Report From Basra: Iraq Prepares For War

By Jeremy Scahill, IraqJournal.org. Posted November 5, 2002.

BASRA-Iraq's southern oil-belt is preparing for what many here see as an inevitable massive attack by Washington. Small military bunkers, equipped with sandbags, barbed wire fences and machine guns line the long stretch of highway heading north out of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. Army soldiers stand guard on large concrete walls, stretching around military garrisons.

For hundreds of years, Basra was called the Venice of the East. Sinbad the Sailor's adventures were launched from its shores. The city is connected by a web of footbridges and canals that empty into the Shatt Al Arab, a focal point of the Arab sea trade for more than 1300 years. It endured both Ottoman and British occupation and, more recently, 20 years of war.

From morning until night, the waterfront is crowded with the hustle and bustle befitting the country's main port. Fishermen and ships line the boardwalk that houses 101 towering, individual bronze statues, each representing an Iraqi Army soldier killed during the Iran-Iraq war. Each of the figures is unique and contains intricate details on the faces of each of the men. They stretch down the boardwalk for a mile, all of them with their arms raised, fingers pointing accusingly toward the Iranian border, some 6 miles to the east. Over the last few months, amid threats from Washington, the soldiers have been given a new coat of black paint.

Young boys sit at the bases of the statues, selling cigarettes and imitation Pepsi and 7-up. Old men play dominoes on cardboard boxes, as ships move along the canal. But the statues serve as a haunting reminder that Basra has long ceased to be thought of as anyone's Venice. The city's strategic location at the mouth of the Shatt Al-Arab, one of the most ancient and busiest trade routes of the Middle East, has doomed the city.

Basra has been one of the most fought-over areas in the world. It's a stone's throw from both Iran and Kuwait and suffered tremendously during both the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War. Many buildings along the boardwalk remain riddled with bullet-holes. Though war has not been declared on Iraq, Washington's warplanes regularly bomb in and around the city under the guise of so-called no-fly zones. Officially, the Bush administration says the planes are there to protect the Shi'ite Muslims from the forces of the central government. But no one in Basra says the missiles make them feel safer. These zones have no basis in international law and were never authorized by any body of the United Nations. Baghdad says that more than 1,300 civilians have been killed in these attacks.

Throughout Basra, people are paying very close attention to what is happening at the UN Security Council in New York. Many a street corner houses a gathering of older men huddled around transistor radios. In addition to the state radio broadcasts, they also get BBC, Radio Monte Carlo and other Arabic language foreign broadcasts. This is certainly true throughout Iraq as well, but in Basra people know that they are likely to be living in a major frontline of any "new" war. This, coupled with the regular sound of air-raid sirens and bombings, has caused many residents to have nervous breakdowns. Several people we spoke with, particularly women, reported having severe emotional and psychological problems sparked by the sound of American and British jets. While people are generally well informed on the current developments and haggling at the UN, no one rules out a surprise attack from Washington.

Throughout Iraq, Disaster Preparedness Teams are training to respond to a US attack. An Iraqi who is working on these teams in the south told Iraqjournal.org that weekly meetings are being held and "pick-up" routes are being plotted to gather members of the disaster teams in various areas in the event of bombings. "Disseminators" from the teams are holding workshops in factories, schools and union halls to educate people on such things as how to cope with a total absence of clean drinking water in the event that water treatment plants are targeted as they were in 1991. Separate from this, several people said that courses are also being conducted in "civil-defense" to prepare for the possibility of a ground invasion.

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