Kuwait Diary

Kuwait Diary -- April 12th, 2003

Day 24 of the 2nd Gulf War
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For the last three days, Iraq has descended into a state of total anarchy and mayhem. Most educated Iraqis, the middle and upper classes, government officials and administrators, are hiding in fear behind closed doors and barricades. Gun totting children move through the streets waving Kalashnikovs and rocket propelled grenades. In the Pentagon briefings in Washington, Arie Fleicher waved his hands and declared, “ Today was better than yesterday; yesterday was better than the day before…..they are liberated.” For the majority of Iraqi civilians, today was definitely not better than yesterday. Baghdad is burning.

You could count 16 columns of smoke rising over the city yesterday afternoon. At the beginning, there was the Ministry of Trade. Looters threw petrol through the smashed windows of the ground floor and the fire burst from them within two seconds. Then there was a clutch of offices at the bottom of the Jumhuriyah Bridge, which emitted clouds of black, sulphurous smoke. By mid- afternoon yesterday, chaos had reached the Central Bank of Iraq as each window flamed like a candle, a mile-long curtain of ash and burning papers drifting over the Tigris. There is no monetary system in Iraq and the money itself has become worthless.

As the pickings got smaller, the looters grew tired and the symbols of government power were cremated. The Americans talked of a "new posture" but did nothing. They pushed armored patrols through the east of the city, but their soldiers did no more than wave at the arsonists. A woman wept beside her husband in the old Arab market. "We are destroying what we now have for ourselves," she said to him. "We are destroying our own future."

The flames spread. By mid-afternoon, the Al-Sadeer hotel was burning – the army of child thieves sent into the building had already stolen the bed linen and the mattresses and the beds and tables and even the reception desk and its mass of iron keys. Then from the towering Ministry of Industry, came trails of black smoke. Every central street was strewn with papers, discarded furniture, stolen, wrecked cars and the contents of the small shops. On the way to the old Saddam hospital opposite the Ministry of Defense, American rifle-fire was hissing through the trees opposite the administrative block shooting at any moving car because they believed Iraqi soldiers were hiding there.

Then, the banks were looted. The Iraqi dinar has collapsed and no one had bothered to bash their way into the banks before. But in the morning, a mob stormed the Rafidain Bank near the Baghdad governorate, dragging a massive iron safe to the door and crowbarring it open. More petty stall-owners turned up with guns to protect their property because the Americans obviously declined to do so. Some looters were wounded.

Then mobs broke into the Kindi hospital, where only five days ago lives were being saved. Armed men were at the gates. Most were in blue medical gowns, although they did not look to be doctors. After the West German and Slovak embassies and the Unicef offices, it was the turn of the French cultural center to be looted. Just a week ago, it was the Iraqi army's oil fires that covered the city in darkness. Now it is the newly "liberated" Iraqi people who are cloaking their city in ash.

American forces were apparently unwilling or unable to deal with the storm of arson, looting, car-jacking, drunkenness and factional fighting that swept Baghdad, Mosul, liberated yesterday by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters before the Americans arrived, and other big cities. I am surprised that the US planners had not anticipated this slide into chaos. Apparently, their plan was to let the Iraqis govern themselves.

The Red Cross, aid charities and Iraqi citizens pleaded with the US to honor its obligations under the Geneva Convention and protect the civilian population. But a senior commander said: "At no time do we really see ourselves becoming a police force."

After the capitulation of the northern city of Mosul, scene of some of the most frantic looting and destruction yesterday, a reported 2,000 US troops were deployed to secure the northern oilfields, bringing all of Iraq's oil reserves, the second largest in the world, under American and British protection. But US commanders in the field said they did not have the manpower, or the orders from above, to control the scenes on the streets of Baghdad and other cities.

In Nasiriyah, two children were shot dead by US Marines after the van in which they were traveling ignored an order to stop. In Basra, British troops killed five men who fired at them while trying to rob a bank. In Mosul, near the Turkish border, where the entire Iraqi V Corps capitulated overnight, mobs rampaged through the streets, stripping public buildings, invading the central bank, tearing up banknotes and burning a market. One man sat smiling outside the central bank while others dumped currency notes over his head.

Mosul's university library, celebrated for its ancient manuscripts, was ransacked, despite appeals from the minarets of the city's mosques for people to stop destroying their own town. "Mosul is facing a barbaric assault," said Huthaif al-Dewaji, a professor of medicine at the university. "We urge Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair ... the commanders of the Peshmerga to help us establish some control."

In Najaf, where a Shia religious leader was hacked to death, days after returning from exile in London, the rival Shia faction that murdered him was reported to have taken control of the city. In Kirkuk, Kurdish forces withdrew but a supermarket and Baath party offices were set alight amid growing tension between the Arab and Kurdish communities.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, dismissed the chaos as a "transitional" phase, born of "pent-up frustration" after 24 years of oppression. He accused newspapers of exaggerating the unrest. He said he did not believe what he was seeing on TV. For the first time, Rumsfeld was showing some emotion, frustration written large on his face. If he could, it seemed he would have censored all the news coming in from the killing fields of Iraq.

