Iraq: Back to Yesterday

By LARA MARLOWE/BAGHDAD

The steel gate in front of the stucco house in the Iraqi city of Najaf swings open and a bearded man appears, flanked by two armed policemen. "Go away -- please," says the middle-aged son of Ayatullah Sayyid Abul Qasim al-Khoei, spiritual leader of the world's Shi'ite Muslims. The son trembles and speaks in whispers. Had not other journalists spoken to the Ayatullah? "Yes, and after they left the police came -- and it was worse," he says. "Please go away, and don't come back. Ten of our family and dozens of my father's followers are in prison."

During the March uprising against Saddam Hussein's regime, the Ayatullah pleaded with Iraq's Shi'ites to exercise moderation. The old man, who is over 90, even traveled from Najaf to Baghdad to speak with Saddam. According to diplomats in the capital, the government promised to release six members of Khoei's family if the Ayatullah would condemn the rebellion on Iraqi television. He did so, but rather than deliver on his promise, Saddam double- crossed him, putting even more of his relatives behind bars.

Terror is back in style in Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Gone are those brief days after the war when, with Saddam looking totally vulnerable, open dissent as well as outright rebellion flared. With the unrest now almost fully suppressed, dreams of a new regime in Iraq have given way to the old hopelessness and fear. Saddam promises democracy and greater freedom of expression, but the Iraqi people expect only despotism. Asked about anti- Saddam demonstrations in March, a Baghdad taxi driver replies, "You cannot ask such questions in this country. If I talk to you, the police will come and . . ." The young man slices his finger across his throat.

The headmistress of a girls' school in Saddam City, a poor Shi'ite suburb of Baghdad, is equally reticent. During the rebellion, soldiers cordoned off the neighborhood for three days and searched every house for weapons, killing 200 people in the process, according to a source close to the Iraqi army. Today all is quiet in the rubbish-strewn streets, but the memory lingers. "Go away," the headmistress entreats when asked simply to comment on daily life in Iraq. "It is dangerous for us and dangerous for the school."

Iraq's Christian minority is particularly unsettled. The community of 600,000, out of a total population of 18.8 million, was traumatized both by Saddam's calls for a holy war against the allies and by worries that the postwar insurrections would bring militant Shi'ites to power. "During the war, we were praying for the allied pilots," confesses a young Christian woman browsing at a stall selling women's clothing. The majority of her fellow believers, the woman asserts, want to leave Iraq for good if Saddam keeps his promise to lift the ban on foreign travel this week. Many Iraqis, however, believe the government will require those who venture abroad to leave behind their money and relatives, making emigration almost impossible.

Other promised liberalizations also offer little comfort to ordinary Iraqis. A new constitution that the regime says it will enact soon would grant Iraq's Kurdish minority a degree of autonomy, legalize political parties other than Saddam's Baathist organization, ban arbitrary arrests and guarantee freedom of expression and the right to hold peaceful demonstrations. An earlier amendment that would have made Saddam President for life has been scrapped. The proposed constitution, however, contains a loophole that leaves many Iraqis cynical about change: by declaring a state of emergency, the President could quickly abrogate these newfound freedoms.

Many Iraqis expect the government eventually to go through the motions of holding elections, though no date has been set. "The sugar pill will be administered to the patient," says a Baghdad medical worker. Like many others, he does not expect the balloting to be free or fair. "It's only a month since you had tanks driving over bodies. Do you think there can be free elections? Is this possible?"

Saddam has already embarked on the campaign trail. Earlier this month, he visited three provincial capitals, Ba'quba, Ramadi and Mosul, as well as his hometown of Tikrit. At each stop, thousands of followers, mostly young people, cheered him, chanting, "Bush, Bush, listen well, we all love Saddam Hussein!" In Mosul the Iraqi President ostentatiously drew a pistol from his holster and fired several shots over the heads of the crowd. The throng went wild, and the footage was shown over and over on Iraqi television. "Tomorrow, if they were given new instructions, they would chant different slogans," says an East European diplomat who has met Saddam many times. "My impression is that he needs these slogans. They're like a drug for him. He just persuades himself that everyone loves him."

The self-deception is not total, though. Saddam knew enough to confine his recent forays to the Baathist heartland, the mainstay of his support. It will be a long time, disenchanted Iraqis in Baghdad note, before the President will try to rally followers in the southern cities so recently devastated by his army.

Even among the supposedly faithful, Saddam detects a lack of fealty. In his recent speeches, he has alluded ominously to "those who failed to perform their duties against rioters and were unaware of the intentions and plans of the saboteurs." Translation: he was disturbed by the failure of provincial authorities -- his local ears and eyes -- to foresee the uprisings and to put them down promptly.

Returning to normality is a top priority for the regime. Every day Baghdad's three newspapers report that more bridges and communications facilities have been repaired. Water and electricity are almost always available in the capital. Rationing of gasoline and kerosene was lifted last month, and food is plentiful, if expensive. Since the embargo on food exports was lifted last month, 300 truckloads of supplies from the region have been arriving daily, via Jordan; a similar number of tanker trucks carry Iraqi gasoline into Jordan.

In less mundane ways too, the capital has shaken off its wartime shock. Each weekend evening, al-Rasheed Hotel is host to 30 to 40 wedding parties, as young couples make up for time lost in the war. Saddam seems to be hoping to keep the country calm by appeasing the middle classes. "If the Iraqis have food, water and electricity, they will be satisfied," says an Arab diplomat in Baghdad. "They have been taught not to ask for power."

Still, the populace, especially outside Baghdad, faces enormous hardships. Relief officials identify the lack of potable water as the country's greatest postwar problem. Many of the bombed pumping stations have been repaired, but others need embargoed spare parts. Aluminum sulfate and chlorine, needed to purify water, are also in severely short supply. Because people are drinking from irrigation ditches and rivers, typhoid, dysentery and cholera are spreading, especially in the south, where fuel is often unavailable for boiling water.

The ranks of Iraq's unemployed are expected to be swollen by soldiers relieved of their duties. Saddam has already dissolved the million-strong "popular army," a citizens' militia, and is now expected to demobilize all but the most loyal of his professional forces. Despite the shock to the job market, such a move would be tremendously popular. "Before, all young men had to be soldiers," says a former conscript who spent seven years fighting Iran. "Now they will be free to enjoy life, to marry and have jobs. For this we are grateful to Bush."

That is scant consolation, of course, for the families of Iraq's war dead. According to British estimates, 40,000 Iraqis died in the war and an additional 100,000 were wounded. Baghdad has made no figures public, and is not expected to do so. "The final toll of the Iran-Iraq war was never announced," says a longtime Western resident of Baghdad. "Saddam Hussein will never announce that these horrific snafus cost so many lives. It's just not done." Some 64,000 prisoners of war have been repatriated from Saudi Arabia, but thousands of missing troops will never be accounted for. The relatives of the missing can still be spotted at bus stations or outside Red Cross offices, hoping against the odds to receive good news -- or any news -- about their loved ones.