April 11, 2003
By JOHN F. BURNS
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 10 — It was a day of widening anarchy in Baghdad
today as the jubilation accompanying the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s
rule gave way to a spree of violence and looting.
A suicide bombing attack on a checkpoint manned by American marines
left at least four of them severely injured, Marine officers said. The
attack took place on the east bank of the Tigris River about a mile
from the central Palestine Hotel. Mr. Hussein, before his fall, had
promised a wave of suicide bombings against American forces.
For many Iraqis, the scenes of adulation that greeted American troops
in east Baghdad on Wednesday, when whole neighborhoods turned out to
cheer and wave at the Americans and to shout abuse for Mr. Hussein,
began to give way to misgivings as a tide of looting grew.
The power vacuum in the city appeared almost complete, with no
immediate prospect of a new order rising from the old.
For the second day, bands of looters had the free run of wide areas on
both banks of the Tigris, breaking into at least six government
ministries and setting several afire, as well as attacking the
luxurious mansions of Mr. Hussein’s two sons and other members of his
ruling coterie.
Looters made off with liquor, guns and paintings of half-naked women
from the home of Uday, one of Mr. Hussein’s sons. They also took the
white Arabian horses he kept.
Although there were some reports of American troops firing into the air
to discourage the marauding bands, most of the looters were able to
pick targets at will in plain view of American units, without fear of
any American response.
One Marine officer standing atop a tank at a checkpoint in east Baghdad
said that he had been asked repeatedly by Iraqis why his unit had done
nothing to stop the looting and that he had explained that he had no
orders to respond. “I tell them the truth, that we just don’t have
enough troops,” he said.
Throughout the day, American troops battled pockets of resistance on
the Tigris’s east bank, one of them at a palace in the Adhamiya
district that was among at least 20 kept for the Iraqi leader’s use in
Baghdad. American officers reported another firefight at the house of a
senior Baath Party official.
On the river’s west bank, Army units that seized control of the
government quarter of the city on Tuesday appeared to be consolidating
their hold on an area running three or four miles north from the
Republican Palace presidential compound.
But farther north in riverside areas like Atafiya and Kadhimiya, and to
the west in neighborhoods like Al Mansur, pockets appeared in control
of paramilitary fighters still loyal to Mr. Hussein and the Baath Party
militia, who could be seen lurking down side streets, in the entrances
of buildings and in bunkers beside main intersections.
In general, the streets were empty except for the bands of looters.
Many came from Saddam City, the northeastern suburb where two million
impoverished Shiite Muslims erupted in jubilation at the arrival of
American troops in the city’s eastern districts on Wednesday.
Reviewing the looting and lawlessness, Véronique Taveau, an official
for a United Nations agency here, said: “The picture is a very dark
one. There is absolutely no security on the street.”
The looters appeared, mainly, to concentrate on sites associated with
Mr. Hussein, sparing most private homes and businesses.
Among the attacks that had a strong political edge were those on the
German Embassy and the French cultural center, both in east Baghdad.
Few Iraqis were unaware, in the weeks preceding the war, that France
and Germany were leading international efforts to force President Bush
into accepting an extension of United Nations weapons inspections here,
and to delay military action against Mr. Hussein.
The French and German buildings were stripped of furniture, curtains,
decorations, and anything else that could be carried away.
At the French cultural center, where looters burst water pipes and
flooded the ground floor, books were left floating in the reading rooms
and corridors, and a photograph of Jacques Chirac, the French
president, was smashed. French reporters said the French Embassy, also
on the Tigris’s east bank, appeared to have been spared because it
remained under the protection of French military guards. The German
Embassy was unprotected.
As the day progressed, the looters widened their international targets.
One building attacked was an office of Unicef, the United Nations’
children’s agency, which has worked extensively to relieve child
malnutrition.
With other United Nations offices escaping attack, some Iraqis
suggested that Unicef might have been a target because of a belief
among the looters that the agency had become too pliant in the face of
the Baghdad government’s incessant claims that the sanctions, and not
the manipulation of the sanctions by Mr. Hussein, had been responsible
for the worst suffering among Iraqi children.
One of Baghdad’s main medical centers, Al Kindi Hospital, was also a
target. After three weeks of American bombing, the wards were filled
with civilians suffering from blast and shrapnel wounds, and its morgue
filled, too, with those killed in the conflict. Yet the hospital took
the full brunt of the looting.
Nada Doumani, an official of the International Committee of the Red
Cross, said the sprawling hospital complex had lost beds, electrical
fittings and other equipment, worsening the crisis already afflicting
all of Baghdad’s medical centers.
“Security in the city is very bad, and people are not daring to go to
the hospitals,” Ms. Doumani told Reuters. “Small hospitals have closed
their doors and big hospitals are inaccessible.”
At the mansion of Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister who had been
the principal international voice of Mr. Hussein’s government for a
decade, the looters carried away all the furnishings, but left a
library that contained the complete works of Mr. Hussein, a book by
former President Richard M. Nixon, and a set of novels by Mario Puzo,
author of “The Godfather.”
The house of Ali Hassan al-Majid, a first cousin of Mr. Hussein who is
known to Iraqis as “Chemical Ali” for his role in directing chemical
weapons attacks on the Kurdish city of Halabja, was incomplete, but a
storehouse behind gave a picture of a man with a large taste for
Western indulgences. Among items carried away by the looters was a
battery-powered model of a Ferrari of the kind that wealthy parents buy
their young sons, a Japanese motorized water scooter, a parachute of a
kind used in free-fall jumping, a video library that included dozens of
hit Hollywood movies of the past decade, more than 100 racing car
wheels, and the entire fittings for a luxury European kitchen.
“Everything in this house belongs to Iraq, not to Ali Kimiawy,” one
looter said, using the Arab term for Chemical Ali. “We don’t have
anything in our houses, not even refrigerators, so we will take them
from here.”
It may be days, or longer, before a fuller picture emerges of the anger
being vented across Baghdad against Hussein loyalists. But one incident
suggested that fears of revenge killings might be well founded.
Reporters crossing the Sinika Bridge in central Baghdad, trying to
reach the government quarter from the Tigris’s eastern bank, were
witnesses to the attempt by a group of young men to catch and kill, or
so they said, a man in his 40’s whom they accused of being a Baath
Party enforcer.
The man reached American troops standing behind rolls of razor wire at
the western edge of the bridge only steps ahead of his pursuers, and
threw himself at their feet.
As the man’s pursuers explained later, their quarry, Khalil Abu Sheikh,
worked for years in the east Baghdad neighborhood of Bab-al-Shaikh as a
bounty hunter , turning in army deserters for the equivalent of about
$3 each.
One of his victims was Nazar Ali Hassan, a 26-year-old man who was
leading the men running after him today. Mr. Hassan lifted his shirt to
show reporters two bullet wounds he said he received when Mr. Sheikh
shot him at his home last October.
“We’re going to kill him,” Mr. Hassan shouted across the razor wire to
the soldiers, who warned the pursuers to step back from the wire. “This
man is mine. He has inflicted so much suffering on our people.”
By this time, Mr. Sheikh was crawling at the Americans’ feet, trying to
kiss their boots.
“I hate Saddam Hussein,” he said. “Please let me go. All I want to do
is to cross the bridge. I come to you as a refugee.”
After radioing their officers, the Americans led the man away. Mr.
Hassan and his friends, vowing to get Mr. Sheikh another day, trudged
disconsolately back across the bridge.