Postcard From Iraq

May 21, 2003
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
www.nytimes.com

BAGHDAD, Iraq
I spent last week driving and flying around central Iraq.
There are so many crosscurrents swirling here, the only way
I can summarize them is with this postcard home:

Biggest Surprise: How dirt-poor Saddam Hussein had made his
own country - thanks to his wars with Iran and Kuwait, 10
years of sanctions and 30 years of tyranny. Outside the
main cities, most of the houses people were living in
appeared to be mud-brick huts, often with open sewers and
no sidewalks. Many villages and towns here look like
ancient Babylon with electricity poles. Many Iraqis
appeared bedraggled.

In short, Saddam had broken his people long before we ever
arrived. It is no wonder that so many Iraqi soldiers just
ripped off their uniforms and fled, and that much of the
damage done to U.S. forces was done largely by Baath
guerrillas. With all due respect to the U.S. military, and
the brave men and women who fought here, this contest was
surely one of the most unequal wars in the history of
warfare. In socioeconomic terms, we were at war with the
Flintstones.

The Worst Thing About This Poverty: It produced the
pervasive looting in the vacuum left behind by U.S. forces
as they swept away the Iraqi Army. That looting was like a
swarm of locusts across the land. It was a spontaneous
explosion of pent-up rage among Iraqis against a regime
that had stolen everything from them. It was also fueled by
a decade of sanctions and depravation that made many Iraqis
desperate to grab anything - as evidenced by the bizarre
collection of machine parts on sale in the Basra looters'
market.

The Best Thing About This Poverty: Iraqis are so beaten
down that a vast majority clearly seem ready to give the
Americans a chance to make this a better place. And, more
important, it would take so little investment, and so
little basic security, to improve the economy here and have
an immediate impact on people's lives. The peace is still
very winnable, as long as we get things moving forward -
which is why the Pentagon's ineptitude in postwar planning
is so frustrating. "We don't want to see a situation where,
by the Americans' not delivering on the simple things,
people will long for Saddam's day," said Hoshyar Zebari,
the Kurdish Democratic Party's foreign minister.

The Iraqi Political Factions With the Most Energy: The
returning exiles. When I crossed the border to Kuwait, I
was held up by a huge throng of Iraqi Shiites, waving green
flags and pounding wildly on the roof of the car in front
of me. It was bearing a returning Iraqi exile mullah from
Iran. His boss, the most important Iraqi exile Shiite
leader, Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, had come back
from 23 years of exile in Iran a day earlier - to press for
"Islamic democracy" in Iraq. I found a similar energy,
without the religious fervor, visiting the Kurdish factions
and aides of Iraqi National Congress exile leader Ahmad
Chalabi, who all advocate secular democracy.

The returning exiles are excited, they know how to play
politics, and they're meeting with delegations from around
the country, laying out their respective visions and
pressing the Americans to let them form an interim
government. The Iraqis in the silent majority, by contrast,
seem out of it. They don't know one another. They have not
been allowed to have a horizontal conversation for decades.
All they've had is a vertical - top-down - monologue. It
will be interesting to see which of these exile groups,
which have not really gone through the national trauma
here, will be able to sink roots among Iraqis who have. In
the near term, though, the exiles are likely to shape the
future unless the U.S. has a plan to develop other Iraqi
leaders quickly.

Most Important Statistic I Heard: Iraq is 60 percent
Shiite. Of those 60 percent, maybe 30 percent would favor a
Khomeini-like Islamic republic. That's only 18 percent of
the country. As such, two things seem clear: the next
president of Iraq will be Shiite, and Iraq will not be
Iran.

Most Eagerly Asked Question From an Iranian Journalist I
Met in Iraq: When are the Americans going to take over
Iran?

Most Eagerly Asked Question From a Lebanese Journalist in
Iraq: When are the Americans going to take over Syria?

My Basic Answer to Both Questions: Until we prove we can do
Iraq right, don't even ask.

Best Quote From a U.S. General, When Asked if We Can Do
Iraq Right: "It is doable - I just don't know if we can do
it." ?

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/21/opinion/21FRIE.html?ex=1054508576&ei=1&en=16586fab8792205d