[Reader-list] The fall of baghdad

[Ravi Sundaram]

Yesterday was television's mythic moment, marines in Baghdad, the live 
toppling of Saddam’s statue, recalling so many similar moments: the 
departure of the US from Saigon in 1975, the  end of the Berlin wall
.There 
is so much you see and so much you don’t
.This is one of the better print 
stories of that day, showing the complexities of that day

R

The toppling of Saddam - an end to 30 years of brutal rule: The toppling of 
Saddam


Suzanne Goldenberg

Thursday April 10, 2003
The Guardian

It was a slow collapse. The statue of Saddam Hussein, huge and commanding, 
resisted the crowds tugging on the noose around its neck for two hours. 
Right arm held steady above their heads, pointing towards the horizon.
At last, metal legs buckled at the knee, forcing Saddam to bow before his 
people, and the statue snapped in two, revealing a hollow core. It was the 
end, or one sort of ending. Thirty years of brutality and lies were coming 
to a close - not decisively, not in full measure, not without deep fears 
for the future or resentment at this deliverance by a foreign army - but on 
a day of stunning changes.

Iraqis had begun drifting towards the statue on Firdouz Square, on the 
eastern bank of the Tigris, in the late afternoon, when the noisy grinding 
of gears announced the arrival of the American tanks.

This was the real heart of Baghdad - not the conglomeration of security 
buildings and palaces that were the preserve of the regime on the opposite 
shore and had been bombed for three weeks by the US military.
The crowds seemed to know what was expected of them. A man went up to one 
of the marines, whose tanks now controlled the circle and both sides of 
Sadoon Road, a main artery in east Baghdad, and asked for permission to 
destroy the statue.

But it was still too heady an idea. "You, you shoot it," the Iraqi pleaded. 
The marine replied, with no apparent irony for the days of killing that 
preceded their arrival in Baghdad: "No, no, I cannot shoot. There are too 
many innocent people around."

So it was left to the Iraqis themselves. A scrawny man tore down the brass 
plate on the plinth; others set off to find a rope to pull the statue down.

A marine threw the Stars and Stripes on top of Saddam's head, before 
thinking better of it; within minutes an Iraqi flag was in its place. It 
was the old flag, without the inscription in Saddam's own handwriting of 
Allahu Akbar (God is most great) that had been added to the gaps between 
the stars after the last Gulf war.

The symbols of his legacy were becoming undone. But the process was halting 
and hesitant, with Iraqis waiting until the last possible moment to assert 
even the tiniest freedoms. At the Palestine Hotel, where foreign 
journalists have been stabled, the system functioned right until the very end.

At 9am, as the marines were trundling into the southern suburbs of Baghdad, 
the minders from the information ministry who spy on journalists, were 
lined up for duty at the table in the lobby, dictating where, and where 
not, it was possible to travel.

Outside, the streets were still and almost monochrome, coated with the 
thick dust of a persistent sandstorm. The crude sandbag posts for the Iraqi 
militia men were empty.

For two miles there was no sign of the fighters who had tried to slow the 
American onslaught on Baghdad, until at last one man came into view beneath 
a highway overpass, slumped in the dirt, cradling a rocket launcher in his 
arms.

Further down the road, a desperate exodus was under way from the 
north-eastern neighbourhoods of Baghdad.

They were entirely male and of fighting age, and they were travelling on 
foot, carrying bedrolls and belongings. They would not stop to talk. A few 
more cars came into view - the white pick-up trucks with the red chevrons 
used by the Iraqi security forces. Yesterday, the drivers were all in 
civilian clothes, and they had rolled-up mattresses in the back.

The minder who accompanied us pointed to a branch office of Iraqi Airways, 
which was improbably open, and where employees were waiting for their pay. 
A hair salon next door was open as well. "You see, everything is normal," 
he said.

We crossed the river to the western bank of the Tigris, keeping a distance 
from the enclave around Saddam's Republican Palace, the staging ground for 
American troops.

Off to the side about 10 fighters, many wearing red keffiyehs, sat on the 
grass with their guns and rocket launchers. They did not appear to be 
Iraqis, but from among the Arab recruits to Saddam's cause who have been 
killed in such appalling numbers in the war against America. As we 
approached, an Iraqi handler barked an order, and the men ran into an 
abandoned house.

We drove on through Mansour, one of the richest residential areas of 
Baghdad, and were flagged down by yet another minder, who had been trying 
for hours to hail a taxi and report for duty at the Palestine Hotel.

"Did you listen to the statement from the information minister yesterday?" 
he said. "He gave a very accurate picture. He said that the Ameri cans had 
been in west Baghdad and that the Iraqis had driven them out."
A few days ago, the US military disgorged four bunker-busting bombs on one 
of the side streets, targeting, the Pentagon said, one of the last 
hideaways of Saddam and his sons. On the main road, shop owners swept up 
shards of glass, and attempted to prise open metal shutters. The minders 
were distracted; a chemist motioned to come inside.

