BASRA, Iraq (dpa) – Sacks of lentils and sugar are being offloaded from ships onto trucks in the midday heat in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr near Basra under the watchful eye of United Nations inspectors.
Every Iraqi is entitled to his portion in return for food vouchers, and it is generally agreed that the U.N. oil-for-food programme has alleviated the lot of the Iraqi population.Nevertheless, the U.N. embargo that followed Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait has meant a daily struggle merely to survive for many Iraqi families.Many residents of Basra, a city that still shows traces of the devastation of the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 and of the 1991 Gulf War, still live under terrible conditions.Some parts of the city stink like a sewer. Residents step into evil-smelling muck up to their ankles as they emerge from their front doors.“If we hadn’t initiated a sewerage programme three years ago, the whole city would have been under water by now,” says Andres Kruesi, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Basra.Red Cross workers are currently putting the finishing touches to the renovation of the Saddam University Hospital in the city. The biggest problem was not so much the shell damage from the Gulf War, rather the poor quality of the original building work, Kruesi says.Some of the hospitals and schools in Baghdad itself remain in poor condition, but the Shiite population in southern Iraq accuses the government of deliberate neglect of the region.“The Sunni ruler clique” would rather erect statues of President Saddam Hussein than fix streets in Basra with the proceeds of their oil sales, locals Say.One of the few well-maintained streets in Basra is the Promenade Shatt al Arab, where young couples stroll in the evening light between the 63 larger-than-lifesize statues of soldiers on their plinths, erected to commemorate the war.The statues all raise one arm pointing in the direction of Iran in a reminder of where the enemy lies. Now that government ministers of both countries are meeting and shaking hands, many Iraqis regard them as something of an anachronism.“The war against Iran was a big mistake, because we were really fighting for the United States, the Saudis and the Kuwaitis against the mullahs of Iran,” one Baghdad intellectual says.“And look how they paid us back,” he adds. The intellectual is not enthusiastic about making the journey to Basra, because the city reminds him of his wartime experiences.“Soldiers died to my left and right, so that I said to my friend: ‘What a coincidence that we are both still alive’,” he says.Some Iraqi Shiites were never inclined to see Iran as the enemy, feeling themselves closer to their Shiite co-religionists on the other side of the border than to the Sunni minority in the Baghdad regime.Some Shiite tribes have, however, allied themselves with the Baghdad government, their families coming to an arrangement with Saddam Hussein’s regime and maintaining order on its behalf.During the 1990s there were several uprisings in the south in protest at the Baghdad government.The Shiite Imam Sayyed Emad el Battat from Baghad regards the revival of tribalism as step backwards for Iraq as a whole.“As a man of religion, I have to reject this kind of thinking,” he says.Officials of the ruling Baath Party in Iraq had for decades forbidden Iraqis to use their tribal names, but these days Saddam is happy to appear on television surrounded by tribal leaders in traditional dress.
