WELCOME TO IWPR'S IRAQI CRISIS REPORT, No. 06, March 21, 2003

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REGION REACTS TO WAR Images of Iraqis welcoming US troops are matched by
concern among neighbours, even in Israel, over the long-term impact of the
war. By Julie Flint in London.

A DIARY OF LIFE UNDER FIRE While the freakish interior minister
brandishes a kalashnikov and hurls abuse to the world, the city's garbage
men continue to collect the rubbish. By an Iraqi in Baghdad.

COWARDLY WAR Resigned to their fate, some Iraqis do their nails, some
check their property. And some just feel ill. By Nuha el-Radi in Beirut.

SAUDI'S BALANCING ACT Caught between its American alliance and widespread
anti-Americanism, Saudi leaders oppose the war officially but assist US
forces all the same. By David Hirst in Riyadh.

WATCHING THE WAR The war is in real-time, but where are the people? By
Anthony Borden in London

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REGION REACTS TO WAR

Images of Iraqis welcoming US troops are matched by concern among
neighbours, even in Israel, over the long-term impact of the war.

By Julie Flint in London

In Safwan, the first town captured by British and American forces on their
march into southern Iraq, jubilant Shia Mulsims sang and danced, kissed
their "liberators" and offered them food and water. They tore down posters
of President Saddam Hussein and, jumping on them, cried: "Saddam, your
days are numbered!"

Iraqi Shias contacted by telephone in Baghdad as they waited for a third
night of bombardment said they too were "very happy" at the news of the
capture of Safwan. They hoped it would soon be the turn of Baghdad.
Outside Baghdad, and outside the range of television cameras, it was
impossible to gauge Iraqi reaction to the Anglo-American advance: while it
was possible to contact the capital, there was no communication with other
major Iraqi towns - either from Baghdad or from outside the country.

In the Arab world, the Anglo-American war to change the regime in Iraq was
more generally portrayed as the third great calamity of the century,
comparable in its likely consequences with the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

"Today, as then, we can point to three aspects of the process of change
that is especially troubling from an Arab perspective," Lebanon's Daily
Star newspaper said in a front-page editorial. "The major driving force
for change comes from outside this region, the Arab people seem to have
very little if any impact on the course of events that will define their
future, and few if any people in this region have any idea of what is to
come."

Some, however, believe they do. They predict that US forces will have no
trouble winning the war but will forfeit the peace, just as Israel did
after its invasion of Lebanon. Indeed, the television footage of Iraqi
Shias welcoming the Anglo-American force liberating them from Saddam was
eerily reminiscent of the scenes of Lebanese Shias welcoming the Israelis
who drove the Palestine Liberation Organisation out of Lebanon in 1982.

Sheikh Naim Qassem, deputy secretary general of Lebanon's Hezbollah party,
spoke for many in the Arab world when he told a seminar in Beirut the Iraq
war was driven by Washington's regional ambitions to re-write the
political map of the Middle East and, in so doing, to control its oil.

"Iraq represents an essential key to unlock the potential Washington is
pursuing," Qassem said. "The United States will easily win the war in Iraq
because of its superior military arsenal. But it will lose the war,
politically, socially and economically because of its unilateral action
that is spurring resistance all around the world."

The second US-led war in Iraq in 12 years drew unusual points of agreement
between Arabs and Israelis.

"Why Iraq? Why now? Why by war?" the daily Yediot Ahronot asked
editorially. "After all, most of the world sees Saddam Hussein as someone
who is not worth the effort, a washed-up dictator of limited powers who is
no longer a threat to the welfare of the world, or its stability."

The paper recalled Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's confident assertion that
there was only a 1 per cent chance Israel would be come under attack.

Yediot Ahronot said the massive cost and scope of the war would be
justified only if Saddam Hussein's army collapsed "like a pack of cards",
if the people of Baghdad welcomed the Anglo-American forces with "joy" and
if weapons of mass destruction were quickly found.

Otherwise, the paper said, "the credibility of the Bush administration
will be mortally wounded, America will withdraw into a mood of soul
searching, and the picture of American soldiers killing Arab soldiers to
no good purpose will be everlastingly and shamefully etched in the
national and religious consciousness of the Middle East."

