From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: FROM IRAQIS, ONE ANGUISHED PLEA: WHEN WILL IT STOP?
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 93 20:12:10 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

	Copied w/o permission from:
	New York Newsday, January 23, 1993

	FROM IRAQIS, ONE ANGUISHED PLEA: `WHEN WILL IT STOP?'

	By Susan Sachs

	BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shifting from foot to foot in the cold, their
chapped hands jammed in the pockets of battered old army jackets, the
veterans of Iraq's wars stand all day in the nearly empty bazaars, trapped
in an uncertain place between ceasefire and peace.
	A man named Mohsen, fresh from 10 years of fighting first against
Iran and then against the American-led liberators of Kuwait, has been
standing all day behind his meager pile of greasy Iraqi candles and chipped
bars of Turkish soap that smell like old shoes. He hasn't sold a single
thing all day.
	"I'm here because there are no jobs," he tells a reporter, fellow
veterans nodding dejectedly beside him. "I spent up my youth in the army.
And now I can't afford to go to college because I have children and a wife
to feed. Tell me, when will you allow this situation to stop?"
	For Iraqis, two years after the Persian Gulf war, the question is a
barbed expression of hope, bitterness and bewilderment.
	The war has ended. Kuwait is free. Soldiers came home. The
generals, victors and vanquished, signed a cease-fire agreement. The United
Nations destroyed most of Iraq's fearsome weapons, the basic U.N. condition
for lifting the 30-month economic embargo. Yet the embargo continues while
the talking stopped.
	So did the Iraqi economy, plunging most of the population into an
uncertain life of monstrous inflation and frightening quarrels with the
administration of former President Bush.
	"Normally, a cease-fire is a temporary state, a beginning, and then
the two sides work out the future relationship they will have," said a
senior diplomat here. "The United States and its allies just stopped at the
cease-fire and never moved beyond it."
	As the whirlwind of events over the past three weeks suggests, the
problem of Iraq isn't likely to fade quietly from the world spotlight. Nor
will the resentment that was kindled by U.S. policy toward post-war Iraq be
easily extinguished.
	Quiescent for months, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein succeeded in
provoking Bush into a military confrontation that underlined Iraq's
impatience for a final settlement of its debts. The conflict left at least
five Iraqi civilians dead. Hussein and his efficient propogandists were
quick to exploit their deaths.
	Those images aren't designed merely for the West, where perhaps
they are dismissed as easily as the dimming memory of the Persian Gulf war.
They are seen, as well, in other Arab countries. There, memories are longer
and the impact more marked.
	Iraq's mixing of propaganda and truth about food and medicine
shortages, the reality of a still-proud Arab country marginalized, and the
recent spasm of U.S. bombing raids to punish Saddam Hussein for toying with
U.N. resolutions - all contain dangerous seeds of a more widespread
regional grudge against the United States.
	"What many Arabs see is unabated hostility to a Muslim country,
while the Bosnian Serbs and Israel are treated very differently when they
ignore the U.N.," said a diplomat from an Islamic country.
	"Bush will be regarded by history as the American leader who
unleashed forces of great instability, like the forces of Islamic
fundamentalism that already are eroding the ground under (the) feet of
regional leaders."
	Egypt and Syria, both participants in the war to drive Iraq from
Kuwait, expressed deep reservations about the recent American-led military
strikes and the continuation of the embargo. So did Jordan, a key to U.S.
hopes for an Arab-Israeli settlement that is struggling with a potent
Islamic movement.
	Turkey, another Gulf war ally that is worried a breakup of Iraq
will trigger an uprising of its own Kurds, refused to allow its Incirlik
airbase to be used by U.S., French and British warplanes bombing southern
Iraq.
	   
	At the same time, many Iraqis' dreams of seeing Saddam Hussein
unseated by the victorious Gulf war allies have long since dissolved under
the weight of day-to-day worries.
	At the Friday horse races in Baghdad, thousands of burly men in
shabby coats crowd the stands in hopes of winning a few more Iraqi dinars
to buy food. Clutching their poorly printed racing forms, they wildly cheer
the graceful horses as they hammer the dirt of the last stretch.
	There is desperation in the air. One man pounds the splintered
bleachers with his fist and bellows in rage when he loses a bet. Another
bows his head and weeps in hacking sobs like a baby.
	"Iraqis are a hard people, a warlike people," said 34-year-old
Tarek, a high school soccer coach holding his sweat-wilted betting slips in
trembling hands. He was afraid to give his last name and glanced around
nervously as he spoke obliquely of Hussein's dictatorial regime.
	"That is probably because our system is very closed. We don't have
dialogue with others. Not even with ourselves," he added. "But Saddam can't
live forever. He must die one day like you and me. He will die and Iraq
will live."
	   
	Because Hussein refuses to sell Iraqi oil under U.N. auspices to
buy food and medicine, the continuing U.N. embargo has sent prices of many
staple food items spiralling to 50, 100, even 300 times their pre-war
levels. Every Iraqi gets monthly rations of rice, flour and other basics,
but it lasts only three weeks.
	What was ordinary has become a luxury. Few people go to movies.
Restaurants serving the working class are empty. A light bulb imported from
Romania is 40 times more expensive than two years ago and now costs the
equivalent of an average day's wages. Detergent is nearly 50 times more
expensive.
	   
	More punishing still is the unpredictability of the regime, which
goes a long way toward cowing the Iraqi people and angering the outside
world. Since the new year, when Hussein decreed that no one may sell
foreign goods, many merchants moved all of their valuable inventory, both
imported and Iraqi, to hiding places in their homes. They fear the next
decree could bring confiscation of their stocks.
	Constantly changing and arbitrary rules are a traditional feature
of Hussein's Iraq. While ordinary people struggle to find rice, huge villas
are under construction throughout Baghdad.
	Handsome new apartment blocks designated for party officials and
army officers have sprung up along the banks of the Tigris river.
	The well-connected Iraqis drive new German luxury cars and toss
down straight gin at hotel discotheques.
	A whim, a shift in tone from the Iraqi dictator, can throw the
lives of ordinary people into a panic of relief or fear.
	Petty crime exacts a heavy price. Worse, the penalties change
without warning. Car thieves are suddenly hanged to announce a tough new
law. Merchants accused of price-gouging are shot, but a few weeks later,
prices again creep up to their former level.
	   
	Veterans of many years of war and the arbitrary exercise of power,
Iraqis yearn for something dependable, something sure, whether it is peace
or war.
	"I was born in 1968," said Baghdad college student Haider Barbuti,
who lives across the street from a civilian victim of the last American
bombing raid. "I opened my eyes and there was war. I have forgotten what
peace tastes like."
	Most difficult, though, is the unsettled state of affairs.
	"This is not like a war," he said. "You don't know your enemy. It's
the whole world and you don't know why."
Xref: sparky talk.politics.mideast:26208 soc.culture.greek:12481