Posted on 04/17/2003 9:38:52 AM PDT by knighthawk
After 32 years in exile, the author, a well-known Iraqi dissident, returned home on Monday night to meet with fellow Iraqis on determining an interim authority for his country.
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I entered Iraq from Kuwait City about two hours ago. Some comrades and I are riding in a convoy, accompanied by a former Navy SEAL from Jay Garner's Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, en route to the Free Iraqi Forces camp outside of Nasiriya. Our vehicles are carrying cash, equipment and supplies for the 800 or so Free Iraqi Forces and others at camp with Ahmed Chalabi. We are refuelling at the last available point, and I am overwhelmed by the vastness of the desert here. I remember it to be much greener. Maybe Saddam's draining of the marshes, an attempt to cripple the Shia Marsh Arabs, has had made it so barren. But it may also be my memory. I have not been here in 32 years.
Tomorrow morning, in Nasiriya, we will be joined by Jay Garner for the first conference on the composition and functions of the Iraqi interim authority. There is no clear agenda. Much of what will be said, certainly by Garner and his people, will be a surprise to the Iraqis here. Much of what I will say tomorrow will also be a surprise, as I am composing my thoughts as we roll through the desert. But I need to make a clear statement of the kind of Iraq we in the Iraqi National Congress envision. As I discussed this with my INC friends on the way, we were streaming through our country for the first time in years, and it caused many of us to break down. Up until now, our discussions of Iraqi democracy have all been theoretical. All that will change tomorrow.
We got a reminder of how critical tomorrow's meeting is when crowds of children descended upon us as we drove. They were desperate for water and food. We couldn't give anything to them and it was tremendously painful to turn them down. I had to drive off-road to avoid them at one point, but they swarmed again, begging. We told them they could go to the nearest Free Iraqi Forces camp for help. I got into an exchange with a boy who didn't understand how I could have been gone for 30 years. He was asking me questions to determine if I was really an Iraqi. It was overpowering, and I found myself talking about the books I've written about Iraq.
There are military vehicles everywhere. The U.S. Army is truly phenomenal -- it is simply the finest working machine anywhere. All the supply routes and logistical connections; I don't know how it's planned out. It's nice to think of the Free Iraqi Forces -- still small, yes, but official -- as part of the coalition. Among their American counterparts, however, there is a sense of uneasiness. Troops are everywhere fingering their weapons. They drive around in Humvees and APCs, always with someone manning the guns. There are not too many checkpoints here in the south, but there is a definite nervousness among the troops, probably because of the suicide bombers that have managed to strike. We hope the Free Iraqi Forces can allay their fears, becoming a real police force that can root out the bombers. There are about 700 in Nasiriya and 500 in Kirkuk, but if the United States allows it, the INC estimates the Free Iraqi Forces can grow to a strength of 10,000, and rapidly.
I spoke by SAT-phone with friends in Baghdad. According to them, the breakdown of authority familiar to the world is getting better. Citizens groups are forming to keep order in the streets, and meeting little preliminary resistance. People want to be safe, and now that the ministries have been ransacked, it appears the worst of the looting has passed. In Basra, too, I understand these same groups are forming. One friend told me that the looting of the National Museum -- something that cut deeply into me -- was the work of newly deposed Baathist officials, who had been selling off our patrimony as they saw their days were numbered. As the regime fell, these (ex)Baathists went back for one last swindle, and took with them treasures that dated back 9,000 years, to the Sumerians and the Babylonians. One final crime perpetrated by Saddam's thugs.
Kanan Makiya is the author of The Republic of Fear.; kmakiya@benadorassociates.com.; ©Kanan Makiya
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