Iraq: postcards from the edge

When Iraqis talk about 'security' they are less likely to mention the explosions in Baghdad that make headlines in the international media than the lawlessness that has been endemic since last year.

They might mention, for instance, the case of Mustapha Samarai, a champion boxer who was kidnapped by five armed men near his Baghdad home, imprisoned for three days and released only when his friend organized a $5,000 ransom.

'They wanted 80 million dinars ($53,000),' he said. 'The $5,000 was less than many other people have paid, and while I was held blindfolded I heard the thieves discussing plans to seize a doctor who would pay much more. I am a strong man, but now I feel weak and am thinking of leaving the country. Whenever we Iraqis make progress, something goes wrong.'

'Since the regime fell I have started wearing a hijab,' said a woman in Baghdad. 'Since the regime change you feel more pressure when you're out on the street - I was robbed when walking with my child - and so you do anything you can that will make you feel more comfortable.'

Iraqis, like people everywhere, can hold contradictory views. A traffic policemen in Kirkuk nodded as his brother praised those who fought US forces in Falluja, and then added that if the Americans left he would leave his job as there would be 'civil war on the streets' and his mother and sister would be unable to visit the market.

As the country emerged from the blanket control of the Ba'athist era, the proliferation of satellite television and newspapers has produced information overload - but little overall perspective. Baghdad in particular is rife with rumor, with every day producing new accounts of explosions that are kept quiet through conspiracies.

'The Iranians have brought 2 million Shi'ites into Iraq in order to win early elections,' said a Sunni Arab and former army officer. 'This is why the Americans did not secure the borders.'

The June day Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawir was appointed president, Iraqis on the streets of Baghdad reacted with a mixture of indifference and hope. 'It's good to have someone from the Shamar tribe,' said one Sunni Arab. 'They are honorable people, although I don't know him personally. He must concentrate on improving the security situation, and he must take care to project himself with vigor.'

'It's got nothing to do with us,' said Ali Obeidi, 22, who was shopping in central Baghdad. 'We preferred Saddam Hussein, when the security was much better. You need an army of 3 million to keep the peace in Iraq.'

'When I went to the mosque, the sheikh said this new president is another Sunni and would be against the Shi'ites,' said a shopkeeper with a Shi'ite father and Sunni mother. 'What is really important is that he loves Iraq and is honest. But how can we know? It's very confusing.'

Iraqis are now starting to discuss the merits, and flaws, of their newly emerging political class. Taxi drivers and shopkeepers will offer opinions to customers much as they might in countries that take freedom of speech for granted. Since such talk, until a year ago, could land anyone in prison - or worse - this is a hesitant process.

Many people still clam up when questioned by a foreign journalist - or start repeating platitudes, sometimes praising Saddam, in the 'official' monotone of the Ba'athist era.
Clans and cousins. Inevitably, many have retreated into family or clan. 'It's okay in our quarter because everyone is of the Hadidi clan and we are all cousins,' said Falah Hassan Ahmed, a 24-year-old Arab in Kirkuk who spent five years in prison for 'insulting the president.'

There are many commentators, often outside Iraq, who want to tell the world 'what Iraqis think' (usually to support their own views). Both the Coalition Provisional Authority and external intelligence agencies have commissioned opinion polling from newly established companies. Sometimes the findings - like Moqtada al-Sadr being the second-most popular political figure in the country - have briefly made the news before the agenda moved on to weightier matters or the latest explosion.

The most obvious and perhaps the most worrying development in Iraqi public opinion has been the divergence over the past year between the Kurds, who make up 20-25 percent of the population of 25 million, and the majority Arabs, who account for around 70-75 percent. Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, acknowledged in an interview with me in June that what more and more Arabs saw as the US 'occupation' still appeared to Kurds as 'liberation.'

'The Kurds want to please the Americans,' said Abdel-Haq Ismail, an Arab in Kirkuk. 'The way we look at the Kurds changed because the peshmerga [the Kurdish military forces] fought with the Americans in Falluja.' Kurdish leaders deny that peshmerga were in Falluja, and no convincing evidence that they were has been produced. But the charge is widely believed by Arabs.
For many Iraqi Arabs, Falluja restored a sense of honor. 'If the Iraqi army had fought like this, the Americans could not have occupied us,' said one.

For the Kurds of Falluja, the fighting was a disaster. Families who had gone to the town, located west of Baghdad, in the early 1990s in search of work, were either driven out or fled violence as 'resistance' fighters opened fire on the Americans from Golan, the Kurdish quarter.
'Most of my customers were Arabs,' said Sirwan Rahim, a 19-year-old Kurdish barber who lived in Falluja for 13 years and speaks better Arabic than Kurdish.

'Most Arabs in Falluja liked Kurds, and I think it was Syrian fighters who decapitated the Americans. But when the United States attacked the town in response, they made a big mistake, and things changed. The young Arabs really started harassing us.'

Rahim said that much of what was reported on television about Falluja was wrong. 'What surprised me most,' he said, 'was them saying that Falluja was very religious. I had to laugh. The other thing wrong in the reports was that Falluja was a Ba'athist town - it wasn't. In fact, many of the Arabs used to openly criticize Saddam in front of me.'

The flight of Kurds from Falluja is one part of a slow but growing physical separation between Kurds and Arabs. The roads between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq are less busy than under the former regime, partly because of attacks on commuter taxis by unidentified gunmen.

'We can't go to Baghdad anymore, it's too dangerous and we face insults from the [new, US-trained] Iraqi police,' said Ghazi Maqdad, a Kurdish truck driver. 'I am sure the Kurds living in Baghdad are keeping a low profile.'

In the balmy days last summer after Saddam's fall, many Arabs went north to mountain resorts like Shaqlawa and Salahuddin in the Kurdish north. Suleimaniya became a favored spot for a weekend away. But, this summer, the flow is negligible.

Arab satellite television coverage of Iraq is compounding the divergence. 'We get our news from Al Jazeera,' said Bassam Behnan, an Arab in Kirkuk who praised Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi'ite cleric, as 'a good man who loves Iraq.' The Kurdish view is very different.

'Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya report only those Arabs who are hostile to the Kurds,' said Sarhang Salar Hama-Sa'eed, an NGO manager in Suleimaniya. 'These stations are always showing Sadr attacking the Kurds and calling the groups who plant bombs 'resistance.' We can't understand why the Arabs don't celebrate their freedom, as we did after 1991.'

'We are poor people in a rich land,' said Abdul-Ghafar Abed Ali, a Shi'ite Arab and neighbor. 'The Kurdish leaders incite people by talking about 'those from the south' who were brought to Kirkuk to replace the Kurds who were expelled. Well, the Arabs came just because they wanted somewhere to live, not out of hostility to Kurdish people. Maybe I will soon have to leave, but even if I can sell my apartment, I need 40 times as much to buy an apartment in Baghdad.'

Despite all the problems, though, Iraqis are managing to get on with their lives. The streets of Baghdad are busy and the local police struggling to direct the growing traffic. 'Higher wages and some reorganization have improved morale, and people are slowly getting their pride back,' said an official in the ministry of water.

The Industrial Union Investment Bank is one of a new breed of private banks offering loans to buy cars or houses. 'The country has no financial policy because we have had no government in Iraq,' said Abdul-Jaber Al-Rubaie, the managing director.

'As a bank, we need more capital and so we have to encourage people to keep money with us, but this is hard because of all the looting last year. The important thing is to improve security. Once this is done, then everything else can fall into place.'