Saddam preparing to raze Baghdad

Only last month war didn’t seem imminent in Iraq’s capital – at least on surface. As The Economist reported, audiences were packing theater and philharmonic concert halls, car parks were bustling with parties, new art galleries and cafés were opening. Baghdad was like a factory on the brink of closing, with workers in denial but abuzz with production deadlines that were long cancelled.

That was before President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein up to sundown yesterday (Washington time) to leave town. When UN aid workers and weapons inspectors started streaming out of Iraq, realization struck. Baghdadis started stocking up on food and medicines, neighbors pitched in to buy water pumps and generators in case bombardment hits reservoirs and power plants, the menfolk stacked sandbags around their homes. Residents are buying canaries too in the belief that the chirpers can detect gas. Enriching themselves overnight, profiteers and smugglers are exchanging their dinars with fancy cars, antiquities and other stuff more durable than a piece of paper with Saddam’s face on it. Lovers are lining up to get married, for next month it may be too late.

Unconfirmed reports have it that some Iraqi officials are starting to flee – a sign that the US call for defection is working. Those who opted to stay are jittery for real news. As their radios blare with hosannas to the "great leader," they tune in to CNN television.

Baghdad’s five million citizens have grown suspicious of each other, the latest issue of The Economist says. They show off rifles while vowing to resist the superpower, but some could have other uses in mind. Saddam had distributed months ago 55,000 Kalashnikovs to loyalist civilians. But with his fall imminent with a predicted surrender of the Iraqi army, as whole divisions did in the first Gulf war, the guns could be used not in his defense but the opposite. "The middle classes, meanwhile, may wish to defend their plush bungalows against armed looters," the magazine notes, "The poor Shias who live in slums around Baghdad tremble to think what their ruler would do to them before he goes. Sunnis shake at what the Shias might do in revenge. Christians worry too; extremists accuse them of being agents of the American ‘crusaders’. Father Sharbil Elias, a Chaldean monk, says that a quarter of his flock has bolted... Fretful, distracted drivers crash so often that pile-ups clog the streets."

Baghdadis are unsure if they should fear more the coming American invasion or their own ruler. Some believe the troops will come as liberators; others, as oil raiders. Iraqis are proud that to be the first Arab state to win independence in the 20th century, and shudder at the humiliation of being the first to lose it in the 21st. Will the Americans, like the Mongols, flatten Baghdad or resort to the medieval tactics of a city siege? On the other hand, will a madman like Saddam raze his own capital rather than let the enemy capture it?

Signs point to the latter. Former Iraqi oil minister Issam al-Chalabi, a recent visitor to Manila, said that Saddam is digging trenches five meters wide, 20 meters long, 100 meters apart around government and military installations, and filling them with petroleum. When the bombings start – and the US has said it will fire 4,000 bombs and rockets within the first 72 hours –he will set the trenches ablaze. The aim is two-fold: Saddam thinks the fires will "blind" smart bombs and terrain-hugging missiles, and thus deflect them to side areas. These side areas, however, are civilian enclaves. Saddam hopes to whip up Arab and Muslim passion against America once reports of civilian casualties start flashing.

The military objective of the fiery trenches is untested. But Saddam’s ruthlessness is clear in the deflection to civilian homes.

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