Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 25, 1993 TAG: 9301250054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAROL MORELLO KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: BAGHDAD, IRAQ LENGTH: Long
AS CLINTON PONDERS POLICY, IRAQ STAYS DEFIANT
The Iraq policy inherited by Bill Clinton seems to be fraying quickly, scorned by defiant Iraqis, questioned by Western allies and distrusted by Arab nations.Clinton faces the prospect of formulating a new approach to this tired but tough country at a time when there is no easy alternative.
For the current U.S. policy, however well-intentioned, has only deepened feelings of bitterness here.
American soldiers waiting to cross from Saudi Arabia into Iraq and Kuwait two years ago often said they hoped the Iraqis understood that the United States held nothing against them, only against Saddam Hussein. But after sanctions have led many Iraqis to lives of desperation, many ordinary Iraqis scoff at that notion.
For Americans, the Persian Gulf War may be a dim memory and the economic embargo the only moral response to a totalitarian regime.
For Iraqis, the memory of the war burns close to the surface. And the sanctions and last week's air attacks on Baghdad only remind them of the price they must continue to pay.
Life grows harder every day, with four tires and a spare costing more than an entire car cost two years ago. Only gasoline is cheap: A motorist can fill the tank of a Cadillac for half the price of a tube of toothpaste.
Iraqis recognize, however obliquely, that it is Saddam who led them to this state of affairs. They also feel that a starving people cannot be expected to revolt, or even resist.
But that fatalistic self-awareness has not prevented them from questioning the motivations of the West.
They read of some 400 Palestinians shivering in the snowy mountains of Lebanon, and they wonder why the West does nothing to punish Israel for not following U.N. resolutions there. They hear of the no-fly zone over Bosnia, and they ask why the West does not shoot down Serbian airplanes even though Serbian soldiers on the ground are slaughtering Muslim men and raping Muslim women.
And they look around them, and see that their pariah of a leader has rebuilt many of the buildings the allies bombed.
To many in the West, Israel, Bosnia and Iraq present different situations calling for distinct strategies. In the Arab world, however, they seem part of a pattern of the Christian West ganging up on Muslims.
Whether or not history will remember George Bush as the president who unleashed a new crusade against Islam, as one Muslim diplomat here predicts, the perceived Western hypocrisy is fueling fundamentalist fervor throughout the Middle East. Secular governments in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan have all been threatened by the growing power of Islamic fundamentalists in the last year, and the fundamentalist Hamas group has created a crisis in Israel and the occupied territories.
"The United States is going to have to decide whether it is in its long-term interest to take actions that encourage fundamentalists throughout the Arab world," said a diplomat based in Baghdad.
The Iraqis have made it clear that their bottom line is an end to the two no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq.
Every alternative is fraught with inherent dangers.
The United States is not prepared to grant Saddam unfettered reign over the Kurds he had so ruthlessly repressed before. Yet the United States is unwilling to accept the essential partition of Iraq, which is opposed by neighbors such as Turkey, Syria and Iran that have sizable Kurdish minorities of their own.
That dilemma explains why Iraqis challenged Bush in the waning days of his administration, gambling that his successor, who won the presidency by promising to attend to domestic affairs, is not prepared to embroil his country in a military quagmire here.
As tough as things are for Iraqis, they are no more primed to capitulate to the West than they were two years ago. They have learned to make do.
They reuse every scrap available. Fertilizer bags hold spices and beans in the market. Pages from old Chinese textbooks and children's comic books become envelopes. Cardboard cartons are flattened and resold for a new cargo.
Nor do they take much time to stand around and feel sorry for themselves. Within 24 hours after the Rasheed hotel was struck by a U.S. missile ripping through its lobby, workers had replastered the ceilings and rewired the electrical cables. The night after the missile attack, hotel guests had hot water in their rooms.
Raya Al-Sheikhi was just a small child when her country went to war with Iran in 1980, and now that another war has ushered her nearly into womanhood, she says she has little time for the usual teen-age pastimes.
The 18-year-old high school senior has two obsessions: sewing fashionable clothes and studying engineering, so someday she may help rebuild her country.
"I am so proud to be an Iraqi. We stood up against 33 countries. We have survived. Of course, we have won the war. Still they want to destroy us. But we are so strong. You don't feel what I feel when I see my people go build my country again," she said.
"So this is not a time for boys. It's a time to study. It's a time to build."
The Iraqis have a reputation in the Arab world of being hard. Almost to a person, they say they do not fear death. But once in a while, someone will hint that it's because death could be no worse than this life.
"Iraq will be more open one day," predicted one middle-aged Iraqi schoolteacher.
And when might that be?
"We all must die some day," he replied.