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April 3, 2003, The Independent Gethin Chamberlain in Az Zubayr UNTIL THE bombs began to fall on Basra, the man sitting in the low, white building on the western edge of the nearby town of Az Zubayr had been a teacher, working 12-hour days to educate the young people of Iraq's second city and keep a roof over his young family. But he would never be as lucky as those who had given up the fight against the Baath party and joined their ranks, or those who had always supported the regime of Saddam Hussein. Only they enjoyed the benefits of Saddam's largesse, only they could buy the meat and vegetables and eggs he and his family craved, only they could fill the top jobs and earn the big salaries and collect the little perks that made life in Iraq bearable. So when the bombs started falling and the Fedayeen took over the schools and the hospitals and the mosques, he knew it would only be a matter of time before there came a knock on his door, a rifle thrust into his hands and the order to fight. He gathered up his family and ran, out of the city towards the bridges over the Shatt al Basra canal, like the 1,000 who fled the city on an another day, running from the guns of their own soldiers, past the British tanks and on to Az Zubayr, where the British had set up camp and where he believed they could be safe. He recalled how clever the Baath party had been in the way it imposed its grip, using the need for food as a potent weapon against its own people. "The ration card is the main thing here. We depend upon it. It is as necessary as the water and the air," he says. "They give us all we need of foodstuffs. If they want anything from anyone they don't give you your rations, so to maintain your family's life you have to do what they want. "We depend upon the family system and the tribe. Your family's life is more important than yours. You must keep their lives, and to do that you must do what they want." Each person receives a ration card which must last them 10 days, he explains. It entitles them to 8kg of flour, 2kg of rice, 1.5kg of cooking oil, 2kg of sugar, 0.25kg of powdered milk and detergent powder. Anything else, like meat, eggs or vegetables, is seen as unnecessary or is reserved only for the wealthy. There are two kinds of Baathists, the teacher says, those who were always with the party and those who have been forced to join to survive. "The original Baathists are the heads of companies, ministries, universities, schools," he explains. "Those people who are forced to be Baathist are teachers, doctors. "They force teachers to teach the children what they say. We have to say that America was built on the skulls of Red Indians and if America comes then Iraq will be built on the skulls of Iraqis. They force us to teach our pupils that the British will occupy their country and steal their oil and do bad things to their families. They use religion to tell us things they want us to know. "The ones who are forced to be Baathists are at the bottom. The others have the better jobs, the better salaries, the better gifts. It is only the Baath party that rules the country." Two weeks after the bombing began, he is trying to start again, frightened of what the regime will do to him if it regains control and frightened of what will happen to his family. But there is an anger there too, anger at what has been done to his country, anger at the people he says have stolen Iraq from the Iraqi people. "Ninety per cent of people hate the Baath party but it is a psychological thing now. The Baath poisons are in our blood and in our minds and we can't eliminate them," he says Conditions inside Basra have deteriorated since the start of the coalition attacks, but even before the war began, he recalls, life was hardly worth the living. "Education is getting lower because people leave schools and universities to find work," he adds. "Even the educated people like me have a low level of life. Salaries are very low, maybe $ 20 or $ 30 (pounds 10 to pounds 15) a month for a professional person. We don't have good houses and the families are large. "There are often 20 people living together, including the children and the older people. "Because of the size of the families, the education is lower. Life gets worse. People are forced to work in addition to their normal work. You see the tomato carts here? "The main crop is tomatoes and we deliver them to other cities and sell them, or work in garages to repair cars. That is what I did. "We are forced to do that, work from early morning to night, six to six we say here, that is the rule here, but there is not much extra money from that either. "We want to run our own lives and to have items for our homes. We don't have extra items. Not every house has a refrigerator and air conditioning is only for the rich. We have radio and TV but that is often all. "There are two rooms in a normal house with 15, 16, 17, 18 people in that house. It is not a home, it is somewhere to stay. "We feel misery." This is a pooled dispatch by a reporter from The Scotsman'
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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