Julie Flint, a long-time correspondent from the Middle East and a former
IWPR trustee, is coordinating editor of the Iraqi Crisis Report.


A DIARY OF LIFE UNDER FIRE

While the freakish interior minister brandishes a kalashnikov and hurls
abuse to the world, the city's garbage men continue to collect the rubbish

By an Iraqi in Baghdad

Thursday, March 20 - The all-clear siren has just gone. The bombing is
coming and going in waves, nothing too heavy and not yet comparable to
1991. All radio and television stations are still functioning. When the
air raid began, state-run television was broadcasting patriotic songs and
didn't even bother to inform its viewers that Baghdad was under attack.
Instead it was replaying yesterday's interview with the Minister of the
Interior . . .

The sound of anti-aircraft artillery is still louder than the booms and
bangs, which means the bombing is still far from where we live. But on the
news channel of al-Arabia television we saw a building burning near the
house of one of my aunts. The phones are still OK. We called around the
city a moment ago to check on friends. Information is what they need.
Iraqi television says nothing, shows nothing. What good are patriotic
songs when bombs are dropping?

My uncle went out to get bread around 6.30 p.m. He said that all the
streets going to the main arterial roads are controlled by Ba'ath party
people. There is no curfew, but you have to have a reason to leave your
neighborhood, and the bakeries are, by instruction of the party, selling
only a limited amount of bread to each customer.

He also says that all houses still under construction near the main roads
have been taken by party or army people.

We have two safe rooms - one with international media on, and the other
with Iraqi television. I watched al-Jazeera. It said the US has bombed the
Iraqi satellite channel, ISC. But while it was saying that ISC was
broadcasting. All television stations are still working.

Friday, March 21 - We sit in front of the television with the map of Iraq
on our laps, trying to figure out what is going on in the south. On the
BBC we are watching scenes of Iraqis surrendering. My youngest cousin was
muttering "what shame" to himself. It is better for them to surrender, but
seeing them carrying that white flag still makes something deep inside you
cringe.

Last night was very quiet in Baghdad. Today in the morning I went out to
get bread and groceries. There were no Ba'ath party people stopping us
from leaving the area where we live, although they apparently do after
evening prayers. But they are still everywhere.

The streets are empty. Only bakeries are open and some grocery shops are
charging four times the normal prices. While I was buying bread, a police
car stopped in front of the bakery and asked the baker if they had enough
flour and at what time they opened. The baker told me they get flour
delivered to them daily. They have been told they must open every day.

Groceries, meat and dairy products are a different story. A dairy company
that is not state-owned seems to be operating still, and its cars were
going around the city distributing butter, cheese and yogurt to any open
markets. We bought fresh tomatoes and zucchini, which would normally be
250 dinars a kilo, for 1,000 dinars.

Most amazingly the garbage van came around.

ISC is not broadcasting anymore. A youth channel which shows Egyptian
soaps in the morning and sports after that has also stopped transmitting.
This leaves two channels: Iraq TV and Shebab ("youth") TV. They are still
full of patriotic songs and useless "news". They love the French here. We
saw the most distressing minister of interior affairs with his guns.
Freaks. Hurling abuse at the world is the only thing left for them to do.


COWARDLY WAR

Resigned to their fate, some Iraqis do their nails, some check their
property. And some just feel ill.

By Nuha el-Radi in Beirut

I am sleeping in the sitting room in front of the television these days.
Writing doesn't come easy. I am too uncertain and nervous now, and full of
foreboding.

This week was supposed to have been an Iraqi cultural week in Beirut, with
an art exhibit, a play and poetry reading. The play was cancelled after
the first day because war seemed too imminent and the players wanted to
get back to their families in Iraq. The poets too.

So only the art remains. I have my sculpture: dozens of figures of all
heights painted and standing in line and made from recycled wood collected
from a building site. They look as if they are demonstrating. They
represent the Iraqi people and I am calling them "We, the people". My
German friend Cristina is staying with me and she suggested that. She said
that's what they said at the Berlin Wall when they brought it down.

Hopefully we will recycle ourselves and survive.

