BAGHDAD, 29 June 2004 — The main road running through Baghdad’s Jadriya quarter, with its fast food stands and small businesses that are open into the late evening, provide one of the few opportunities for amusement in post-war Baghdad.
Young families, business people, state officials and other members of the urban middle class congregate here to chat over hot dogs and soft drinks on the warm summer evenings.
Politics are seldom the topic of discussion. Most are on the contrary looking for entertainment and to be diverted from the cares of everyday life in the tense capital.
One of the main concerns is personal security. “Today is the first time I’ve been out in two months,” says Abdulrahman Jalal, who runs a business in the transport sector. His son and partner, Hassan Ramadan Hassan, has come to visit him from Nasiriyah, 300 kilometers away to the south, and this has provided the occasion to go out of doors after a long break.
“We’ve had three cases of abduction on my street alone,” says Jalal, describing how a doctor and his two children were hauled away by a criminal gang and ransomed to their fearful families for $1,000. Hassan tells how Nasiriyah has also become dangerous. After outsiders began streaming into the city, the customary means of maintaining social control began to break down.
The armed supporters of the cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr went on the rampage, even laying siege to public buildings. Both men tell of how trucks, together with their loads, have disappeared on the long cross-country roads and of gangs of bandits who are making full use of the general security vacuum in the country.
They both accuse the US-led forces of “achieving absolutely nothing” in more than a year of occupation.
Iraqis are now experiencing electricity cut-offs for 12 to 15 hours a day for the second summer in a row. Refuse collection is a haphazard and unreliable affair. Builders’ rubble and rubbish has begun to accumulate on the streets of Baghdad and is not being cleared away by the city authorities.
Even the queues at the petrol stations are lengthening in this country of huge oil reserves.
The two businessmen are, however, keen to give the benefit of the doubt to the interim government, which formally took over from the coalition.
“We are pleased about the new government,” Jalal says. “It includes lots of experts who know what they are talking about,” he says. Hassan adds: “We don’t know most of them, as they have not held office before — but perhaps that’s a good thing.”
The two men are agreed that the main criterion by which they will judge the new government is whether it can re-establish law and order. “That is the most important thing; everything else is secondary,” says Jalal.
The new government appears to be aware that security is the priority for most Iraqis. Its head, Iyad Allawi, has indicated he is considering declaring a state of emergency in certain “problem regions”.
And the introduction of compulsory visas for foreigners is intended to counter infiltration by terrorists and those seeking to create disorder in the country.
Noticeably more police are out on the streets of Baghdad, and they are even issuing traffic fines for the first time in 15 months.
Psychologically this has been a good move on the part of the authorities, but many members of the public are still querying whether the newly recruited security forces have the capacity and the staying power to establish and maintain order.
Jalal and Hassan are, however, determined to be optimistic. “We are tired of all the wars and the disasters,” Jalal says. “At some point things have simply got to start looking up.”