Saturday, Sep 6, 2008
Ten years after the Gulf War, the Iraqi leader is stronger than ever.
Jan 18, 2001 | On a street corner in Baghdad's Sheikh Omar neighborhood, famous for auto mechanics who can fix any heap of junk, three men are stooped over on the curb, arguing over a little pile of scrap metal.
"I'll take this!" says Sabar Hassem, 35, as he snatches a mangled piece of rust from the heap. With the eye of a connoisseur, he recognizes it as an air filter from a Ford pickup truck, perhaps from the 1950s. He gleefully hands over 100 dinars, about a nickel, to the seller. "I will replace the filter and remake it for a newer model," he says. "Then I will get maybe 2,000" -- about $1.05. His day, or maybe even his week, is made.
This is Baghdad exactly 10 years after the start of the Gulf War, a city that has defiantly clung by its fingertips during a decade of Western-led sanctions and embargoes. Before the devastating bombings, Baghdad had long been the envy of the Middle East, with top-notch health care and schools. Iraqis these days have learned to live by their wits.
Ten years ago this week, Baghdad stood shattered. After 40 days of continual bombardment from American fighter jets, its bridges were bombed, its electricity stations gone, its communication tower in pieces. Operation Desert Storm, the U.S.-led attack that drove Iraqi invaders out of Kuwait, flew 110,000 sorties over Iraq and dropped 85,000 tons of explosives. By the time the allied force of 33 countries and hundreds of thousands of soldiers finally ceased blasting the country on February 22, 1991, it had endured perhaps the heaviest bombardment anywhere on Earth since the Second World War.
In the war's aftermath, the United Nations imposed sanctions over Iraq's mammoth oil revenues, in the so-called "oil for food" program, requiring President Saddam Hussein to get approval for spending Iraq's own money, and forcing most Iraqis to depend on monthly ration coupons of sugar, rice, oil and other items for their sheer survival. During a week's travels around Iraq, my taxi driver told me stories of quitting his job as a school teacher, unable to make ends meet.
Arriving here, it's hard at first to grasp the devastation of the city. Baghdad's bridges have been fixed, the shell marks cemented over and roofs retiled. The electricity works almost 24 hours a day, a dramatic improvement from just a few years ago. The streets are a jumble of stalls selling everything from plugs to paper, and most kinds of food. Despite the sanctions, those who have the cash can still get luxury items. One day I buy bananas from Colombia, and that night am offered a fine French sausage for a pre-dinner snack.
Above all, one fact dominates life in Iraq. Saddam, the man President George Bush in 1991 called "Hitler revisited," has endured the decade, too.
As the third White House administration since the Gulf War gets ready to unpack its boxes in Washington next week, the country will also see the return of key Gulf War figures Dick Cheney and Colin Powell. A nagging question looms over the administration of the man whose father prosecuted the war: If Saddam has lasted through all this, what will finally drive him out?
The Republican Party campaign platform last year promised "a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein." And last month, Powell declared that Saddam was "sitting on a failed regime," and was "not going to be around in a few years' time." As secretary of state, Powell said he would "re-energize" the international embargoes, he said.
Judging from a week in Iraq, Powell has an extremely tough task ahead.
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