Back in Iraq: Iraqis who lived in fear under Saddam Hussein now feel threatened because of their links with the American occupiers, but they are resigned to the US presence, writes Lara Marlowe.
Al-Suqut. The word crops up in every conversation - before "the fall", after "the fall". Iraqis used to talk about "the fall of Baghdad" but it made them sad. "The fall of the regime" was cumbersome for an event so frequently mentioned. So the events of April 9th, the day Saddam Hussein's black basalt statute was toppled by the US army, were reduced to three telegraphic syllables, the dividing line in Iraq's modern history, as significant to Iraqis as BC and AD in Western civilisation.
A small minority of Iraqis, a fraction of the Sunnis who make up 25 per cent of the population, mourn "the fall" and delude themselves that Saddam Hussein will return. Another minority enthusiastically embrace the American occupation, in the belief that Washington really does have Iraq's best interests at heart. The majority are relieved their dictator is gone but are deeply disappointed by the unkept promises of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to provide electricity, water, telephones and, above all, security. They would like the Americans to start thinking about leaving.
Adnan al-Daraji (53) says "the fall" was the happiest day of his life.
"I got on my knees and thanked God," the chairman of Baghdad City Council recalls. In younger days, al-Daraji was a chief steward for Iraqi Airways and a major in the Iraqi army reserve. He was dispatched to Kuwait as a battalion commander in the 1990 invasion, and surrendered to US forces in Saudi Arabia. While a prisoner, he led other officers in plotting the overthrow of the regime. Saddam got wind of the project and imprisoned 25 men when they returned home. They were sentenced to hang, but after al-Daraji spent 15 months in a tiny cell with four other officers in military intelligence headquarters, Saddam succumbed to pressure from the UN Human Rights Commission and freed them.
When you ask Iraqis why they hate Saddam, few mention his immense cruelty; they seem to take it for granted that brutality goes with power. What they resent most is his selfishness, his failure to show generosity to his people.
"Saddam worked only for the benefit of himself and his family and his masters," al-Daraji says. His "masters"? Like many Arabs, he gives credence to conspiracy theories that Washington continued to "control" Saddam long after the Iran-Iraq war. Most Arabs still believe the US gave Saddam the go-ahead to invade Kuwait. Several times this week, Iraqis and other Arabs told me that Saddam made a deal with the US to hand over his country in exchange for escape.
"I don't have proof; I have doubts," al-Daraji says. "A lot of Iraqis think there were arrangements."
After he was released from prison in 1993, al-Daraji moved every year, taking his wife and seven children from one poor dwelling to another, in the hope of evading further persecution by Saddam's security forces. He bribed the police not to report his changes of residence, and eked out a living doing odd jobs. In 2002, when George W. Bush began talking of war, "I hoped he would do it. In my mind, I willed him to do it". Al-Daraji sat out the three-week bombardment in the mud brick house where he still lives, down a narrow alley in the poor Sheikh Omar district of east Baghdad.
"In the past I always said: 'Today is better than tomorrow,' " he muses with a grin. "After 'the fall', I began saying: 'Tomorrow is better than today.' "
In late May, a local notable told al-Daraji there would be a meeting with US troops in Baghdad City Hall, to set up a municipal council.
"So I went with my two eldest sons, and I said: 'I want to apply.' There were seven candidates from Sheikh Omar, and five of us were elected. It was democratic. Democracy can work in Iraq, in the near future," he says.
When you listen to al-Daraji, you almost believe that US attempts to build an Iraqi nation will succeed. The Americans awarded him the attributes of power: a cellphone with a US number that rarely works, a laminated badge so he can queue with other Iraqis to be body-searched before entering the CPA premises, a $160 per month allowance, and a pistol which he keeps locked in a plywood box in his living-room.
"I carry the licence, but not the pistol," he says. "God is responsible for my protection. One of my friends calls me Gandhi."
