'We will have to drive them out'

Three months before the US is due to hand over sovereignty in Iraq, anger and despair are gripping the country, reports Lara …

Three months before the US is due to hand over sovereignty in Iraq, anger and despair are gripping the country, reports Lara Marlowe from Baghdad

It wasn't supposed to be like this. The Bush administration expected Iraqis to love the US, not blow up its soldiers on patrol every day, not lob grenades at vehicles carrying construction contractors, then burn and dismember their bodies.

A year ago next Friday, US forces took over Baghdad, completing what President George W. Bush called "one of the most successful military campaigns in history". The celebrations that greeted Iraq's "liberators" were muted, but whatever ceremonies mark the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime will be even more subdued.

April 9th is a source of dread, not celebration, because Iraqis fear that "the resistance", al-Qaeda, or whatever demons have transformed Iraq into the world's most violent country will stage a large-scale attack to taunt the American occupiers.

READ MORE

The Shia Muslim majority, who have lost a leading Ayatollah and hundreds of believers in attacks on mosques, are especially fearful. The anniversary of Saddam's fall almost coincides with an important religious holiday, the 40th day after Ashoura. On Ashoura, March 2nd last, more than 170 Shia were massacred by bombers at the shrines of Kerbala and Kadhimiya.

Three months from now, the US is to hand over nominal sovereignty to an Iraqi government. But June 30th also worries Iraqis. Though the "transitional committee" responsible for the change has not yet pronounced itself, there will probably be three presidents or prime ministers named. But if the US administrator, Paul Bremer, does not craft a careful compromise between Shia, Sunni and Kurds, tension could erupt in further violence. Iraqis know that the US occupation will not end on June 30th.

"There may be another Bremer with a different title," says Dr Hummam Bakr Hammoudi, the chief political adviser to a leading Shia member of the US-appointed Governing Council. "But the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) will become the biggest US embassy in the world, with 4,000 employees. The American military will stay. The Iraqi economy will be American, and all the important organisations - the media, the army, the military - will remain under US control."

Despondency grips the country.

"We are afraid that Iraqi society will lose all hope," says Dr Hummam. "The Americans made a lot of promises about rebuilding the country, but most of them have not been kept."

Khaled Ezzat, one of Iraq's best known sculptors, unwittingly played a role in the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Ezzat made the one-ton bronze statue of Saddam which was pulled off its plinth by a US armoured vehicle in Ferdoos Square on April 9th. The statue was Saddam's 65th birthday present to himself, surrounded by 37 columns representing the year of his birth, 1937.

Needless to say, Ezzat hates the statue cobbled together by art students to replace his work. It allegedly represents freedom, but looks more like E.T. flying in a witch's costume. "It's so ugly," Ezzat moans.

Like most of Iraq's former Sunni elite, Ezzat is grumpy. "Every day, people talk to me about my statue," he says, sitting in the garden of Al Hewar gallery, across the street from the Turkish embassy. "I'm tired of it." Ezzat met Saddam many times. The former dictator stocked Baghdad's streets, ministries and museums with effigies of himself. "He always asked to meet the artists," Ezzat says. But he expresses no opinion. "I am not political. He is finished.

"Let's talk about art." But when you ask Ezzat what projects he has underway, he says none. "Artists need peace and quiet. You cannot work with the sound of bombs. Artists cannot work in this situation." Ezzat's fellow sculptor Taha Wahaib, who co-produced another fallen statue of the dictator with Ezzat in the ministry of planning, at least has a sense of humour. "Whenever an artist's pocketbook was empty, we'd propose a portrait or a statue of Saddam," he laughs.

Ezzat swears he is apolitical, but he misses the cocoon provided by the old Baathist regime. "Before, our work went around the world," he says. "The ministry of culture and the artists' union organised shows abroad. I sold many pieces in Europe and Asia." Did he feel the slightest tinge of remorse when his statue buckled over before the world's television cameras? Ezzat shrugs. "All art is for the people. If the people don't like it, they will remove it." The dissatisfaction of the minority Sunnis runs through all social classes. They feel wronged by the Americans, and grow more nostalgic for Saddam's rule by the day. "From the moment the Americans arrived, they decided we would be the terrorists, and the Shia would be the Ali Babas ," says Sheikh Nadhum al-Zeidi, a Sunni religious leader who survived an assassination attempt last month.

