Faith, Shame, and Insurgency

Life in occupied Iraq

Steven Vincent from the March 2004 issue

Unless you're a VIP who can fly directly into the Baghdad airport, the usual way to get to the city is from Amman, Jordan -- a 600-mile, 12-hour-plus drive (depending on the vagaries of Jordanian customs officials) across barren terrain only a Bedouin could love. My Iraqi driver picked me up at my hotel at 1 a.m., and after interminable hours bouncing in a GMC Suburban along unmarked pavement lit by stars, we hit the border at dawn. By a neat bit of timing, the sun was just lifting over the horizon when we cleared the final checkpoint and, as I slipped a Nelson Riddle tape into the cassette player, we were off again, roaring across the Mesopotamian desert to the strains of "Route 66."

I'd come to Iraq to test my beliefs. Back in New York, I'd been a firm and vocal backer of the war, though not necessarily of the Bush administration. After witnessing firsthand the horrific events of 9/11, I felt the civilized nations of the world had to take on terrorism at its roots -- roots that included the Middle East's legacy of poverty, hopelessness, and despotism, epitomized by, among other tyrants, Saddam Hussein. Saddam may or may not have contributed to the murder of 3,000 people in downtown Manhattan, but I believed a free and prosperous Iraq, spreading ripples of democracy and the rule of law from Damascus to Riyadh, was a key element in preventing similar attacks in America or elsewhere.

But a question had always nagged me: How could I truly endorse the war unless I actually went to Iraq? How did I know my assumptions were correct? And so last fall I traveled to the cradle of uncivilization, staying in Baghdad from mid-September to late October, with a four-day trip to the southern city of Basra. Although my experiences were by no means exhaustive, I feel confident that they were intense and profound enough to offer a valid perspective on the state of Iraq today. I spoke to cab drivers, Islamic clerics, waiters, Western journalists, American and British soldiers, anti-war activists, human rights activists, Iraqi housewives, employed and unemployed academics, children, U.S. government officials -- as close to a full panoply of current Baghdad life as I could. What I saw and heard surprised, delighted, and horrified me in ways I could never have predicted. I still support the war -- even more so, in fact. But I'm less optimistic than I was on April 9, 2003, the day the statue of Saddam fell in downtown Baghdad, when, through my tears, I believed the good guys had won.

I realize no single account will sway someone as to whether the Iraq war was justified. Indeed, for many opponents of the war, the demise of Saddam Hussein and America's flawed attempts to establish democracy in that country are beside the point. But I wonder how they can assume that their suppositions are correct until they do what I did -- go to Iraq and discover for themselves what the Iraqi people think and feel about Saddam and the U.S.

Taking the Pulse

My education in the realities of Iraq started early. At a truck stop near the "Sunni Triangle," the area west of Baghdad populated by foreign and Ba'athist guerilla fighters, we picked up an Iraqi doctor whose car had broken down. As we passed through the volatile towns of Ramadi and Fallujah, where booby traps and ambushes kill or wound American soldiers daily, the doctor pointed out the surrounding vegetation: verdant fields, hedges, palms, and even, he said, copses of birch trees. "To reward his followers," he explained, "Saddam diverted water from the Euphrates River to turn this area into a Garden of Eden." In doing so, however, the tyrant drained thousands of square miles of fertile wetlands in southern Iraq to punish the local "Marsh Arabs" who revolted against his regime after the first Gulf War. "In this way," the doctor concluded, "Saddam turned a desert into gardens and gardens into desert. He corrupted the very geography of Iraq."

Baghdad is an unlovely place. Thirty-five years of war, economic sanctions, and now looting have resulted in gutted buildings, pitted streets, and garbage-strewn fields where packs of dogs run through monotonous neighborhoods of plaster and poured concrete. The dominant color is brown: brown skin, brown buildings, and brown sky, the last from the smog that chokes the city like a five-pack-a-day habit. Add autumnal temperatures of 100 degrees or more, nightmarish traffic jams, and the ever-present threat of crime and suicide bombings, and you've got a place unlikely to top anyone's vacation list.

