The Gulf Life Among the Smoldering Ruins

By Dean Fischer

The desperate battle for the once thriving port of Basra, Iraq's second largest city, has become the longest and most crucial campaign in the 6 1/2- year Iran-Iraq war. More than 20,000 Iranian troops and 10,000 Iraqis have died since Jan. 9, when Iranian Revolutionary Guards attacked Iraqi defenses along the Shatt al Arab, a broad waterway that forms the southern frontier of the warring nations, and advanced on Basra some ten miles away. The stakes in the fighting, which has settled into a ferocious standoff a few miles outside the city, could not be higher: an Iranian victory would demoralize the Iraqis and could topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, whom Iranian Leader Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has vowed to crush. The global importance of the war was shown anew last week when the U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk moved to within striking distance of newly installed Iranian missile batteries that threaten shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. Though Basra is usually closed to Western reporters, Dean Fischer, TIME's Cairo bureau chief, visited the devastated city last week. His report:

A menacing quiet fills the empty streets. Stray dogs and cats poke through the rubble of collapsed houses destroyed by Iranian 122-mm rockets. Here a shell has gouged a water-filled crater in the center of a once lovingly manicured lawn. There a shattered iron gate hangs limply from its hinges outside a small garage. An occasional car filled with wide-eyed Iraqi sightseers cruises the streets, but the passengers seldom stop. It is as if they are afraid the attacks will resume any moment.

Those fears are justified. Without warning, the stillness can be shattered by the screaming blasts of shells launched from up to a dozen miles outside the city. Lasting between 20 and 30 minutes, the salvos light the sky by night and confine residents to their homes by day. If the attacks are aimed at swelling the tide of refugees who have already poured from the city, which has dwindled from more than 1 million residents in 1980 to about 175,000 today, they are amply fulfilling Iran's expectations. Says a Western diplomat: "Basra is basically inoperable."

The Iranians are clearly trying to break the city's will. Nearly every building along the section of the Shatt al Arab that flows past Basra has been damaged or destroyed. The beige facade of the deserted four-story Sheraton Basra is pockmarked with shrapnel and shell holes. During the intense bombardment in January and February, thousands of panicked residents abandoned their middle-class brick homes near the water.

Beneath the onslaught, the city's piers lie idle. A major shipping center in calmer days, the port of Basra is now filled with stranded and rusting vessels. In the middle of the Shatt al Arab, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, two cargo ships lie half submerged, the apparent victims of random shells.

Farther from the Iranian rocket launchers, a limited sense of normality remains. A few shops are open, and people walk the mostly empty streets. In & the broken landscape of Basra, however, things may not be what they seem. Standing before a bungalow that she called home, Nazha Shouket Buny, 37, described herself as the only resident of her area who had not fled. "Basra is my city," said Buny, who was smartly dressed in a white sweater and brown skirt. "I am going to stay here." Yet her devotion to a district that lacked food, water and electricity seemed suspect. With Iraqi officials striving to put a brave face on the fighting, the government may have placed the woman in the deserted neighborhood to impress visitors with her resolve.

Signs of battle scar the road from Basra to Baghdad as well. A dozen immobilized Iraqi tanks rest beside the highway, some with gaping holes in their armor, others mere burned-out hulks. The ruined tanks are a powerful reminder of U.S. arms sales to Iran. Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz attributes his country's equipment losses largely to American shipments of TOW antitank and Hawk antiaircraft missiles to Tehran.

Even more harmful than the missiles, Aziz asserts, was the political signal that their shipment sent. Says he: "The Iranians must have drawn a conclusion that the Americans are not opposed to the installation of an Islamic puppet government in southern Iraq." Baghdad fears that Tehran wants nothing less than to establish just such a republic, with Basra as its capital. In the shadow of that threat, the desperate and desolate city fights for its life.