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27-3-003 PA News Aid This is a pooled despatch from Gethin Chamberlain of the Scotsman, with the Black Watch in Az Zubayr. The crowd has been growing since the early hours, young men in brightly coloured football shirts, women in their black Chadors, older men in their long Jelabbahs. Children running around excitedly, looking up coyly at the soldiers behind the lines of orange and white tape stretched out in front of the area from which the food and water will be handed out. By 9am there are a couple of hundred men, women and children outside the former Iraqi army compound taken over by the British troops who have moved into the town of Az Zubayr. For days the troops have been struggling to gain control, tormented by small gangs of hardcore Iraqi fighters refusing to give up the struggle against the British and American forces sweeping into their country. Two British soldiers have died in rocket propelled grenade attacks in the town and even yesterday (Wednesday) the rebels were making their presence felt, firing mortars at the crowd that had gathered for the first attempt to hand out humanitarian supplies. But today (Thursday) is different. Gone is the fog and rain of the previous couple of days, in its place a blue sky and a warm sun to dry out the stagnant puddles and transform the mud back into the ever-present dust that blankets everything in the south of this country. In the dirt street in front of the barracks, life is going on as it has for years, the people seemingly resigned to the occasional thud of distant artillery fire. A cart rolls past towed by a donkey. Clusters of old men lean against the grubby whitewashed buildings or stand out in front of the piles of rushes that are used to roof many of the basic structures that are their homes. Out beyond the brick buildings, there are huts made entirely out of rushes, the traditional homes of the marsh Arabs of this region. At the gates of the compound, the crowd is growing impatient. The aid handout, planned for 8am a couple of hundred yards from where the mortars fell yesterday, is running late. The army has flooded the area with armoured vehicles and troops determined to avoid a repeat of the earlier debacle but they can do nothing to hurry the aid convoy. No one is sure when it will arrive. Some of the crowd begin to drift away, heads shaking, disappointment clear in their faces. Those who stay are growing agitated, beseeching the soldiers for water. They use hand gestures to try to make themselves understood, holding up their fingers to indicate ten days, pointing to their mouths, miming eating, waving their hands. They have had no food or water for ten days, they are trying to say. A young man points to his matted and greasy hair, tugs at his dirty clothes, sniffs at them and grimaces. There has been no water to wash or clean or to drink. People have been filling buckets from the muddy puddles by the roadside. They are filthy, reeking, desperate for the promised help. A man pushes his way forward to speak to the soldiers. His name is Ali Salman Hussein, he says and his English is good. He is 35, a graduate with a degree in management, but he has no work. Better dressed than some of them around him, he lives in a well-built house a little way along the road, paid for by the money sent to him by his brother. Ali says he is glad that the British and Americans have come, but he wants them to keep their word, to flood the country with aid to help the ordinary people who, he says, have suffered under the Iraqi regime. But they are nervous of the army too, he says, and do not want their liberators to become their occupiers. The British and Americans must avoid swapping one unpopular regime for another, he says. "The people are afraid of the tanks and all those things but they are happy that the British are here instead of Saddam," he says. Even talking to the British soldiers is dangerous, for there are still people in the town loyal to the Iraqi regime. The fear is clear to see: when someone raises a camera to take a picture, the crowd shies away. But Ali says they know they need help and if the British can provide it the opposition will dwindle. "You are here on the condition that you liberate Iraq," he says. "We are hungry, we need food and water, we need life materials. "From the beginning of the attack we have been without food and water. It is difficult to live with no water, no food, no electricity. "But life was very difficult before. They gave us only two hours of electricity each day, there were no jobs for the young people. I graduated from college with a management degree, but I have no job. "Now I hope everything will be changed that we can live freely. Before we could not talk. Even talking to you is very dangerous, but now nobody can give us orders." He has little time for the rebels responsible for yesterday's attack believing Iraq's army has no stomach left for fighting. "Yesterday was maybe kids, not military. The military are all in their houses, they are tired of fighting, they fought for eight years with Iran, all those wars. It makes us tired of war. "We don't want you to occupy us, we want you to liberate us and leave. If you don't leave then we will hate you." He wants the military commanders to involve the Iraqi people in the aid effort, using people in the town to help distribute the aid to those