March 22, 2003

A View From Baghdad:

This article, from the latest New Yorker and posted on their site just five days ago, is the most recent in a series of dispatches from Iraq by reporter Jon Lee Anderson. It discusses at some length the history of British intervention in Iraq, and implies how people may respond to the latest wave of western intervention. I strongly encourage you to read the piece. Also, Anderson writes:

Later, in a situation without minders or translators, I told a man who is highly placed in Baghdad that I had seen trenches and foxholes on the road to Kut, and he laughed. That was just to keep people busy doing things, he said. It was obvious that the regime did not intend to defend anything but Baghdad itself. The Republican Guard and the Special Republican Guard had been pulled to Baghdad from the south and the north and had been dispersed throughout the city, in civilian areas. This seemed like a foolhardy policy to him, but there it was. “If everything else is gone,” he said, “then why fight for Baghdad? What is the point in that?”

Two days into the war, this certainly sounds like what we're seeing, no?

UPDATE: As a compliment to Anderson's article above, the New Yorker is also hosting this 1952 article by Joseph Wechsberg entitled Letter from Baghdad. It is a fascinating account of pre-Saddam Iraq, especially as a point of contrast. Example:

We cruised along Abu Nuwas Street, which is Baghdad's Broadway and skirts one bank of the river. As it grew dark, strings of colored bulbs were lighted up, and there was juke-box music in the cafés—noisy, bad jazz. The terraces of the cafés were crowded with men—only men, and thousands of them. (Like all other Moslems, Iraqi men feel that the place for women is in the home.) They were sipping coffee or soft drinks and carrying on vigorous arguments—most of them probably about local politics, my companion said. The river was full of boats and on one of them some men were holding a muzgoof—an open-air fish roast at which quantities of shabbut, a Tigris fish that is highly rated locally, are consumed. In the "Notes for American Visitors to Baghdad," published by the American Embassy, I read that, according to many connoisseurs, fish at a muzgoof "is enjoyed most when eaten with the fingers." (Other practical hints for visiting Americans: "In the movie houses Americans usually sit in box seats. . . . There are various Arab-style cabarets but it is recommended that you visit them in the company of Iraqi friends. . . . Baghdad taxis have no meters, and you should bargain with the driver regarding the fare before you get into the cab.")

Posted by Avocare at March 22, 2003 03:21 PM
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