On the night of the opening, a few days ago, I willed a sandstorm of
biblical proportions, for 40 days and 40 nights. Everyone laughed. I said
that would be the only thing that could save us. We have had a huge storm
raging in Beirut - and so have they.

I telephoned Baghdad this morning. The US has been kind to us this time
and left us with communications and electricity. The telephone rang and
rang and finally Ma answered.

"Did I wake you?"

"No," she said. "I was in the garden doing my exercises." We laughed and
laughed.

"Did you sleep?"

"Oh yes," she said.

"What is everyone feeling?"

"We are all resigned to whatever our fate might be."

Lamia went and had a pedicure and manicure and did her hair. She said if
she was going to die she wanted to be neat. Today they will go and check
Amal's shop. It's bound to have damage. The ministry of planning across
the river was hit.

It's 11 a.m. and I feel sick to my stomach. They say the US forces are 150
kilometres into Iraq. What 's the difference between Iraq invading and
occupying Kuwait in 1990 and America invading and occupying Iraq in 2003?
The most powerful nation in the world with the latest weapons of mass
destruction is attacking a small country that has been pre-emptively
stripped of its defences. Neither country had a UN resolution legalising
its attack. Will the UN be able to place sanctions on the US and its
"coalition" now - or does that sound like double standards?

In the name of peace and humanity, thousands have to be killed. In the
name of liberation, in the name of democracy, there will be a military
occupation. Would someone please tell me where the democracy lies in
"Either you are with us or against us"?

The Pentagon says 600 sites were considered most likely to be hiding
prohibited weapons, but only 75 were visited by the United Nations'
weapons inspectors. Why didn't the Pentagon give the names of the sites to
the inspectors? Could it be that they wanted to invade and occupy
themselves? Will they now plant evidence where none was found, to make
their aggression legal?

In the last 12 years of sanctions, the US and the UK bombed the no-fly
zones almost daily. Iraq did not manage to down a single jet or do any
injury to any country near or far. How, then, is it such a danger to the
world?

The US is using precision cruise missiles that can pick out individuals in
their cars from thousands of miles away. Iraqis are told to dig trenches
and fight with their swords. Space-age warfare meets pre-World War I
tactics. This is the most cowardly war of all - a politicians' war, full
of lies.

Hope is in the people of the world, demonstrating, demonstrating and
demonstrating against this war. It is they who bring us strength and hope
for the future.

I am going to be sleeping in the sitting room in front of the television
again tonight. If I can write anything else I will send it. But for now
this is all I can feel.

Nuha al-Radi is an Iraqi artist and author of the best-selling Baghdad
Diaries, which she began to write in Baghdad during the last Iraq war. For
the last few years she has lived in Beirut.


SAUDI'S BALANCING ACT

Caught between its American alliance and widespread anti-Americanism,
Saudi leaders oppose the war officially but assist US forces all the same.

By David Hirst in Riyadh

Having vainly sought to prevent war, Saudi Arabia has resigned itself to
the only course now left open: to limit its potentially disastrous
consequences for Iraq, the region and itself, and to play what part it can
in shaping the post-Saddam order.

"To say that we are deeply worried about whatever might come after
Saddam - the violence, the chaos, or the political vacuum - is to say the
simple truth," said a high government adviser.

At the street level, there is no outward sign of any such alarm. As the
capital awoke to the news that the war had begun, there was nothing to
indicate that this was anything other than the quiet beginning of just
another Muslim weekend. Unlike other Arabs, the Saudis are not much given
to public demonstrations.

"People keep to themselves," said one. "But you can be sure they are all
glued to their television sets, and the channels they are mostly tuned
into will be Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar" ­ the trenchant, Qatar-based
satellite channel and the Beirut-based voice of Hezbollah.

A peculiar habit of the Saudis is to bombard one another with text
messages on their mobile phones: "I have received dozens today," said one,
"like 'God protect Iraqis from the boots of American soldiers' and 'God
once drowned Pharaoh and his court ­ may He now sink an American aircraft
carrier.'"

The outbreak of war has put the government in a very delicate position. On
the one hand, it seeks to preserve the favour of the United States ­
severely impaired since September 11 ­ and any influence over its Iraq
policies which that might earn it; on the other, it has to humour the
feelings of a profoundly anti-American public.