Al-Daraji is proud to have been elected chairman by a secret ballot of Baghdad City Council's 37 members. He seems to over-step his brief sometimes, opposing a new finance law that would allow foreigners to own non-oil-related property in Iraq, and demanding that the US-appointed Governing Council secure Iraq's borders or that it ban the al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya television stations, which he accuses of "giving a platform to Iraq's enemies". As an English-speaking Shia Muslim who never lived abroad and eschews Islamic fundamentalism, he could be headed for a brilliant political future. The Shia compose at least 60 per cent of Iraq's population, so they are likely to win any democratic presidential election.
The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last month: "Iraqis are on the road to democratic self-government. All the major cities and over 85 per cent of the towns have councils. In Baghdad, I attended a City Council meeting that was remarkable for its normalcy. I saw its members spend their time talking about what most city councils are concerned with - jobs, education and the environment."
Al-Daraji admits he brought out photographs of himself with Powell, and the newspaper clipping praising the first meeting he chaired, to elude my question about how long US troops should stay.
"There is a difference between what I want and how long they will stay," he says. "I want them to deal with us like Germany. They can have military bases, but they must get off the streets, out of the cities. I think that's what they want too. But they will decide how long. I think they will be here for hundreds of years."
This up-and-coming politician predicts that the country's oil wealth, the world's second largest reserves, will remain the property of the Iraqi people.
"Of course the Americans will take a share," he adds. "But Saddam took everything from us. The Americans will leave more than enough for us."
Al-Daraji brushes aside the fear of bombings, rape, assault, kidnapping and robbery that paralyses many Iraqis.
"The economy will solve the security problem," he claims. "When people can work for a living, they won't want to steal and kill any more."
The Wild West is perhaps the best analogy for post-war Baghdad, with its daily battles and profusion of guns for hire.
"Drive-by shootings, car-jacking and rocket-propelled grenade attacks are just a few of the daily hazards facing those brave enough to work in Iraq," Nick Marmion of Enterprise Ireland Dubai wrote last month. "Drafting in specialist security consultants is a prerequisite for any company wanting to send employees to Iraq."
Most of the security firms employ former special forces members; fees start at $1,500 per day per man for short-term contracts. One such firm, Olive, composed mainly of former SAS men, is protecting the US Agency for International Development and the US Army Corp of Engineers. The private security firm, Custer Battles, has won contracts to provide security for the Baghdad, Mosul and Basra airports. No-one seems to worry that clients might associate the name with Gen George Armstrong Custer's massacre by the Sioux in 1876.
"I'm afraid because I work for the Americans," Bushra Mahdi (27), the fare collector on the Custer Battles mini-bus, told me. She wears tight blue jeans, a white T-shirt and bleached blonde hair. The bus stops next to a highway pillar emblazoned with the words "LEAVE US OR!!". Someone has painted a giant blue X through the words and faintly scratched the word "STAY" into the cement; a summary, in graffiti, of Iraqis' ambivalence towards their occupiers.
The Iraqi Minister for Electricity alights from the mini-bus with his luggage - the red tape involved in entering the airport was too much even for his escort. Four bodyguards wearing pistols in shoulder holsters jump out of two land-cruisers, then speed down the highway on either side of the minister's white, curtained Mercedes.
"The airport road is dangerous," Mahdi explains. She is learning English from old Hollywood movies and dreams of emigrating to England. But there is still no passport-issuing authority.
As we wend through central Baghdad, Mahdi says she is glad Saddam is gone, "but the situation is very bad. We are building very slowly. Every American has a cellphone, but no Iraqis".
A beggar woman in a black chador bangs on the minibus window, as we wait behind a donkey-drawn cart laden with flour sacks. The cart stops to pick over a rubbish-tip beside the road.
"We have electricity three hours on, three hours off," Mahdi says.
We pass the 10-metre high, pre- fabricated concrete wall surrounding the former presidential palace, now the seat of US power in Iraq. The wall resembles the one being built by the Israelis in the West Bank; it, and the many roads closed by American troops, are deeply resented by Iraqis.
