BAGHDAD, 14 April 2003 — Several dozen Iraqis yesterday staged the first anti-US demonstration in Baghdad since American forces arrived last week, amid mounting anger over widespread looting since President Saddam Hussein’s regime collapsed.
US forces began the Herculean task of restoring normalcy to the country devastated by years of war and sanctions, setting up an operations center to screen Iraqi workers in the heart of the battered capital.
But near the recruitment desk in the Palestine Hotel, demonstrators lifted a banner, “Bush Saddam.”
They chanted: “There is only one God and America is the enemy of God!” and “We will sacrifice our souls and our blood for Iraq!”
One protester said the demonstration was meant “to tell the Americans that they’re the ones who put Saddam in power and now they’re going to try to force on us other rulers we don’t want.” But near the site of the protest, hundreds of locals queued up for their first jobs in the area, triggering massive traffic jams in central Baghdad.
They flocked to a recruitment desk in the Palestine Hotel, where a Marines spokeswoman said they were seeking to put Iraqis back at work in key sectors, starting with the police and electrical power departments.
“We want workers, not only senior officials,” said Gunnery Sgt. Claudia Lamantia, of the 1st Marines Expeditionary Force. “The idea obviously is to get everything back working.” US troops will start joint patrols with Iraqi security forces in a bid to restore order to the capital, a US spokesman said yesterday. Marine Staff Sgt. Jeremy Stafford, a spokesman for the civil affairs program, could not give a date for the start of the joint patrols but said talks were under way with Iraqi security officials.
“The intended plan is to have joint patrols with one Iraqi car along with one of our Humvees,” Stafford said. He said the Iraqi police remained a significant force in terms of manpower and vehicles, and the main issue was to screen their personnel for patrol duty. “It is just a matter to make sure we don’t have any embedded Fedayeen,” Stafford said, in a reference to the paramilitary units ultra-loyal to Saddam.
Baghdad, a city of five million people, has been without electricity for about 10 days while most homes are also without water and telephone services. Public transportation is non-existent.
But the biggest fear among residents has been the security situation, highlighted by the pillage of entire sections of the city in recent days by rampaging youths from the immense Shiite suburb of Saddam City.
Lamantia, who was getting an earful of complaints from local citizens in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel, said the Marines were holding yesterday their first meetings to rebuild the police force and power utility.
“There are fears that this is not happening fast enough,” she said. “We are trying to do things one thing at a time.”
If more people were on the streets of Baghdad yesterday, shops remained closed and the sprawling city appeared to teeter between a massive drive for urban renewal or another descent into potential chaos.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said several Baghdad hospitals remained without water or power.
“(We) would like to deliver medical supplies to them. But right now we don’t dare because everything is being ransacked,” ICRC spokeswoman Nada Doumani told AFP in Geneva. US-led forces control most of Iraq, but pockets of resistance remain and the city of Tikrit, around 180 km north of Baghdad. US military commander Gen. Tommy Franks said “six or seven” US soldiers thought to have been taken prisoner by Iraqi forces were found by US troops and were in good shape.
Meanwhile, a semblance of normality returned to Baghdad yesterday, with many street-traders and kiosks selling food and cigarettes for the first time since US troops took the capital. Bus services were resuming yesterday between the Iraqi capital and cities in the south on the 25th day of the US-led war.
Thousands of Iraqis were also seen driving into the city with furniture and clothes strapped to their cars and the “Saddam dinar” — the Iraqi currency — was changing hands at about 2,700 to the US dollar, compared to up to 4,000 on Saturday.
But most shops remained closed in a city ravaged by looting since Saddam’s government collapsed on Wednesday. And it was still unclear whether the dinar — which bears a picture of Saddam — would be replaced, possibly by the US dollar. It is already a popular target of souvenir-hunters on Internet trading site eBay.
One man, who gave his name as Rafat, said he opened his kiosk in Baghdad yesterday for the first time in several days, selling chocolates and a few peanuts.
“The situation is getting back to normal, sort of. There is more activity in the street,” Rafat said.
Another man, Ahmed, was selling cigarettes from a cardboard box on the pavement — a packet of Gauloises costing 3,000 dinars, compared to 1,000 before the war.
Asked about business, he said: “It is okay. This is my first day.”
A Reuters Television crew saw some shops open in other parts of Baghdad and one cameraman said he bought a chicken for 7,000 dinars, compared to 1,000 dinars before the war. Prices were generally dropping but appeared to vary between different parts of the city.
