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If a random sample of people in Baghdad is anything to go by, Iraqis
have a pretty good idea who blew up the United Nations headquarters
here. It was the Americans.
Who else, they ask, wanted the UN out of the country?
'The Americans are to blame'
Patrick Graham
National Post (Canada)
Saturday, August 23, 2003
BAGHDAD - If a random sample of people in Baghdad is anything to go by,
Iraqis have a pretty good idea who blew up the United Nations
headquarters here. It was the Americans.
Who else, they ask, wanted the UN out of the country?
Whatever group, in fact, carried out that strange and confusing attack,
the theories circulating here tell you a lot about how suspicious Iraqis
are of the Americans.
"Seventy per cent of the people I know blame the Americans," says Rafed
as we sit in his upper middle-class home in a wealthy Baghdad
neighbourhood. "Whenever something big happens, even Sept. 11, we always
blame the U.S. because only they can do something that is difficult."
This faith in American know-how may be one reason Iraqis are so
perplexed the reconstruction program is moving so slowly. It is not just
the bombing the Americans are blamed for, it's pretty much every thing
else that has gone wrong in a country where people feel life is getting
progressively worse.
The gulf between the way the United States, and even the UN, perceive
themselves and their image here seems almost unbridgeable.
Local businessmen who supported the invasion complain about the
privatization process and the foreign carpetbaggers arriving to vacuum
up the country's patrimony. Everybody else complains about the lack of
security, the lack of power and the brutality and arrogance of American
soldiers.
These are not minor worries in a country where temperatures can reach
50C. Sleeping without a fan or air conditioner feels like lying in warm
vaseline. If 10,000 people died during the recent heat wave in France,
where temperatures were 10 to 15 degrees cooler, imagine how many might
have died here where mothers are forced to wrap their children in wet
towels to keep them from overheating.
Lawlessness is another common complaint. A few days ago, a driver
working for foreign journalists was car-jacked by men armed with guns
and a pistol. When he pulled over, grabbed the keys and ran, they shot
at him. The aged pickup he was driving was worth no more than a few
hundred dollars, if that.
The greatest threat to foreigners in Baghdad may be terrorism, but
Iraqis are much more likely to be shot in such mundane hold-ups or
caught in the cross-fire of a U.S. military action. As Iraqi goodwill
evaporates, the likelihood of their helping the resistance, foreign or
local, grows dramatically.
The overall situation is opaque and the the UN bombing has not made it
any easier to figure out. No one is really sure who organized the
attack. The al-Qaeda connection may sound plausible in Washington, but
there has been little actual proof of its involvement, which leaves
people here speculating.
"It was probably the Iranians," a former general in the Iraqi army told
us earlier in the week. "They are like eels -- always trying to muddy
the water. And car bombs are their style. They blew up our embassy in
Beirut in 1981 and our Ministry of Planning in the 1980s with the exact
same method. What is the benefit for al-Qaeda if they do this? Why have
they not attacked the UN in Africa or Afghanistan?"
The general, who did not want his name published because he is trying to
work with the Americans, thought that no matter who carried out the
operation, the Americans still bore a great deal of responsibility.
"The Americans are to blame because they failed to secure the army bases
and ammunition dumps after they invaded," he said. "There is still a
working anti-aircraft gun behind my house. They stood by and watched the
looters take everything from the government ministries, including the
army bases.
"After the war in 1991, 15 of the country's governorates were as chaotic
as the country was after this last war and we lost a lot of weapons. We
offered large rewards for weapons and retrieved probably three-quarters
of them. Everybody in the country was looking for weapons to sell us. We
were even able to get some American weapons that they had left behind,
including some new rocket launchers. But the U.S. army waited too long
and offered too little money. Some of us went and told them that these
armaments would be used against them but they ignored us. Even the
helicopters and airplanes were broken up and the parts were smuggled to
Iran."
The general said he knew of several places where a well-connected person
could buy the kind of munitions used in the attack, in addition to
mortars or grenades.
"They will sell it to anybody who pays and won't turn them in to the
Americans," he said.
Although there have been claims the truck that carried the munitions
came from Syria, it was a Russian-made Kamas flat-bed model commonly
used by the Iraqi army, which shipped them in for civilian purposes and
then painted them green.
The reaction of Iraqis to the bombing is complex and not easily
understood by outsiders. A surprising number are simultaneously
sympathetic to the UN workers and impressed by the attack.
When the bomb went off, we were seated in the waiting room of a police
station in the so-called Sunni triangle, the region where anger at the
Americans is most apparent. The reaction to the bombing was upbeat, like
the home team scoring a goal at the local soccer stadium.
But it is not just the Sunni areas that make few distinctions between
between foreigners, such as UN workers, and the occupying U.S. forces.
"I was in the area around Hilla with a group of Shia religious leaders
when the Red Cross vehicle was attacked," said Michael Birmingham, a
human rights activist living in Iraq. "And they clearly did not make any
distinction between westerners. The combination of Iraqi government
paranoia and the policies of isolating Iraq has effectively made many
here unable to differentiate westerners."
Mr. Birmingham, who came to Iraq as a volunteer for the UN Development
Program last fall, said that in the minds of many Iraqis, the UN is
associated with 12 years of sanctions that caused more suffering than
the war itself.
Mr. Birmingham, who was inside the UN building when the blast took
place, believes it had too much U.S. presence rather than too little,
making it an attractive target.
"We had been saying for weeks that the UN could be a target," he said.
"UN workers had been complaining about the presence of the soldiers."
Mr. Birmingham managed to escape from the battered building, but once
outside he saw a badly wounded man he recognized from UNICEF, Canadian
Christopher Klein-Beekman, who later died of his injuries. Mr.
Birmingham stayed with Mr. Klein-Beekman, trying to keep his airway open
until two men took over and they rode together in an ambulance to the
hospital.
"What is heartbreakingly sad about the attack is that the people who
were breaking down barriers between the West and Iraqi society were
killed -- like Chris. He was a knowledgeable, concerned and passionate
spokesman for the Iraqi people."
The archives of South News can be found at
http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/
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