Many hold new hope for an end to violence
BAGHDAD -- All Ahmed Fakri wants from the new Iraqi government is a badge and a gun.
Fakri guards a telephone exchange, a potential target of bomb-wielding saboteurs, for the state Facilities Protection Service. But up to now, the US-supervised Interior Ministry has given him no weapon and no identification beyond a flimsy card attesting to his three days of training.
Fakri, 26, never expected to have any input into choosing the new slate of leaders who will take power June 30 to ready the country for elections next January. Asked who chose the caretaker government announced yesterday, he said, "America, of course."
But he is willing to overlook that if the new government manages to do what a year of US-led occupation has not: Make Iraqis feel safe. He said he would back any government that delivers what Iraqis want most, namely security, jobs, and eventually the chance to choose their own leaders without fear of election-day violence.
While Iraqi, US, and UN officials noisily debated how to give Iraqis a say in selecting the government and traded accusations of hijacking the process, many Iraqis seemed to assume it would be an American-run show. But yesterday around Baghdad, they declared with surprising unanimity that they barely care who rules as long as they end the security fears that disrupt nearly every effort to improve their lives and their society. Only then, they said, can Iraqis begin to find their political voice.
"Whoever does something good for Iraqis, let him be president. If he makes us safe, and gives us jobs and houses, what more could we want from him?" said Edward William, an Iraqi contractor building a park.
A walk down the street from Fakri's post by the telephone exchange offered a tour of thwarted civic effort.
William has a contract from the Baghdad city government to build a park in a flat, dusty spot between two highway offramps. He said he had barely started work last month when 150 meters of fencing was stolen from around the site at the busy hour of 6 p.m. The police were unhelpful, telling him, "Maybe your workers did it." On Monday, he said, a vanload of young men pulled up, accused him of working with American occupiers, and threatened, "We will kill you."
A quarter of a mile down the road, Nasser Qas Yunan's repair crew was working on a pipe break that periodically caused the busy street to flood with sewage. Last week, a car bomb across the street killed a boy selling cigarettes.
Fear, he said, is slowing the project and depriving the workers of overtime pay.
"The workers, whenever a car stops, they look up and wonder if it's a car bomb, so they can't keep their minds on their work," he said as he watched three emaciated men drive a pipe into the ground, standing knee deep in muddy water. "We used to work until 2 a.m.. Now we stop by 4 p.m."
The new government, he said, should strengthen the police force so that the foreign troops on each side of his repair site can pull back. The foreign neighbors are a target, he said, which makes him one, too.
If anyone could be expected to complain that the new government is not representative of Iraq's political spectrum, it would be the Iraqi Communist Party, which predates Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party and is one of the few parties in the country with a real power base. In the Cabinet announced yesterday, the party, which has long since exchanged Marxist ideology for economic populism and secularism, retained its hold on the Ministry of Culture, but did not get any additional posts.
But at the party headquarters, where several dozen members gathered around a television below a portrait of Lenin to watch the announcement of the new government, no one was angry. Party members are biding their time until January, when they believe they will do well at the polls if the security climate allows them to campaign.
Just across town, near the US-led occupation headquarters and blocks from where the new government will sit, there was a grisly reminder yesterday of how their efforts could fail. A car bomb struck the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the country's two main Kurdish parties, just after hundreds had celebrated the anniversary of the party's founding. At least three people were killed.
Blood spatters could be seen six stories up on the wall of an apartment building next door. Hamid Hameed, a party member in charge of security, said it would not be easy for the new government to improve security, particularly when dealing with suicide bombers whose aim is to disrupt Iraq's political development.
"They come to die. How do you defend against them?" he said.
The new president, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, and the new interior minister, the governor of Saddam Hussein's home province, were both picked in the hope their tribal ties could help calm Iraq's most restive areas. But it is unclear how much power the new government will have over security.
Yunan, the sewer repair manager, said he would be happy for the government to start small, increasing police patrols and building sports clubs.
Up the street, Fakri, the telephone exchange guard, remained worried about getting shot by gunmen or arrested if US soldiers asked him for the ID card he still doesn't have. He wondered whether the new interior ministry would do any better at equipping him.
"I hope so," he said, "but I don't think so."
Anne Barnard can be reached at abarnard@globe.com.
