Arab News has reporters in the Basra/Umm Qasr area and they have filed a series of stories documenting that the Coalition analysis of Iraqi citizens' attitudes is right on. These reports and others like them will help sustain us during the difficult days ahead, when civilians will be tragic casualties and while the Arab and much of Western media pound us without mercy.
OUTSKIRTS OF BASRA, 28 March 2003
Arab News asked several of the refugees waiting to enter Basra what they thought of regime change. Accompanying Arab News were several international TV crews. What the refugees said on and off camera were very different things. On camera, the general feeling among the crowd was sorrow at losing Saddam. Off camera, the citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra appeared genuinely exhilarated at the prospect of a brighter future, after Saddam had been removed.
UMM QASR/BASRA, 30 March 2003
When we finally made it to Safwan, Iraq, what we saw was utter chaos. Iraqi men, women and children were playing it up for the TV cameras, chanting: "With our blood, with our souls, we will die for you Saddam."
I took a young Iraqi man, 19, away from the cameras and asked him why they were all chanting that particular slogan, especially when humanitarian aid trucks marked with the insignia of the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society, were distributing some much-needed food. His answer shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. He said: "There are people from Baath here reporting everything that goes on. There are cameras here recording our faces. If the Americans were to withdraw and everything were to return to the way it was before, we want to make sure that we survive the massacre that would follow as Baath go house to house killing anyone who voiced opposition to Saddam. In public, we always pledge our allegiance to Saddam, but in our hearts we feel something else."
Different versions of that very quote, but with a common theme, I would come to hear several times over the next three days I spent in Iraq. The people of Iraq are terrified of Saddam Hussein.
UMM QASR/BASRA, 31 March 2003
That was when I first got the sense that these people were really eager to see Saddam and Baath gone. I asked several what they thought of the US/UK plan to remove Saddam. They told me: "Now that they have started to remove him, they cannot stop. If they do, then we are all as good as dead. He still has informants in Umm Qasr and he knows who is against him and who isn’t." When asked about what they think of this war, most Iraqis said that they were against the loss of innocent life and the destruction of their cities, but they seemed adamant about the removal of Saddam. They were happy about the "liberation" of Umm Qasr but were disappointed in the US/UK for not keeping their promises to provide humanitarian aid.
Thanks to OpinionJournal's Best of the Web Today for noticing these.
Posted by Alan at March 31, 2003 05:21 PM