Wall Street Journal - March 24, 2003
U.S. Troops Aren't Welcomed By Everyone in Southern Iraq Relief Effort, Aimed at Easing Defiance, Faces Obstacles to Delivering Supplies
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV and NEIL KING JR. Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Far from being hailed immediately as liberators, invading U.S. and British forces in southern Iraq are facing deep hostility and gunfire from some residents who are often desperate for food and water and sometimes furious about the continuing military assault against their country.
The coalition is now rushing to get relief supplies into the region through the seized port of Umm Qasr, hoping that food will ease the bitterness.
Even after supplies enter the country, however, distributing them in large cities such as Basra could be difficult if many residents remain hostile to the invasion and fighting persists, which isn't clear will happen. The military, facing not only Iraqi troops but also defiant civilian guerrillas, also may have to run separate supply routes into the south as most coalition forces follow the latest military planning and move further north toward Baghdad, bypassing other cities along the way.
In the dusty town of Az Zubayr, just south of Basra, some Iraqis in civilian clothes fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at British and American troops. "The Americans are destroying our country. There will be a fight," said Ismail Hantush, an engineer at the state-run Iraqi oil company. Nearby, a local tailor cradled his baby boy and said with a smile: "We hate you. You are all criminals."
Portraits of Saddam Hussein still lined the streets, and a lone British unit camped under a red banner: "Every last droplet of blood we'll give you, O Saddam."
Schoolteacher Majid Kaddoum stood amid a group of farmers as coalition tanks rumbled past, his voice shaking with anger: "We are Iraqis, and we will defend our country and defeat the aggressors." The farmers, in dirty Bedouin dress, nodded in assent as Mr. Kaddoum, in a tattered leather jacket, added with pride that he belongs to Mr. Hussein's Baath Party. "Saddam is our leader, and we will fight for him," he said.
U.S. officials now hope that a massive relief effort will help change the thinking of local Iraqis, who remain fearful and feel threatened as long as Mr. Hussein remains in power. One key to doing that is reopening Umm Qasr, a crucial gateway for supplies, as the U.S. and other countries race to get food, water and medicine into Iraq. Any delay will risk deepening the animosity.
President Bush, returning to the White House after a weekend at Camp David, vowed that "massive amounts of humanitarian aid should be moving within the next 36 hours, and that's going to be very positive news for people who have suffered a long time under Saddam Hussein." The initial relief shipments are expected to follow military convoys overland from neighboring Kuwait.
All relief work will fall to military forces until areas are secure enough to permit civilian groups to enter. That could take weeks.
Dashed Expectations
The early indications of hostility to the coalition invasion in southern Iraq, the heartland of the Shiite community that rose up against Mr. Hussein's rule in 1991, sharply contrasts with expectations among some U.S. military commanders of being greeted there as liberators. Just a few weeks ago, coalition officers in Kuwait were making plans to fly TV crews to film cheering crowds in southern Iraq.
Many here remember all too well the harsh reprisals against those who listened to American promises and took up arms in 1991, only to be crushed by the Iraqi military.
Further south, residents in the quiet Iraqi town of Safwan, right on the Kuwaiti border, were scrounging for food and water, with only little assistance from coalition forces.
On the highway outside Safwan, near burning oil leaking from a pipeline, U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Brian Koenig's amphibious vehicle kept control of an intersection. The crew had brought humanitarian rations from Kuwait, but these were long gone, and villagers demanded the Marines' own food. "They just keep coming," Sgt. Koenig said. "Little kids, moms. ... How can you say no?"
As the Army's own supply lines are stretched, there is only so much that even the most good-natured soldiers can do. "There is no water, no food, no electricity, nothing left here. We want the world to help Iraq," implored Ali al Zubaidi, a jobless 35-year-old in Az Zubayr.
