Six months on, Iraq is a nation in a state of flux

SA’AD Amir’s first task after Baghdad fell was finding a roof over his head.

During the war, an artillery shell landed on the house next door to his, killing three of his neighbours and demolishing much of his own home.

Six months on, the 40-year-old former chef has found a new home but the threat of bombs still loom uppermost in his mind. His new job is as a security guard outside a United Nations World Food Programme compound, where he fears car bombers could strike at any moment.

"In my old job, I made cakes for weddings and parties, and it was nice: I always had people when they were happy," he said.

"Now you can’t do that job, because it doesn’t pay anymore. People make the cakes themselves because they have no money. I took this work in security because it pays good money. My wife and four children are worried I will get killed, but what can I do? I must feed them."

Mr Amir is part of the growing army of armed security staff springing up all over Iraq to defend hotels, businesses and government institutions from attack. Originally, the main threat was looters, now it is terrorists.

The staff who man outer checkpoints, like Mr Amir, are in the frontline of the defences - scores have died in the last two months as suicide bombers have targeted foreign organisations like the United Nations and the Red Cross.

His only real protection is an elderly AK47 and a walkie-talkie, neither of which he has much faith in. Every time a car drives notably slow or fast near his building, or a loud noise sounds, he winces nervously in the knowledge that it could herald his last moments.

"I know that the bombers are now targeting any UN building, and we will be the first to be killed if that happens. I have to check the cars of people who drive in here, and the first thing I tell anybody is that if they don’t do what I say, they will get every bullet in my gun straightaway.

"We have been given training, but I know though that if the suicide bomber decides to come here, there will be very little I can do. He will explode his bomb outside here if I try to kill him first.

"There are people like me protecting every building in Iraq now, and it is us who are dying as these terrorists fight their war with the Americans. But it is also our duty to defend our country, and I will do it. God has already decided when we are going to die."

Mr Amir now lives in a flat in Bab al-Sharji, a crime-ridden quarter of central Baghdad that is rife with drug addicts and petty criminals. Electricity is supplied only six hours a day, he said, while running water frequently cuts out, despite the claims of the coalition that both these services are now back almost to normal.

Nor do his local streets feel any safer - two days ago, he says, a man was shot in the leg outside his house after an argument and the police did not even turn up.

He sees little chance of improvement in his life in the foreseeable future.

"I went to an Iraqi human rights organisation to ask if they could help me get compensation from the Americans for my old house, but they said they could do nothing."

He added: "My only thing to be grateful for is that unlike my neighbours, my family were not in their home when the bombs landed. I can’t even prove for certain now that it was an American bomb, which means I will probably never be able to sue them."

Life, he said, may get better for his children, but he himself cannot help yearning for the old days. "Saddam was a dog, but at least he kept the country secure. Now I cannot even walk in the park with my wife because it is not safe, and I work in fear of my life every day.

"Even my children are not going to school at the moment, because of all the terrorist bombs that have been going off. I am afraid that they will start hitting schools, as they don’t seem to care whose lives they take, just anything to make big news.

"We need better security, fast, and for that, we need someone like Saddam again."

THE NEWSPAPER EDITOR

IN THE last years of Saddam Hussein’s increasingly paranoid regime, Ishtah Jaseem was one of the few Iraqi journalists who could criticise his government and get away with it.

As she freely admits though, it was no great journalistic triumph. Like many young women her age, she had caught the roving eye of Saddam’s powerful son Uday, and been given a job on his own newspaper, Al Asara.

"I was a political reporter, covering the activities of the president, and because it was owned by Uday, you could write articles that were occasionally critical of government policy," she said. "But it was not real criticism - only things that Uday wanted you to write. We were all more afraid of him than we were of Saddam himself."

Now, six months after the collapse of the old regime, 24-year-old Ms Jaseem is back in business as the editor of her very own newspaper, one of nearly 170 now hawked on the streets of Baghdad. But Habbaz Booz - which translates roughly as "The Clown" - is very different from the stern religious and political weeklies that have otherwise proliferated. It is a tabloid-style paper of sensationalist stories, satirical articles and cartoons. In Britain it would fall somewhere between he Private Eye and the Sun - page three excluded.

The less-than-serious content has raised a few disapproving frowns among the editors of Baghdad’s more sombre journals. But as Ms Jaseem points out, real press freedom means, among other things, the freedom to be frivolous.

"Most other newspapers are either religious or political, or economic, and I thought it would be a good idea to do one that got Iraqi people laughing again.

"That has hardly happened in the last 20 years, and, really, we haven’t got much to smile about right now. But at least we now have the freedom to laugh at what we want to laugh at.

"In the old days the only humour that was allowed was official humour, with people making jokes about Saddam’s enemies and so on. You knew really it wasn’t funny as whoever you were laughing about was probably suffering."

The first edition of the twice-weekly paper came out on 27 April, before the war had officially been declared over and while Baghdad was still in the grip of looting.

Ms Jaseem’s father, who edits a daily Iraqi newspaper called The Witness, has helped her sort out the printing and publishing, which is done from a half-derelict office in Baghdad city centre. Since April, it has sold out of its 7,500 print run every time, and has proved popular with both educated and uneducated, men and women.

"Most of the papers here feature nothing but stories about men, but we have something for everybody," she said. "At the moment it is very popular, and we have people queuing to buy it when it comes out. It is just a start for me, but being able to run your own newspaper and write exactly what you want, how you want, is certainly a great feeling for me. It’s not one my father ever had during most of his career."

