IRAQ: Iraq is on the edge - caught between nostalgia for the pre-Saddam 1950s and an uncertain future. Michael Jansen reports from Baghdad
My friends the Radis always affectionately refer to the capital city of their country as "Bags". My Radi contemporaries, Selma and Nuha, were here during my latest visit in May. I am glad that they are not here now to see how things have gone from bad to worse.
Selma is a jet-setting archaeologist and Nuha is painting in Beirut. They belong to the ancien regime, the period of the British-installed monarchy which is now seen as the good old days by most middle and upper middle class Iraqis.
With the final period of less intrusive British rule in mind, Ala'eddin Selim Abdullah, the owner of my hotel, the Orient Palace in the Karada district, named his restaurant Fifties and parked his black and white 1951 MG saloon out in front.
Fifties is a pleasant place, with a small bar flanked by two padded stools, dim lights, dark red tablecloths, gleaming utensils and flowers. As UN personnel and journalists hover over beers or gather for dinner, a pianist plays golden oldies from the 50s and 60s on an art deco upright. Above the bar fly eight wooden ducks and on the walls are photos of Iraq between 1930-60.
In 1950, Tahrir Square, the centre of the capital, was a wide open space adorned with a few scrappy trees. Along the Tigris corniche of Abu Nawas Street, men in suits and ties sat at at formally laid tables and dined off masgouf, charcoal-grilled yellow and silver carp from the river. Butter was made by peasant women shaking a large balloon of skin. Iraq's most famous singers were revered personalities people knew at first hand.
Today Tahrir Square is a sweltering traffic jam, the restaurants on Abu Nawas are closed, butter is imported, and popular singers are distant television personalities. The 1958 revolution, several coups and 24 years of Saddam Hussein's rule changed everything. The toppling of President Saddam in April was not only a coup and a revolution but also projected Iraq from the 20th to the 21st century. This is because much of the basic social and physical infrastructure laid down by the British was either destroyed during the US bombing campaign or during the pillage that followed.
Today Baghdad is a perilous place, with "Ali Baba" lurking on the roads and in the shadows as well as resistance fighters taking pot shots at US forces, risking Iraqi lives in the crossfire. Electricity is fitful. Cuts are random and unpredictable. Phone communications may work within certain districts but not from one to the others.
Yesterday I was invited to have a beer at the most famous landmark of the British raj - the Alwiya Club - by Dhari Khamis al-Dhari. The club, established in 1924, did not admit selected Iraqis until the 50s. Now it is the preserve of affluent Iraqis.
Dhari is a member of the Administrative Council of Abu Ghraib, an urban and agricultural area west of Baghdad known for its notorious prison, built before Saddam came to power and now back in use.
Dhari is very proud of Abu Ghraib's council. It was the first to be established after the war. It runs the police, 135 schools, buses for teachers, the irrigation system, and other essential services.
"Security is much better in Abu Ghraib than Baghdad," Dhari said. Perhaps this is because the inhabitants are mainly tribal from the Abu 'Amer, Beni Timimi and Za'aba, to which Dhari belongs.
Being a tribesman in Iraq does not mean being a herdsman or farmer. Dhari, the son of a member of the monarchical parliament, received his university degree in Germany.
"I told the Americans just after the war to protect facilities but they failed. They came without a plan and did not know what to do. They could not cope."
Others in the group, which gathers every Friday at noon, agreed. Dhari went on: "I have repeatedly asked the Americans to fix security - theirs and ours. But they reply that if they spend more time on their security, they will have to give up time to work on our security, electricity and water. I have recommended that they hand over security to our police. They know the place. They know who the criminals are and where they live. Our police need cars and radios to operate."
(Before speaking to him, I was told by a diplomatic source that a delegation of Iraqis who approached the US occupation authority with just such a request were refused, politely.)
Dhari is in despair. "Things are going too slowly," he says. One of his friends remarked: "The British know how to be occupiers, the Americans don't."
Iraqis find the lack of communications one of the most galling depriva- tions. Last week, Iraqis and visitors who have GSM mobile phones with roving applications were surprised to find them working. Two companies, one Bahraini and the other Kuwaiti, set up two networks providing roaming services. A journalist said she was delighted. "For two days I rang everyone to say hello. I felt liberated from the satellite phone which only works outside, unless one buys a special attachment and puts up an aerial."
But after a few days, the authorities closed down the two companies. Iraqis were outraged. According to Charles Heath, the British spokesman for the authority, the "Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 11" prohibits the establishment of mobile services unless approved by the authority which is now in the process of taking tenders for a system which would cover Iraq. However, this will not be operational until mid-November. Three and a half months. Iraqis are growing increasingly impatient. They want electricity, security and telephones now, not in November - maybe. They have been given too many promises.
While they wait, Iraqis who wish to communicate will have to make do with the Internet. Internet providers using the latest satellite technology have sprung up all over Baghdad. Their services are affordable for many people.
In most centres, it costs 2,000 dinars, or $1.25, for an hour. Some people hire a computer for half that time to send urgent messages to relatives on the other side of the capital, in another city or town or abroad. The Internet services, plus mobile phones, will - eventually - project Iraqis into the 21st century as far as communications are concerned.
That is if a viable government is installed. Many Iraqis are concerned over the occupation authority's reliance on an old-fashioned sectarian formula for governing the country. The membership of the governing council, appointed to prepare the way for elections and a permanent government, was selected on confessional and ethnic bases.
"Iraq has never been run along sectarian lines," snapped a friend. "There are no differences between Shias and Sunnis. My father was a Shia and my mother a Sunni. All my relatives have made mixed marriages," she added.
There is serious concern amongst Iraqis that communalism will become the basis for all appointments. This will create new divisions in a society made fragile by the war and its aftermath.
While educated members of Iraq's communities interact and, as it were, belong to the same "club", this is not true of the uneducated and deprived masses, particularly the Shias, who follow the dictates of their clerics. The most popular clerical figure today is Muqtada Sadr, a young man from Kufa whose father was a highly respected and revered figure.
Muqtada Sadr's followers control the vast Shia slum in Baghdad which is inhabited by two million people. He is a rabble rouser who adopts a strongly anti-US line but does not step over the line by inciting violence against the occupying forces. Once he does that, or provides arms for the "Mahdi army", which he is raising, the US military says it will intervene.
Meanwhile he is free to stir up his supporters at sermons during the Friday communal service. His aim, of course, is to win over the mass of Shias, 60 per cent of the population, on the understanding that Iraq is to be a democracy. More moderate Shia politicians, particularly those from groups which have joined the governing council, cannot compete with him for the street. They are appealing to Iran, which has great influence among Iraqi Shias, to curb the rebellious Sadr. The rise to power of Sadr and men like him could lead to an upheaval comparable to the Communist revolution in Russia.
Iraq's traditional social contract - which has been operative since Ottoman times - would be swept away along with the modernisation and Westernisation acquired by Iraqis since the British occupation in 1920.
Iraq is on the edge. No one can predict how the country's politics will develop. In a matter of months, it could be projected into the 21st century with a democratic government and up to date infrastructure or become a retrogressive Iraqi version of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is neither democratic nor forward looking.