TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/101590/1015013.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.8 KB | 124 lines

                                                                                THE GULF, Page 53

Dance While You Can


Baghdad takes on a surreal haze as Iraqis muse about Saddam's
fate and hostages party with diplomats into the night

By CARL BERNSTEIN/BAGHDAD


    The desert winds called hamis are blowing now, and with them
Baghdad seems enveloped in a surreal haze: diplomats drop out
of the sky to plead with Saddam Hussein for a solution before
it is too late; hostages lounge by the pool and pin their hopes
on each new arrival; ministers hint of divisions within the
government; reporters interview the most recent terrorists to
take up residence here; the Muzak in the state-owned hotel
plays Hava Nagila.

    Increasingly there is talk that Saddam may not survive the
winter, that before an American-led military offensive occurs,
his own generals may move against him. Or (a more favored
scenario) that someone in the inner circle will assassinate
him. The talk -- some of it wishful thinking, perhaps -- comes
from well-connected Iraqis, Russians and Western intelligence
specialists. They draw parallels with Romania, though the idea
of an organized mass opposition is improbable. There are
reports of protests and desertions in the army.

    It is impossible not to feel the change in atmosphere.
Intrigue, speculation and confusion abound. For more than an
hour last week, the national soccer team refused to leave its
field so the ragtag People's Army could parade before foreign
television cameras. In private, high-ranking government
officials acknowledge that there is widespread dismay and
despair among Iraqis over the consequences of the nation's
invasion of Kuwait. Influential citizens claim knowledge that
the attack was opposed by 18 colonels and generals, as well as
by several senior ministers.

    Aside from Saddam's principal aides and Baath Party
regulars, the only Iraqis who publicly pretend enthusiasm for
the coming struggle are schoolchildren. Several thousand parade
past the U.S. embassy, shouting, "Down, down Bush!" Each day
in their classrooms they salute their leader, are taught the
lessons of the reunification of Kuwait and are drilled in the
ugly designs of the Americans and Zionists.

    Since the invasion, more than 1 million foreign workers have
left the country, almost all of them maintenance and service
employees. Street cleaning seems to have ceased; boilers and
generators are out of order for days. The combined effect of
economic sanctions, emigrant flight and international isolation
is not "strangling" the country; rather, those actions are
demoralizing and destabilizing Iraq, and rendering the place
increasingly dysfunctional. In the hotel elevator, a prosperous
businessman, fortyish and due to report for army duty in the
morning, vows he will flee. "I have a brother-in-law in
Chicago," he confides.

    Caught in the midst of this psychological battering are
17,000 "guests." These include the 700 Americans, Britons,
French, Germans and Japanese tethered to military and strategic
sites; 2,000 foreign nationals still hiding in Kuwait; 5,000
Western and Japanese men and 200 women (most of them Irish
nurses) who cannot leave because they have contracts with the
Ministry of Trade, Consumer Goods and Shopping Centers (yes,
thats the title); and 5,000 Russians and 4,000 Yugoslavs, most
of them workers in the oil fields and construction projects.

    According to diplomats, most hostages at strategic sites are
rotated among locations every week to 10 days, apparently to
keep them from becoming too familiar with their surroundings
and to prevent escape. They are permitted to write and receive
letters. "We believe they are being treated well in the vast
majority of cases," says a Western official.

    Most of the other hostages (except about 100 Americans and
Britons holed up in diplomatic residences) live in a strange
limbo: relatively free to travel around the country, their mail
and movements and phone calls monitored, riding the crest of
each rumor and BBC or VOA report that portends hope, spending
worthless Iraqi currency on rugs and jewelry in the suq.

    Baghdad's citizens seem to have taken fondly to their
hostages, particularly four young Dutchmen who cruise around
town, top down, in the city's only red Mercedes convertible.
They are up from Kuwait, where three of them worked in the oil
fields and the fourth was in charge of digging a lagoon for the
Emir's yacht. Boredom is the biggest problem. "Mostly we spend
our time sitting at the pool plotting useless strategies," says
an Irish doctor who arrived here Aug. 1 for what he thought
would be two weeks of work and a tour of Islamic culture.

    At night the hostages jam the city's open-air fish
restaurants on the banks of the Tigris. Except for hotel dining
rooms, almost all the city's restaurants are closed. Mangy cats
beg for morsels of the fish -- called masgouf -- that are
caught in the river, transferred to tanks, clubbed over the
head and then roasted over a wood fire.

    Afterward, Italian and Spanish diplomats socialize with the
hostages for what they call Salsas si Puedas, which means very
roughly "Dance If You Can While the Ship Goes Down." Meanwhile
the Dutchmen organize a soccer game with a television crew just
back from a press conference held by an exiled Saudi prince who
enjoys closer ties to Beverly Hills than to Riyadh. He has a
peace plan.

    It is possible sometimes to imagine that this place is a set
for a Peter Sellers movie. And then reality intrudes. A mother,
perhaps 50 years old, clutches a letter from President Saddam
Hussein. She lost seven sons in the war with Iran, and wrote
the President this month to beg that her last male child not
be taken from her and conscripted. The President has granted
her wish, and she is grateful.