Iraq: With the arrival of Iraq's new ruler in Baghdad, there were signs that improved healthcare, restored utilities and some democracy may follow. Lara Marlowe reports
Gen Jay Garner's first public appearance in the capital somewhat resembled those of the ancien régime : unannounced, furtive and well guarded.
Until yesterday the US had not done a lot for Yarmook Hospital, which found itself close to the front line in the battle for Baghdad Airport.
A US tank bombardment on April 7th destroyed the third floor of the medical wing. Soon after, Dr Waleed al-Heeti, chief of the Department of Medicine, recalled, the victorious US forces entered the courtyard to knock down the statue of Saddam Hussein, along with a hoarding inscribed with the dictator's wisdom on health and medicine. "The Americans came here specially to destroy the statue. They drove a tank in and out, just for that purpose," Dr al-Heeti said.
Unfortunately, the tank did not stay, and the hospital was so thoroughly pillaged that today it is functioning at only 25 per cent of capacity.
Although Gen Garner spent an hour-and-a-half in Yarmook Hospital yesterday, his only promise was to hold a meeting between hospital staff and civil administrators a week from now. The US official and the Iraqi doctors he met gave glaringly different accounts of the encounter.
"I visited the hospital and met the chief doctor and his team," Gen Garner said. "These people are perfectly able to cope with things themselves. All they need is equipment to work."
Gen Garner did not comment on the large holes in the hospital lawns, from which 25 bodies were exhumed on Monday for reburial in cemeteries. Their clothing, burned by hospital staff, still lay on the grave sites.
"They were buried by the doctors," Dr al-Heeti said. "All the staff had run away." All were civilians killed when US forces fired on cars in south-west Baghdad, as troops moved towards the airport. In all, more than 700 people died at Yarmook Hospital during the three-week war.
Now the concern of hospital staff has focused on one banal but crucial question. "There's no money," Dr al-Heeti said. "All these people want their salaries," he continued, indicating the dozens of doctors, nurses and ambulance-drivers who had just watched Gen Garner's departure.
"The money was stolen from the safe, and the banks are not open. We need $50,000 to meet our payroll."
But Gen Garner offered no financial commitment. Instead he told doctors: "You are an old country with an old civilisation and you will build your country, not us. We want to help you with reconstruction."
Dr al-Heeti, who studied medicine in Manchester, saw the irony of the situation: the US destroyed his hospital and his country, and now a retired US general was telling Iraqis to roll up their shirt-sleeves and get to work. "The most important thing is to rebuild our hospital. There will be plenty of time to blame each other later," he said.
Since the war, Yarmook Hospital has undergone its own little experiment in democracy. The former hospital director, a Baathist official, fled. So doctors held an election and named Dr Abdel Karim Zeid their new leader. CARE and the International Committee of the Red Cross provided electrical generators.
To keep the powerful Shia Muslim howzah (religious schools) happy, the sheikhs are also given a say in running the hospital. As I left, a US soldier tossed Meals Ready to Eat pouches to his buddies on the hospital roof. A Shia sheikh, in robes and turban, nearly collided with the soldier. "The howzah are helping us, and the Americans are guarding us. We aren't political; we take help from wherever it comes," Dr al-Heeti explained.
At the South Baghdad Power Plant, Gen Garner promised electricity would be restored to much of the capital by last night. When the same promise failed to materialise last week, the disappointment was bitter, and Baghdadis accused the Americans of lying.
At the nearby Daura power plant, workers hoped a 10-megawatt gas turbine at the South Baghdad Power Plant would enable them to resume production within 12 hours, too. All had abandoned the plant for 10 days, but answered US appeals to return to work.
One of many rumours circulating said US forces were paying electricity company workers $10 per day to repair the plants. With money in short supply, the story went, technicians were prolonging the process so they could continue collecting the daily stipend.
Not true, Felah Hussein and Ahmed Abbas, technicians at the Daura plant told me. "We are working to bring electricity to people. We have no idea when we will be paid," they said.
US army engineers had visited the plant - one of three in Baghdad - only once, a week ago. "The reason there is no power," Mr Hussein said, "is that the Americans didn't tell us what to do.
"There are more than 300 workers coming here every day, and there is no one telling us what to do. The boss is organising us, but he doesn't have any orders either."
Across Baghdad, public-sector employees have begun trickling back to work, but in the ministries and offices not sacked by looters and arsonists these devoted civil servants encounter the same problems: no salary, no organisation, no instructions. "The US could have handled this so much more deftly," suggested an Iraqi businessman. "If they had announced they wanted only the 55 [people on the most-wanted list], if they'd protected the ministries and kept everything intact, the place could have functioned."
So far, the US has caught seven of the 55, most of them "small fry". Abdel Khalek Abdel Ghafour, a former minister of education and scientific research, and Jamal Mustafa Abdallah, one of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law, reportedly joined the five already in custody yesterday. And Mr Abdallah's capture was only claimed by Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, but not confirmed by US forces. Later, the INC claimed the Free Iraqi Forces had captured former deputy prime minister Mohammad Hamza al-Zubaidi, number 18 of the 55, and had turned him over to US troops.
Mr Chalabi yesterday claimed Saddam Hussein was still in Iraq and moving from one hiding place to another. He said Saddam's younger son Qusay was sighted in the Baghdad neighbourhood of A'adhamiya on Saturday.
As if rebuilding Iraq and tracking down the ancien régime were not enough to keep him busy, Gen Garner must fight off over-eager would-be members of the new regime. A few days ago an unknown man called Mohamed Mohsen al-Zubaidi declared himself Governor of Baghdad. A US soldier guarding the looted municipality building yesterday told me Mr al-Zubaidi and city employees would be moving in this morning. Mr al-Zubaidi had already hung a sign saying "Executive Council to Rebuild Baghdad" at the al-Awiya Club, opposite the Palestine Hotel, which is under the "protection" of US forces. His "deputy", Jawdat al-Obeidi, announced he would represent Iraq at the next OPEC meeting in Vienna.
Then Barbara Bodine, co-ordinator for Central Iraq who had arrived with Gen Garner, put an end to Mr al-Zubaidi's ambitions. "We don't really know much about him, except that he declared himself mayor," she said. "We don't recognise him."