Awaiting war from over the border with fear for their families at home

Iraqi exiles in Jordan have mixed views about their country being invaded -even to topple the author of their misfortune. Michael Jansenreports from Amman

Like all the other 300,000 Iraqis in Jordan, Omar and Nuha await the war with trepidation. They have family and friends in Baghdad.

Nuha's sister has left her house in a fashionable district on the Tigris because it is near a military camp and has moved in with friends in a safer location. Nuha's nephew bought a Kalashnikov last month during a visit to Amman before going back to Baghdad. He is determined to protect his house against looters if law and order break down, as everyone there expects will happen once the government loses control.

Omar and Nuha - they prefer pseudonyms - have lived here for many years. They are among the 160,000 Iraqi "legals" residing in Jordan. They own a handsome three-bedroom flat and a fine collections of paintings and books. They are educated, highly sophisticated Orthodox Sunni members of the upper crust of society.

Both their fathers took part in the national struggle against the British and were banished from Iraq.

Omar, a historian, is an Arab nationalist. He and his wife are against war and the reoccupation of their country. Although Omar spent some time in prison under Saddam's regime, he insists that Iraqis must choose their own rulers and is incensed to think of another foreign general ruling his country.

To some this suggests that Omar supports Saddam. He denies this vehemently.

"The worst thing Saddam Hussein has done to me personally is that he has put me in the position of defending him. I am humiliated and embarrassed to be in this position."

Another Iraqi exile called Hussein is from a different world. He belongs to the heterodox Shia sect of Islam and hails from the south. He is a former resident of al-Thawra ("Revolution") quarter of Baghdad, renamed Saddam City.

"We don't call it Saddam City," he snaps.

He has been living in Amman as an "illegal" for five years and last visited Baghdad seven months ago. For many years, Iraqi political refugees were given six months plus two weeks residency, but no longer. There are at least 140,000 Iraqi "illegals" in Jordan.

Hussein is one of the lucky ones. He shares a two-roomed flat with two other men. "One room is for work, the other for sleeping," he says. His accommodation is far better than that of the majority of "illegals," many of whom live five to a room and share common bathing and toilet facilities.

Hussein is a gifted painter and lives off the sale of his work. He trained at the Iraqi Institute of Fine Arts and the Academy with my friend, Muhammad Ghani, Iraq's most famous living sculptor. One of his roommates, another educated man, works at a supermarket, the other is unemployed.

"We share," says Hussein.

He says he left Iraq "because there is no freedom". His uncle was executed, his father was taken prisoner during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and held by the Iranians for 10 years, and another uncle was killed during this war.

Hussein longs for the day when Iraq is freed from the present regime. While he worries about his family in al- Thawra, he is prepared to accept war as the price of liberation.