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Correspondents' Journal

May 5, 2003 - R.M.

Impressions of Baghdad: Is the War Over, or Just Beginning

I’ve been making the journey to Iraq since before the introduction of the United Nation’s oil-for-food program in December 1996. Prior to oil-for-food, Iraqis had little medicine, food, electricity or clean water. The country lived under a brutal dictator, and many had forsaken hope. In words that have been repeated by scores of Iraqis through the years, a minister told me in August 1996 that Baghdad and Iraq were finished.

Today, Iraq is a country under occupation; there is no government, no law nor order. Most shops remain shuttered and few venture out of doors. The night air is punctuated by the sound of gunfire and people live in fear. Curfew begins before dusk. Guns are openly sold for as little as a couple of dollars. There are no jobs, and the doctors and others who continue to work receive no compensation.

Jay Garner (the retired general and U.S.-appointed post-war administrator of Iraq) recently announced the reopening of schools. But schools were looted or burned during the war and they have no books, supplies, chairs, or desks. There is no central administration or compensation for teachers.

Baghdad is scarred beyond comprehension. It has become a volatile and dangerous city. Every government ministry, with the exception of the Oil and Interior Ministries, was bombed, looted, and burned. People have nowhere to report to work. With the ministries bombed, there are no records of citizenship, no passports, and no way out. Iraqis have become stateless and nameless—prisoners in their own land.

Birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, driver licenses, education records, diplomas, property deeds, population census records, bank records, tax receipts—everything that allows a civil society to function seemingly has been lost. How does an emerging first-world nation reclaim the records of its very existence?

Hospital administrators speak of conditions that are worse than those prior to the oil-for-food program. Equipment is breaking down and medicine is running out. There is no way to communicate. With no central government, each hospital is on its own. The availability of electricity and potable water is slowly improving, but gasoline shortages remain acute.

Iraqis are quickly exhausting their savings, and existing food supplies will be depleted in the coming weeks. Sixty percent of Iraqis (16 million people) depended on the previous government’s monthly food ration. Unless food supplies are immediately shipped to Iraq and the food delivery system is reconstructed, famine is likely.

An Uncertain Future

- Rick McDowell

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