US troops from the 3rd Infantry Division guard one of the compounds of Baghdad's international airport with a .50 caliber machinegun. US Army Captain Douglas Hoyt from the 3rd ID said, 'I told a group Iraqi men the other day that I pray for them all every day.'(AFP/File/Romeo Gacad)
Two years on, one US soldier tells his story
BAGHDAD (AFP) - The euphoria of liberation that followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003 rapidly evaporated to give way to concerns over security, health and a lack of basic daily necessities.
For US soldiers who were in the vanguard of the operation to depose the Iraqi dictator the problems of daily reality in post-Saddam Iraq have become inescapable.
US Army Captain Douglas Hoyt from the 3rd Infantry Division took part in the storming of Baghdad and returned to the capital for a new stay of duty in March.
In a rare insight into the private thoughts of a top US soldier, he told AFP in an email how Iraq has changed over the past two years and of his hopes and fears for the future.
"I drive on the streets and walk through the area now and the smells are mostly the same. I do not smell as much death, but the rest is the same. It is still a dirty Third World city.
"The power is only a little more reliable then when I was here last. Not as many generators on the streets powering the area but the power is still unreliable. The sewage is still just as bad also. I have seen some improvements in fresh water distribution. Roads are getting better. A lot of the trash is getting cleaned up, or consolidated rather.
"When I left the first time, there was still widespread looting. Everyone was a thief just trying to get their hands on as much as they could to sell or use later. There were more people begging for food and water then. Many people were homeless.
"Now two years later, I still see them as criminals. Only this time it is extortion and kidnapping for ransom, and killing for money. Everyone is just trying to get more for themselves on every level of society. I have seen very few altruistically motivated people. The few I have seen I have embraced. The people are still thankful that we ousted Sadam Hussein.
"I remember standing at a checkpoint two years ago and listening to a man tell me that he was very thankful for our ousting Saddam, but at the same time he warned me that we should not stay. He said that the people of Iraq can love us for what we did but still fight us for staying.
"I think that this is exactly what happened while I was away for two years. All the resistance to the coalition was acceptable to the people of Iraq.
Now they have taken a new perspective. Now I feel safer riding around in my Humvee and standing on the street talking to people.
"After the election they have seen our true purpose here. They realize the insurgency is no longer true Jihad. It is now only criminals being paid to kill and destroy the future freedom for Iraq.
"These men we now fight will kill a man for less then 10 dollars, and spend the money on whiskey and other non-Muslim activities. They are tired of the death. So, for now I think they will remain passive or even help rid us of this criminal insurgency. This is what they tell me.
"I have hope that by maintaining the moral high ground we can teach these people some level of altruism. I fear about when we are asked to leave by the legitimate government, and if we do not agree on a timeline to leave, we will once again be fighting the Mehdi Army and other groups.
"I hope that before we leave we can improve the standard of living for everyone. I hope they will embrace the freedom and equal rights for everyone. We shall see.
"I told a group Iraqi men the other day that I pray for them all every day. I told them this was my hope and prayer.
Iraqi children run up to a US soldier from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division on patrol to shake his hand along a street in Baghdad. US Army Captain Douglas Hoyt from the 3rd ID told AFP that he hopes he can help improved the standard of living for Iraqis.(AFP/File/Marwan Naamani)
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein listens during his first appearance before a judge in July 2004. Two years after Saddam Hussein's statue crashed to the ground in Baghdad, most Iraqis remember him as the head of a police state who ruined his country.(AFP/POOL/File/Karen Ballard)
Saddam still haunts Iraq 2 years on
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Two years after Saddam Hussein's statue crashed to the ground in Baghdad, most Iraqis remember him as the head of a police state who ruined his country and opened wounds that are still all too clearly visible.
"I will not gloat even if it would heal the open, festering wounds," vowed new President Jalal Talabani, citing a line from an Arabic poem, when asked on Thursday at his swearing-in if he had a message for Saddam.
But the Kurdish rebel leader, who fought Saddam on-and-off for nearly 30 years, did not miss the chance to describe his longtime enemy as "the most heinous of dictators and a ruthless fascist that massacred his people."
For Talabani, Saddam simply equals Halabja, the northern Kurdish village where an estimated 5,000 people died in a chemical attack in 1988.
"Saddam went too far... he's part Nazi, Fascist and Stalinist tossed in with some oriental flavours," says Bakhtiar Amin, another Kurd and Iraq's outgoing human rights minister.
On Baghdad's Rashid street, Saddam's abrupt end, like Iraq's many brutal successions last century, is on display everywhere.
"Saddam is with us every day, his legacy is right here, look around you," says Ahmed Abdul Karim, 50, an archeologist and a Shiite native of Baghdad.
The wave of frantic looting that swept through the capital in the aftermath of Saddam's fall has reduced an ancient courthouse and the legendary Dar al-Hikma library into bare skeletons.
An ornate government building dating from the times of Iraq's deposed monarchy is a bombed out garbage dump.
"Iraq was one big prison and Saddam was the warden," says Abdul Wahid Awaf, 47, a man missing half his teeth loitering outside the building.
He squats with his brother at an old townhouse that belongs to the Sunni Muslim waqf, or religious endowment.
In the nearby Al-Sarai shopping arcade, a group of Shiite merchants lament the security void and the crime and violence that still plague Iraq but revel in their post-Saddam liberties.
"My father would hush us whenever we would utter Saddam's name inside the house saying the 'walls had ears'," says Hussein Khudayr, 29, describing a time when he was forced to join the ruling Baath party just to secure a place in Baghdad University, where he studied Russian.
He recalls the ban on certain books, mobile telephones and satellite dishes and how Saddam's dreaded mukhabarat, or secret service, would monitor every student gathering or outing.
"Now we can openly criticise any politician, it is a beautiful thing!" cuts in his neighbour Abu Mohammed, 40.
But from old Rashid to old Adhamiyah, a few kilometres to the north, it is another world.
Faris al-Juburi, 50, begins to cry when he remembers how a US soldier climbed on Saddam's statute in Ferdis square tying a US flag around it before the bronze monument was chained to an armoured vehicle and torn down.
"Stop it, do not open my wounds," tells him Samir al-Duri, 35, seated with other friends on tattered wooden benches in a tea house in this predominantly Sunni Arab enclave along the Tigris.
They say Saddam was a great leader but question the wisdom of decisions like the war against Iran and the invasion of Kuwait.
"Yes he had a dictatorial streak, but a thousand Saddams and not one US soldier on Iraq's honourable soil," says a man who would only give his name as Abu Bilal, 40.
"Show me one Arab leader that did not use force to safeguard his rule," he adds to justify Saddam's oppression of the rebellious Kurds and Shiites.
They proudly recount how Adhamiyah was the last district to resist the Americans after April 9 and point to a bullet scared metal door and a gaping hole in the wall filled with bricks and brushed over clumsily with white paint.
But the sectarian and ethnic divides, which have grown deeper over the past two years, cannot explain what Saddam's fall has meant for Iraqis.
In the upper middle class neighbourhood of al-Jamiaa, on the capital's west side, Muthana al-Dulaimi, 35, a Sunni whose family hails from the restive Al-Anbar and whose members held senior positions in Saddam's regime, says they were overjoyed to see him go.
"My mother was ululating!" he says. "We had seen how sick the regime was from the inside. But my parents were quickly disillusioned with what came after Saddam, I am still hopeful."