Going behind 'enemy' lines

Former New Zealand Army commander BRET BESTIC was seconded to the UN mission in Iraq working alongside weapons inspectors. These are his impressions of the troubled nation.

Ours is the only aircraft in sight at Baghdad International Airport where we are shunted into a large, bright, clean but deserted terminal building. After a short wait in a lounge dominated by three large photos of Saddam Hussein taken about 15 years ago, we are put on to a bus for the ride through town to the office.

We are given a security briefing and told always to carry a backpack containing a change of underwear, basic toilet gear, money and passport. If we have to leave in a hurry, we are to head for the airport, abandoning everything else. I am there as a logistics consultant to a non-profit organisation looking at options for expanding working accommodation.

The city is a dusty beige, low-rise, littered place with few buildings above six or eight storeys. People dress in predominantly Western clothes, with perhaps a quarter adorned with Arab headdress or a veil for women.

It is unhurried. The traffic is competitive but sedate. The shops seem well stocked, particularly the fruit and vegetable shops which are bulging with produce. The road network is excellent and there are many new buildings, but most are strangely unoccupied or not quite completed.

Groups of armed and bored-looking police and military stand around intersections and roundabouts. Huge portraits of Saddam are everywhere, depicting him in various smiling poses in military and civilian garb.

I am given opinions and comments from several Iraqi nationals who ask not to be identified, "just in case, you understand" .

One tells me of the gradual destruction of the middle class in Iraq over the past 10 years, either because they have left legally, fled or have seen their wealth dissolve in the chaotic economy.

One was on a Government salary of 3000 dinars eight years ago, which was the equivalent of US$9000 ($16,400) a month. He is still on 3000 dinars, but it is now worth US$1.30 ($2.37) a month.

I am told money rules the land. Saddam Hussein uses it to buy favours and to slowly and miserably humiliate those out of favour. It is a weapon of control.

When you change money, you hand over US$20 and get a brick-sized wad of currency in return. The notes are all 250 dinars and cashiers spend their days counting them off by the hundreds. The canteen even has a note-counter used in banks to keep up with the accounting. You don't ask the price. You say: "How many pieces?" meaning, "How many pieces of paper do you want?"

The atmosphere in the office is focused and businesslike, even though the staff are still largely strangers to each other. I note how few females are on the staff. Gender equality apparently becomes less of an issue the closer one gets to discomfort or perceived danger. Most of one gender stay in the nice places, most of the other are shunted around to the cold showers and dirty toilets.

I go by road 600km to the northwest, an Iraqi and myself in one vehicle and two Landcruisers, each carrying five minders appointed by the Government to care for us. By 7.30am it is light enough to see the flat, barren land as we speed along a well-made, four-lane highway at 150km/h.

My companion is an ex-taxi driver whose concept of safe driving is to keep 3m from the exhaust of the minder vehicle in front, but offset by 1m so he can see the road beyond it.

His English is perfect and articulate as he tells us with some pride that he has a wife in Egypt with two teenage sons who he supports by smuggling money through friends going to Jordan, and another wife in Iraq who is an enthusiastic bedmate but who does not want any more than their present three children until he is rich.

He does not tell his friends or relatives who he works for in case they kidnap his children for ransom because he has a regular income. Each morning he drives his taxi from home as if he is still in that business, parks at the office and assumes his clandestine role.

The countryside is absolutely flat for the first 350km. We pass beige brick houses, Army bases and compounds, scattered settlements, scruffy shops and villages, a few trees, periodic flocks of sheep with their faithful and bored shepherd boys, and huge fields of freshly ploughed land ready for the new wheat crop.

The air is clean and fresh, made more so by recent rain. Hills emerge in the distance, identifying the far bank of the Tigris River, whose name is inseparable from the development of civilisation in this historic land.

We stop at a roadside cafe run by Kurds and sample local lemon tea, unleavened bread and a mildly spicy mince. I talk to our minders about soccer and their time in Britain as engineering students. We avoid politics.

My driver refuels with 35 litres of petrol and I discover he has a monthly allowance of US$20 to cover fuel for his vehicle, rather than being reimbursed for costs. I insist on paying, so he accepts the 350 dinars it costs. Petrol is 10 dinars a litre, or less than one US cent. They make the stuff, so it should be cheap, and I guess the US wants a large share of it. Bottled water is 70 dinars a litre.

The land becomes undulating and more interesting as we approach Mosul, where a new camp may be erected. The minders are helpful, speak English well, and want to know every detail of our requirements to help us to achieve our deadline. There is no hint of obstruction, deviation or impediment.

We agree on the details, and the conversation turns to the history of Mosul and what there is to see. The land has been subjected to invaders, battles, the ebb and flow of religions, the evolution of cultures and the varying fortunes of whole civilisations.

Time does not allow us to see the sights, but they promise to take us touring if we return. There are some old Christian monasteries and churches in the area, and I realise that Iraq is far more secular and less Islamic-extremist than I had assumed. Based on a limited sample of the minders and other Iraqis I meet in various roles I have the impression of a friendly, proud, tolerant, educated and subjugated society.

Friday brings a dust-storm that envelopes the city in a dense cloud that reddens our eyes and keeps everyone indoors. As a result, the influenza someone arrived with spreads throughout the office.

Friday is not a workday in Baghdad (nor is Saturday) but the office continues anyway. A few people from other "advanced civilisations" insist on Happy Hour at the hotel, where I talk to a United Nations interpreter working with the weapons inspectors.

His native tongue is Arabic, he speaks fluent English, French and Spanish and is disturbed by how little time he has to study German.

As an interpreter of the spoken word and a translator of the written word he must give an accurate English version of Arabic scientific documents, tell inspectors what the signs, labels and technical manuals mean, convey the subtly of the cultural aspects of Arabic expressions while trying to understand the engineering, military, nuclear and political terms. .

One of the group, who was here for some years in the 90s, says the Iraqis do not have the skills to assemble, produce, sustain or design weapons of mass destruction.

He claims that until the sanctions were imposed, the dinar was a strong currency and Iraq was a well-educated country, with many local and foreign educated middle- and upper-class managers.

When they graduated, doctors, dentists and administrators did what they were trained to do, but the engineers went into upper management jobs and didn't do much more than occupy space.

Foreign firms and consultants conducted the business, and the skilled tradesman and lathe operators who turn drawings into machines were foreign workers.

When the dinar collapsed, these people went home, leaving Iraq with few skills and even less of a concept of maintenance and spare parts.

He uses as examples the shambles of the railway system, the hordes of rusting agricultural machines in the fields, dilapidated trucks and irregular power supply in a country where diesel is cheaper than water.

"They simply cannot sustain any production levels in anything. If they have all of these weapons, they will have procured them overseas, along with the operators, and they may well have kept them in the foreign country until the fuss is over."

* Bret Bestic, who works for the World Food Programme, is a former brigadier and commander of land forces, NZ Army. He worked as a civilian with UN peacekeeeping forces in the Balkans, and is a former regional manager of Paremoremo prison.

Herald feature: Iraq