Worry, little joy mark Basra, seat of anti-Saddam hatred

BASRA, Iraq -- For the gaunt-eyed men who make sentimental journeys to their old wire cage at the White Lion jail, there are no two ways about it. Saddam Hussein is gone, and anything else is better.

"I don't care if the British and Americans stay forever," Jassim Mohammed Qassim said. He suffered a year of beatings and electrical torture in a jammed, sun-baked outdoor cell for trying to flee Iraq.

Near a suspected mass grave from 1991, Mohammed Majid Jabar tells how he escaped execution by a hair, then hid out for 12 years. "May our saviors never go home," he said, looking heavenward.

But on the streets of Basra, as in much of a shattered Iraq, many are not so sure. Among many there is growing bitterness. The hated dictator is gone, yet nothing is in his place. Fear, hunger and mounting misery fill the vacuum.

If any place in Iraq should be thrilled at freedom, it is Basra. Saddam punished this southern Shiite Muslim stronghold mercilessly after insurgents, inspired by the 1991 Gulf War, rose against him.

Worsening conditions

During more than a decade of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, while Baghdad rebuilt itself and Saddam's hometown of Tikrit prospered, this one-time oil boomtown grew steadily poorer.

Still, Basra displays little of the popular joy America and Britain expected.

"I can't send my daughter to school while armed men burst in and steal girls," Nida Mohammed said, sitting on a couch with 18-year-old Sara, who nodded in vigorous accord with her mother.

A former principal of the school, Nida said she had gotten several reports of kidnappings from reliable former colleagues. Such incidents cannot be confirmed with police. Basra has no law and little order.

Hers is what was known as a "clean family," with no political activity and a good record of keeping their thoughts to themselves. Her husband runs a department at the state's South Oil Co.

Their reward was a comfortable home in a nice part of town, with a cheerful garden, sitting rooms to receive friends, full plates on the table and a sturdy jeep outside.

"It is anarchy, and anyone with a score to settle is now free to act," she said. "What good is all this if now we can only cower in this house and wonder what we will see in our future?"

The only authority around Basra is the British army, and spokesman Lt. Col. Ronnie McCourt admits the job of peace is too big for soldiers to handle.

Eventually, British officers say, they will set up a functioning government, but few expect to get it right at first. "I'm afraid the time it takes will be longer rather than shorter," McCourt said.

Patience is running out fast along the fetid sewer channel in Old Basra that was once a grand canal lined with elaborate houses that only 20 years ago approached the grandeur of Venice.

'What was Saddam to me?'

Salik Abdul Wahad, 50, stood at his usual spot behind tubs of hot oil, frying chickpea dough. Passers-by watched, but not many had the few cents worth of dinars to buy a greasy paper cone of falafel.

"What was Saddam to me? Nothing," Wahad muttered. "He never came here to bother me. And now what? We are afraid in the streets, in our homes. No one has money, even to eat. What is better?"

Nearby, Hana Wahid bought bread from a baker who sweated at his roaring wood-fired oven. She clutched her 2-year-old daughter to her chest.

"Security," she said, repeating what has become Basra's mantra. "We're frightened all the time. Whenever we go out, we don't know what we will find."

In happier times, Old Basra throbbed with color and life. Gondolas plied its canals, pausing at a royal palace and mansions with ornately carved wooden balconies.

When oil brought wealth, families moved to large suburban homes. Then an eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s impoverished Iraq. Just when things looked better, Saddam invaded Kuwait.

The U.N. sanctions that followed cut most Basra families to the barest necessities, and their jewel of a city center is now a moldering ruin.

Consequences of war

The action these days is at the "looters' market," where people shop at deep discounts for anything from bits of wire to giant motor pumps stolen from the still-crippled water utility.

British officers admit privately that at first they overlooked much of the looting of nonstrategic buildings. It kept civilians away from battle zones and helped redistribute some common wealth.

But fresh waves of stealing, often at the point of assault rifles, hampers efforts to restore calm.

The University of Basra used to bustle. Now few of its 18,000 students show up on a campus that has been picked clean, down to its light fixtures and doorknobs. Young Islamic radicals roam the grounds demanding that women students cover their faces and wear ankle-length dresses.

Samir Abdullah, 55, refused to join Saddam's Baath Party and is mentioned as a likely candidate for university president. But he excoriates what he calls a foreign invasion and occupation.

"I am a biologist, and I know our abilities," he said, denying Saddam's regime posed a chemical or biological weapons threat. "This is a big lie. The war is a big lie. And now the Americans are here."

He said few Iraqis liked the fallen regime but most now worry about what will come. This should have been an internal Iraqi matter, he said.

"The damage now is more than what Saddam did to us," Abdullah concluded. "This is a catastrophe. They are destroying our country, not liberating. We are very pessimistic for the future."

Desperate people break into the city's water mains to fill a few buckets and knock over high-tension pylons to steal hunks of copper.

International Red Cross teams struggling to restore water and power, and United Nations aid workers, accuse the British of doing far too little beyond winning a brief war.

"They opened the box of Pandora, and now everything comes out," said Giorgio Nembrini, a Red Cross water specialist.

"They thought they would free the country and everything would be perfect," he said. But looting has done the damage that Americans and British tried to avoid by careful bomb targeting, he said.

Andras Kruesi, the Red Cross delegate in charge here, said Geneva Convention rules require more from the victor.

"They can't just come here and occupy and then say, 'Sorry, we're going away,"' he said. "It's their responsibility, and they can't delegate it.

Some Iraqis are stepping in. Walid al-Khalifa, 38, sneaked back from exile and helped Britain take Basra. Now head of the Iraqi National Accord party, he advises on rebuilding the police.

So far, more than 1,000 men have been recruited to replace Saddam's 6,000-man police force in Basra, although few are yet trusted with weapons.

Khalifa was also on the British-picked consultative council to help administer Basra. But he quit at one stormy session, saying that most appointees were known profiteers who had worked with Saddam.

"Security is not good, but it will get better," Khalifa said. "At first we expected to see blood everywhere as people took revenge. but, thank God, people forgive."

Slowly, the back streets of Basra are showing new promise. With no curfew, streets are lively at night.

The Adam Restaurant is open again, along with a fancy ice cream parlor, a pizzeria and countless other businesses. Goldsmiths display their wares, although they hurry home before dark.

Fruits and vegetables fill the markets. Shops sell satellite phones and once-banned books. Entrepreneurs of every sort are hard at work.

While former prisoners stared silently at the ruins of the White Lion, Faysal Ghazi chipped away at concrete holding bars in the windows. He plans to sell the bars to people who want safer homes.

"I live nearby and at night I could hear the screams coming from this place," he said. "I guess you could say this is my little part of Saddam's legacy."