that, like it or not, all reporters will be rounded up and confined to the premises.

In the middle of this tense scene Wednesday night strode a particularly curious sight: a pair of Canadian oil firefighters sporting uniforms bearing the logo Alert Disaster Services. These Calgary men were called in from their bases in Dubai and Doha, respectively, to sort out a problem with an Iraqi well.

Flanked by Iraqi government escorts, the men were reluctant to say much as they checked in. But one of them, Wayne Stennis, chimed in to say, "we've been in weirder places than this.

"Well, maybe not weirder than this," he added. "We were in Uzbekistan last month. But I suppose this is different."

No less tense are Iraqi government officials, many of whom are adopting a tone of exhausted, sometimes bitter resignation when addressing what is to come. "We will lose this fight," a senior Information Ministry official observed dryly. "But America will lose as well."
 
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