Security fears spark protest

2003-04-14 08:03

Baghdad - Iraqi anger grew on Sunday over continued lawlessness in their occupied country with local residents staging the first anti-American demonstration here since US troops arrived to a warm welcome last week.

The protest by about 100 Iraqis came as US forces began the herculean task of restoring the battered country to normalcy, launching a recruitment drive to put Iraqis back to work in key sectors.

As the military focus of the Iraq war shifted to Saddam Hussein's fiefdom of Tikrit, where fierce fighting was heard late on Sunday, Kurdish television reported the deposed Iraqi leader's half-brother Watban had been captured by coalition troops near the Syrian border.

If the size of the Baghdad demonstration was small, it reflected mounting impatience here with the US failure to stem widespread looting and re-establish order and basic services since the regime of Saddam Hussein fell on Wednesday.

Brandishing a huge banner that read "Bush=Saddam," the demonstrators gathered in front of the Palestine Hotel to criticise US President George W Bush for failing to fulfill his promise of a better Iraq.

"United States, you will regret it if you don't keep this promise," they chanted. "We will sacrifice our souls and our blood for Iraq!"

Baghdad was known as a bastion of state-organised anti-Americanism during Saddam's 24-year rule but Sunday's demonstration was tinged more with disappointment than ideological fervor.

But life was inching back to normal, with stores beginning to reopen their doors and traffic picking up pace. More people were on the streets and bus services were resuming between the Iraqi capital and cities in the south.

Near the site of the protest, hundreds of locals queued up for their first jobs in the post-Saddam area, triggering massive traffic jams in central Baghdad.

They flocked to a recruitment desk in the Palestine Hotel, where a marine spokesperson said US officials sought to put Iraqis back to work in key sectors, starting with the police and electricity departments.

Baghdad, a city of five million people, has been without electricity for about 10 days while most homes are also without water and telephone services.

But the biggest fear among residents has been security, highlighted by the pillage of entire sections of the city in recent days by rampaging youths from the immense Shiite suburb of Saddam City.

Marine Staff Sergeant Jeremy Stafford, a spokesperson for the civil affairs programme, said US troops were in talks to start joint patrols with Iraqi security forces.

"The intended plan is to have joint patrols with one Iraqi car along with one of our Humvees," Stafford said.

US troops were also seen detaining looters for the first time in Baghdad, stopping 25 men on a bridge over the Tigris and taking three into custody.

Frederic Bonamy, head of the French relief group Premiere Urgence - which has been providing infrastructural support for Iraqi hospitals since 1997 - said here that the main problem facing Baghdad's decimated hospital system was the absence of medical staff scared away by threats of looting and violence.

Hospitals have been closed because of combat damage or a lack of electricity and water. Many were partially or completely looted in the frenzy that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime on Wednesday.

Only the biggest of the capital's 33 hospitals are providing signficant services, relief groups said. One of them is under US military guard and the other watched over by neighbourhood protection squads.

US-led forces control most of Iraq, but pockets of resistance remain. Snipers were still a concern and Tikrit, 180km north of Baghdad, has yet to be captured.

Witnesses reported hearing fierce fighting on the outskirts of Tikrit. A spokesperson for US Central Command in Qatar said troops were "actively engaging any force we need to."

US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld reported "very little" resistance in the city of 100 000, whose fall would all but mark the end of the US-led war to topple Saddam.

The commander of US forces in Iraq, General Tommy Franks, said he could travel to Baghdad this week to visit troops. He said the trip would be low-key and not a "parade".

But in a harrowing sign of what may be to come, US military officials said that marines patrolling Baghdad on Friday had discovered 310 vests fitted for use by suicide bombers.

Marines also reported finding five canisters with a substance testing positive for chemical agents in a Baghdad schoolyard among large stocks of ammunition.

- AFX