U.S. and British forces seized the port of Umm Qasr after a daylong firefight Saturday, but U.S. Marines continued to face fierce Iraqi resistance in pockets of the city Sunday, at one point ordering in U.S. airstrikes. But even as fighting continued around the city, British naval units began to sweep the port for mines and to search for booby traps. They are now racing to reopen the port by midweek for the delivery of humanitarian supplies.
Massive Dredging
The U.S. Agency for International Development hopes as early as Monday to award a contract to a company that would administer the port, which is now under British military command. The agency will then pick a U.S. contractor to oversee a massive dredging and rebuilding effort intended to make Umm Qasr ready to handle large cargo ships bringing in thousands of tons a day of relief supplies. The port can now handle only smaller ships, and has limited ability to unload them quickly.
Even before the port is fully operating, humanitarian supplies stockpiled in Kuwait are slated to be loaded onto a British landing ship and ferried for unloading nearby. Six merchant vessels that carried military supplies from Britain are anchored in the southern Persian Gulf and will be loaded with food and other supplies in Dubai and other nearby ports for delivery through Umm Qasr, said Rear Adm. David Snelson, commander of Britain's naval forces in the Gulf.
But it isn't clear whether fresh food and water will be enough to pacify the local populace.
In Safwan, a border town where Iraq surrendered in 1991 and where the U.S. provided massive humanitarian assistance during the first Persian Gulf War, the initial muted welcome is turning to open hostility as civilian casualties keep rising.
"How can we be happy? They are killing our people here," said farmer Majid Simsim, pointing to a mosque in the center of town where an ambulance had just brought the bodies of two other farmers killed by U.S. aircraft in the fields nearby. "We want our country to be independent again and the Americans to leave."
On a highway south of Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, Sapper Robert MacLeod of the British Seventh Air Assault Brigade stood with his submachine gun at the ready. "These people still have a lot of guns -- and we don't know whether it's the army or the civilians picking up guns and firing at us," he said.
In the descending chaos, looters took advantage of the only sketchy military presence in most populated areas in the south. Motorists siphoned gasoline from a shabby service station in Safwan, just across the road from a British outpost.
In Az Zubayr, hungry crowds looted the local food depot, stealing a supply that would normally last 30 days, said the depot's manager, Mohsen Galban. "We ask the Army for help, but nobody helps us," he said.
Some Iraqis react with scorn to the American radio broadcasts promising a massive rebuilding. "All this talk about bringing us freedom, it's just talk. All we have seen here so far is destruction," says Najib al Zubairi, a local government employee.
U.S. military officials said Umm Qasr and its harbor are likely to be the first Iraqi territory put under military administration. Authorities in London are bringing in an army unit that normally handles operations at the massive British military port near Southhampton, the 17th Port and Maritime Regiment, to help run the facility until the contracted administrator is prepared to take over.
Back to Work?
U.S. military officials hope that Iraqi port workers will resume their duties. Harbor pilots will be needed to guide large merchant ships carrying aid up the Khor abd Allah waterway, which links the port to the northern Gulf and is difficult for big ships to navigate due to shoals and sunken vessels from the 1991 Gulf War. And they will need workers to unload cargo and operate the blue cranes that stick into the sky around the docks to meet their ambitious timetables.
The Umm Qasr port complex, with two sets of berths about a mile apart, has suffered over the past 12 years. Submerged ships hinder traffic, while much of the port's infrastructure, including the cranes, have deteriorated during a decade of United Nations sanctions. The port, at last count, had just one aging dredger, so that accumulation of silt often forces ships to anchor in deeper water and have their cargo shuttled in on smaller vessels.
A 2001 U.N. report said that "generally poor port conditions [at Umm Qasr] continue to contribute to the slow and inefficient offloading of necessary food."
Two Iraqi boats were found carrying 68 mines over the weekend. Navy speed boats were operating further up the waterway to intercept merchant dhows that military officials feared Iraq might use to sneak more mines down the channel for attacking U.S. vessels.
-- David S. Cloud in Bahrain contributed to this article.
Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov at wsj.com and Neil King Jr. at neil.king at wsj.com