But if you're interested in hooking up with the Baghdad scene, there are two places to go. One is the Hewar Gallery, northwest of the city's center. As with Rick's American Café in Casablanca, everyone goes to Qasim Septi's combination art gallery, teahouse, and gossip nexus, where former Ba'ath Party members and former agents for the Mukhabarat, Saddam's secret police, hobnob with many of the same people they spied on for the old regime. (The unspoken rule regarding Saddam supporters: Unless they actively tortured or killed people, Iraqis forgive and forget.) At the Hewar I met what passes for Baghdad's bohemians: young, smart, male artists and writers, whose fluency in English makes them the go-to guys for foreign visitors seeking insights into Iraq. I wasn't sure what I'd hear when I asked them about the war.

"When I saw the statue of Saddam fall, I couldn't believe it; I thought I was dreaming," said sculptor Haider Wady. "We use to pray to live for just five minutes without Saddam Hussein. Now we have the rest of our lives!" Painter Mohammad Rasim remarked: "We were afraid the U.S. wouldn't invade. We knew there would be death, but we chose war to get rid of Saddam." Naseer Hasan, a poet and former member of Iraq's national chess team, put it in personal terms: "Throughout my nearly 40 years, I've seen only oppression, terror, and murder. But the removal of Saddam shows me that history can actually smile. Now, each morning I wake up, I find parts of my soul that I thought were dead are slowly coming back to life. April 9th was like a second birthday for me."

To be sure, not everyone at the Hewar felt reborn, especially among the customers over 40, who remembered the good old days of government-sponsored awards and competitions, lucrative commissions for portraits of Father Saddam, and extra pocket money from spying for the Mukhabarat. "Under Saddam, we could do any kind of art, as long as it wasn't political; things were much better then," Septi, the owner, said nostalgically. "Saddam was good for us; we lived well!" declared former Saddam portraitist Abdul Jabar. Some yearned for Saddam's authoritarian hand, especially when it came to the thieves, called in local slang "Ali Baba," who infested Iraq directly after the invasion. "Saddam good, Saddam strong -- under Saddam, no Ali Baba," an art dealer griped in broken English.

The roughly 50/50 split between pro- and anti-Saddam voices at the Hewar is deceptive, however. Because of the despot's beneficence to artists -- advocates of government arts funding, take note -- support for the tyrant runs deep there. The same can't be said for the country as a whole. Among the Kurdish population in the north, for example, opinion is largely anti-Saddam, pro-U.S. In the south, the dominant Shi'a Muslims despise Saddam but are neutral or somewhat antagonistic toward the U.S. Only in the central Sunni Triangle do you find loyalty to Saddam mixed with deep opposition to America.

Baghdad is part of this area, but judging by countless conversations I had with residents, including more than 100 cab drivers, Saddam should not consider running for mayor anytime soon. I'd say at least 95 percent of Baghdadis hate him, with maybe 80 percent supporting the U.S. to various degrees. Anti-American sentiment is tricky to gauge: Iraqis are notoriously double-minded about everything -- quite capable, for example, of praising the U.S. for removing Saddam one moment, then castigating it for supporting Israel the next. But an August opinion poll conducted by Zogby International for the American Enterprise Institute found that while 32 percent of Iraqis wanted coalition forces gone within six months, 34 percent wanted them to remain for a year, and an additional 25 percent said it should be two or more years.

Among those less friendly toward the U.S., there's a welter of views, ranging from pro-Saddam, pro-liberation (a tough one to parse) to vehement diatribes against George Bush that Michael Moore might envy. These sentiments were largely drowned out in December when the news that U.S. troops had captured Saddam sent Iraqis into the streets, singing, dancing, and shooting guns into the air. "Saddam is gone and took all his evils with him," said Rand Matti Petros, manager of a Baghdad Internet café, in an e-mail she sent me shortly after the tyrant was pulled out of his hole. "This surely must be the work of God."

Hamlets and Gertrudes

Besides the Hewar, the other must-see destination in Baghdad is the Shabander Teahouse. It's down on Mutanabi Street, in an old part of the city where buildings dating from the Ottoman Empire sag with age and neglect. On Fridays, Baghdad's booksellers crowd the muddy thoroughfare, hawking everything from Saddam's potboilers to English-Arabic dictionaries to American engineering manuals a quarter-century out of date. Friday was also the day my artist friends gathered in a dirty, open-air, turquoise-colored teahouse where, for 1,500 dinar (about 75 cents), you can purchase a glass of bitter lemon tea, rent a narghile (water pipe), and sit for hours. Like the Hewar, the Shabander is a social scene favored by Western journalists eager to interview Iraqi locals. I was one of the few American reporters this crew had met -- and boy, did I get an earful.