Where Things Stand

By Terry McCarthy/Basra

On the dock of Abu Fulus port, 20 miles south of Basra, Bassem Saghair deftly works the controls of a crane as he unloads air-conditioning units from the hold of the Hussaini. The ship is one of a dozen crowding the waterfront that have sailed from Dubai up the Shatt al-Arab River laden with consumer goods. Saghair, 15, quit school for this job, which pays $360 a month, double the highest salary any Iraqi official earns from U.S.-occupation authorities. "Life is not bad," says Saghair, with a shy smile spreading under the beginnings of a mustache.

Abu Fulus, which means "father of money," was little used during Saddam Hussein's regime, but with U.N. sanctions against Iraq lifted and all import and customs controls unenforced, the port has become an unofficial entry point for used cars, electronics, clothes and food. There are no government officials here and no British soldiers from the garrison in Basra. Merchants walk up and down the dock, shouting purchase orders into satellite phones as young men in jeans with AK-47s guard against pirates who prowl the river in motorboats. As in the American frontier a century ago, fortunes are being made almost overnight in Iraq, and with the same lack of control. As Saghair hoists a load of fruit from the bottom of the hold, a coconut falls out of the lifting net, narrowly missing a docker's head. What safety procedures are in place at the port? he is asked. He smiles again: "There is no law here."

Iraq is a country where lawlessness comes in many forms. At its most lethal it is the car bombs in Baghdad, the ambushes of U.S. troops around Fallujah, the shootings in Tikrit. But outside the deadly Sunni triangle, the absence of law has produced a chaotic sense of freedom that leaves Iraqis both exhilarated and terrified. To get a clearer picture of conditions in the entirety of Iraq--particularly in the north and south, which have received less media attention--TIME teamed up with ABC News to travel the length of the country, visiting more than 30 towns and conducting more than 600 interviews with Iraqis from all levels of society. We found dramatic contrasts between Greater Baghdad and the rest of the country.

Security, which almost all Iraqis say is their major concern, is far better in both the north and south than it is in the capital. Electricity is much more reliable outside Baghdad. There are almost no power cuts in the south, a region that often had six or less hours of electricity a day before the war. Schools are mostly back to normal, and commerce is booming as goods flood in across the Turkish and Kuwaiti borders. The military presence of the U.S. in the north and the British in the south is far less visible than are the U.S. forces in and around Baghdad. Despite sporadic ambushes, the foreign troops are largely tolerated by locals, who tend to view them as a necessary evil until a viable Iraqi administration is in place.

There are many complaints--about the increase in banditry on the roads, the slow pace of reconstruction, the rise in prices, the shortage of jobs caused in part by the U.S. dissolution of the Iraqi government and army. But when people in the north and the south were asked whether life has improved since the war, the answer, in Arabic, often came automatically: "Tab'an ahsan" ("Of course, better"). In the village of Duluiyah, in central Iraq, Abdel Fattah al-Juburi, a longtime opponent of the Saddam regime, says of the occupation, "It's clear we got the better of two evils."

Way up in the northern hills of Iraq sits the Christian village of Alqosh. After the U.S. toppled Saddam, improvements were felt there almost immediately. For 12 years, Alqosh existed in a restricted area between Saddam's army and the Kurdish resistance. An army roadblock outside the village severely constrained travel and the movement of goods. After Saddam's fall, the roadblock vanished. Now village stores are crowded with customers lining up to buy refrigerators and televisions. "There is lots of construction now," says Salam Nissan Shamoun, the postmaster. "Before, we couldn't even bring in a single bag of cement." About 25 miles to the south lies Mosul, which is similarly revived. The markets are full of new goods, restaurants are open late and a brightly lit Ferris wheel dominates the amusement park beside the Tigris River.

While the Iraqi private sector has been quick to adapt to the new post-Saddam freedoms, the transition in the public sector has been traumatic and clumsy, dogged by unfulfilled promises from the occupying powers and by burning impatience on the Iraqi side. Dr. Ghalib Shaker, director of Ibn Sina Teaching Hospital in Mosul, says the hospital is short of X-ray film, IV fluid and antibiotics, all of which he says were promised him by the U.S. several months ago. "These are simple things," he says. "I don't know why they can't solve this." Other Iraqi hospitals also complain of shortages, which stem from distribution bottlenecks in Baghdad and the evacuation of many foreign medical workers after the August bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. The Coalition Provisional Authority has acknowledged that Iraq's health-care system is not functioning at prewar levels except perhaps in the north. This is in part because 12% of hospitals were partly damaged during the war and 7% were looted, according to U.N. figures.

Iraqi frustrations are compounded by high expectations of what the U.S. occupiers could do. "We are under the biggest superpower in the world," says Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, manager of the Mosul Dam, "so people thought the U.S. could do anything--restore power, build new houses, bring tourism, improve life--immediately. But things cannot change at the push of a button." Another aggravating factor is wounded Iraqi pride. Shaker recalls that 20 years ago, Iraq's hospitals were the envy of the Arab world. "In the '80s, Jordanians and Syrians came here--to this hospital--for treatment, but now they wouldn't dream of sending patients here."

As one heads south into the Sunni heartland, the level of discontent increases sharply. In Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, police stations and official buildings are heavily fortified with sandbags and razor wire, and in the market, a universal complaint is the lack of jobs. "Unemployment is very high here because most Tikritis used to be connected to the old regime," says Tahsin Mohammed, 30, a former military officer. He says he knows a major general from Saddam's Republican Guard who is now selling cigarettes.