"Under no circumstances will Saudi Arabia take part in the war against
brotherly Iraq," Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler, said in an
eve-of-war statement. "Its armed forces will not enter an inch of Iraqi
territory. We expect the war to end the moment UN Security Council
Resolution 1441 to disarm [Iraq] of weapons of mass destruction has been
implemented, and we categorically refuse that Iraq come under military
occupation."

Yet almost everyone in the kingdom is aware that the government is trying
to make things as easy as it can for the Americans. It is going out of its
way to ensure the flow of oil to world markets. For the past three months
it has been building up a special, 50-million-barrel reserve which it will
release in the event of any war-related disruption of supplies.

And the Crown Prince's categoric assertions about Saudi Arabia's
non-participation in the war are less than frank. True, it has not offered
its territory as a launching pad for the ground assault on Iraq. But it
has granted lesser forms of collaboration, including the use of the key
command-and-control facilities at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, and
overflight rights for aircraft and missiles. A contingent of US troops is
stationed near the Iraqi border for "defensive and humanitarian" needs.

The oil-rich desert kingdom is America's most loyal Arab ally. The
official equivocations are inspired, among other things, by the very
awkward fact that anti-Americanism here has reached an unprecedented
level ­ the most intense, perhaps, in the entire Arab world. An opinion
poll published this week shows that only 3 per cent of the population
takes a "favourable" view of the US, compared with 12 per cent last year -
the lowest of the five, officially pro-American countries in which the
poll was conducted.

Some 170 leading Saudi intellectuals recently signed a statement urging
all Arab states to "deny US forces facilities for attacking Iraq" and to
"use the oil weapon to defend Arab interests". Thirty-two high-ranking
Islamic scholars and preachers declared that it is religiously
impermissible for Muslim governments or individuals to "cooperate" with
the US war on Iraq. A moderate Islamist warned that, once the bombing of
Iraq started, "all Western people in Arabia will be in trouble one way or
another; no one can stop that unfortunately" ­ a reference to random
terrorist attacks in which two Britons and a German have so far died.

The Westernised, often American-educated elite have become perhaps the
most angry and embittered segment of society. Indignation at the almost
daily televised spectacle of Palestinians dying at the hands of
American-supported Israel merges with a specifically Saudi indignation at
the humiliations, insults and abuse deemed to have been heaped on the
kingdom since September 11 by American officials, politicians, religious
leaders and commentators.

None of this anti-Americanism means, however, that Saudis, government or
people, are indifferent to the almost certain silver lining: the removal
of a generally detested Arab leader, "the Arab Nero of our times," as the
editor of Al-Riyadh, the kingdom's best-selling newspaper, described him.
Some of the Saudi intelligentsia ­ a minority, perhaps, but an influential
one ­ ask, as this columnist in Al-Watan, "Where were Saudi intellectuals
when Saddam used his chemical weapons on Halabja, when he invaded Kuwait
and set its oil fields on fire? Why didn't they send a petition to the
Iraqi ambassador in Riyadh then?"

Now that the war has begun, it is important that it be as swift and
surgical as possible. The longer it lasts and the greater the slaughter of
Iraqi civilians, the harder it will be to appease or suppress popular
anger directed not only against the Americans, but at the complicities of
all Arab rulers.

The regime has its excuses. In his eve-of-war address, Crown Prince
Abdullah said that the failure to stop the war was a wider Arab failing.
That argument, taken together with his personal popularity and
"nationalist" reputation, find considerable favour. "Of course," said a
former newspaper editor, "it is shameful that non-Arab Turkey should have
been the one to deny access to US troops, not the Arabs themselves. But it
is an Arab shame, not just ours."

David Hirst, veteran Middle East analyst and long-time Middle East
correspondent of The Guardian, wrote this commentary for Lebanon's Daily
Star.


WATCHING THE WAR

The war is in real-time, but where are the people?

By Anthony Borden in London (ICR No. 06, 21-Mar-03)

Anticipating the US military's much-touted "shock and awe" campaign,
international broadcasters trailed the start of the war like a expectant
audience awaiting a fireworks display. 24/7 programming required talking
heads all through the dull mid-week evenings before the show began. Long
scanning shots of calm evening skies were interspliced with eerie images
of a Baghdad intersection, the traffic lights changing over empty streets.

