Is this freedom? ask Iraqis, as Baghdad descends into chaos
By David Fox
BAGHDAD, April 11 (Reuters) - The Iraqi capital was descending into
chaos and anarchy on Friday as residents went on a looting spree in full view
of coalition force.

With U.S. troops were still battling to contain pockets of Iraqi militiamen
and feyadeen scattered around the city, thousands of ordinary citizens were
helping themselves to anything they could lay their hands on in shops, factories,
schools, hospitals and government buildings

Young and old, men and women took advantage of the Friday Muslim holiday
to rifle through scores of buildings damaged in the battles for Baghdad, but
looting was taking place even in areas unaffected by fighting.

“Is this your liberation?” screamed one frustrated shopkeeper at the crew
of a U.S. Abrams tank as a gang of youths helped themselves to everything in
his small hardware store and carted booty off in the wheelbarrows that had
also been on sale.

“Hell, it ‘aint my job to stop them,” drawled one young Marine, lighting a
cigarette as he watched the spectacle. “Goddamm Iraqis will steal anything
if you let them. Look at them"

But for those not helping themselves to their new-found freedom, mounting
anger was being directed at the coalition forces for doing nothing to stop the frenzy.

“For God’s sake. How can they just let them do this. This is my life,” one
old man cried as a gang used crowbars to remove the security mesh from the
Anwar electrical repair shop near the centre of town and began carting off
dozens of dilapidated air conditioners that were being fixed inside.

POWER VACUUM
To Iraqis, coalition authorities appear not to have given any thought to the power
vacuum they would create by removing Saddam Hussein.

Saddam’s trickle-down system of patronage meant that anyone in any position
of authority -- from traffic police to government functionaries -- have been tainted
by association and have melted into the population.

Some have taken to looting themselves, knowing where the best stuff is.

“She worked here, she can’t have it, she worked here…” shouted one women
as she wrestled another for roll of material in government supply office

In some neighbourhoods, residents were erecting makeshift roadblocks and trying
to form local watch groups to prevent looters from descending on them.

But some looters were telling coalition forces that the roadblocks had been erected
by militiamen, prompting tanks to crash through them and sometimes opening fire
on houses where neighbourhood watch groups were gathered.

DEAD BURIED IN HOSPITAL GARDENS
The city’s hospitals were overflowing with civilians injured by what they said was
U.S. shelling or firing and at one, the dead were being buried in the facilities’ gardens.

Dozens of corpses were on Friday still lying rotting by roadsides or in cars blown
up by coalition forces as they captured Baghdad.

Near the airport, volunteers wearing face masks and rubber gloves were using
shovels to scrape human remains from the burnt out wrecks of cars, trucks and
buses, just metres (yards) away from U.S. forces idling their tanks by the roadside.

With no possibility of identification, the corpses were being buried in shallow
graves by the roadside.

“This is going to cause a major problem for sanitation and the water system,”
a U.S. army engineer officer told Reuters.

“The water table is very low here and what goes in the ground, goes in the
water,” he said.

Nearby, the corpse of an airport worker rolled around in the current of a
pool created when a U.S. bomb struck a water mains.

“That’s ‘bubbling Bob’,” said one soldier. “Been there a while. I ‘aint
gonna fish him out. Let the Iraqis do it.”
(David Fox, Iraq)
REUTERS FOX

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