[A-List] Iraq: popular opposition to US

["Keaney Michael" <Michael.Keaney@xxxxxx>]

After 20 years of war Iraqi doctors await attack with mix of fatalism
and dismay

Stockpiling begins as population prepares for the worst

Ewen MacAskill in Baghdad
Thursday September 19, 2002
The Guardian

The director of the Mansour hospital in Baghdad, Luay Qasha, is, like so
many Iraqis after 20 years of war, a fatalist. He smokes heavily, loves
high-cholesterol foods and is preparing his hospital for US attack.

Mr Qasha, a consultant and pathologist who trained at Whitechapel, in
London, has a naturally cheerful disposition. An Anglophile, as are most
of his generation of Iraqis, he is happiest talking about Manchester
United, whom he watches on satellite television, British shops like
Sainsbury's and, best of all, British food: fish and chips, bacon and
eggs and steak and kidney pie.

He turned reluctantly to the US threat, his mood instantly sombre. "We
are stockpiling medicines for war," he said. "It is sensible. We are
keeping aside bandages, fluids, antibiotics. We are getting the
operating wards ready. These are the most important things in time of
war."

Mr Qasha, 48, is in charge of a 300-bed hospital. "If there is war, we
will be here 24 hours every day. I will be, and the nurses: all the
staff. We will have resting stations in the hospital where we can sleep.
We have a generator in the basement."

Iraqis have a strong sense of pride and patriotism, whatever their
personal feelings about their president, Saddam Hussein. Mr Qasha is no
different: "We will cope. It is not the first attack by the States. We
were attacked in '91, '96 and '98."

The general population has been getting ready too. "Everyone has extra
food, water, oil, candles, bicycles. You should have these things
because of the threat," he said.

The Iraqis cite as one of the reasons for their concern the sudden
influx of journalists into Baghdad: 250, according to the ministry of
information, with many more than that outside appealing for visas. "We
are not stupid. We know why you have come," one resident said.
"Journalists come when there is war."

But they also have other, more realistic, indications. They listen
frequently to radio and television news updates, either from the local
or international media, and know that the US is not satisfied with the
offer to let the United Nations weapons inspectors return.

There was no sign yesterday that the Canal Hotel, the headquarters of
the inspectors until they left in 1998 protesting that President Saddam
was obstructing their work, was being readied for their arrival. The UN
flag was flying over the heavily guarded compound but there appeared to
be no one other than Iraqi sentries around.

One guard said: "I hope they are not going to come back. We will have
nothing but trouble."

The inspectors were unpopular with the Iraqi government, who claimed
they made unreasonable demands for access to all sites in the country.
There was an attack on the compound in January 1998 when a rocket
grenade was fired from the street. Any such problems this time round, or
obstruction of their work by the Iraqi government, could see a swift
move by the US to war.

The population of Baghdad is bracing itself for two wars: the US
bombing, which is expected to be followed by invasion, and the civil war
- or at the very least the bloodletting - that would follow President
Saddam's downfall. The latter is the one that the people of Baghdad fear
most. The Iraqis have a long list of grievances against their president
and there are a lot of scores to be settled.

Those around President Saddam, especially in his Ba'ath party, know what
to expect and will not give up power easily. They remember the slaughter
of Ba'ath party members in the aftermath of the Gulf war in 1991 when
the Shia Muslim population of southern Iraq rose up against Saddam.

A western diplomat said it was difficult to predict the reaction of the
population to a US invasion. "The country is extraordinarily tied down.
It is a regime that has lots of security agencies. People are being
watched or assume they are being watched," the diplomat said. "There are
whole sections of society that are excluded by the government but, from
survival instinct, they will do nothing. But, if they thought he was
going, they would move. They will not die in a ditch for him. They might
wait until the US troops were 50 miles from Baghdad."

He expected the US to go "to extraordinary lengths to minimise civilian
casualties. Although there are no guarantees with smart weapons, they
are better than during the Gulf war."

There are few visible signs round Baghdad of the military gearing up for
war. There are hardly any anti-aircraft batteries to be seen from the
streets, no tanks at important junctions or elsewhere and relatively few
soldiers.

The diplomat cautioned against writing off the Iraqi military: "We do
not know what the state of preparedness is but it would be a mistake to
think they are an enfeebled force. They have had a chance to replenish
since the Gulf war and if it comes to military action, it is different
from '91. They would be defending their homeland."

People with little or no loyalty to Saddam will denounce in vitriolic
terms the US. There is bafflement in a country, in which so many of the
middle-classes, like Mr Qasha, were educated in Britain, that Tony Blair
should be involved too. At times this bafflement turns to anger:
assurances to British journalists that nothing is held against them
personally is punctuated with increasing explosions of outrage at the
British government.

Mr Qasha, who sees enough suffering daily in his hospital, is not prone
to such outbursts. He retains an affection for England and Wales. His
main concern, apart from the prospect of war, is his patients,
especially those in the cancer wards.

It is almost obligatory for any visitor to Iraq, but especially
journalists, to be shown round cancer wards by bored doctors. These
doctors routinely denounce US imperialism and blame an increase in
cancer cases on UN sanctions imposed after the Gulf war and the impact
of depleted uranium shells from that war.

The hospital is of a good standard, less than 20 years old, and is
well-staffed. The problem was, Mr Qasha said, that the staff, unable to
travel, had not been able to keep up with medical developments and were
using the methods of the 1970s. And because of sanctions, they were also
using the equipment of the 1970s and, in the case of cancer treatment,
they often did not even have that.

Sanctions have been lifted on most goods but vital medical supplies and
equipment remain banned. The UN body that decides what items can and
cannot go to Iraq vetoes radiotherapy equipment, and the drugs to carry
out bone marrow transplants. Radiotherapy equipment is labelled "dual
use": the UN, under pressure from the US, said it has potential military
as well as medical applications and fears Iraq could use it to make a
"dirty bomb", a crude nuclear device that can be carried in a suitcase.

Mr Qasha, without rancour, dismissed this as scientifically impossible.
"Who has ever heard of a nuclear bomb being made with cobalt? They are
made from plutonium or uranium," he said.

In one of the wards, Swama Yassin, four, from Sulaimaniya, in the
Kurdish part of Iraq, dangled his legs over his bed. Mr Qasha said the
child needed a bone marrow transplant and that was not possible in Iraq.
What were his chances? "GOK," Mr Qasha said. "God only knows." He added:
"With a transplant, he has a 70% chance of success. Without it, his
chances are not very good."

And now there was the prospect of war; he considered that hardest of all
to take. "Do you love war?" Mr Qasha said at the end of the ward tour.
He was not really expecting an answer. "I do not love war," he said.