who need it rather than just throwing it out from the back of trucks like a keeper feeding animals at a zoo. But he believes that if enough aid can get through, the Iraqi people will support the British and Americans and the success of the military campaign will be assured. "We have the Republican Guard and they are strong but I think you will succeed," he says. "I think peace will come. "The militia will surrender when the bullets they have are finished. "But I say to the world we need food and water so the people will love Mr Bush and Mr Blair. If you don't we will hate you." Inside the compound, they are still waiting for news of the aid convoy. While they wait, some of the soldiers investigate the flat-roofed buildings scattered around the central courtyard. Along dank corridors, they peer into rooms in which tattered scraps of furniture are scattered around their concrete floors. On the walls are Iraqi military maps and pictures of Saddam Hussein. One, home-made, has a cut-out picture of the Iraqi leader, golden rays spreading out from beneath him, illuminating a drawing of the globe. In one room, the stench of a bowl of tomatoes long gone rotten, lying were they were left next to a low wooden desk. In another, four military helmets and a smoke grenade. Outside, a breeze-block wall surrounding a wide open space, bordered by small plots of greenery. There are palm trees, but their leaves have gone. Outside the gates the Warrior armoured vehicles of the Black Watch are pulling away down the road. The convoy has finally arrived and they were being escorted into the town. Word spreads quickly and soon the crowd number several hundred people, surging forwards only to be forced back by the thinly spaced line of troops. Some have fixed bayonets, shoving the more aggressive young men roughly backwards with the flat of their rifles. The convoy appears, half-a-dozen military vehicles packed with troops from the Royal Logistics Corps flanking two lorries carrying metal containers stuffed with boxes of water and ration packs. Soldiers leap out, assuming dramatic poses and pointing their weapons in all directions, like something out of a movie made by a bad American director. The soldiers inside the compound exchange glances, eyebrows raised. A little over-dramatic, they suggest to each other. Lots of people are shouting, trying to get the trucks inside the compound and hold the crowd at bay. For a while they struggle. Those who have queued patiently in line behind the tape are swamped as the crowd breaks through the army lines, laying siege to the back of the first truck which now stands open, revealing hundreds of boxes of water inside. People are pushing and shoving each other, fighting to get to the front. A small girl, brown hair and bright brown eyes, emerges from the base of the scrum, clutching her precious bottle, smiling at the soldiers. Others have worked out that they can get more bottles by handing their haul to those waiting behind the cordon and then heading back for more. Each is handed one bottle but it is nowhere near enough. They want more. There is more shouting, more soldiers waving their guns about, the line breaks and people press forward. The situation is getting out of hand, the soldiers turning this way and that as more and more people break ranks and try to get to the trucks. Ali is berating the commanding officer, Lt Col Mike Riddell-Webster, demanding that someone from the town takes control. The CO takes him at his word and leads him to the back of the truck, were Ali now shouts at the crowd, ordering them to take one bottle only and leave. It seems to work and slowly order returns. But now they have water, the crowd wants more, more water, more food, more medical attention. A man pushes forward, clutching two X-Rays, showing a bullet lodged next to his spine. Won't a doctor help him, he asks. Others have weeping sores on their hands and bodies. The medics are trying to help, offering basic attention were they can. Only yesterday, an ambulance braved a barrage of RPG and machine gun fire to pluck two injured children to safety from the centre of the town. Both had been shot, caught up in the fighting, and their parents had gone to the army to plead for help. Sgt John Hardy, a Scots Guard attached to the Black Watch, said there was no way they could refuse. "It's not about hearts and minds, it's what we do. If you see a kid in need you just help them out," he says. Geoff Lockett, the man in charge of the aid operation, suspects that many of those queuing for food and water and medical care are the same people who have made life so difficult for the British troops over the past few days. But he says that they have no choice but to try to help the civilian population if they are to have any chance of success. "A lot of these guys have probably been firing rounds and RPGs at us," he says. "But we've got to stamp our impression on these guys that we are a force for good. It is a gesture, but it will give the right impression." Standing with his hands on his hips watching the soldiers dropping bottles of water into the sea of hands below the tailgate of the trucks, the CO knows that much more aid is needed if the campaign is to succeed. "It's a drop in the ocean, but I suppose it is a start," he says. end |
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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