Inside America’s Iraq

For the “outsiders”, the air route remains a tempting option. The stark white, unmarked RJ twin-engined 80-seater, climbs rapidly to a safe height and, once over Baghdad, spirals down. It is like hurtling down a minaret.

The arrival terminal is sparse and clean, the Iraqi immigration and customs officials giving a speedy clearance, particularly to the American TV crews bringing in tons of equipment. At the exit I spot the squat Iraqi information ministry official who had once escorted me to Tariq Aziz weeks before the war. He is now working as a guide to a visiting TV crew. Furtive exchanges of phone numbers and we clamber on to the official bus that drives us to a point several kilometers towards Baghdad.

This bus stop is on a gigantic circle around the airport which has been cleared of vehicles, indeed of all humankind. Here passengers are assisted by soldiers of the Occupation Authority in the form of two embarrassed looking Gurkhas. Would it not have been better public relations if American soldiers, along with their new Iraqi recruits, received the passengers? But that does not appear to be the American purpose — it is, instead, to instill awe. Wasn’t “shock and awe” the original script? “Get the f*** out of here,” yells the US soldier, jumping out of his APC. More expletives later, he yells, “Can’t you see the army is moving?” My driver swerves to the right. He laughs: “They are scared.” Then adds, “How can we tolerate it?”

Baghdad, once the easiest city to drive around, is today a huge traffic jam. With the occupation have come the second hand car dealers from all over the Gulf, indeed even from Houston. The exact figures are not available of the number of cars choking Baghdad’s streets. The traffic nightmare is aggravated by two other factors. Half the streets on one side of the Tigris have been blocked to ensure security for the Green Zone behind which the Occupation Authority resides. Then, traffic lights do not work for want of electricity. The authorities have still not been able to restore power to a city where once there was no shortage. Trust the ingenuity of Indian entrepreneurs like Hardarshan Singh Meijhi, who has installed a generator to service an entire neighbourhood not far from the celebrated Firdaus Square. Baghdad lives without centrally provided power for hours. “They are punishing us,” the driver continues. One shudders to think what might happen as the mercury shoots past 50 Celsius in May and June. Rebellion or submission?

Probably neither—if you listen to the dour ayatollahs, sunk in the deepest layers of thought in their najaf hauzas, or seminaries. In the Baathist period, visitors to Karbala and Najaf, the Shia holy cities, required a permit and a guide for access to the shrines. Demonstration of religious fervour was taboo. Today, in the aftermath of the Moharram commemoration, the entire square between the shrines is filled with young men in black beating their backs with chains to the slow rhythm of a solitary drum. This ritualised participation in the pain of the martyrs of Karbala would have invited the firing squad in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

This elementary truth the ayatollahs have grasped. “Freedom of worship is the present reality,” said one ayatollah, seated cross-legged in his study lined with leather-bound books up to the ceiling on all four walls, even as his pupils sat around him in reverential attention. “As for the Americans professing their desire to hand over sovereignty and leave,” he said, almost looking through me with his deep set eyes, “We have a sense of history and know they have not come here to leave in a hurry.” There is a sense in Najaf that a visit to Grand Ayatollah Sistani by some members of the Governing Council was projected as endorsement of the interim constitution that the Shia clergy finds flawed on several counts.

My guess is the clergy will withdraw into its shell, keep its enormous hold on millions of Shias by encouraging efficient self rule and patience. They are in no mood to encourage mass agitation and thus offer the population as a target. They are settling down to a long game of patience even as the Americans run out of it, determined to hand over authority by June 30 to heaven knows who, transform the Green Zone into the largest American embassy campus, supported by troops in half a dozen bases spread across Iraq.