Financial Times; Oct 19, 2002
MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA: Iraq stocks up on blood and bullets
By Nicholas Pelham
Iraqi hospitals are stocking fresh supplies of medicine, and the central blood bank is appealing for donors, as Iraq prepares for its third foreign war in 20 years.
"We have no choice but to prepare to defend ourselves," says Abdelrazaq al-Hashimi, a former education minister and leading ideologue in the ruling Baath party. "We are ready today."
Diplomats say that in the run-up to Tuesday's presidential referendum, in which Saddam Hussein claimed to have won 100 per cent of the vote on a 100 per cent turnout, the party's rhetoric shifted from denial to preparation for war. In his investiture speech on Thursday, the Iraqi president warned of "the great danger" ahead.
The country's emergency services fear the worst. Surgeons at the Saddam General Hospital, which caters for 3m people in the sewage-strewn slums of northern Baghdad, warn they have water reserves for only one week if power stations are bombed and electricity for water-treatment plants cut.
"Without water we cannot operate," says a hospital surgeon, who foresees the wounded flocking to a hospital unable to treat them. "We will face collective hysteria."
As part of their contingency plans, aid agencies operating in central and southern Iraq this week met UN staff to arrange the import of 1,000-litre water bladders, chlorine and first aid kits. But aid workers fear that once war starts, the foreign staff who administer the oil-for-food programme providing Iraqis with daily basics will be evacuated.
"It will be a catastrophe," says Vincent Hubin, director of Premiere Urgence, the largest foreign aid agency operating in Iraq. "It is not a war they are starting, it's a slaughter."
In an apparent concern that food supplies could be disrupted, the authorities this month distributed double rations designed to last till December.
And at the Iraq museum, home to perhaps the world's finest collection of Mesopotamian antiquities, curators are bringing in packing cases to evacuate the museum. The museum lies across the road from a communications centre, and in 1991 a stray missile landed in the main showroom at the 3,500-year-old feet of giant Assyrian winged bulls.
The authorities also face the task of mobilising their people in the face of a daily psychological barrage of threats from Washington. So far there have been no signs of the stockpiling of food, as happened in 1991.
Officials say this week's "mother of all election victories" has boosted morale.
But diplomats say the president's investiture speech before party cadres on Thursday night bore few of the hallmarks of vintage Saddam. In a homily empty of energy and aggression, a seemingly defeatist Mr Hussein called on God to ensure that if he could not win in this world he would triumph in the next.
Aware that their fate is entwined with that of Mr Hussein's, Baath party cadres say they preparing to prevent the flight of the Baghdad's population, one third of whom reportedly fled in 1991 to the safety of rural areas.
"Five million Baghdadis will stand and fight in defence of their country," said Mr Hashemi, in a tone which made it clear he was delivering an order.
Iraqis say that after 12 years of sanctions they are keen to defend their homes from the threat of looting. But diplomats fear the authorities could be ordering residents to remain in their homes as a possible human shield against air attacks.
Mr Hashemi also said the distribution of guns had been increased in preparation for urban warfare, and reports say the Baath party has begun training militias.
As part of the organised celebrations that followed the declaration of the election result, young men in minibuses sped through the streets liberally firing automatic weapons into the air.
The mounting circulation of firearms has also exacerbated fears that as in 1991 a war that starts as a foreign adventure could degenerate into civil war.
Some anti-aircraft artillery guns have also been positioned behind the vast icon- billboards of Mr Hussein, and a massive development project has begun at the dilapidated Baghdad Zoo in Zawra park alongside the barracks of the Republican Guard on a scale diplomats suggest seems inappropriately large to be simply renovation.
Reports of military preparations outside Baghdad are even harder to verify. The authorities are said to have called up reservists born between 1960 and 1970, the age-group who are veterans of the Iran-Iraq war and Gulf war.
Diplomats caution that Iraq's army is no longer the battle-hardened force it was when it swept through Kuwait, and 12 years on, its equipment has been seriously debilitated by a lack of spare parts.
But diplomats note that hitherto Mr Hussein has used chemical weapons whenever his survival was threatened. And they say he recently appointed four new provincial governors, including two generals, to take the initiative if lines of communication with Baghdad are cut.