Among Sunnis, there is always the same refrain: life was better under Saddam Hussein; "at least we had security; as long as you didn't get involved in politics, you were all right".

"There will never be a leader like Saddam Hussein again," a resident of Nidal Street, where the Mount Lebanon Hotel was blown up on March 17th, told me. "If the Americans stay here 100 years, they will not make an army like Saddam did. No Arab country ever had such a strong army." The men in Nidal Street showed me the rubble of the home of the Christian Abu Zayer family, in which five people perished. At least seven others died in the hotel. Initial reports said 27 were killed, but the following day the US revised the figures downwards to seven. "They don't want people to know how bad it really is," the admirer of Saddam said. He didn't want to be named because it might endanger his chances of receiving compensation for his destroyed property. "After the explosion, the Americans shouted at the ambulance driver to pick up a wounded British man and leave the Iraqi lying on the ground. They don't treat us like humans." US forces have begun publishing a classified weekly round-up of rumours entitled the Baghdad Mosquito, in the hope of countering the wild stories that further discredit the unpopular occupation. The men in Nidal Street insisted that a missile fired by a US helicopter - not a car bomb - destroyed three homes and the Mount Lebanon Hotel.

Such allegations are also widely believed by the Shia Muslims, who enjoy far better relations with US authorities than the Sunni do. Dr Hummam Bakr Hammoudi is a Shia cleric and a close aide to the leader of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which sits on the Governing Council. I asked him who assassinated his mentor of several decades, Ayatollah Mohamed Bakr Hakim, last August, and who carried out the bombings last month in Kerbala and Kadhimiya.

"There are several groups with the same aims," Dr Hummam said. "They don't want Iraq to stabilise. Some are remains of the former regime, some are al-Qaeda, and the US intelligence services are involved in these attacks to give them an excuse to continue the occupation." While most Sunnis express support for "the resistance", the Shia are biding their time, confident that their majority of 60 per cent will prevail. "We have the power of numbers," Dr Hummam says. "Therefore, we will obtain power. We are patient, so we are strong." Sheikh Muktada Sadr's followers are seen as riff-raff by other Shia. They are largely poor and uneducated, and are associated with the massive looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. Sadr's group have had run-ins with US authorities, who this week closed down their Al-Hawza Nataqa newspaper.

Muktada Sadr claims that up to two million Iraqis belong to his "Army of the Mahdi", the main Shia militia-in-waiting. His representative in West Baghdad, Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani, was briefly detained by US forces on two occasions. "Just because we were against Saddam doesn't mean we accept the occupation," he told me. But he does not approve of attacks on US forces. "No, we do not support the resistance. Our leaders say it's not time yet." Such words must send shivers down Paul Bremer's spine. The US is already overstretched fighting the Sunni insurgency. Now there are rumblings among the Shia, who don't like the draft constitution they were rail-roaded into signing, because it gives the Sunni and Kurdish minorities virtual veto power.

From his little house in a cul-de-sac in the holy city of Najaf, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest religious authority in Shia Islam, peacefully but stubbornly resists Paul Bremer's attempts to mollify Sunnis and Kurds at the expense of the Shia. Fortunately for the US, the Ayatollah insists he does not want an Iranian-style theocracy.

Al-Sistani, who was born in Iran and bears an eerie resemblance to the late Ayatollah Khomeini, has repeatedly refused to meet Bremer. He delayed the signing of the draft constitution and has consistently pushed for early democratic elections which would bring the Shia to power. Sistani eschews violence, but his influence over the Shia makes him the most powerful man in Iraq. "The moment Ayatollah Sistani or Muktada Sadr says fight, we fight," says Sheikh Mahmoud al-Sudani. "We are ready." But Sheikh Mahmoud is talking about fighting the Americans, not the Sunni Muslims. Like dozens of Iraqis I spoke to this week, he rejects the possibility of civil war. The bombings against the Shia, and more than 20 attacks on Sunni clerics and mosques, appear to be the work of a few fanatics in both sects who are spoiling for a fight. Ironically, most premonitions of civil war come from Paul Bremer and the western media.