The issues that dominate the news pages have scarcely changed over the months: the lack of electricity, water and security in the city, and the hundreds of thousands of people now without jobs.

The satire that has developed is direct rather than subtle: one cartoon shows members of Iraq’s new Governing Council being pushed around blindfold by United States soldiers; another shows a new Iraqi ministry office on the planet Mars, which, goes the joke, is the only the place where complaints to the Americans can be made.

Some of the more sensationalist headlines also show that six months on, the Iraqi appetite for conspiracy theories remains as strong as ever. One recent edition carries stories about Saddam Hussein being hidden in Kuwait by the CIA, and also the alleged discovery of a huge stash of American-made weapons of mass destruction near Basra.

The country’s former leader also appears in a "Where is he now?" column, in which readers swap opinions. Is he hiding in the country, living in luxury courtesy of the Americans, or driving a taxi in New York (the last being a favourite theory).

Ms Jaseem added: "Yes, we have freedom and liberty, and more than 170 newspapers are issued but from my point of view, I think things are getting worse. Even though Saddam was a bad guy, at least you felt safe and you could walk about on your own."

When not editing her paper, Ishtar Jaseem spends time with her friends in the wealthy Mansour district of Baghdad, where she now lives.

Night-life these days, though, is very different. Few cafs open after dark, and none of the bars and nightclubs that Saddam closed down a decade ago have deemed it safe enough to re-open.

"We face insecurity every day. Our country has gone from being one of the safest in the world to being one of the most dangerous in the world," Ms Jaseem says.

For that reason, she says, her plans to include pages on women’s lifestyle, make-up and fashion in Habbaz Booz have been put on hold.

"Girls and women in Iraq are interested in those things like anybody else, but right now they have more important things to worry about."

THE COLONEL

AS AN armoured brigade commander in the Iraqi army, Colonel Majid Kadom helped line up nearly 150 tanks against the coalition forces. Now, six months after the collapse of Baghdad, he works for an Iraq-based United States contractor, supplying US army bases.

Helping out the people he was previously ordered to kill is not, however, the most difficult adjustment he has had to make. By far the hardest change has been losing the elite status he had as a top army officer.

"The army has always been one of the most important institutions in Iraq, and if you were in its senior ranks you were in the first degree of life in terms of prestige among civilians," said Mr Kadom, 41.

"I was in charge of 1,360 men, and wherever I travelled, I had five or six bodyguards with me and a driver. That wasn’t because my life was in danger all the time, it was just a prestige thing. If I was in a city and I wanted to go to a good restaurant to eat, all I would have to do was send somebody in to ask, and when they heard my rank I would get a reservation straight away. When my car drove through towns, policemen would close the road to other traffic when I went through."

During the war he fought on Iraq’s eastern border, where, after being bombed by US B52 aircraft, his men quickly deserted. He then cast off his army uniform, donned civilian clothes and smuggled himself back through American lines to Baghdad, where he found all his old blessings had turned to curses.

Taking part in the invasion of Kuwait, and suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq had previously earned him bravery commendations. Now they were considered tantamount to war crimes, even if committed while following orders.

"To do well in the army in the Saddam regime you had to fight bravely, be part of the Baath Party, not protest against the government, and not to have any relatives who did anything wrong either.

"Now all that had turned upside down - it is hard for anybody who has not been through it to imagine the hell it is. After 23 years of risking your life during an army career, suddenly they disbanded it, with no chance even for payment, never mind a pension for fighting for your country.

"You went from being someone to being no-one, and other people could see it too. They never said anything to my face, because they knew if they did I would kill them, but sometimes you can see them thinking: ‘Hey, you, you’re not important now.’"

For the first two months after the war, he lived off his wits, buying and selling whatever he could to keep money coming in for his wife and four children. Then he realised that with the influx of foreigners into the country, the fluent English he had learned during military training 20 years ago was probably his best asset.

After a brief spell working as a translator, he got a job as a $140 (82.56)-a-week local manager for a US civilian contractor to the army, supplying gadgets such as shower units and caravans to army bases around Tikrit.

Mr Kadom now finds himself as the main breadwinner in his family, with his eight grown-up brothers now dependent on his new job to find them work as drivers, labourers and office assistants.

Most were previously in the army themselves, and, like him, find such menial tasks an affront to their dignity.

Most are swallowing their pride at the moment and hoping to find jobs in foreign armies in other Arab countries, such as Yemen, Libya and the Arab Emirates.

Working with his old enemies now causes him no dilemmas.

"I never liked Saddam Hussein, and when the Americans finally knocked him off his shrine, everybody was very happy. I haven’t liked all the Americans I’ve met, but most have a good sense of humour and some are my friends now.

"Nowadays I think the Americans are here to do a good job, but nobody is giving them a chance.

"The Iraqis saw Saddam destroy the country for nearly 40 years, but none of them ever said anything about it. Now they ask why the electricity, water and so on haven’t been fixed after just six months. But that is democracy.

"Life is a like a merry-go- round, sometimes you are up, sometimes down. Me, I hope to go back to the Iraqi army - I could have been promoted to being a general if things hadn’t changed.

"My other hopes are for my new baby boy, Wissam, who was born in September. He, God willing, will have a better life than me."