Distributing aid to the desperate

Distributing aid to the desperate

By Gethin Chamberlain
With the Black Watch in Al 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 Al Zubayr.

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

Ali Salman Hussein

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In the line of fire

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 on 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 Thursday is different. In the dirt street in front of the barracks, life is going on as it has for years.

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.

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.

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.

Desperate for help

They have had no food or water for ten days, they are trying to say.

People have been filling buckets from the muddy puddles by the roadside.

They are filthy, reeking, desperate for the promised help.

British troops had come under fire

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.

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 people are afraid of the tanks and all those things but they are happy that the British are here instead of Saddam," he says.

Talking is dangerous

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."

He has little time for the rebels responsible for Wednesday'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."

Food arrives

Finally the aid convey arrives. Word spreads quickly and soon the crowd number several hundred people.

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.

Geoff Lockett, the man in charge of the aid operation, is well aware that many of those queuing for food and water are the same people who have fired at British troops.

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.

"We've got to stamp our impression on these guys that we are a force for good."

This is pooled copy from Gethin Chamberlain of the Scotsman, embedded with the British army in southern Iraq.