"This is the price of freedom, between you and me," he said. "This son of a 
bitch destroyed us. Ariel Sharon - all the dictators in the world - become 
angels beside him."

It was not an entirely unexpected confession. The last days of the war had 
brought increasing moments of candour from Iraqis, trained over the years 
to suppress all critical thoughts of the regime. The self-repression was 
infectious. During 11 weeks in Iraq, I rarely referred to Saddam by name 
even in hotel rooms, which are bugged. He became Puff Daddy.

But as the end grew near, the lies became more intolerable. Acquaintances 
tugged me aside and blurted out that their cousins and brothers had been 
killed by Saddam for various offences. Drivers, who are vetted by the 
information ministry, reacted with excitement and smiles when the American 
army made its first foray into southern Baghdad at the weekend. And the 
minder, never viewed as especially solid by his colleagues at the 
information ministry, boarded the bus for the ritual tour of the city one 
morning, describing with great excitement the report on the BBC that Saddam 
airport had fallen.

"Very optimistic news," he said. Then he remembered.

It was the same yesterday. After unburdening himself of his hatred for 
Saddam, the chemist begged me not to reveal his name, or his shop's location.

"I wish the coalition forces would come here," he said. "I would guide them 
to all the Iraqi positions. But if the coalition forces stay longer in 
Iraq, I think it is going to be a disaster."

They already had arrived. We deposited the minder at the hotel and headed 
back across the river for Saddam City, that dumping ground for the 
dispossessed and secretly disaffected Shias that had become notorious over 
the years. The tanks had been and gone, and a carnival of looting was under 
way. Teenagers, laughing recklessly, rolled away swivel chairs from 
government buildings. At an electrical supply depot, grown men piled 
whatever they could carry on to forklifts and wheeled out to their homes. 
An Epson printer lay abandoned in the road.

"Have we got rid of that criminal Saddam?" asked one man, carting off a red 
space heater and an ancient adding machine. "Until when?"

But it wasn't all celebration. As the looters streamed by a bearded 
engineer erupted in anger. "This is the freedom that America brings to us," 
he said. "They destroyed our country. They are thieves. They stole our oil 
and killed many people. Here are the results."

A battered red Saab drove by with six tractor tyres on the roof and the 
boot, and two tied down on the bonnet. A teenager turned up with a rifle in 
each hand, freshly stolen from a shop, twitching convulsively at each 
trigger. "Bush, Bush," he screamed. "Zain" (very good). Two more youths 
pushed a small Suzuki jeep along. There was no sign of police, or the 
militias from the ruling Ba'ath party, those in khaki uniform who had kept 
an iron grip for years on Saddam City.

Viewed with suspicion by the regime and dread by its better-off countrymen, 
Saddam City was in the grip of the very nightmare Iraqis had envisaged for 
the ending of this war: rioting and lawlessness. Smoke billowed from a 
government store on the edge of the neighbourhood. Beneath a highway 
overpass, young men tried to cart away the field guns abandoned by the 
Iraqi fighters when they fled.

Meanwhile, US marines had moved into the north of Baghdad, taking control 
of the last bridges across the Tigris. The circle of territory still under 
the nominal charge of Saddam was shrinking.

Back at the Palestine Hotel, it was not yet immediately apparent that the 
regime had entered its final day. True, the most senior officials from the 
information ministry had decamped, either in the dead of night or secretly 
in the morning. None had said goodbye. But a few journalists still hovered 
forlornly in the drive way, waiting for their minders. Shots were fired 
from the nearby education ministry at vehicles marked TV.

In the south of the city, a few bands of fighters were making their last 
stand. A trail of burned-out cars, one with a corpse at the steering wheel, 
led to sounds of gunfire from residential neighbourhoods.

A few men stood outside their homes, waving whatever pieces of white cloth 
came to hand. A column of US tanks was lumbering into view in the distance, 
but it was too early to think of anything but survival.

A statue of Saddam had been destroyed at the main turn-off, but it had been 
chopped in half at the waist by an American tank shell, not rebellious 
Iraqis. Here, and in other pockets of the city, the diehards of the regime 
were making their last stand. One US marine, asked yesterday what had 
sustained the ragtag and woefully underarmed groups of fighters for so 
long, said: "Adrenaline."

By nightfall yesterday, the rush was beginning to wear off. The crackle of 
gunfire in the distance - met by the boom of American tank shells - tapered 
off. A few Iraqis, watching the chaotic and emotionally charged scenes at 
Firdouz Square, and the ritualised toppling of the statue of Saddam, grew 
silent, and edged away from the crowd.

"Can you believe it?" said one man, holding his four-year-old son close to 
his side. It was impossible to read the emotions flickering across his 
face. "People are happy. I am not sure."

He sighed, and nudged his chin in the direction of the American tanks. 
"Shit, all of these problems because of Saddam. They are going to stay 
forever, these Americans."