Baghdad Days and Nights

Ten Years After the War, Iraq’s Capital Is Still Trying to Recover

An Iraqi man carries a sack of flour from a warehouse in Baghdad. Ten years
after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, life is very different for the residents of
Baghdad. (Faleh Kheiber/Reuters)

By Mohammed Ajlouni

A M M A N, Jordan, Aug. 4 — On a scorching summer afternoon, two women in
tight-fitting black clothes and shiny silver shoes slowly make their way to
the entrance of the once-luxurious al-Rasheed Hotel in Baghdad.
     They are joining dozens of others for an upper-class wedding party. Ten
years after Iraq invaded its southern neighbor, Kuwait, life in the Iraqi
capital has taken on a new dimension.
     A once-prosperous middle class has been eroded. Instead, a new class of
profiteers has emerged from the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War.
     Before the war, 60 percent of the Iraqi population belonged to an
affluent middle class. Now, Iraqis blame U.N.-imposed sanctions for
reshuffling the nation’s society, wiping out that middle class — and
destroying a secular, urban society.
Tough Times
To mitigate the effect of the sanctions, the United Nations in 1996
initiated an “oil-for-food” program, to help buy food and medicine for the
needy. The program has stabilized the economy, but it has also created an
opportunity for cronies of the regime to benefit through smuggling, skimming
profits and other illicit activities.
     In the past few years, several shopping arcades and plush restaurants
have opened in some areas of Baghdad. Along the main street of the posh
Karadeh district in particular, restaurants have been mushrooming, competing
to attract this emerging class.
     Yet, while the shops around Baghdad are filled with all sorts of goods
entering Iraq, legally or illegally, Iraqis who have no ties to either the
regime or the postwar profiteering economy find it very difficult to afford
anything. A civil servant, for example, makes the equivalent of $3 a month.
     Jamal, a 37-year-old accountant, does a little better. He makes about
$4 a month. But despite a separate night job driving the family sedan as a
taxi, he cannot afford to send all seven of children to school and this year
has decided to keep his daughters at home, still worrying about making ends
meet.
     “Even if school is free, I just can’t afford to buy shoes for them to
go to school,” he says. He asked that he not be further identified.
     Most Iraqi families have resorted to selling their belongings.
Makeshift street markets have sprung up all over the country, with people
selling everything from the family silver to, literally, the kitchen sink.
     Iraq’s child mortality rate, once comparable to child mortality figures
in the industrial world, is now reaching alarming numbers. According to
UNICEF, 8,000 Iraqi children die monthly, joining more than a million that
have died since sanctions were first imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait.
     Eight-year-old Sheren Murad sells incense sticks at the corner near the
Ministry of Information building. “If I don’t work, my sick parents will
have nothing to eat,” she explained matter-of-factly. She makes close to a
dollar a day.
     For many Iraqis, electricity is just as pressing a problem. Despite the
country’s abundance of oil, electricity is supplied in three-hour on-and-off
intervals. The south of the country — a region whose political forces
traditionally have been hard for the regime to control — gets power only at
night.

Religious Revival
These days, religion seems to be winning the day, which is a far cry from
the 1980s, when the Ba’ath party of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had helped
create one of the most modern and secular nations in the Arab world. Now,
once-empty mosques are crowded, not just with the aged, but with youngsters
as well. Kadim, a 50-year-old driver, offers a reason: “When you are in
need, you can only turn to God for help,” he said.
     Secularism was one of cornerstones of Ba’ath ideology before the war.
Baghdad was famous for its bars and nightclubs, a rarity in the Arab world.
An Arab poet, Abu Nuwas, well-loved for his erotic and bacchanalian poetry,
even had a street named after him in the capital.
     But almost all the clubs and bars have shut down, and to satisfy the
religious revival, Saddam is now building what is believed to be the biggest
mosque in the Arab world, not surprisingly called Saddam’s Mosque. A grand
structure, it is being constructed on the site of a once-popular race
course.
     Ten years after the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam’s grip on power in Iraq
seems to be stronger than ever. Diplomats say that any talk of a coup
attempt on the Iraqi leader is “wishful thinking on behalf of America.”
     For Saddam’s cronies, opportunities now abound. But for ordinary Iraqis
suffering daily, there seems to be little they can do to overcome their
struggles.

ABCNEWS producer Mohammed Ajlouni, based in Amman, Jordan, recently visited
Baghdad, Iraq, for this report.
Watching From Afar
Aug. 4 — Iraq’s neighbors are watching closely. Many countries are trying to
restore their friendship, though mostly on the economic level. Lucrative
contracts under the oil-for-food program are hard to resist.
     Even Syria, a longtime enemy of the Iraqi state, has agreed to open the
oil pipeline closed 20 years ago at the outbreak of the Iraq-Iran War. Gulf
states have been making friendly gestures. Many have reopened their
embassies in the Iraqi capital despite calls from Kuwait not to do so.
     Many Western countries are eager to resume diplomatic relations. France
maintains a sizable diplomatic delegation mission heading a de facto
ambassador or a charge d’affairs in Baghdad. The French Cultural Center on
Abu Nuwas street opposite the Presidential Palace on the banks of the Tigris
River is bustling with activity. And executives from French companies
frequently travel to Iraq in pursuit of lucrative oil exploration deals that
they hope to strike once the sanctions are lifted.
     Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz received a warm welcome on a
recent trip to Moscow, becoming the first Arab official to be received by
Russian President Vladimir Putin. Putin pledged to support Iraq in its
effort to lift the sanctions and even hinted that Moscow might unilaterally
break the air embargo.
— ABCNEWS’ Mohammed Ajlouni