"When Saddam was here, he did not cut the roads," Mahdi says. "He let us through, but the Americans don't let us."
The feelings of Iraqis like Mahdi are apparently filtering through the concrete wall, into the recesses of the Disneyland-like former presidential palace.
"Now the reality of foreign troops on the street is starting to chafe," the US Administrator, Paul Bremer, told the US Senate last week. "Some Iraqis are beginning to regard us as occupiers and not as liberators."
For a foreign journalist, one of the most extraordinary things about post-war Iraq is people's eagerness to talk. The pent-up desire to communicate pours out, unstoppable.
"I kept my mouth shut for 25 years," says Rand, a housewife in the local chemist's in Karrada. "I never spoke - not even to neighbours. We forgot Arabic as well as English. I want the Americans to stay as long as they can. When you've seen death, you're happy to have fever."
The chemist, Abu Ahmad, is jovial.
"My little boy saw Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf [the former information minister] on television last night," he volunteers. "And he started saying: 'Amu Saddam, Amu Saddam [Uncle Saddam].' The entire country was programmed, down to the nursery schools, to say 'uncle' or 'father'. It will take years to clean our brains out - it's like needing a complete blood transfusion. But it's getting better every day now." Yet for Abu Ahmad, whatever progress there is has nothing to do with US forces.
"They promised to liberate us but they are occupying us. The Governing Council does nothing without an order from Paul Bremer," he says. By chance, Tahir al-Bayati (75), a retired professor who is well-known in Iraq for writing all the country's English grammar texts, happens into the chemist's.
"It's fine, in my view," he says with elegant enunciation, revelling in the chance to speak his second language. "We got rid of the bloodiest dictator in history. Am I exaggerating?" The old man laughs. "I am expressing myself openly, frankly, without fear, not like before . . . I used to teach my students . . ." Then, in a magical moment, al-Bayati breaks into song: ". . . In Dublin's fair city,/Where the girls are so pretty,/I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone . . ."
The housewives and chemist applaud, and al-Bayati offers a more nuanced appraisal of the US invasion.
"We want to be a free country, for them to leave us. They have saved us from a black era, but I wonder why things are moving so slowly. America is a great country. Why can they not supply us with electricity? These excuses cannot be believed. America is a rich country, Iraq too. We have been under their control for six months. All of us are asking. We need food rations. We expected more," he says.Outside, two Humvees drive down the street with a loud-hailer. Henceforward, curfew will start at midnight, rather than 11 p.m. Since Iraq just changed to winter time, there is in fact no difference, but the measure is presented as a sign of improving security. US soldiers descend from the Humvees and begin distributing copies of Baghdad Now; a Bi-Weekly 1st Armoured Division Publication, filled with upbeat articles about opening a training academy for the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps and the commencement of rubbish collection in Baghdad.
"They swarm us. A lot of people like us," Cpl Juan Castillo (23), from Los Angeles, tells me as he hands out the newspaper. "I don't know what the little kids mean by it, but they always shout 'I love you'."
Soldiers in the vehicles sweep the street with their eyes, fingers on the triggers of their M-16s.
"I'm from psy ops," Castillo says, apparently unaware of the sinister antecedents of "psychological operations" in other US wars. He lives in the palace complex and admits his unit is "pissed off" because the Pentagon "changed our dates on us". His unit was supposed to go home in December, but its stay has been extended until May. "There's concerns," he adds. "Some of our guys have died from IEDs [Improvised Explosive Devices] and there's terrorists out there. It's scary, but it's our job. There's a lot of stress."
The Humvee convoy moves on, and middle-class Karrada forgets the brief intrusion. Merchants and shoppers go back to talking, buying and selling. The street will empty at nightfall. Then the neighbourhood will rattle with gunfire.
Burning rubbish fires lend an eerie glow to the dark buildings, filling the air with acrid smoke. Baghdad's inhabitants hunker down, nursing a host of legitimate grievances. But they're determined to get on with their lives now, whatever the Americans do in their sealed complex across the river.