Iraqis Resigned to Threat of War

BAGHDAD —  Food rations have been doubled for the last two months, the military is on alert, the ruling Baath Socialist Party’s militia is patrolling outside ministry buildings, and antiaircraft artillery has been positioned in key areas.

Still, people here insist that they have made few plans of their own to cope with a war.

President Bush wants to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and if he can’t do it by saber-rattling, he has said he is prepared to send in the U.S. military. But this city of nearly 5 million seems to be sleepwalking through the crisis. It is not that the people don’t recognize the risk they are facing, especially since the nation’s military strategy appears aimed at luring American troops into urban locations, where Iraqis feel they will have a fighting chance.

It just means that they are accustomed to living under threat--and they are numb. With the hammer hanging over them, they are simply trying to get on with their lives.

“Iraqis are Muslims, and they feel their destiny comes at God’s will,” Saad Naji Jawad, a political science professor at Baghdad University and a shopkeeper, said the other day. “But that doesn’t mean they aren’t scared of a coming war.”

For 22 years, Iraqis have endured the hardships of war and economic sanctions. No matter whose fault that was, it changed their way of life, forced them to become experts on getting by and gave them a feeling that they can survive almost anything. Now, they just figure that they are going to have to do it again.

“It will not affect us,” said Raad Ishak, 47, owner-operator of a dry cleaning business in the Christian neighborhood of Karada-Erkheta. “We are used to living in such conditions.”

Ishak did say that if there is a war, he expects to close his shop, the sole source of income for 20 people. Electricity will probably be cut off. Water may stop running. And his children’s school is likely to be closed. He can’t sleep at night because he is worried that his kids could be injured.

What he means is, he’ll survive.

“What can we do? We are just ordinary citizens,” he said, in a reflection of the fatalism that seems to have gripped the capital.

The last time the United States led a coalition against Iraq, in 1991, the fight took place in the desert. As Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, they were easy targets and were devastated by U.S. air power. When they took cover in trenches carved in the sand, coalition forces buried them alive with earthmoving equipment. This time, if there is a war, it could well be centered here, in the city of a thousand and one nights, a city whose history is tied to the birth of civilization.

Baghdad may no longer be known as a place where parents want to send their children to study medicine, but it remains home to an ethnically and religiously diverse population. The streets they live, work and play on could well become America’s next battlefield in a fight that Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz has promised would be “a fierce war.”

Yet despite wars and sanctions, Baghdad is a dynamic, if stressed, city. It stretches along the Tigris River, with the districts of Rusafah on the east and the Karkh on the west. Eleven bridges connect the banks, and the fact that bridges bombed by the U.S. have been rebuilt has added to the sense among citizens that the city and its people can endure anything.

Fadhwat Arab is the center of Baghdad. The rundown, litter-strewn neighborhood is a few blocks from the city’s municipal building, a giant brick edifice that is testimony to the power of local authorities. Fadhwat Arab also represents the mix that is Baghdad: 3,600 residents who are Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Kurds and Turkomans, even Christians.

Yadullah Nouri Ali, 61, lives there, inside the shell of a collapsed building, with 10 family members. His home is a courtyard covered with corrugated metal. He was an ironworker but, like most of his neighbors, now has trouble scraping together the 10,000 dinars (about $5) a day he needs to support his family.

Like his neighbors, too, Ali has lived through a lot of war. He took shelter in the 1980s, when Iran bombed Baghdad, but he has many times stood outside listening to the bombs the U.S. has dropped on his country. His fortunes, meanwhile, have paralleled Iraq’s economic path, and that has been down and down. After the Persian Gulf War, he was forced to sell all of his possessions just to feed his family.

Ali has plenty of reasons to be angry at his government. And perhaps he is, though it is impossible to know in a place like Iraq, where self-expression is not exactly encouraged. But he also seems sincerely offended at the notion that American forces could roll through his neighborhood.

“Despite the fact I am an old man, I can confront 20 Americans if I have to,” he said.

His wife, Zahara Abdullah, 47, was like-minded: “Do you accept that your government will attack and assault this neighborhood and our children? He is our president. You are not our custodian.”

The couple have been through so much that survival has become their way of life. They are bracing for the inevitable losses of electricity and running water. Their 19-year-old son, Mohammed, will probably lose his $20-a-month job working a lathe. And their 11-year-old grandson is worried that he won’t be able to go to school or train to become a doctor.

“I am afraid they will bomb my school and that I will not be able to study,” the boy said. “This is what I am afraid of.”

But Ali and his family refuse to make any preparations. Perhaps the reason is misguided pride, of which there seems to be no shortage here. Or perhaps it is a conviction that, in the end, their leaders will do all they can to avoid a war--a conviction that also seems widespread. In any event, they simply reject the notion of getting ready, as do their neighbors.

“We will never make preparations,” said Salah Nuaimi, 71, who has lived his whole life in the neighborhood. “Why? Because of God. Everything is from him.”

Across town, Layuth Ghanim, 42, stood in the shadow of the Lady of Salvation Church. The church is Syrian Catholic and draws 1,000 congregants every Sunday. The sounds of students from the church school echoed off the soaring white edifice as Ghanim expressed the same thoughts Ali had.

“We are living in such a situation for years,” Ghanim said while waiting to pick up his three children from classes. “We are used to this. I don’t think even if it is worse it will be different than last time.”

One sign here of the years of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War is the number of rundown cars crowding the streets. But those thoroughfares also serve as an example of the country’s resilience, not only with the traffic that chokes them but with the many luxury cars that also cruise up and down. Nowhere is this more evident than in Arasat al Hindiya, the city’s most upscale neighborhood. The municipality is widening the sidewalks there with octagon-shaped tiles for pedestrians interested in shopping in the luxury boutiques or dining in the fancy restaurants.

If anywhere in Baghdad has a lot to lose, it is Arasat al Hindiya, whose residents live in grand villas rising behind wrought-iron gates. But there as well, residents and shopkeepers are refusing to alter their daily lives because of the prospect of war.

“Maybe in 1991, at that time, there was fear,” said Maan Samaraa, 27, part owner of a fabric shop called Ashram. “But after that and throughout the years, with the many bombings, we got used to it. For me, I am not afraid of what will happen. I can tell you with strict determination and will, we will not be affected.”

None of this is to say that Baghdad’s authorities are not, at least, trying to prepare their people for what could be a serious fight. One analyst said he expects that if there is an invasion, the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party will hand out weapons to the few residents of the city who don’t already own guns.

In addition to the practical measures they are taking, like distributing extra food, officials also seem to be working on psychological preparations. At the Mother of All Battles Mosque, a huge house of worship dedicated to the Gulf War, Imam Abdul Latif Humain was trying to rally the troops Friday and brace them for what might be a very one-sided war.

“Our cause is depending on faith and justice,” he said to several hundred men and women seated inside the mosque during the Friday prayer ceremony. “The U.S. is lacking these two qualities--faith and justice.... We have faith, which is better than huge numbers of soldiers.”