Whether through wishful thinking or a deeper knowledge of their own society, Iraqis say civil war is impossible here. There is too much inter-marriage, Sunni and Shia told me, and the Arab tribes - the real foundation of an Iraqi's identity - are all mixed.

Sheikh Nadhum al-Zeidi, a Sunni imam in Abu Dscheer district just south of Baghdad, would appear to have more reason than most to hate the Shia. On the morning of March 11th, a blue Opel station wagon screeched to a halt in front of Sheikh Nadhum's car as he stopped in front of the home of a fellow imam. "Three gunmen hung out the window, firing sub-machine guns," Sheikh Nadhum recalls. His 20 year-old son Ahmad, and 37-year-old son-in-law, also called Ahmad, slumped over dead.

Clutching his wounded left hand, Sheikh Nadhum bolted from the car and raced towards the front door of his friend's house. The blue Opel made a U-turn and fired again, wounding Sheikh Nadhum in both shoulders and the head.

On March 27th, a man named Abu Omar, who worshipped at Sheikh Nadhum's Al Rahman Mosque, was gunned down in the same way. Sheikh Nadhum says it's possible the attacks are staged by Shia extremists eager to avenge the killing of Shia. "But we are not 100 per cent sure," he adds.

Sheikh Nadhum has the look and manner of a Wahabi, the extremely devout Sunni sect which the Shia blame for attacks on them. As we talk, a drum-beating Shia procession marches down the street outside, part of the endless mourning for Imam Hussein. "There is but one God," Sheikh Nadhum sighs, not unlike a puritanical Protestant disgusted by saints' statues. During the recent Muslim month of Moharram, the Shia aggravated sectarian feeling by posting photographs of their religious leaders throughout Baghdad and flying countless flags and banners from their shops and houses.

Sheikh Nadhum blames the US for all that has gone wrong in Iraq. "There is no doubt" that the US wants a civil war in Iraq to give it a pretext to continue the occupation, he claims, repeating almost verbatim the words of the Shia Dr Hummam.

"The Americans are destroying us," Shiekh Nadhum continues. "It won't get better as long as the occupation forces stay here. I hope they will leave on their own. If they don't, we will have to drive them out." Iraqis are inclined to make a romantic distinction between al-Qaeda, whom they blame for the car-bombing of hotels and other civilian targets, and "the resistance" which attacks coalition forces. It's not clear how the barbarous murder and mutilation of four US civilian contractors by a mob in Fallujah on Wednesday fits into this convenient explanation.

"Resistance against occupation is not terrorism," Sheikh Nadhum says. A couple of miles from his mosque on the Dora Highway, the Iraqi police have built watchtowers to survey the wasteland that the insurgents used to fire mortars into the US headquarters known as the Green Zone. "Policemen who co-operate with the Americans are a target for the resistance," Sheikh Nadhum says.

The Sheikh poses for a photograph, flanked by his Kalashnikov-bearing bodyguards. "With guns we will teach [the Americans] and kick them out," he says. A bodyguard chimes in: "It will be very easy if we are united." It is not clear how closely al-Qaeda is linked with the former Baathists who are trying to drive the US out of Iraq. A US military spokesman said that only 100 of 7,500 "security detainees" are non-Iraqis. Yet it suits everyone to see al-Qaeda's hand in the violence.

The US can portray the war in Iraq as part of President Bush's "War on Terror". Iraqis can distance themselves from the worst atrocities, saying they're the work of fanatics loyal to Bin Laden, and al-Qaeda can prove it's still alive and killing.

