| |
Baghdad's telling red
banners
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
BAGHDAD - With the burial on Saturday of the
elder sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay, in their
ancestral village of al-Auja, near Tikrit, one chapter
in troubled post-war Iraq came to a close. The brothers
- like their deposed father notorious for their
brutality - were killed in a gun battle with US troops
in the northern city of Mosul on July 22 after being on
the run for more than three months.
For the
people of Iraq, though, life goes on, albeit a far from
normal one for many, especially in the capital city.
For a start, there appears to be an almost
complete absence of traffic control. Although some
traffic lights work, they are ignored with impunity as
there are few policemen on the roads and motorists are a
law unto themselves.
This is not the case at the
remaining large hotels, the Sheraton, the Palestine and
the al-Rasheed, which is home to members of the
Coalition Provisional Authority ruling Iraq and military
personnel. (The al-Mansoor has been badly damaged and is
out of business.)The hotels are surrounded with barbed
wire fencing and their entry and exit routes are heavily
guarded, with all visitors thoroughly checked, as are
all cars on surrounding roads.
The street
passing the Palestine to the main market has been closed
for almost four months, says a wine shop owner, Raad, a
Christian from Mosul. Business is bad, he says, due to
daily looting and plundering which has forced many other
shopkeepers to close down.
In the same street a
branch of the Iraqi Rafidain Bank is under construction.
"It was badly damaged by looters. Now there is hope that
things will return to normal as we have started
renovation work and aim to resume normal functions in 10
to 15 days," says a bank worker supervising the
rebuilding. Also in the same street, Haji Abbas Zaidi,
the 68-year-old owner of a private tourist business,
surprised this correspondent by speaking perfect Urdu
(Hindi). Haji Abbas' father was an Arab from Basra in
southern Iraq who ran a transport business from Baghdad
for pilgrims going to the holy city of Karbala, where
Zaidi's father met his mother, who came from Lucknow in
India.
Haji Abbas, a Shi'ite, has some strong
views about what's happening to his country. "Resentment
is growing against the US and will grow further. Uday
and Qusay may have been hated in Iraq for their deeds,
but they belong to this land and they were killed by US
troops who are considered by all Iraqis as aggressors
and occupiers.
"The most powerful superpower in
the world has right now failed to provide uninterrupted
supplies of energy. Sometimes we have power for three
hours and some days it is for six hours, for the rest of
the time we have to rely on generators. We do not have
contact outside the country through telephone, everybody
is forced to keep a satellite telephone.
"You
know, my father and mother used to talk about thieves
and dacoits [bandits] in India, but I had to ask
them about the meaning of these words. The last time we
heard about a looting incident was near al-Najaf two
years ago, now it is an everyday routine here in
Baghdad," said Haji Abbass.
He maintains that
people are now forced to eat into their savings. "A
customer cannot draw more than 50,000 dinars [US$30] in
a week from his bank account. But the cost of a chicken
is 4,000 dinars, so what is the chance of operating a
business," Haji Abbass asks.
A ride in a cab to
al-Adhymia, a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad, is somewhat
like driving in the scorching sun through a graveyard.
Amid destroyed buildings, most shops are closed and few
people are on the streets other than US patrols, backed
by helicopters hovering low over buildings. This aerial
surveillance and ground patrolling is a common sight in
Baghdad.
Al-Adhmyia is well known for
the shrine of the Imam Abu Hanifa, known in the Islamic
world as "The Greatest Imam". In more recent times, on
April 10, it was the scene of a fierce clash between US
troops and Iraqi, Lebanese, Algerian and Egyptian mujahideen,
35 of whom died in the fighting, and the buildings in
the area still bear the scars of rockets and gunfire,
including the mosque itself.
Local residents pay
their respects to these foreign fighters who gave their
lives for Iraq, all of whom now have their own grave
with Koranic verses on the tombstones and regularly
decorated with fresh flowers.
After the shootout
the deputy prayer leader of the mosque was arrested by
US troops, then released, But the community refused to
accept him and his superior, Abdul Ghafoor Qaisy, as
they belonged to the Ba'ath Party and Qaisy was also a
member of parliament. Now, a new prayer leader has been
appointed with the consent of the local population.
However, this has not changed the anti-US sentiments in
and around Al-Adhmyia.
Yusuf, Ibrahim and
Mohammed regularly visit the mosque for their five
prayer sessions a day. They each said that Saddam's fall
was a blessing for Iraqi people, but they refused to
accept US rule, saying that they would like to see them
booted out of their country.
Amid the desolation
of the neighborhood, red banners are conspicuous,
hanging from many buildings, all carrying the name of
the Hizbul Islami al-Iraqi, (Islamic Party of Iraq),
showing that the al-Adhmyia neighborhood has separated
from the Ba'ath Party and taken a path similar to that
chosen by Osama bin Laden.
(Copyright 2003 Asia
Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
