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Baghdad, a city on the brink http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=inDepthNews&storyID=2006-12-07T134454Z_01_MAC635679_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ-BAGHDAD.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-inDepthNews-3
Thu Dec 7, 2006
By Alastair Macdonald and Aseel Kami
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq may already be in a civil war or just on the brink of one. But whatever it is, the focus is Baghdad, where all aspects of life are ever more disrupted by sectarian violence and its people ever more weary and afraid.
Drive around this city of 7 million in daylight and the signs are clear -- rows of shuttered shops, barricaded roads, empty homes, bustle that is brief and subdued. At night, under curfew, gunmen take command. Talk to the people of Baghdad and one hears the voice of a fractured, terrified community.
"We're afraid, depressed, frustrated," said one woman for whom this month should have been among the happiest of her life.
Lina -- who like most in the city on the banks of the Tigris River is too frightened to use her full name -- is about to be married but the 33-year-old said: "I feel such a burden when I think of what might happen on our wedding day."
This year, weekly death tolls in the capital have risen from the dozens to the hundreds, notably since February's destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra touched off a wave of reprisals.
Two weeks ago, bombs that killed over 200 people in the capital in the worst attack of the conflict caused another quantum leap in the fear factor, driving the mildest of men to take up Kalashnikovs and roam the streets to defend their homes.
Already 100,000 Iraqis a month were fleeing abroad, many of them part of a "brain drain" of Baghdad's skilled classes. Now, even more of those who remain are moving, seeking safety in numbers among people of their own sect, Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim.
"Mortar wars" have broken out between rival neighborhoods in what used to be known as the "City of Peace".
Shops and schools have closed. Workers, merchants and civil servants have been kidnapped in their dozens, many later found tortured and dead on the streets. Teachers are dragged pleading for mercy from their classes. Family life has shrunk indoors in a city where nightmares come true and everyone has bad dreams.
"I can't go to a photographer. I'm afraid," bride-to-be Lina said. "When my friend married in July it was bad, but this is worse. I'm terrified to go shopping.
"I should be happy, but I don't feel like a bride."
GUN LAW
For family man Abu Marwah, the November 23 bombs in the Shi'ite slum stronghold of Sadr City were a life-changing moment.
Already his neighborhood was being hit by deadly mortar attacks, a death squad shot and dumped two men near his house, his wife had given up work and his local shops had closed.
But on the night of the bombing, when the 40-year-old translator found himself picking up his Kalashnikov in anger for the first time and preparing to shoot anyone who came near, he realized it was time finally to abandon his home.
Fearful the district would be attacked, he went out on the street, taking orders from tough-talking strangers, all of one sect, who organized the men into defensive positions.
"In my family there are Sunnis and Shi'ites but I had to choose because my house is in a particular area."
Sitting in the dark, on the roof of the house he had built and lived in for 16 years, he decided it was time to quit Iraq.
"If I die, it will be when God chooses. I'm not afraid," he said, sitting in his office in a suit and tie. "But I was thinking 'What will my family do if something happens to me?' This week I made up my mind to leave."
The exodus -- which would be equivalent in terms of its population to a million Americans emigrating every month -- is hitting business, deadening the city's economy, which briefly flourished when the U.S.-led invasion ended sanctions.
"You get the feeling there's no one left," said shopkeeper Wisam Badia, 40, at his small store in central Baghdad. "They're either afraid to go out -- or they're fleeing the country."
Mass kidnaps and bombings at markets, including lately at the Shorja wholesale market in the city center, have disrupted supplies, retailers say. Inflation is running above 50 percent a year but lately prices of some imported luxuries such as coffee and chocolate have leapt by that much in just a week or so.
GOLDEN AGE?
Hairdresser Um Khaled lamented the drop in trade over her 25 years in business. "Saddam's time was the golden age," she said, echoing many Iraqis who once cheered the fall of the dictator.
"Even a year ago, things were much better," the salon owner said. "I used to have lots of brides come in on their wedding days too. Now I don't take many. I'm too afraid they'll be kidnapped when they leave the shop in their gowns."
Among the hardest hit victims of the troubles are Baghdad's children. Not only are they kept away from parks and street games by anxious parents but their education is suffering badly as many either stay away from class or find schools are shut.
For reasons best known to themselves, militant groups have been attacking colleges and schools, assassinating teachers.
Teenager Mohammed said he fled his school this week when militiamen burst in and dragged away the headmaster.
For many, money and an uncertain welcome elsewhere stops them leaving the city. Others though simply find it hard to go.
"I tried going to Jordan this year," Um Khaled said, but she found the small familiar things of home too hard to abandon.
"I missed our wooden Baghdad fish carts," she said. "Even though now I think of them carrying bodies after bombs go off.
"I won't quit because I love Iraq."
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