TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012191/01210112.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.6 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 44

Where Dread Fills the Air


On the eve of what looks like war, the inhabitants of Baghdad
hope for the best but prepare for the worst

By SCOTT MACLEOD/BAGHDAD


    Jamil Roubayee, a 32-year-old doctor, glances around the
emergency room and tugs nervously at the stethoscope in the
pocket of his white coat. On one side of the ward lie four
elderly men who were rushed to Baghdad's biggest hospital, the
12-story, powder blue Saddam Hussein Medical Center, after
suffering heart attacks. On the other side are two ailing women
as well as a little boy afflicted with sickle-cell anemia.
Because of the international blockade against Iraq, Roubayee
says, the hospital lacks antibiotics and other medicines
necessary to treat the patients. At least one of the men will
soon die, he predicts, and the boy may lapse into a coma.

    As conditions deteriorate by the day, Roubayee, the
hospital's chief resident, can hardly bear to contemplate what
will happen next. Once the U.N. deadline for Iraq's withdrawal
from Kuwait expires this week, he fears that American and
allied planes will bomb Baghdad and that his hospital will be
overwhelmed with the wounded. "It will be a disaster," says
Roubayee, who once served as a medic in an Iraqi army tank
unit. "Doctors are very anxious. You have patients dying in
front of you, and there is nothing you can do about it. We hope
there will be no war."

    Yet the mood in this city of nearly 4 million is that there
will be war, and as each day passes, the gloom deepens. As
foreign diplomats evacuate their embassies and prepare to fly
out of the country, Iraqis wait at service stations in lines
30, 40, 50 cars long to buy enough gas to make sure they can
drive out of the city in case of attack. The government closed
the museums and moved its Babylonian and Abbasid treasures to
bomb shelters. Many Iraqis were putting tape over their windows
to prevent shattering in case of bombing. Others are laying in
a month's supply of food, getting ready to sit out what their
leader has promised will be the "mother of all battles."

    Spirits grow darker with each government pronouncement and
directive. Officials ordered families to learn safety
precautions at 342 hastily organized civil-defense training
centers. Some 10,000 doctors, nurses and other medical
personnel began undergoing mandatory civil-defense instruction.
Officials told the owners of buildings in Baghdad to convert
their basements into well-equipped bomb shelters. Iraqi TV
showed lengthy footage of soldiers at the front chanting
patriotic slogans and saying how ready they were to defend Iraq
if attacked by the U.S. The Baghdad newspaper al-Jumhuriyah
published advice on how to identify a chemical-bomb attack:
there will be a muffled explosion with a lot of smoke, leaves
will fall from trees, and the ground will quickly become
littered with dead insects.

    On the palm-studded grounds of Saddam Hussein's opulent
presidential palace, antiaircraft batteries have been moved
into position, including two perched atop the triumphal arch
at the palace's main gate. Barracks inside the city appear
deserted as the bulk of Iraq's army has moved to the front
lines in the southern part of the country. Few men of military
age can be seen in the city's famed fish restaurants and cafes
along Abu Nawas Street. Despite the abundant signs of war
readiness, some Iraqis remain perversely secretive about their
plans. When a foreign journalist innocently asked his escort
whether his family was making preparations for a war, he
replied curtly, "I cannot tell you anything. I am from the
Ministry of Information."

    Saddam Hussein himself put in an appearance at a conference
of Islamic leaders, where he promised a jihad against the U.S.
unless the grievances of Palestinians were redressed.

    Many Iraqis saw the evacuation of diplomatic missions as the
most ominous sign of impending war and the possible bombing of
Baghdad. Only hours after the failure of the U.S.-Iraqi talks
in Geneva, Ambassador Harold Walker and other British diplomats
formed a convoy and left the country by driving 300 miles
across the desert to the Jordanian border. Three days later,
charge d'affaires Joseph Wilson IV and five other American
diplomats evacuated the U.S. embassy and left on a chartered
Iraqi Airways flight for Frankfurt. Before their departure, an
Iraqi woman was turned away from the embassy with tears
streaming down her face.

    Even senior government officials, when their guard slipped
for a moment or two, appeared wary of what the future might
hold. Sitting in his eighth-floor office overlooking the muddy
Tigris River, Naji al-Hadithi, director general of the Ministry
of Information, turned up the volume on his TV set when CNN
aired a story about Iraq. Afterward, fingering red worry beads,
he boasted to his American visitors that Iraq held a
considerable military advantage in the event of war. "During
our war with Iran," he explained, "we lost 53,000 men in order
to recapture Fao, one small Iraqi town. In the entire Vietnam
War, America lost only 50,000. The party that can endure the
most sacrifices is the party that will win."

    But later, a little after a muezzin's call to prayer rang
out from a nearby mosque, he abandoned his stock lecture. "It
seems that Iraq and the U.S. are like two trains headed toward
each other on the same track," he said. Pondering that reality
for a moment, he looked up and asked quizzically, "What do you
think will happen?"