Talking heads - invariably male except for one BBC reporter in Amman -
appeared time and again during extended quiet periods. Nothing here, they
were compelled to report before the screen flipped to another location,
another view on the disjointed narrative. Reporters following the British
and American navies caught the sense of drift precisely, literally out to
sea, far from the battlefield, watching cruise missiles head off without
any idea where they might be headed.

Pale-faced experts, obviously working overtime, were dragged from their
beds, and promoted as "monitoring the situation closely". This probably
meant watching the same screens as their audiences - and getting as little
rest. Some had back up from intricate electronic displays that highlighted
the rugged Iraqi terrain, the reach of the enemies' competing radars, and
countless different "scenarios".

US ex-servicemen with slow southern drawls expressed confidence in the
"awesome power" of the US military, and their satisfaction that everything
was going to plan, although the plan was already a completely different
one . . .

The attempt to pinpoint Saddam Hussein and his entourage had started the
campaign on a low key note. Whether or not it indeed failed, the heavy
bombardment so expected did not take place. Instead the real story,
whatever it might be, could not be filmed - with limited bombing in one
area, some noises heard in another, rumours of a swift advance on Basra
and possible "secret surrender talks" - but of course nothing first hand
and nothing at all confirmed.

"Embedded" journalists serving, or rather stationed, with individual units
offered intriguing footage of tanks racing across the desert towards
Basra, or comical exercises in donning gas masks. (Less fortunate ones
occasionally sought to speak through the contraptions.) But again, there
was minimal information: the troop commander, who had just provided a
briefing, averred that everything was going to plan, the men were well
prepared for their mission, and so on. On the rare instance when
information might have been available, it was operational, and the
reporter acknowledged, could not be reported. "It's going to take us a
while to get used to this embedding system," noted one presenter.

The main stations followed type. Fox, America's hard-line patriotic
station, ran a "War on Terrorism" moniker over a waving flag - perhaps not
even updated since 9/11. A reporter shown unshaven and still in a T-shirt
breathlessly reported on a local firefight - dramatic, frightening, no
doubt amazing, but of no relevance, no sense.

CNN bounced between US military officers on one hand and military star
reporters and commentators on the other - Wolf, Christiane, even Larry
King manning a news anchor format during his programme - and US military
officers. The station maintained a neutral tone - only occasionally
admitting admiration for the sheer extent of the US forces - but spoke
almost uniquely to American, and official sources.

The BBC filmed less in the field - at least during my night owl hours -
and more time in the studio. But they provided a more diverse picture than
their rivals. Although the station, like all others, did not seem to
acknowledge anything but the war - we are, after all, not watching the
news but The War - they did focus on related side events. One was the
tense Brussels meeting of European political leaders, still rankling over
the UN bust-up . In a unique round-up report, it was the only station of
the several I surfed that had any report about the substantial
demonstrations against the war, in Europe and America, reporting many
arrests in San Francisco.

All this highlighted the primary problem in the coverage: there were no
people. True, it was after hours. But there were no reports from people on
the front lines, in the regions, on the streets or in their homes. Most of
all, there was not a single Iraqi or Kurdish voice, far less an Arab. So
short of interview subjects were the reporters that at one point, in a
glowing profile of a ship's weaponry, it seemed as if the journalist might
interview the cruise missile. "Is everything going to plan?"

Two days in the war, we had seen not a drop of blood.

Getting closest to the truth, perhaps, was a frustrated David Shuster of
NBC News. Standing in the cavernous briefing room in Doha, Qatar, he
wondered why the US military had spent considerable taxpayers' money to
construct a press facility it had so far not used. There were no press
briefings, operational details could not be provided even if the reporters
had them, and there he was, stuck hundreds of miles away from any action.

"They don't want us to get the big picture," he said. "We don't have any
sense of the overall. That's by design."

Anthony Borden is executive director of the Institute for War & Peace
Reporting.

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Iraqi Project Coordinating Editor: Julie Flint

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Copyright (c) 2003 The Institute for War & Peace Reporting

IRAQI CRISIS REPORT No. 06