The presence of al-Qaeda in Iraq is yet another source of recrimination against the US. "I have a black vision of the future," says Hamza al-Kafi, a human rights lawyer. "We could accept everything else from the Americans, but not turning our country into the battle front between the US and al-Qaeda." The National Co-ordinating Committee of Iraq issues a weekly security round-up. Though incomplete, it gives an indication of the scale and nature of the violence. During the week ending March 20th, there were 222 attacks in Iraq, including 67 bombs on highways, 57 incidents of small arms fire, 30 attacks by rocket-propelled grenades, 28 mortar attacks, 19 missiles, 14 drive-by shootings, etc. The most striking thing is that 161 of the attacks - 73 per cent of all incidents - targeted Coalition Forces. Though civilians were targeted in only 6 per cent of cases, they comprised 51 per cent of the 72 people killed that week.

Added to the constant fear of violence is the realisation that "freedom" means freedom to support the institutions backed by the CPA and Coalition Forces. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, recently boasted in the New York Times that Iraq's interim constitution "guarantees freedom . . . of expression; the right to assemble . . . and the right to a fair, speedy and open trial." It prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention, he added.

Yet order 14, issued last summer by the US administrator Paul Bremer, allows the CPA to shut down any media which "incites violence". Bremer's two-month closure of Al Hawza Nataqa for "encouraging violence against the coalition forces and the CPA" provoked almost daily street demonstrations in Baghdad this week.

The right to assemble is also relative. Demonstrators are required to obtain prior permission from the CPA, though they rarely do. The Shia who drove packed cars and buses down Baghdad's boulevards shouting "the Americans and the Governing Council are infidels," to protest the closure of Al Hawza did so with US helicopter gunships hovering menacingly overhead.

The Human Rights Organisation in Iraq marked the anniversary of the start of the war with a poster entitled "Days of Solidarity With Iraqi People Suffering Under Occupation; After Decades of Human Rights Violations Under the Old Regime, We Don't Need More Violations." Several of the posters were torn down, allegedly by US forces, and the CPA dispatched a "media officer" to inquire about the meaning of the poster. "We took it as a form of pressure," says Hamza al-Kafi.

The right to a fair trial and freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention are not - as Rumsfeld claimed - guaranteed under US occupation, al-Kafi says. Thousands of Iraqis are still held arbitrarily by US forces, he adds, though there has been some improvement.

Ismael Zayer, an Iraqi journalist who worked for 12 years in Brussels for Al-Hayat, the finest Arabic-language newspaper, returned to Baghdad just days after the regime fell. Before entering journalism, he was wounded three times fighting in the mountains of Kurdistan against Saddam's forces.

Zayer was hand-picked by Margaret Tutwiler, the US Ambassador to Morocco and a former State Department spokesperson, to launch Al-Sabah newspaper with US funding. Despite its reputation as the Governing Council's newspaper, Al-Sabah's circulation has reached 75,000, making it Iraq's leading newspaper. "We never experience any censorship," Zayer insists. "We consider ourselves reasonable and responsible. We don't spread rumours or imbalanced information." The facade of Al-Sabah has been machine-gunned twice, and someone started a fire in the printing plant, which also cranks out 25,000 copies of the US military newsletter Stars and Stripes. To make the irony complete, Zayer works from the very office where Uday Saddam Hussein used to edit Babel. He got rid of the giant eagle that loomed over the desk, but cartons of photographs of Uday awarding medals and smoking his Havanas are still stacked in a corner.

Near the entry to the complex stands the former torture chamber, where Uday's henchmen tortured journalists who made spelling errors. The falaqa, in which the soles of the feet were beaten with a stick, was standard punishment. "At least the Americans don't do that - not yet," Zayer jokes.

Ismael Zayer is the US State Department's dream: unlike Dr Ahmad Chalabi, the darling of the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon, Zayer does not slavishly anticipate US wishes. "If we assume responsibility and prepare ourselves [to govern], the Americans will have to leave," he says. "We must assume that they will leave and we have to be ready. This is the only way." It's unusual rhetoric in Baghdad these days, and Zayer knows he's outnumbered. He also knows that few of his fellow Iraqis will share his joyful heart on April 9th. "For me it's the day I got my country back," he says. "Iraqis got their country back, but they got the Americans with it, and that's the problem."