IRAQ: The occupation of Iraq ended and a new government was sworn in yesterday but ordinary Iraqis still crave security, Lara Marlowe reports from Baghdad
As the June 30th deadline for the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government grew closer, the level of anxiety rose daily. Iraqis feared that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would mark the occasion with a car bombing or other attack on an unprecedented scale.
If for no other reason, many were relieved when the US administrator Mr Paul Bremer stole a march on the bombers, handing over power two days early in a secret ceremony.
Twelve hours before, only a half-dozen US officials were informed of the plan to bring forward the transfer of sovereignty.
The move was made at the request of Iraq's Prime Minister, Mr Iyad Allawi. Mr Allawi is Iraq's new "Mr Security", and he has staked his future on his ability to resuscitate the army and police force and protect civilians.
"The security of all Iraqis now lies in our hands," he said at the 10.30 a.m. hand-over.
Mr Bremer, his British deputy Mr David Richmond, Mr Allawi, Iraq's new president Mr Ghazi al-Yawar, Chief Justice Mr Mahmoud Medhat and the Kurdish deputy prime minister Mr Barham Salih were the only people to participate in the ceremony, which was held in a small room somewhere inside the sealed- off Green Zone which the Americans continue to occupy in the centre of Baghdad.
Mr Bremer read a letter in which he called the handover "a victory for all the forces of goodness in Iraq". The task of the Coalition Provisional Authority which he has headed for the past 14 months was over.
"We welcome Iraq's steps towards assuming its legitimate role with sovereignty and honour among the free nations of the world," he concluded, signing the letter, "Sincerely, L. Paul Bremer, ex-administrator of the CPA."
Mr Bremer handed the leather-bound document to Chief Justice Medhat, who passed it on to President Yawar. The baby-faced Sunni Muslim leader of the Shammar tribe, one of Iraq's largest, played his ceremonial role well.
For Arabs, the office of president is always paramount, and Iraqis are slow to understand that it is Mr Allawi, a Shia Muslim, who is meant to wield power.
Mr Bremer also gave Mr Allawi a letter from President Bush re-establishing diplomatic relations between Washington and Baghdad, broken since Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The US pro-consul then boarded a helicopter - his only way of travelling inside Iraq - to a waiting C130 transport plane at Baghdad airport. Less than 24 hours earlier, a US soldier was killed when gunmen fired on a C130 taking off from the same airport.
It was lunchtime before news of the secret transfer began filtering down to the streets of Baghdad. At the Sahar fast-food restaurant in the Mansour district, frequented mostly by students, no one watched the images of the ceremony broadcast by the Arab satellite television channel Al-Jazeera.
"I feel sad," said Marwa, (23). "The occupation makes it impossible for the situation to stabilise." Her husband Seif said the new president and prime minister were virtually unknown in Iraq, having spent two and three decades respectively abroad.
"I'm from the Shammar tribe," Seif said. "And I'd never heard of him." But wasn't it better for Iraqis to have more power, Americans less? Yes, Seif said. His wife disagreed. "The people in power are working for the Americans," she explained.
"I am very angry because Iraq is not free," said Ibrahim (35), a law student from the town of Abu Ghraib, near the prison where US soldiers have tortured Iraqis.
Those who praised Mr Yawar mentioned the size of his three million-strong tribe and thought the former businessman, who spent the last 20 years in the telecommunications industry in Saudi Arabia, was an honourable man. The burly Mr Allawi inspired a degree of confidence because of his reputation for toughness. Thirty years of dictatorship - and the debacle of the post-invasion period - have convinced many Iraqis that their country must be ruled by a strong man.
Mr Allawi makes no apologies for his long relationship with America's Central Intelligence Agency.
"We don't feel ashamed of having been in touch in order to overthrow Saddam and liberate Iraq," he told Cable News Network, the US satellite television station. One of his first measures will be a new "Defence of Public Safety Law" which will extend the powers of the Iraqi police and army, probably falling short of full martial law.
