One man’s joy in Iraq
“DO YOU have any newspapers?” Iraqi border guards
ask travellers arriving from Jordan. Like most of their
countrymen, they are anxious for any information,
especially about Iraq itself, that is unfiltered by
government propagandists. But recently, as Iraq has
faded from the world’s headlines, the pickings have
been thin. Saddam Hussein’s regime seems more firmly
entrenched than at any time in the past ten years, and
the international dispute over how to handle him is as
intractable as ever. No news may be good news for Mr
Hussein, but it is a disaster for the bulk of his citizens.
The one place where talk of Iraq rattles on is the United
Nations Security Council. After squabbling for a year
over what sort of arms-control regime to impose on
Iraq, it eventually created a new body, Unmovic, to
ferret out whatever nasty weapons its predecessor,
Unscom, had overlooked. A further month of
squabbling ensued over who to put in charge.
Eventually, last month, the council settled on Hans Blix,
a former Swedish foreign minister and head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency. After taking up his
new position on March 1st, Mr Blix has 45 days to
produce an “organisational plan”, over which the
Security Council will doubtless squabble some more.
Even if the council agrees on an agenda for Unmovic,
the Iraqi government has refused to have anything to do
with the new body. It might back down if pressed, as it
has done before. But should Unmovic ever manage to
get into Iraq, it would doubtless fall foul of the same
intransigence that stymied its predecessor. And since
Mr Blix’s every move will be subject to council
members’ vetoes, there is endless room for things to
continue to go wrong.
Viewed from Iraq, all this debate has an air of unreality.
The border guards have no time to wonder whether or
not Mr Blix will ever arrive; they are busy with other
customers. Tunisian, Jordanian and Indian businessmen
jostle at the passport desk. An Italian commercial
delegation follows fast on the heels of an Austrian one.
A German contingent recently passed through to reopen
their embassy in Baghdad; Japan is about to follow suit.
Iraqi delegations will soon travel the other way, en route
to Spain and Turkey.
The lobby of Baghdad’s plushest hotel, which stood
empty and echoing two years ago, seethes with
diplomats and businessmen taking in an exhibition on
“American aggression”. In theory, the world is still
ostracising Mr Hussein’s regime with the strictest
sanctions ever imposed. But, by now, in practice, many
foreign firms and governments are keen to rebuild old
ties.
Although simply hobnobbing with Iraqi officials does not
contravene the letter of the sanctions, many do not stop
at that. In principle, all goods entering Iraq should
receive approval from a special UN committee. But for
every truck crossing the Jordanian border by the book,
UN staff reckon that another 20 pass without permission
(some of those, admittedly, fall under a Jordanian-Iraqi
barter deal sanctioned by the UN). At the Turkish
border, there are 200 embargo-busters for every
legitimate load.
To pay for goods brought in this way, the Iraqi regime
smuggles oil out by land and sea. In the north, the line of
tankers waiting to cross the Turkish frontier is
sometimes backed up for 30km (18 miles). At the
opposite end of the country, in the Gulf, fleets of small
ships load up with Iraqi oil and then sneak out through
Iranian waters. Although American and British patrol
boats intercept some of the smugglers, such as the
Russian tanker seized last week, many more slip by.
Some of the fruits of this trade are on display in
Baghdad. In stores catering to senior government
people, shoppers deliberate over cognac and delicacies
that are certainly not part of the normal UN food ration.
Pirated copies of the latest American films and serials
are regularly shown on Iraqi television. Mr Hussein’s
newest palace, draped in scaffolding a year ago, now
presents an unblemished façade to the skyline. Workers
are fixing smart stone cladding on run-down government
offices.
The traffic police whizz about on shiny new motorbikes.
The well-equipped security services seem firmly in
charge; even the rumours of protest against the regime
that emerged from southern Iraq last year have died out.
After poring over satellite photographs, American
officials recently announced that Iraq had rebuilt many
of the buildings destroyed by American bombs in air
raids in December 1998.
But even if Mr Hussein has found ways around the
embargo, most Iraqis have not. To mitigate their plight,
the UN set up the “oil-for-food” programme, whereby
its staff supervise the sale of limited amounts of Iraqi oil
and the purchase of humanitarian goods with the
proceeds. Although supplies of food and medicine have
increased, Iraqi bureaucrats still hamper distribution,
while American and British representatives at the UN
have put many of the humanitarian contracts that they
question on indefinite hold.
Increased rations have helped with basic nutrition but
with little else. They cannot touch the general ruin of the
country after ten years of sanctions: the scale of
dilapidation is too great. For instance, the road from
Baghdad to Basra reveals that the agricultural land in
between has become one vast salt pan. Computer
programmers and electrical engineers moonlight as
taxi-drivers for want of work. Iraq’s lapsed middle
classes hawk rusting plumbing joints at one of
Baghdad’s many impromptu markets. A hospital in
Basra, miserably short of all its imported supplies, says
that even its blood-bank (presumably not imported) has
been empty for the past six days.
As one unemployed scientist puts it, “Life is very, very
bad.” This stark summing-up does not apply to Mr
Hussein and his friends. And none of it, good or bad, is
news for the news-starved border guards.