Duluiyah, about a half-hour drive south of Tikrit, has a special history. The village was once a source of army, police and intelligence officers for the Saddam regime. But the village fell under a cloud after members of its dominant tribe, the Jubur, tried to overthrow Saddam in 1990. Many in Duluiyah were optimistic when the Americans arrived, but each improvement in the village seems to come with a setback. At first the electricity supply improved, but then it faltered when seasonal maintenance on plants took out some capacity and when a water-pumping station came online nearby, diverting much of Duluiyah's power. Thanks to the pumps, water has been gushing from taps as never before, but it is untreated and must be boiled and disinfected. The local school has been newly painted, but the Iraqi contractor the Americans hired to do the work stole school furniture.

Baghdad, 50 miles to the south, is Iraq's heart of darkness, a place of suicide bombings and great uncertainty. But as one moves out of the Sunni triangle, heading south, the sense of threat abates. Some 100 miles away is Kut, where at midday Haitham Hillal and Ali Rath, two traffic policemen, sit down to drink tea by the Tigris. They talk excitedly about their new salaries: $100 a month--five times what they used to get. Hillal and Rath are aware of the violence in Baghdad but insist there are no such crises in Kut. The main problem locally, they say, is the huge postwar increase in weddings, which has led to a rise in accidental shootings caused by celebratory gunfire. A third man, Hashem Ali, a former security official, joins them, and suddenly an argument breaks out. "Iraqis should be proud of the attacks in Fallujah," says the newcomer, adding that security was much better under Saddam. "Yes, in the mass graves security was perfect," says Hillal, to which Ali has no answer. The two men glare at each other, but when it is pointed out to them that whatever their differences, they could never have had this argument under Saddam, both smile sheepishly and agree.

Like Kut, Amarah, about 100 miles farther south, is a bustling provincial city, now under British control. In the central market, merchants can't remember a time when business was better. The main reason is the dramatic rise in disposable income now that the coalition is paying public employees $60 to $180 a month. Before the war, teachers earned $5 to $10, policemen $20. Sabri Nama, 54, is a foreman at the Amarah Paper Mill outside town. He is happy about his increase in monthly pay from $25 to $180 but says he would rather be earning it. Because there is still not enough electricity in Amarah to supply the town and the factory, the paper mill, which shut down during the fighting, has still not reopened. "The British are too slow," Nama complains. "They only make promises, never finish anything."

Some 70 miles to the southwest, Nasiriyah General Hospital strains to keep up with demand. The city's other hospital--used as a base by Iraqi militiamen during the fighting--is in ruins. Still, Hassan Mahmoud, father of a 9-year-old boy who suffered head injuries from a fall from a second-floor window, is grateful for one thing. In the past, he says, one had to bribe doctors, nurses and administrators to get hospital care. "Now you don't need money to get a doctor. Now the doctors are honest," he says.

In the teahouses of Nasiriyah, as elsewhere in Iraq, price increases are a big source of complaint. In Saddam's day, the cost of food was regulated. With such regulations no longer in force, and with the infusion of American dollars fueling inflation, tomatoes have gone from 3-c- to 19-c- per lb. in Karbala. A house in Kirkuk that rented for $12.50 a month before the regime fell now fetches $50. In Hillah farmers are reeling from a threefold increase in the cost of fertilizer. Jarallah Ali, a patron at a Nasiriyah cafe, complains that he can no longer afford his brand of soap because the price has doubled.

In the south, where the Tigris and Euphrates join, sits Basra, headquarters of the British. The city saw some of the worst looting immediately after the fighting, but with more than 4,000 Iraqi police officers now on the streets, the city is mostly peaceful. Shi'ite Muslims, who were persecuted across the south by Saddam for their 1991 uprising, find themselves free to practice their religion without interference, which has conferred a feel-good bonus on the whole region. Parallel to religious freedom is a new freedom of information. Iraqis are crowding into Internet cafes to get Web access, which was tightly restricted by Saddam's security services. Self-taught computer experts Haider Kadhim, 22, and his brother Mohammed, 25, have established themselves as Internet-cafe consultants, earning $500 fees from each of eight businessmen so far. "The best thing about life now is freedom," says Kadhim. "You can say anything, go anywhere."

Freedom has its dark side. With all the goods coming off the ships from Dubai and the trucks driving up from Kuwait, the roads outside Basra have become notorious for banditry. Murder has increased as people settle scores against former members of the regime. And over the summer Shi'ite extremists firebombed liquor stores belonging to Christians.

Still, says Hani al-Saadi, 29, a former medical student who sells mobile phones in the center of Basra, "we know every birth requires pain." Al-Saadi and his family, who had been living in Jordan, returned to their hometown of Basra after Saddam's fall to try to make the best of new opportunities. Their example reflects the sense of hope that a great number of Iraqis share. Though many told our reporters that certain aspects of their lives were worse today than before the regime's collapse, a majority said they were optimistic about the long term. Even in Baghdad one can find elements of this faith. The change of regime came at a significant cost for Ayad Abdul Kareem Muhssin, an engineer there. During the stress of the U.S. bombing campaign, his wife, pregnant with their fourth child, went into premature labor. Their newborn daughter lived only a few hours. "We made a sacrifice for this freedom," says Muhssin, without bitterness. How long will the freedom last? "Forever, I think. And it'll be better after a month, and after a year, much better. I think so."

--With reporting by Hassan Fattah/Duluiyah and by ABC's Jim Sciutto/Kirkuk, Bob Woodruff/Nasiriyah and David Wright/Baghdad

ABC News/TIME Tune in to ABC News and ABC News Radio broadcasts through the week for "Iraq: Where Things Stand" or go to abcnews.com

With reporting by Hassan Fattah/Duluiyah and by ABC''s Jim Sciutto/Kirkuk, Bob Woodruff/Nasiriyah and David Wright/Baghdad