- BAGHDAD (Reuters) - To fly
to Baghdad now takes only an hour and 15 minutes from Amman to Saddam International
Airport. Yet the short journey takes you into a country totally dislocated
from the world.
-
- Abroad, one feels a U.S.-led war to overthrow Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein for allegedly acquiring doomsday weapons is about to flare
up. Once in Iraq, the scene that meets the visitor seems quite different.
-
- As a general rule, Iraqis are proud people who don't
like to flaunt their misery. Their turbulent history, including two recent
wars, has also taught them resilience and fatalism.
-
- Just before boarding the plane to Baghdad, one gets the
sense of going to a country under siege. Travelers are loaded with packages
of goods and anything they can carry with them.
-
- Journalists are loaded down with equipment and medical
kits, including everything from painkillers through antibiotics to gastro-intestinal
remedies -- all very scarce after 12 years of United Nations sanctions.
-
- The scene upon arrival in Baghdad shows that the most
obvious damage from the Gulf War in 1991 has been erased.
-
- Bridges, roads and government buildings destroyed by
allied bombings during the war and by U.S.-British air strikes in 1998
have been rebuilt. Streets are bustling with cars and shoppers. Stores
are stocked up with food.
-
- Even old public buses have been replaced with new ones.
-
- Baghdad's streets are brightly lit at night and the palm
trees dotting the large and newly asphalted highways make one forget the
drums of war beating in Washington.
-
- The city appears to be functioning. Yet its people look
exhausted from years of isolation and deprivation.
-
- Once the industrial hub and cultural heartland of the
Arab world, Iraq was forced back into an almost pre-industrial age after
the Gulf war. A nation with the world's second-largest oil reserves has
seen its per capita income plunge from $3,900 per year in 1980 to a low
that nowadays goes unrecorded.
-
- "WE DO NOT FEAR DEATH"
-
- Most people interviewed by Reuters seemed indifferent
to prospects of war. Many say they learned long ago to rely on their creator
to help them cope with the hardships they have endured since the Gulf War.
-
- "We are believers in God and we do not fear death,"
said Akram Naji, who runs a pharmacy with obviously depleted stocks.
-
- There is virtually no sign of any hoarding or stockpiling
of goods. In a country hit by poverty and a stringent embargo, not many
people can afford to buy their daily meal anyway.
-
- "Stock up on what? And with what money?" lamented
Arouba.
-
- The Iraqi government has, however, begun supplying Iraqis
with food rations for two months in advance under the U.N. oil-for-food
program, introduced in 1996 to ease the burden on ordinary Iraqis.
-
- It is true that, according to U.N. statistics, there
is more medicine available and more food in people's stomachs because of
an easing of import restrictions and an increase in the U.N. food program
ration, which provides an average of 2,235 kilocalories per person per
day compared to 1,275 before 1996.
-
- But the United Nations is sounding the alarm now.
-
- It says a growing revenue shortfall as a result of substantial
reduction in Iraqi oil exports and a disagreement over pricing with the
Security Council sanctions committee has left 1,441 approved humanitarian
contracts without funds.
-
- Ali Hamati, the U.N. information officer in Baghdad,
said Iraq would need to export about $7 billion worth of oil during the
current phase in order to meet its humanitarian program budget of over
$5 billion -- something analysts see as unlikely.
-
- Meanwhile Iraqis dismiss the threats of war by President
Bush as "deja vu," recalling the eight-year war with Iran and
the 1991 Gulf War that drove Iraq from Kuwait.
-
- "We're living our life normally. This is not the
first time that America wages war on us. Their planes, missiles and bombs
don't frighten us," said Wafa, a mother of two, as she bought food
in a Baghdad market.
-
- "WE'RE USED TO WAR"
-
- "We've got used to wars. We've been living in a
state of war for the past 22 years. America's rattle means nothing to us.
We will continue to fight anyone who attacks us," said Abbas, a soldier,
in his 40s.
-
- Washington's insistence that its Iraq policy is partially
aimed at liberating the people of Saddam Hussein is not reciprocated by
Iraqis.
-
- "May God enlighten him (Bush). He has no business
with us. Why does he want to hit us? What does he want from us?" said
an elderly woman in the market. "Obviously he has greedy ambitions
in Iraq because our soil has gold (oil)."
-
- Fadel Obeidei, a retired banker, said: "All Iraqis
hate Bush because he and his father are behind the embargo. He is responsible
for all those who died under sanctions.
-
- "Bush is bringing his fleet, warplanes, tanks and
warships to attack us. Why? Have we attacked Americans?"
-
- Many Iraqis voiced deep hatred for the United States,
which they accuse of driving them into penury and humiliating them.
-
- And they express resentment against the United States
for using its firepower to impose its will on other countries.
-
- "If American ground troops enter Iraq, we swear
by God that we will not leave one of them alive. If they're courageous,
let them fight us face-to-face, soldier-to-soldier, and not just bomb us
from the sky with their planes and missiles. But they are cowards,"
said Tahseen Rishan, 50, a civil servant.
-
- Many Iraqis, mostly followers of moderate Islam, look
to God to redress their grievances.
-
- "I don't think we have any choice but to rely on
God. We believe that whoever does evil receives evil...On September 11
America paid for the evil it inflicted on Iraq," one taxi driver said.
-
- Copyright 2002 Reuters News Service. All rights reserved.
|