The Progress of Disaster

By Christian Parenti, In These Times. Posted September 19, 2003.

BAGHDAD -- The air in Baghdad is potent stuff. Plastic-rich garbage heaps burn in empty lots. Massive diesel generators run round the clock. More than a million vehicles -- old cars, trucks and fuel-guzzling U.S. tanks -- creep through the streets belching fumes. On the horizon, beyond the looted and bombed out office blocks, looming above the low-rise residential sprawl, is a giant smokestack; its massive black plume hangs over the city constantly. Add to this haze the soot of building fires, the stench of sewage, and the ubiquitous dust from countless rubble heaps; then cap and seal the mixture with the 115-degree hostility of a desert sun.

But forget the poisonous air. The really pressing issue in Baghdad is escalating chaos. The 6 million people living here want electricity, water, telecommunications, and security. As of yet they have none of these in sufficient supply. On the ground it seems that this American adventure is spinning out of control. Most Iraqis want peace, but a terrorist war of resistance requires only a small and determined minority.

Here the criminal is king. Saddam emptied the prisons and the United States disbanded the police, while 60 percent of people are unemployed. As a result, carjacking, robbery, looting, and murder are rife. Marauding men in "misery gangs" kidnap and rape women and girls at will. Some of these victims are dumped back on the streets only to be executed by their "disgraced" male relatives in what are called "honor killings."

Many women and girls stay locked inside their homes for weeks at a time. And increasingly those who do venture out wear veils, as the misogynist threats and ravings of the more fundamentalist Shia and Sunni clerics have warned that women who do not wear the hijab should not be protected.

According to the city morgue, there were 470 fatal shootings in July, up from 10 the year before. Not surprisingly, most people in Baghdad are armed and edgy. Under such conditions community solidarity takes on strange forms. Irish peace activist Michael Birmingham, who works with Voices in the Wilderness, witnessed the new vigilantism first hand.

Three carjackers took a vehicle in midday. In response, the crowd on the streets started throwing stones while shopkeepers started firing AK-47s. Before long the crowd had dragged one of the carjackers out onto the street and started beating him. "They were jumping on his head and his chest. I don't think he made it," explains Birmingham in a deadpan Dublin brogue.

As for the American troops -- whom Iraqis call the kuwat al-ihtilal, or forces of occupation -- they are stretched too thin to deal effectively with such crimes. And they have little understanding of Iraqi culture or politics. They are adrift in a sea of unintelligible Arabic, where even the street names are a mystery. At crime scenes they can just as easily arrest the victims as the perpetrators. Their small convoys are under constant assault.

Officially there are, on average, 13 attacks on Coalition Forces in Baghdad every day. Since May 1, when the war "ended," more than 404 U.S. soldiers have been permanently removed from action due to wounds, while more than 60 have been killed.

I relay these numbers to a grunt in the field, a young GI with the First Armored division. He has no clear picture of how the counter-insurgency war is going other than that someone shot at the gate he is guarding a while back and missed. But he's sure of one thing. "Whatever they tell you is a lie. It is bullshit. They're camouflaging."

Even journalists are getting killed. A Reuters photographer, Mazen Dana, was recently taken out by U.S. troops. Before that, a young British freelancer named Richard Wild was murdered by an assassin who probably thought his victim was a solider. Three GIs had died the same way: at close range, in the neck, from behind, with a pistol.

May Ying Walsh -- a stellar American reporter who now works for Al Jazeera -- was almost killed, as she recounts with an air of blank serenity. "I was interviewing some soldiers and a grenade fell right in between us, like a ripe piece of fruit. Everyone ran, but I just froze. The grenade rolled under a Humvee and when it blew, somehow, the shrapnel missed me. I think I was behind the tire or something." Her film crew and two GI's were not so lucky; all of them were wounded, one of them very badly.

Baghdad also suffers from the less dramatic structural violence of epidemic poverty. War, sanctions, and Saddam's greed have left a large destitute class with no work, medicine, or schooling. Exploring the rubble of some government ministry, two colleagues and I meet Ibrahim Kadum, who lost his foot in the Iran-Iraq war, then he lost his home and now squats in these ruins with his wife, nine children, and a shaggy and bleating ewe.

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