Global Policy Forum

By Rory McCarthy

Hussein Saber shook with fury as he lay on a dirty hospital bed last night and told the story of another day in Baghdad, a city torn apart by killings, misunderstanding and the startling failures of America's military occupation. Yesterday Hussein, 33, should have collected a $50 (£30) emergency payment which all Iraq's now unemployed soldiers are due to receive. The money did not arrive and so he and hundreds of other frustrated young men poured towards the gates of the US-led authority to protest. Within minutes he was shot in his right side by a young, nervous American soldier. Hussein survived but two other Iraqis standing next to him in the crowd were killed.

Just a few miles away in the centre of the city, gunmen in a passing car shot dead one American soldier and wounded another as they guarded a propane gas station. It was another strike against the US military by an increasingly bold guerrilla resistance force intent on destabilising the reconstruction.

Neither the Iraqis nor the Americans ever dreamed that Baghdad would be like this, ten weeks to the day after Saddam Hussein's regime was finally toppled. The people of this city are still gripped with the deepening problems of poor security, interminable power shortages and unpaid salaries. Their frustration is spilling over into a spate of attacks on the US military, which are met with heavy-handed raids and mass arrests which, in turn, spark yet greater frustration. Searing midsummer temperatures do little to cool tempers on either side.

"I hoped and I wished that when the American forces came they would bring us democracy and freedom but unfortunately we have seen the opposite," said Hussein, a non-commissioned officer in the air force for the past 18 years. "The Americans are going to get hurt if the situation remains as it is."

All the junior ranks within Iraq's 400,000-strong military, which was formally dissolved last month, have been promised a one-off payment and the chance to apply for a job in the new Iraqi national army. In reality none have been paid since their last wages from the regime in February or March. Recruitment for the new military has not started and, like the thousands of regular government employees still without work, their frustration should be evident for the US authority to see.

Hundreds of former soldiers gathered at the national recruitment office in Baghdad yesterday morning where they expected to receive their payouts. Similar payments have been made by the British army in Basra. But yesterday when officials in the building told them they had no money to offer they poured towards the gates of the Republican Palace, once Saddam's home and now the base of the US-led authority.

In the eyes of the US military, the crowd of frustrated former soldiers was a threat and they eventually opened fire. The Iraqi soldiers see themselves very differently - as husbands and fathers, struggling to make a living, gripped with defeated pride and disappointment.

Khadum Hussain Hani, 32, joined the Iraqi military aged 15 for the same reasons that brought many of the young Americans on patrol in Baghdad into the US army - he wanted to serve his country and he wanted a decent wage.

His brother, also a soldier, died during the war with Iran in the 1980s. Following tradition, Khadum married his brother's wife and took responsibility for the couple's three young children. Last year they had another son.

Until the war he was paid 75,000 dinars a month (then worth $37). Since March he has received nothing and has had to borrow thousands of dollars to pay the 30,000 dinars monthly rent on his small apartment. "I have borrowed and borrowed and all I have left in my pocket today is my identity card," he said yesterday. Before the war he and his wife talked about whether he would fight. "I told her I wouldn't fight. I was glad the Americans were coming to take us away from this oppression," he said.

Now he has to explain to his children why he has no work and no money. "Sometimes they ask: 'Did you bring home any apples today father?'" he said. "I tell them I will bring apples one day when I have some money."

It is all too clear that the natural goodwill that many Iraqis felt when the US and British forces brought to an end three decades of brutality and repression is rapidly fading. "There is a big gap between the Iraqis and the Americans right now," said Khadum. American troops speak freely of their own frustrations. They patrol in heavy bulletproof jackets and Kevlar helmets in the suffocating midday heat.

Many were first deployed to camps in Kuwait nine months ago and have had little time to rest or recover from the intense three weeks of combat that brought them to Baghdad. The shift from fighting to peacekeeping has been frac tured and slow. Still they are being targeted in guerrilla attacks and they don't understand why.

The al-Shawaf crossroads outside the Republican Palace, the bloodied site of yesterday's killings, has become the touchstone of the failings of the military occupation. Here there are queues of the articulate and the plain angry. The US officials who should be listening to their very simple and very real complaints are locked in a cycle of meetings from dawn until after midnight in the palace complex, behind the heavily guarded, barbed-wire entrance at the palace gates.

Alia Abbas Issa, 42, used to work in the palace as a seamstress, sewing curtains for Saddam's offices and private rooms. She took the job to help pay for English lessons at the local British Council office. It paid her well, up to 200,000 dinars (£2000) a month. Then came the war. Her apartment was looted of all her possessions, even her bed, and her job disappeared. She is left caring for the two daughters of her younger brother, who died in Kuwait during the first Gulf war. "There is nothing I can tell them. We used to have money now there is nothing. We cry from night until morning," she said. "I thought the Americans would bring us a new start. We want to like George Bush but the Iraqis are suffering and suffering," she said. "God will reward those people who come here if they come here to help us."

FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.