- BAGHDAD (Sapa-AFP) -- Iraqis
show as little sign of heeding calls for mass resistance to the US-led
invaders as they do of rising up against the Baghdad regime.
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- Faced with more than two weeks of fearsome attacks by
US-British war planes throughout the country and repeated assaults on their
capital, most Iraqis seem to be waiting for the end of the showdown in
which their fates appear to lie in others' hands.
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- Such resignation is a mixture of traditional fatalism
and the bitter experience of a quarter century of iron-fisted rule which
has crushed individual liberties and channelled all wellsprings of enthusiasm
in a single direction - support for their all-powerful leader Saddam Hussein.
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- On Sunday the repeated calls by Saddam and his inner
circle for Iraqis to stage an uprising against the rapacious Western aggressors
resonates with privileged fighters, but largely falls on deaf ears in the
rest of the country.
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- Saddam on Saturday issued another rousing address, read
out on television on his behalf, calling on Iraqis to fight the invaders
wherever they encounter them.
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- "The enemy has concentrated all its forces against
Baghdad, which has weakened its power in other parts of Iraq," he
said.
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- "You must now weaken them further, deepen their
wounds and deprive them of what they have taken of your land, even though
it is negligible, in order to reduce their chances and accelerate their
defeat."
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- Death toll difficult to establish
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- Militias of the ruling Ba'ath party, Fedayeen paramilitary
units, elite Republican Guard forces and the army appear ready to continue
the fight, as seen in the southern city of Basra and on the outskirts of
Baghdad.
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- Many are willing to die for Saddam, as they showed in
the three-hour defence they put up Saturday against American tank units
in the Dora-Yarmuk area of the capital - a lost cause some US officials
described as an Iraqi suicide mission.
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- The death toll from this first coalition foray is difficult
to establish but US officials said it had claimed the lives of 2,000 or
more Iraqi fighters.
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- Local hospitals were struggling to deal with such a large
influx of incoming wounded and Iraqi authorities declared the area a prohibited
military zone.
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- Hearts-and-minds campaign
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- In interviews with Iraqi civilians, there is little palpable
sense of a readiness to take up arms to defend the nation or even to summon
a force to protect their neighbourhoods.
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- Despite the efforts by the Americans and British to shake
off an invaders' image in their hearts-and-minds campaign, their desire
to see an Iraqi rebellion against the regime has also been a disappointment.
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- Although they issued repeated calls for Shi'ite Muslims,
who represent a majority in Baghdad and the rest of Iraq, to not interfere
in the war, there was some hope that they would in fact lend their aid
to the coalition in the capital of five million people.
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- "Given Shi'ites are half the population ... you
probably have people ready to help out, you have to be patient," chair
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers said on Thursday.
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- Deeply suspicious of US promises
-
- But he quickly noted the complex realities of the Shi'ite
community in Iraq, which is deeply suspicious of US promises following
their abandonment by Washington after the 1991 Gulf war, and strong reluctance
to see American occupiers at some of their holiest sites.
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- The main Iraqi Shi'ite Muslim opposition group vowed
on Friday that followers in Baghdad would stay out of the conflict.
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- "They will try to remain on the sidelines to suffer
the least possible damage, until they are certain that the Iraqi regime's
repressive machine has been annihilated," an official from the Supreme
Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) told AFP.
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- "When this point is reached, they will start organising
themselves," Mohsen Hakim said.
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