The end of dust and smoke

In Baghdad, the illusions created by the old regime have gone; the people await a new reality

As US Bradley armoured fighting vehicles manoeuvred in the grounds of the presidential palace a mile away across the Tigris, the minister of information stood on the roof of the Palestine Hotel and declared that Iraq was winning the war.

“They pushed a few of their armoured carriers and some tanks with their soldiers. We besieged them and we killed them. And I think we will finish them soon. My feeling is that, as usual, we will slaughter them. Those invaders – their tombs will be here in Iraq,” he said to an incredulous throng of reporters, most of whom had spent the previous three hours watching and filming from their hotel room balconies as Iraqi soldiers fled the palace compound, while others surrendered or were shot.

The minister of information, Moham-med Saeed al-Sahaf, with his smartly pressed uniform and jaunty step, became the emblem of Iraq’s refusal to accept the inevitable. He created a bubble of delusion, and the journalists who covered this war from the Iraqi government side were forced to dwell there with him.

In al-Sahaf’s vocabulary, the Americans were “villains”, “mercenaries” and “desert animals”, and the American administration “the government of Al Capone”. When, in the early stages of the war, he was told by a journalist that the Americans were a hundred miles from Baghdad, he scoffed: ” They are not in any place. They are on the move everywhere . . . They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion.”

Illusion was always important in the republic of fear. People had to believe that there was no alternative, or they would be obliged to seek it. After the Americans attacked the airport, the Iraqi government controlled a diminishing enclave in central Baghdad. But even on the day US troops took the main palace, most Iraqis could not think the unthinkable.

“We will fight to the end,” said an elderly man unconvincingly, as he stood outside his shop with a few friends. “I hear there’s fighting at the palace,” said a vegetable-seller, but his colleague quickly shut him up. Such things were not to be discussed, at least not in front of foreigners.

The eyes and the ears of the regime were still around, and Saddam Hussein still held power in people’s minds. You could be shot or hanged or worse for suggesting that the Americans might be present, let alone on the brink of victory.

But by 9 April, when American battle tanks fought and then parked on one of the main bridges across the Tigris, some Baghdad residents were at least acknowledging their presence.

“The Americans are on the Jumhuriyah Bridge . . . Now people certainly know where they are,” explained one man. Not, however, the minister of information, who stood on the roof of the Palestine Hotel, which had just been hit by a tank shell that killed two journalists, and said: “They are going to surrender or be burnt in their tanks. We are going to tackle them and destroy them.”

The minister of information was alone. No other government figure emerged from the bunker. The defenders of Baghdad melted away. The previous day, a French cameraman filmed militiamen from Saddam Hussein’s most fanatical followers, the Fedayeen Saddam, taking on Americans under the Sinak Bridge in central Baghdad. As they leapt suicidally forward, armed only with Kalashnikovs and rocket-propelled grenades, one shouted: “The Republican Guard’s not here! We have to do the attack ourselves!” Several were injured, others probably killed.

They were almost alone in their determination to fight. As the Americans grew bolder, penetrating farther into the city, fewer armed men could be seen on the streets. Sandbagged positions on corners were left unmanned, whole sections of the city were deserted. As for Saddam Hussein, his whereabouts was a mystery.

The enforced fantasy of the regime was maintained even by Iraqis facing the most brutal reality of war. The staff at Baghdad’s main hospitals were forced to lie, claiming that all those injured by cluster bombs were civilians.

“Among all these people who are here – civilians, women, children, elderly – all of them are victims of cluster bombs, which is a mass destruction weapon which is prohibited,” said Umeed Medhat Mubarak, the minister of health, as another young man with a bleeding stomach wound was wheeled past him. An orderly covered up a military uniform with a cloth so journalists could not see.

But what was the difference between civilians and soldiers? Many of the wounded young men were conscripts from families too poor to buy them out of the military service. They had not fought but had been instantly crushed by the American military meat grinder. Hundreds of casualties were rushed in, and overworked surgeons operated through the night. At times, the water and electricity were cut, but hospital staff continued to patch up the wounded and save lives.

“Look, I am a doctor. I am not looking for where and how and by what weapons. It’s not my work. But I am receiving a war-injured patient,” said Dr Osama Saleh, the surgeon at al-Kindi Hospital.

Gradually, the dust and smoke that obscured Baghdad for most of the war started to lift. Iraqis could see the myth of the loyal Republican Guard for what it was. But no new reality had settled as they waited for word that the government was gone and some unknown colonial dispensation would rule their lives. No one was cheering. They were just waiting passively for a new fantasy of liberation and the reality of rebuilding their lives.

Lindsey Hilsum is diplomatic correspondent for Channel 4 News