A tale of two Iraqs

A tale of two Iraqs

By Ryan Dilley BBC News Online, Basra

Saddam Hussein, though living in the same country, appears to have occupied a world far removed from that of the Iraqi people.

"And this is just a simple one!" says a woman outside the walls of the sprawling Presidential Palace in Basra. "All that money spent and he did not even come to it once!"

Only an Iraqi, used to the spendthrift excesses of Saddam Hussein, could call the scores of ornate marble buildings which make up Basra's presidential complex "simple".

No expense was spared when it came to the royal palaces

Saddam Hussein visited Basra in 1988, soon after it had been liberated from invading troops from nearby Iran.

During the bloody conflict between the neighbouring countries - launched by Saddam Hussein in 1980 and tacitly supported by both the Pentagon and the Kremlin - Basra was heavily shelled by the Iranians and sacked before they were beaten back from the city.

During the victorious Iraqi president's stay in Basra, locals say he was very much taken by a fishing spot on the Shatt al-Arab river.

Desirous of constructing a palace on the site, the Iraqi leader had houses on either bank razed and uprooted a date palm plantation - so as to deny snipers cover from which to attempt an assassination.

The people of Basra lived in poverty

Saddam Hussein's invasion of nearby Kuwait in 1990 and the ensuing Gulf War and local insurrection that followed only temporarily halted construction. Even the UN-imposed economic sanctions, which caused much of the rest of Iraq to go to rack and ruin, did not halt the builders.

While nearly a third of children in Baghdad were classified as underweight - up from just 7% before the war - spending on Basra's "simple" palace and its equivalents across Iraq continued.

"Only the most expensive materials were used," says a local civil engineer. "Italian marble was imported and used throughout the buildings. While the wages of ordinary Iraqis were very low, those that built the palace were very well paid."

Violent oppression

Such grand projects - including a plan to build the world's largest mosque in Baghdad - were part of what was called the "counterattack", a defiant signal that Saddam Hussein would not buckle under the sanctions intended to bring him to heel.

Basra palace speaks of this defiance, but also articulates the deep gulf between Saddam Hussein's self-image as a benign father to the Iraqi people and the grim reality.

Since there were so many protesters in Basra, he treated us in a very severe manner

Basra resident, Salah Hamza

Carved sandstone relief on the side of one main building depicts fanciful scenes of peace and plenty. While chubby children play with toy trains on these walls, outside the palace gates, Iraq's real and ragged children clamber over abandoned anti-aircraft guns or frolic in muddy puddles.

On another carved panel, an Iraqi officer holds a woman in a protective embrace beneath an AK47 rifle and a dove of peace.

The rule of the gun in Basra was, of course, very different.

Though the Iraqi army did indeed save the local populace from the Iranian invasion, it also savagely put down the 1991 insurrection which saw citizens here rise up against Saddam Hussein.

And even before then the people were violently oppressed. Today, people gather around the bombed-out headquarters of the Al-Amen secret police. They fear their relatives, snatched by the regime, may have been in the underground cells when US-led forces attacked.

Forbidden palace

Abdul Rasak Hassan says his son was arrested in 1980 for being a devout Muslim. "Since then I have heard nothing of him. Perhaps he is in Baghdad, perhaps here. Until the British came, I could not even openly say that my son had been arrested."

Few Basra residents have ever ventured near the palace gates. One drunken lawyer once mistakenly drove up the approach road and was killed when guards riddled his vehicle with bullets.

Now some locals, employed by the British to clean up the buildings, are getting their first glance at the opulence paid for with their money.

Despite sanctions, Saddam Hussein's palaces are full of luxuries

"It reads: 'The dead of the war with Iran are better than the living.'" says one worker reading the carved inscription over the main door. It appears Saddam Hussein believed this maxim fully, especially when it came to looking after the living of Basra.

"Since there were so many protesters in Basra, he treated us in a very severe manner," says Salah Hamza. "He didn't care that we had poor water treatment plants, few power stations and no new houses. No Basra people held good jobs in the administration."

While the palace has gold taps, the local hospital uses cut up window glass instead of proper microscope slides. While craftsmen were well paid to paint ornate ceiling decorations, a doctor's monthly salary bought just three bottles of drinking water.

For all this expenditure, Saddam Hussein was never inclined to repeat his fishing trip to a city he despised and which largely despised him.

Today, British troops fish in the manmade ponds which divert the Shatt al-Arab into the palace grounds. For rods they use the radio antennas from the tanks in which they rolled into this city.