The foreign troops have become an onerous presence, as if the burden of Saddam was removed only to be replaced by a new burden. Iraqis now have to suffer the numerous intrusive checkpoints, the traffic jams they cause, the many roadblocks, the tanks, the lines for gasoline. They are awakened by the rumbling of tanks through streets, or the sounds of gunfire. Many Iraqis wonder what are these words "fuck" and "shit" that Americans use all the time. Frustrated young soldiers point their machine guns at grandmothers and sometimes tease unarmed Iraqi youths about how easily they could kill them.

Iraqis are lost and confused before the American juggernaut. There used to be ministries, ways of getting things done; now they have to march through long paths carved out with barbed wire and stand in the sun, with gun barrels facing them, as they are searched, patted down, questioned, their I.D.s declared unsuitable, told they cannot be helped, sent elsewhere. Tempers are lost; Americans scream in English and Iraqis scream back in Arabic, neither understanding the other. American soldiers do not sympathize with the inconvenience. "We stand in the sun all day," said one soldier, looking at hundreds of Iraqi men standing or squatting, and waiting.

They continue waiting at night, without electricity, living in darkness by gas lanterns, listening to the sounds of gunfire all night, suffering from heat without air conditioning, sleeping outside to escape the saunas in their homes, sitting on the curbs or standing in clusters, living in boredom, fear, frustration and futility. There is no security. Saddam's regime had a monopoly on violence. It was possible to accommodate oneself to life under Saddam, and to live without arousing the state's ire or incurring its wrath. The present violence is random, collaboration with it impossible.

Meanwhile, coalition soldiers live removed from Iraqis, hiding in palaces that once belonged to Saddam. They are increasingly vulnerable and nervous after an epidemic of successful attacks on Americans, and the high security that accompanied the first weeks after the war is being restored. Some attackers are indeed the lingering remnants of Saddam's regime. Nihilistically they shoot power stations with rocket-propelled grenades and blow up water pipes, damaging Iraqi communities for the sake of propaganda.

Two frustrated U.S. intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, say that many of those who attack Americans are not former Republican Guards or members of Fedayeen Saddam or the Baath Party, as has been widely assumed, but instead are men who opposed Saddam and welcomed the Americans. Suffering wounded pride and humiliation from the treatment they receive from U.S. military personnel, they need to restore their self-esteem. It is a view repeatedly reinforced during conversations with Iraqis themselves. They feel shame for their country's quick capitulation after predictions of last stands and blood baths and boasts that American soldiers would not be able to deal with the heat. These successful attacks demonstrate their virility and the American vulnerability and gratify most Iraqis subconsciously, as evidenced by how fast detailed and accurate rumors of the attacks spread throughout the country.

Some American soldiers wonder why anybody would want to attack them, since they are, in the end, liberators. Others are cynical and question why they were sent to Iraq at all. One enlisted Marine wanted to know what it was like back home during the war, if Americans supported them, and if they knew why the war had been fought. When asked why he thought he was in Iraq, he responded: "It's obvious -- for oil. The first thing we did was secure the oil field in Basra." And then he scoffed: "Americans are blind! There were no weapons of mass destruction. We barely even took any fire." Other soldiers complain that they were sent to do a job they were not trained for. How long will their patience last?

Most Iraqi clerics have told their congregations to be patient, that the time is not right to attack Americans and they should give them six months or a year to fulfill their promises. And perhaps such patience will pay off. Bremer in May had rejected earlier plans to give substantial power to an Iraqi provisional government. But in an apparent concession to Iraqi pressure, Bremer has announced that a temporary governing council will be established later this month, and Iraqi political leaders agreed this week to join it.

Still, the clerics say, if the Americans fail, or if they remain in Iraq too long, it is legitimate to attack them. "All good people of the world reject foreign occupation," Imam Muayad, the leader of Iraq's most important Sunni mosque, said last Saturday. "Whether they are Muslim or not. Americans rejected British imperialism, so why do they deny other people the right to do what they did? We as Muslims reject any foreign occupation because Muslims do not recognize slavery to anyone but God."

Recent Stories