A Fifth of Scotch: $300

Life in Baghdad and at the front as the Iranians attack

For seven weeks, TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis was stationed in Iraq, reporting on the war with Iran and studying the mood of the nation as it fought to stave off the furious offensive launched by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Shortly after leaving last week for Amman, the Jordanian capital, Brelis filed his impressions of embattled Iraq:

At first glance, Baghdad could not seem safer. There are color photographs of President Saddam Hussein everywhere in the capital, his beaming countenance gazing reassuringly down on his countrymen. The state-controlled television news, now broadcast in color, projects the same kind of official optimism. True, there has been an unbroken series of military victories on the fighting front to lend credence to Saddam's leadership abilities. No one talks about what might happen if there were a reversal on the battlefield.

Yet the cost of the war is being felt here, not because the Iraqis are losing on the battlefield but because this nearly landlocked country is experiencing a severe economic pinch after 23 months of fighting. The vastly superior Iranian navy, which the Ayatullah Khomeini inherited from the late Shah, has effectively sealed off the vital Shatt al Arab waterway. With the exception of military hardware, which is flown in, Iraq's supplies must arrive by land routes from Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Result: astronomical consumer prices. A quart bottle of drinking water costs $25. If you are desperate for Scotch, a fifth will cost you $300. One small tomato sells for $12. After a mediocre meal in a Baghdad restaurant the other night, four foreign diplomats split the bill for $1,015.

Everyone in Baghdad corners people coming in from the southeastern city of Basra, wanting to know what is happening near the front. The exodus of panicky Europeans from Basra has become a virtual flood, and the anxiety there about the future is reminiscent of the feeling in Iran during the Shah's last days.

If Khomeini's fanatical army breaks through the Iraqi lines and captures Basra, the reverberations will shake all of Western Europe and Japan. According to one highly placed Western diplomatic source, "The fall of Basra would bring the crash of the Frankfurt stock market. Every blue-chip company in West Germany has a big stake here. They have close to $5 billion invested in development projects in Iraq." The Japanese also have $5 billion staked on Saddam's survival. France is not far behind. The U.S. is in for just under $ 1 billion.

Ultimately, one must go to the fighting front to find out what is really happening there. The Iraqis have built hillocks topped with markers to show the way: here an arrow-shaped stone, there a palm frond. To miss these is to wander into the extensive Iraqi minefields. Forcing the Iranians into those minefields is one secret of Iraq's success. At one point two miles from the international border, the sand is littered with Iranian bodies as far as the eye can see, when it is not squinting against the blowing sand. An Iraqi bulldozer is pushing the corpses into a hastily dug burial ground. Pennants were found among the bodies, reading NEXT STOP, AN NAJAF, the Shi'ite holy city in central Iraq where Khomeini spent 14 years in exile plotting the overthrow of the Shah.

Five times the Iranians have tried and failed to break through to Basra. In these cruel battles they have lost more than 30,000 men to Iraqi troops that are trained and advised by French and British experts. On their last attempt, the Iranians threw five regular divisions and four brigades of Revolutionary Guards against the Iraqis.

Near a colonel's bunkered command post, soldiers fill empty shell casings with water from tank trucks. The sound of outgoing Iraqi artillery is constant, there is little fire coming from the Iranian side. Some of the men sleep beneath slanting canvas hutches. Others spread carpets on the sand and pray toward Mecca. When one enemy round explodes several hundred yards away, they continue their prayers without flinching. "During the [last] battle," says the colonel, with undisguised pride, "they were in their tanks for 36 hours, buttoned down all the time, and fighting. That's why I'm certain we will win."

Back in Basra, I talked to one of that city's leading citizens, a Sunni merchant. He said he had no plans to leave, although almost all foreigners have already fled and business has come to a standstill. He is counting on a cease-fire by the end of October, although he agrees that the Iranians will not easily give up their dream of capturing Basra. "Most of the Iranians are members of the Shi'ite sect of Islam, and they want Basra," he explains, "because they know the Shi'ites here will welcome them with open arms. The Shi'ites are not saying anything these days. They are waiting for the Iranian army to get here before they show their true feelings." All the commanders at the first line of Iraq's land defenses are loyal members of Saddam's Baath Party, and the men they command all belong to the Sunni sect, the ancient rivals of the Shi'ites.

Thirteen hours after my return to Baghdad, a different kind of war hit the capital. A bomb exploded inside the Ministry of Planning, killing an unknown number of people and wounding scores. It was a professional job: the explosives gutted all six stories of the building. The government has played down the explosion, but such a terrorist strike in a city preparing to welcome the summit of nonaligned nations in September does not augur well for security. It also underlines the view of my friend, the Basra merchant, that the Shi'ites may not be as loyal to the Saddam government as we are told. There are two fronts in Iraq today: the battlefield in the desert, and the Shi'ite fifth column in the cities waiting for Khomeini's forces to arrive.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.