Heavy traffic and getting heavier is back on Baghdad main streets. That is not really a sign that life is getting back to normal here, but simply that the air and ground war is over, as well as the looting and institutional rampaging, which is what for weeks kept most people indoors afraid to venture out.
"It's the difference between night and day," my former CNN colleague Peter Arnett chortled to Sis and me, when-after many years-we stumbled into a reunion while walking through the lobby of the hotel housing much of the International press. "Remember how it was during the last days of the regime and in the war?" Peter asked rhetorically. "We couldn't go anywhere with out our 'minders.' Now everyone-including us-can go anywhere we want."
However, except for visiting friends and family, for many of those Iraqis now able to go anywhere they want, it's a case of being all dressed up with no place really to go…and nothing to do. No sight worth seeing is intact because of the air war and subsequent ground war bombardments; and there are still very few jobs to travel to.
That's because, until today, when power was restored-but only momentarily (not even long enough to boil water)-there had been no electricity with which to manipulate the electronic technology and operate the simpler mechanical contrivances, which, along with oil, produced much of the wealth and capital that made the nation, except for the dictatorship, one of the most sophisticated, better educated, as well as, hygienically and medically one of the best off societies in the Middle East.
In fact for several weeks there has been no electricity to simply turn night into day in Iraqi dwelling places or to power the humbler appliances, which, before the twelve long years of war waged against them by the U. S. and Britain began, had enabled the Iraqi relatively convenient domestic way of life.
Of course, the very few Iraqis who can afford gas powered generators do have light at night. They also can continue to preserve perishables in their refrigerators, as well as cook, wash, and operate the many other conveniences such as radios and TVs, which during prewar days even the less well to do could take for granted.
However, relatively well off Iraqis, like everyone else still dare not drink scarce tap water without boiling it.
Why has it taken so long to restore power to Baghdad-if only for those few tantalizing minutes today? There has been no official explanation from occupation officials, who apparently are content to let restoration-slow as it is-speak for itself and as it transpires. So the inference Iraqis have been drawing is that "America has been leaving it for us to do."
As a result restoring power is very much on Omar's mind these days. The exasperated unemployed Iraqi electrical engineer, now working fitfully as a taxi driver-interpreter, complained that "Bush broke it. So, why doesn't he fix it?"
"How can we fix it? And with what?" a perplexed college upperclassman, named Ali, asked. He is not just eager to start earning a currently nonexistent living, but more basic than that, he is anxious to simply complete his education at Al-Mustansirya University, Baghdad's second largest.
But doing that is on indefinite hold. Besides the absence of power, the campus is a mess! Most class rooms, labs and administrative spaces are in shambles: torn apart, looted and/or trashed by rampaging civilians during the first days of the city's occupation.
Our tour of the campus was monitored and chaperoned by young men in casual civilian clothes wearing green armbands made out of green rags, who also were sporting menacing automatic rifles. Obviously around to keep order, they scurried furtively around corners when we tried to take their picture. They apparently had been providing security with the blessing of the officer in charge of two huge U. S. tanks stationed across the street from the main entrance to the campus, because he could easily observe the armed youths as they civilly queried each person as he or she tried to get inside the gate. "Our rules of engagement do not apply to boys like them. They are here to keep order," the officer said, "so we don't disarm them."
"Are they students?" I asked Ali.
"No. They are from the Mosque."
"Why from the Mosque?"
"The Imam told them to come."
"Why the green arm bands?"
"They are Shia," said Ali, as he anxiously pushed me along in order to comply with the guard's soft but firmly voiced recommendation to keep moving and complete our tour as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, in the sprawling dusty dirt poor neighborhoods where Sadaam Hussein did the least for the people, particularly the Shia, the lights remain permanently off at night; the water taps are dry for days on end; and there is no medicine for even the simplest of ailments. So these Iraqis, who were among the first naturally to cheer the allies as "liberators," when it was finally safe to do that, are becoming disillusioned fast with the virtually nonexistent pace of power, water, medicine, and jobs restoration, as well as the prospect of a drawn out process to acquire U. S. bestowed permission to rule themselves.
As a result, these fuming millions are quickly forming into hitherto unimagined broad-based combinations. And a myriad of political parties-perhaps as many as 20 and rising-are emerging too in this former one party nation ruled by just one man. Potential party loyalists are being wooed by organizers with offers of regular stipends for their future votes and vote getting efforts.
However, the development of one particular broad-based coalition-probably the largest in Baghdad-is more than political. This historically unique alliance has the potential of becoming a social and religious phenomenon as well as political powerhouse.
The mushrooming coalition is comprised of poor Sunni and Shiite Muslims. The partnership is being organized, pursued and jointly promoted by already popular and therefore influential local Sunni and Shiite clerics, with the Shia apparently the senior partner in the arrangement. Assertively militant, the new movement's leaders are already politically radical by western and most current Arab establishment standards.
The coalition's savvy religious leaders, like their colleagues in other Middle Eastern countries, are adept at organizing and providing the kind of reliable social, health and educational services capable of winning to their political agenda the hearts and minds of their deprived beneficiaries. Currently they have joined together to push for a quick end to the occupation and the hopefully quick installation of an elected government, which they would want to function along pious Islamic lines.
Sadaam Hussein kept this kind of alliance from forming during his paranoid reign by sewing suspicion of the Shiite majority among his minority Sunni. His shrewdly promoted fear led, as he planned, to hatred-motivated dissension, which enabled large scale violent governmental persecutions, especially in the south. Sunni who saw through the subterfuge and resisted Sadaam's divide and rule strategy were dealt with in an equally atrocious manner.
Recently we visited a former Baath Socialist Party (Sadaam's party) neighborhood office located in a building on Palestine Street, a major Baghdad boulevard. It had been commandeered by Shia in the area who turned it into a Mosque.
As in many other districts, the men there were encouraging others from the neighborhood to help find those who had been involved in the post-invasion looting in order not to punish them but instead to try to get them to respond positively to a joint plea by their Sunni and Shiite cleric-leaders to give back what they stole.
And, guess what!? Many of the young men we encountered there were wearing green armbands like the ones we saw embellishing the sleeves of the youthful security guards at the university. Meanwhile on the new Mosque's roof, snapping smartly in the breeze, and also-one could sense-snapping proudly, was a green flag.
A horizontal banner perhaps twenty feet long was secured to a low wall outside the building. I asked one of the typically young men milling about what the sign said, "It says," he answered fervently, "There is only one force: the force of Islam."
"What makes this force?"
Pointing to his right hand, he said, "This is Shia." Next pointing to his left hand, he continued, "This is Sunni."
Then, interlacing his fingers, he squeezed his hands together tightly and added with a blissful smile, "That be one big force."
At that moment, a grinning companion who had been nodding affirmatively as his friend explained the significance of the banner, placed a fresh red Chrysanthemum in my hand.
So these people too are part of the unending traffic snaking along Iraq's main thoroughfares. But, unlike those essentially aimless Iraqis described at the beginning of this piece, these Iraqis know exactly where they are going; and they are in a hurry to get there.