Mistrust breeds resentment in Iraq

By Hugh Sykes
BBC News

A lack of trust, it seems, means freedom does not taste so sweet

The removal of Saddam Hussein may have been welcomed by many Iraqis. But attitudes to the coalition forces have hardened and, it seems, the coalition's lack of trust in the Iraqi people is at least in part to blame.

Looking through my photographs from Iraq last year, there are so many happy faces, so many smiles.

In Baghdad, Basra, Karbala and the small town of Hilla near Babylon, people kept on saying: "Please - take our picture mister."

Once it was a group of fellow diners at an outside kebab cafe, another time a group of women heavily shrouded in their black "chadors" caught my eye, pulled the cotton away from their faces so that it only covered their hair, and the flash lit up their smiles in the night.

Many Iraqis I met also said: "Thank you Bush, thank you Blair, we love freedom."

At a cafe in Basra, two sailors sat with me as I smoked a hubble bubble and explained how much better their lives had become thanks to the invasion - and one of them - Abu Dijassem - said: "We love the British."

As the occupation deepened, Iraqis began to feel that their liberation was being damaged, diluted, diminished

I nodded gratefully, thinking this was just a pleasantry for my benefit, and he said "No, no we really do... look!", and he brought out his wallet - in the little plastic window where people usually keep pictures of their families there was... David Beckham.

"Ah, you like Manchester United, then," I said.

And a little voice at my elbow corrected me with news that was only a couple of days old. "No no! Real Madrid."

"Oh, hello - who are you?" I asked.

"I am Moataz. I am 10."

"And you like your football..."

"Yes."

And I had a flash of inspiration - I told him: "I live in London, near Highbury - where Arsenal play."

"Ah," said Moataz. "Patrick Viera, Thierry Henri...David Seaman." And he did a perfect goalie's save from his chair.

It seems a long time ago, another world almost, that happy evening in the Basra coffee house.

And as the occupation deepened, Iraqis began to feel that their liberation was being damaged, diluted, diminished.

Language barrier

The coalition didn't trust the people they'd set free.

The Americans, especially, retreated behind rolls and rolls of razor wire, pointed their revolvers and their rifles at passionate but peaceful crowds, and barked orders in English at people for whom courtesy is one of the essential qualities of life.

They considered every Iraqi as a potential enemy Dr Hussein al-Shahristani

In Hilla, a quiet town full of devout Shia Muslims delighted that Saddam had gone, two local petrol station attendants, Faris and Riath Hussein, joined crowds lining the main road to cheer the coalition troops as they passed through on their way to Baghdad.

Two days later, Faris was driving Riath along the same road - as they approached a checkpoint, they thought they were being told to carry on.

They carried on. US marines opened fire.

Faris was killed, and a bullet hit Riath through the front of his head, blinding him in both eyes.

I counted 19 bullet holes in their Toyota car, parked outside the home that their brothers and their families shared.

I sat with Riath. Two girls came into the room. When I asked him if they were his daughters, he broke down and wept.

"I don't know," he choked. "I can't see them."

In the photograph I took of Riath, with five-year-old Noor and six-year-old Rana, the confusion and fierce resentment on the girls' faces is a vivid metaphor for some of the fundamental mistakes the coalition made and their angry consequences.

Lack of trust

Many of my Iraqis friends say this is true including one man in particular - Dr Hussein al-Shahristani, the nuclear physicist who spent 12 years in Abu Ghraib prison for defying Saddam Hussein. He refused to work on Saddam's nuclear weapons' programme.

He told me this week that what had gone wrong from the very beginning was the Americans' mistrust of the Iraqi people.

Long before the serious violence erupted last year, a man in a crowd warned me, you must make our lives better quickly because in the hot weather we grow angry

"They considered every Iraqi as a potential enemy," he complained. Instead, he says, they should have realised realising they had a resourceful and highly-educated people mostly grateful for their liberation, and eager to be left to get on with recovery and reconstruction themselves.

And, he believes, the consequence of this haughty, insulting attitude was an eventual loss of patience with the coalition, the rise of the violence that has now become routine.

And the greatest danger he sees now is the already developing unholy alliance between al-Qaeda and the well-funded, well-organised and highly-disciplined former Baath party machine of Saddam Hussein.

His principal instrument of terror and control is creeping back into key positions once again in councils and committees across the land.

There are two continuing failures which my Iraqi friends most deeply resent.

They still feel unable to walk the streets of their capital city in the relative cool of the evenings because of crime, kidnapping and suicide bombers.

And - above all - they cannot comprehend how the richest and most powerful nations in the world have been in Iraq for 15 months now and still the electricity supply is unreliable.

For the second summer in succession, they are having to endure daily temperatures of 55C in the shade without a reliable power supply for their ceiling fans.

Long before the serious violence erupted last year, a man in a crowd warned me, you must make our lives better quickly because in the hot weather we grow angry. Hot weather, hot mood.

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 3 July, 2004 at 1130 BST on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.