Though Iraqis crave security, they have reservations about giving too much power to men who served in Saddam's security forces only 15 months ago.
"If we want to fight terrorism and car bombing, we must enforce the rule of law, not establish martial law," said Judge Zuheir Maliky. "Arab countries have a very bad experience of martial law. The danger is that it gives too much power to the executive branch, and the taste of power is very sweet."
The new government was sworn in shortly after 3 p.m., in a ceremony only slightly more elaborate than the subdued transfer in the morning. The president and prime minister and their top deputies sat on a dais in front of a row of Iraqi flags, still imprinted with the words Allahu Akhbar (God is greatest) in the handwriting of Saddam Hussein. An attempt to change the flag last month led to rioting.
Again, secrecy surrounding the ceremony was so total that the BBC's correspondent in Baghdad admitted she didn't know where it was being held, even as it was broadcast.
In a monotone voice and at the speed of a machine-gun firing, Mr Allawi read his address to the nation. After what he called "temporary setbacks" Iraq will "rise up like mountains standing firm," he predicted.
He promised to find civilian jobs for any soldiers not re-incorporated into the army. (Mr Bremer is believed to have swollen the ranks of the insurgency by dissolving the army.)
Developing democracy in Iraq would be "a hard, complex task" that would take years, he predicted, promising to work for "stability, tranquillity and peace".
The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq is a Shia Muslim party with close ties to Iran. It holds the finance and youth ministries in the new cabinet of 33 ministers. Mr Redha Taki, the head of political relations, said he believes Mr Allawi can diminish violence in Iraq by two-thirds.
But Mr Allawi was in charge of security in the outgoing Governing Council since July 2003. If he is so talented, I asked, why didn't he succeed already?
"Because he didn't have full responsibility; the Americans kept control of security," Mr Taki said. "Iraqis don't want to deal with foreigners. An Iraqi policeman wants to take orders from Iraqis, not Americans."
At the London conference before the US-led invasion in March 2003, Mr Taki noted, he and other Iraqi politicians warned the Americans that they would not be able to administer the country after the war.
"We told them to prepare an interim government to take over immediately. When the regime fell, they should have said: 'This is your government instead of Saddam Hussein'. But they didn't listen.
"Now, after one year, they are going back to the first step. If they had set this government up more than a year ago, they wouldn't have lost all those troops."
The mood was very different at the Association of Islamic Scholars, the group of leading Sunni clerics who are suspected by the Americans of supporting the resistance.
After their weekly meeting at the Um al-Qura mosque - whose minarets were built by Saddam Hussein in the form of Scud missile launchers - a dozen ulemas filed out in white robes and turbans. They refused to speak to waiting journalists, but Mr Omar Rakib, a lower ranking sheikh in civilian clothes, distributed their latest communique. "The only thing that changes is that Bremer is being replaced by (the new US Ambassador John) Negroponte," Mr Rakib muttered.
The violence that has claimed more than 300 lives this month alone is "an excuse for the occupation to stay longer in Iraq," said the statement. "Iraqis understand that they are occupied and they know the dirty goals of occupation."
The religious leaders urged the interim government "to stand up to the occupiers if they want to win the trust of the Iraqi people".
Though they might not approve of the government, the association said they would not try to destabilise the situation because they wanted to avoid bloodshed.
Mr Allawi, like his US mentors, prefers to minimise the strong Iraqi element in the insurgency. In his address to the nation yesterday, he spoke only of "mercenaries who come from abroad" and called on Iraqis to "stand united to eradicate the foreign terrorists who are killing our children and destroying our country".
Mr Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the elusive extremist whom Mr Allawi no doubt had in mind, delivered his assessment of the "transfer of sovereignty" last week, in an audiotape posted on an Islamist website.
"The indirect occupation is the most effective weapon to be used against this nation," Zarqawi said. "The infidel foreigner who aims at stealing the nation, looting its riches and enslaving it, is replaced . . . with hypocrites who wear the same skin and have the same tongue of this nation."