Posted on 27-5-2003
Gun
Gangs Rule Iraq's Streets, U.S. Loses Control
The Observer, Sunday 25 May 2003,
Ed Vulliamy in Baghdad reports on aid agencies' struggle
to save Iraq from looters, disease and poverty
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!
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