Baghdad residents are braced for a new war on their streets, Michael Slackman reports from the city
Food rations have been doubled for the past two months, the military is on alert, the ruling Baath Party's militia is patrolling outside ministry buildings, and anti-aircraft artillery has been positioned in key areas. Still, people in Baghdad insist they have made few plans of their own to cope with a war.
President Bush wants to topple President Saddam Hussein, and if he can't do it by sabre-rattling, he has said he is prepared to send in the US military. But this city of nearly six million people seems to be sleepwalking through the crisis.
It is not that the people don't recognise the risk they are facing, especially as the nation's military strategy appears aimed at luring US troops into urban locations, where Iraqis feel they will have a fighting chance.
It just means they are accustomed to living under threat - and they are numb. With the hammer hanging over them, they are simply trying to get on with their lives.
"Iraqis are Muslims, and they feel their destiny comes at God's will," Prof Saad Naji Jawad, a political science professor at Baghdad University and a shopkeeper, said the other day. "But that doesn't mean they aren't scared of a coming war."
For 22 years, Iraqis have endured the hardships of war and economic sanctions. No matter whose fault, it changed their way of life, forced them to become experts in getting by and gave them a feeling that they can survive almost anything. Now, they just figure they are going to have to do it again.
"It will not affect us," said Mr Raad Ishak, (47), owner-operator of a dry cleaning business in the Christian neighbourhood of Karada-Erkheta. "We are used to living in such conditions." Mr Ishak did say that if there is a war, he expects to close his shop, the sole source of income for 20 people. Electricity probably will be cut off. Water might stop running. And his children's school is likely to be closed. He can't sleep at night because he is worried his children could be injured. What he means is, he'll survive.
The last time the US led a coalition against Iraq, in 1991, the fight took place in the desert. As Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, they were easy targets and were devastated by US air power.
This time, if there is a war, it could well be centred here, in the city of 1,001 nights, a city whose history is tied to the birth of civilization. Baghdad no longer might be known as a place where parents want to send their children to study medicine, but it remains home to an ethnically and religiously diverse population. The streets they live, work and play on could well become America's next battlefield in a fight that the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tarik Aziz, has promised would be "a fierce war".
Yet despite wars and sanctions, Baghdad is dynamic . It stretches along both banks of the Tigris River, with the districts of Rusafah on the east and the Karkh on the west. Eleven bridges connect the two banks, and the fact that bridges bombed by the US have been rebuilt has added to the sense among citizens that the city and its people can endure anything. One sign here of the years of sanctions imposed on Iraq after the Gulf War is the number of rundown cars crowding the streets. But those thoroughfares also serve as an example of the country's resilience - many luxury cars also cruise up and down.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Arasat al Hindiya, the city's most desirable neighbourhood. The municipality is widening the footpaths there with octagon-shaped tiles for pedestrians interested in shopping in the luxury boutiques or dining in the fancy restaurants.
If anywhere in Baghdad has a lot to lose, it is Arasat al Hindiya, whose residents live in grand villas rising behind wrought-iron gates. But there as well, residents and shopkeepers are refusing to alter their daily lives because of the prospect of war. Not that authorities are not trying to prepare Baghdad's people for what could be a serious fight.
One analyst said he expects that if there is an invasion, the Baath Party will hand out weapons to the few residents of the city who don't own guns.
In addition to taking practical measures, such as distributing extra food, officials also seem to be working on psychological preparations. At the Mother of All Battles Mosque, a huge house of worship dedicated to the Gulf War, Imam Abdul Latif Humain was trying to rally the troops yesterday and brace them for what might be a very one-sided war.
"Our cause is depending on faith and justice," he said to several hundred men and women inside the mosque. "The US is lacking these two qualities - faith and justice. We have faith, which is better than huge numbers of soldiers." - Los Angeles Times