Baghdad shows few signs of worry

Downstairs in the student union at Al Mustansiriya University, the music blared as young men and women jammed around tables sipping sodas meant to resemble 7-Up and munching potato chips sold out of popcorn machines.

Farah Rasheed and her friends spread out their notes, cramming for a biology exam. At the next table, Wahabi Talib and Mohammed Abdullah, a pair of 22-year-olds with wisps of emerging beards, jabbered about computer software and the dance party a couple of nights back.

What they were not talking about was war.

Any week now, U.S. soldiers may come storming toward Baghdad, bringing the risk of turmoil - or worse - into the students' lives. Some almost certainly would be called upon to fight. Food, electricity and medicine could become scarce or disappear. Yet none of that came up without prompting on a crisp winter day in the Iraqi capital.

"We laugh, we dance, we have fun,'' said Talib. And the war? "We leave it to God.''

Baghdad on the brink does not feel like a city facing war. The markets are full of shoppers, the mosques full of worshippers. The streets are clear of soldiers and tanks.

Youngsters chase after soccer balls. Teen-agers trade tapes of the Backstreet Boys. Adults buy bootleg discs of the latest James Bond thriller. Restaurateurs prepare kebab or grill fish from the Tigris River.

While the government has doubled food rations and some people have put away extra oil, sugar and flour, two weeks in President Saddam Hussein's Baghdad have yielded no outward signs of panic, or even much preparation. The Iraqi dinar has fallen in value, reaching about 2,300 to the dollar, but the Baghdad Stock Index has soared to new heights. People go about their business dismissing the threat as the latest chapter in a long-running battle.

"Life is normal. We've gotten used to this since the beginning of 1991,'' said Wissam Jawad, 25, a government clerk, referring to the Gulf War.

Salman Ali, 58, who sells athletic attire at a crowded bazaar, finds no deep concern among his customers. "They don't care about war,'' he said. "I don't see any difference between six months ago and today. It's the same life and the same people. I was sitting here six months ago, and I'm sitting here today.''

At Ahmed Ewaiad's wedding shop, would-be grooms flock in looking to rent a BMW or Mercedes festooned with plastic flowers for the big day. The going rate is $12.50 to $20 a day.

"Our people aren't thinking of war,'' said Ewaiad, 25. "Weddings are going on just like old times.''

This is what passes for normal in a place where the meaning of the word has long since warped - a place where gasoline costs 3 cents a gallon but an oil pump is impossible to find, a place where the minarets of a mosque are compared to missiles, a place where the popcorn machines are filled with potato chips. So many aspects of ordinary life have been obliterated over the years that just getting by can be a war in itself. The threat of another one seems unreal.

Perhaps it is a denial like that of so many cities before invaders arrive, or perhaps people here really are used to the idea of war. Maybe people are afraid to be honest in the presence of the government minders who accompany foreign journalists. Yet, even out of earshot of the escorts, Iraqis express more fatalism than worry, a sense that their lives are out of their hands, so they might as well get on with them while they can.

"Welcome to our hell,'' whispered one student at Al Mustansiriya.

Baghdad, built on the banks of the Tigris some 1,240 years ago, has seen better days. Once arguably the richest city in the world and the centre of Muslim civilisation, Baghdad has become an outpost of an ostracized government, reachable by car or a handful of flights from Amman and Damascus.

Despite Iraq's vast oil reserves - estimated as the world's second-largest - Baghdad boasts little of the gleam of the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Decades of war, repression and, for the past 12 years, a blockade, have choked an economy that might otherwise rival some in Europe. Before beginning its downward spiral, Iraq was judged to be on the same economic and social level as Greece; today, it suffers by comparison to the poorest of its neighbors as a typical Iraqi scrapes by on $30 a month.

In Saddam City, a sprawling community on the outskirts of Baghdad, some 2 million mostly poor Iraqis live in dilapidated concrete apartments and wait for the next food ration coupons to arrive.
Livestock roam free, and every courtyard is divided by clotheslines with dingy laundry.

Yet Baghdad still works, if in its own way. Damage from the Gulf War has largely been repaired. The roads are smooth and maintained. There are no ruined buildings in the center of the city. Electricity, telephones and television generally work, if not always reliably.

@Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service