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Life in battened-down Baghdad :Self-preservation U.S. soldiers' goal

MITCH POTTER

12/04/03: (Toronto Star) BAGHDAD—The grimaces on these young American faces speak volumes, however monosyllabic their words may be. Turkey Day has come and gone, and that whisper of a visit from President George W. Bush barely echoes now in the ears of his troops in Iraq.

A young corporal named Bourgeois corrected a reporter yesterday when asked whether the president's dramatic night-time foray brought any kind of levity to his personal slog in Baghdad, now a stale seven months old.

The first answer, an embittered, dirty look. Then, grudgingly, to fill the dragging silence: "They said he came to Baghdad, but it was really only BIAP." (Translation: Baghdad International Airport, in army-speak.)

Bourgeois' final thought on the matter: Neither he nor anyone else in his unit would have gone anywhere near Bush had they known of his visit, which they didn't, and had they been enjoying a rare day off, which they weren't.

"I would have been somewhere else," he said. "Sounds like a pretty high-profile target to me."

More telling, perhaps, the surprising ambivalence of a PAO (more army-speak for Public Affairs Officer), the very sort paid by the Pentagon to make nice for the media. He, too, managed few words on the presidential foray: "I'm indifferent. I'm just a soldier, sir."

War or peace, right or wrong, win or lose, none of it seems to matter any more to many enlisted Americans in Iraq, for whom a political exit strategy cannot come too soon.

In the wake of the worst month yet for coalition casualties, self-preservation appears to have taken hold as the overriding ethos. Hunker down. Don't grin, just bear it. 

Survive.

Now, nearly eight months after the welcome toppling of Saddam Hussein, the unwelcome army that did the deed is yet another confused element in a cacophony of mixed messages in today's Baghdad.

This is an armoured city now, so battened-down against the terror insurgency it barely resembles the Baghdad of April, when giddy Iraqi children swarmed like seagulls around smiling U.S. Marines and army infantry units.

Complex networks of concrete, sandbag and razor-wire barriers clog the streets, encircling every remaining site of Western value, as the coalition leadership — civilian and military alike — retreats ever deeper within a hermetically sealed Green Zone comprising nearly 10 per cent of greater Baghdad.

Armoured U.S. patrols are still to be seen motoring twitchily through the main thoroughfares, but their numbers are dwindling as newly minted Iraqi police deploy in their place. The appearance of the nascent native security men was described yesterday as a Godsend by one Baghdad man. "They are like angels from heaven, putting their lives on the line against the devils (resistance fighters) who are trying to ruin us," he said.

The pinpoint severity of the most recent attacks — extending to Spanish, Japanese and Italian diplomatic, military and security convoys — has left the remaining foreign nationals in a race to determine how, exactly, not to be a soft target. Diplomats are thinking twice about the conspicuous habit of loading themselves into easily spotted four-wheel drive vehicles, are as journalists, many of whom are trading armoured cars for the easily ignored wrecks far more common to these streets.

Yet the hair-trigger fears of Westerners and the almost daily feed of visuals showing something on fire and some soldier dead belies the fact that 25 million Iraqis are going about the business of getting on with life.

The new normal, in Baghdad at least, includes a measurably greater affluence — government salaries for everyone from street sweepers to school teachers are up significantly over Saddam-era rates, and signs of what is now the most freewheeling economy in the Arab world abound.

An estimated 250,000 cars have been added to Iraqi streets, imported duty-free at bargain rates and fitted with black licence plates to denote that someday, when a real Iraqi government emerges, they'll be subject to proper registration.

Yet even these come with mixed messages. Between the roadblocks, barricades and surfeit of new drivers, Baghdad is one big snarled gridlock; the growing fleet of private cars is also exacerbating another round of gasoline shortages, which has once again enraged Iraqis who thought they'd seen the last of the long line-ups.

Coalition authorities yesterday were at a loss to explain the absurd fuel crisis, continuing as it is atop the world's second largest petroleum reserves. One source told the Star a combination of factors — increasing demand for home heating fuel, pipeline attacks and a shortage of trucks ferrying processed Iraqi oil down from Turkey — are to blame. Another factor: Gas is being siphoned off to feed electrical generators, which are busier now that Baghdad is once again grappling with dwindling electricity supplies.

The new acting president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Shiite Muslim cleric Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, was bombarded with questions about the shortages yesterday during his debut press briefing at the Baghdad Convention Centre.

He had no answers. But if nothing else, it was fascinating to see Iraqi journalists pounding away with hard questions for an Iraqi leader, however symbolic that U.S.-appointed leadership may be.

Hakim's ascension to the rotating council presidency will be worth watching, as it symbolizes growing Shiite impatience with the transition of real power — and if Bush is to extract himself from Iraq with dignity, it can only come with the acquiescence and willing co-operation of the country's 60 per cent Shiite majority.

In a briefing of almost comical vagueness, Hakim yesterday blue-skied the prospect of mobilizing his political group's armed wing, the Badr Brigades, together with Kurdish peshmerga fighters and other Iraqi militias into a new national force to take on the Saddam loyalists blamed for attacks on civilians, U.S. troops and foreign institutions.

Once faced with demands to disarm from the U.S.-led coalition, the Badr Brigades as part of a new Iraqi force now seems an idea the Americans might just be willing to live with.

This, too, appears part of the new normal in Baghdad.

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