"It's untidy. And freedom's untidy. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things," Mr Rumsfeld said. "They're also free to live their lives and do wonderful things. And that's what's going to happen here."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) warned that Baghdad's medical system had "virtually collapsed" from a combination of combat damage, looting and fear. Few medical staff had reported for work after mobs invaded some hospitals on Thursday and stripped them of vital equipment. An ICRC spokeswoman, Nada Doumani, said: "The ICRC is profoundly alarmed by the chaos ... Under the Geneva Conventions, it is up to the occupying forces to impose law and order." The organization, reminded the US and Britain of their legal responsibility to protect civilians and essential services. Vital medical equipment such as heart monitors and incubators have been stolen and even the laboratories ransacked - centrifuges and microscopes smashed. United Nations aid agencies say the humanitarian situation is worsening and the civil disorder means it is not safe for them to send their workers in to help civilians.

The country's cultural heritage is under threat too.The famed Iraq National Museum, home of extraordinary Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections and rare Islamic texts, sat empty, except for shattered glass display cases and cracked pottery bowls that littered the floor. Gone were irreplaceable archaeological treasures from the Cradle of Civilization.

Everything that could be carried out has disappeared from the museum, gold bowls and drinking cups, ritual masks worn in funerals, elaborately wrought headdresses, lyres studded with jewels, priceless craftsmanship from ancient Mesopotamia.

"This is the property of this nation and the treasure of 7,000 years of civilization. What does this country think it is doing?" asked Ali Mahmoud, a museum employee, futility and frustration in his voice. The looting, is destroying the history of the very people that are there. A museum employee, reduced to tears after coming to the museum and finding her office and all administrative offices trashed by looters, said: "It is all the fault of the Americans. This is Iraq's civilization. And it's all gone now." She refused to give her name.

McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad, was infuriated. He said he had been in frequent and frantic touch with U.S. military officials since Wednesday, imploring them to send troops "in there and protect that building." The Americans could have prevented the looting, agreed Patty Gerstenblith, a professor at DePaul School of Law in Chicago who helped circulate a petition before the war, urging that care be taken to protect Iraqi antiquities. "It was completely inexcusable and avoidable," she said.


The spokesman for US Central Command, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, suggested that there was little the 120,000 American and British troops inside Iraq could do until a new civilian administration was formed. The first talks between potential Iraqi leaders, from inside and outside the country, will be convened in Nasiriyah on Tuesday.
Citizen Arkan Daoud Boutros said: "Americans entered the city with the slogan of helping us, but we haven't seen anything from them. We have seen only robbery."

Elsewhere in the world.

In Russia Vladimir Putin has been hosting a meeting of "antiwar" leaders in St. Petersburg to press for the reconstruction of Iraq to be led by the United Nations.
Putin said Friday the world was better off without Saddam Hussein but he criticized the U.S. and British military force by which the former Iraqi leader had been toppled. Speaking alongside German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at a conference in Russia's second city, he said: "We always said that the regime of Saddam Hussein does not correspondent to democracy and human rights... but you cannot solve such problems with military means." Putin said 80 percent of the world fell short of western standards of democracy. "Do we go to war with all of them?" he asked.

"If we weigh up what is good and what is bad in the results of this war -- it is positive that we have got rid of a tyrannical regime. But by what means? Losses, destruction and the deaths of people. This is a negative consequence," he said.
Putin, Chirac and Schroeder, all of whom opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, gathered in the Russian leader's hometown to make a joint call for the U.N. to oversee post-Saddam reconstruction. In reply to a question, Putin discounted a carve-up of interests in Iraq like that decided at the post-World War Two conference in Yalta which divided conquered Europe into zones of influence. He said this was not his idea of a system of international security and he called for the Iraqi issue to be solved within the U.N. in New York.

"We stand for the fastest return of this issue to the framework of the United Nations," Putin said. "Russia and Germany are in favor of a political solution. There are no prospects for a military solution."

A top Pentagon official Thursday suggested France, Germany and Russia would better contribute to reconstruction by forgiving debts to any new Iraqi government.

Yesterday, former Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov said that, on the eve of the war in Iraq, he had conveyed a message from President Putin to Saddam urging him to step down.
Putin called Primakov late March 17 and asked him to travel to Baghdad to pass the message to Saddam.

"Vladimir Putin said that everything must be done in order to avert an armed invasion of Iraq, because it invariably would lead to large numbers of casualties among the civilian population," Primakov said.

Recalling on Russian television his dramatic, last encounter with Saddam in one of his palaces, Primakov said: "I told him this ‘if you love your country and love your people...and if you want to save your people from these sacrifices, you must leave your post as President of Iraq’."
"I told him that I understood how difficult this proposal was for him and how it could change his life, but that he had to understand that he was doing this for Iraq, for his motherland," Primakov said. The Iraqi strongman gave a patient hearing to Primakov, patted him on the shoulder and then walked out of the room without another word.

Primakov said Moscow had done all it could to avoid war. "Russia and Vladimir Putin did everything until the very last moment to prevent this terrible war. Terrible, because it is still not clear what it could bring about."
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The battle for Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown, has begun. This is the last fedayeen stronghold which is still not in coalition hands. The US is pounding the city with bombs, but Iraqi fedayeen have moved missile launchers into the city. This will be the last stand of Saddam’s fighters. I for one, am at a loss to understand why these fighters continue to engage in a military battle, specially now. Is it pride? Is it a misplaced sense of patriotism? Is it a misplaced sense of loyalty to tribe and territory?

Whatever it is, civilians will continue to bear the brunt of this conflict. To them a ‘better tomorrow’ seems a distant dream seen through the hell-fires and smoke, as Iraq burns, and a world heritage goes up in smoke.