BAGHDAD, 26 March 2003 — Fearing bloody street fighting or a devastating siege of Baghdad, Abu Ahmad and his family finally decided to get out yesterday. On the sixth day of heavy airstrikes and with US and British ground forces marching on the capital, the retired army officer said he has had enough.
“Things seem set to get nastier with every passing hour,” Abu Ahmad said, as thuds of distant explosions echoed in central Baghdad. “I don’t want to put my family through weeks of heavy bombardment or street fighting.”
Unlike some Baghdadis, Abu Ahmad had opted against abandoning his house before a US-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein. But now he is moving his family to the relative safety of eastern Iraq.
Plenty of others are doing the same. Many streets of the usually bustling city of more than five million are empty. There are no more queues outside petrol stations or bakeries. Most shops are closed and business activity suspended.
“I think many of those who could but did not leave before hoped the war would either not happen or it would not be that bad,” said Abbas, a taxi driver. “But now people are realizing that this war is different from the past.” This is Iraq’s third war in two decades, after the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq conflict and the 1991 Gulf War.
US and British forces have swept across southern Iraq despite stiff resistance in places and some units are now less than 100 km from the capital, where Iraq’s elite Republican Guards are massed for a crucial battle.
“There is no doubt that the heroic Guards will fight hard and defend Baghdad ferociously,” Omar Saad, a 32-year-old engineer, said. “But this means heavy battles and maybe a very long siege. We have to be prepared.”
A combination of careful preparations on the Iraqi side and US and British efforts to avoid civilian targets has left much of Baghdad’s infrastructure intact. Power and water supplies continue to function with other services in the city. But conditions could dramatically deteriorate if there is a prolonged standoff.
“When the battle for Baghdad starts, the Americans will not be so nice,” Abbas said. “They will hit our electricity, water and hospitals. Then life will be very difficult for us.” Not all civilians have escaped the bombing. In northern Baghdad, an angry crowd of men, some waving rifles and shouting, carried three coffins through the streets yesterday. Several women wailed over the coffins, which people said contained civilians killed in allied bombing of the area. People retrieved belongings from the rubble of houses watched in silence by a small group of onlookers. While civilians ponder what to do ahead of the looming siege, Saddam loyalists are busy. Thousands of militiamen are digging in.
Soldiers in olive-green uniforms carrying AK-47 assault rifles guard government buildings, man sandbags on street corners, trenches and bomb shelters in public squares. Others drive around in pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns.
While there have been comparatively few civilian casualties in the bombing, many symbols of Saddam’s rule have been hit. At least three presidential palaces were bombed as well as offices of top officials, government buildings and several military headquarters. The accuracy of the bombing has allowed some residents a sense of relative security or resignation.
Residents do not rush to the bomb shelters with every falling bomb. “They are hitting certain targets and we don’t live nearby, so we are not going to any shelters,” a woman said. “And even if we do, they can hit us there if they want to.”
