In The Capital of Dread

By CARL BERNSTEIN BAGHDAD

Poised on the edge of war, this is a city moving in several directions at once, none of them encouraging, some of them infinitely sad, all of them frightening. The authorities have tried to give outsiders the appearance of business as usual. But there is no hiding the reality that, be there war soon or a few more months of hair-trigger peace, life for the Iraqi nation is changing irrevocably.

The countdown to a finale has begun, and almost everyone here seems to know it, hostages and hoteliers, the men in the souk, the women in black abayahs, % the few young dancers left in the discotheques. The tension is evident in the conversation of Iraqi ministers, at one moment fevered and passionate, the next dazed and even depressed. It surfaces in the frustration of the businessman who cannot comprehend that "an Arab solution" is not enough for the rest of the world. It stares out from the eyes of the mother whose sons have just been discharged from eight years at the Iranian front.

There are more imported delicacies available in this city than there have been for years, quail and cheeses liberated from the refrigerators of Kuwaiti sheiks and destined for the tables of privileged Iraqis. But there is almost no medicine for high blood pressure, heart conditions and asthma. Some factories are beginning to shut down, people are hoarding their money, many shopkeepers sit idle. In the diplomatic residences of the fashionable Al- Mansur neighborhood, ambassadors and attaches debate the options for Saddam and the U.S.: almost all are bad, and most end in grief or horror. Among Westerners, there is some gallows humor. Among ordinary Iraqis, it seems, there is acceptance, chagrin, forlorn hope or simple noncomprehension.

There are rumors: of 28 people killed in the town of Mosul during a demonstration protesting food shortages; of an attempt by the President's first cousin to assassinate him; of generals executed for plotting against Saddam. The rumors come not from diplomatic intelligence sources but from Iraqis, many of whom, despite the pervasive fear and security apparatus of the state, insist that opposition and dismay with Saddam Hussein run deep.

"Go out and talk to the people," Information Minister Latif Nassif Jassim told a group of reporters one night last week. "It is more important than what any minister says." He would not be pleased with the results. Despite the demonstrations organized by the government, enthusiasm for Saddam seems muted. "The people here are tired of war, tired of him, tired of not traveling, of not living," says a young man tending a store with no customers.

Signs of Saddam's contradictory legacy abound: housing projects only half- finished, soccer stadiums and no foreign teams to play in them, empty hotels with antiaircraft batteries on their roofs. The city is at once sinuous and Stalinesque: palm trees and concrete mausoleums with a martial theme. And everywhere the gaze of the maximum leader. Hundreds of billboard-size portraits are painted on buildings, framed in traffic circles, displayed in lobbies: Saddam drawing sword, Saddam on stallion, Saddam in sunglasses, Saddam in camouflage fatigues, Saddam looking like Xavier Cugat in white suit, Saddam slaying the infidels. In the city center is a new statue, 60 ft. high: Saddam, ramrod straight, arm outstretched in salute.

The devastating results of the eight-year war against Iran are visible everywhere: the numbed population, fraying public services, unemployment and a pervasive security state that enforces Saddam's rule through fear and a cult of personality that is truly Orwellian. "This could have been the most prosperous, advanced country in the Middle East," says a diplomat stationed here for six years. "It has the minerals, 10% of the world's oil reserves, favorable climate, it's not overpopulated. But as Nasser did in Egypt, Saddam put his country's resources into technology, and then the technology was applied to the war machine instead of the country."

The state-owned hotel where most of the press and many Western "guests" are kept serves as metaphor for the failed ideal of Saddam's Baathist party, which preaches a renascence of Arab greatness through socialism, Islamic values and the secular goals of a modern industrial nation. The place is overreaching, contradictory, a lot better in conception than execution. From the outside, it beckons impressively, promising luxury, hospitality, comfort. There is tennis, a casino, gardens of bougainvillea and the shade of towering eucalyptus trees. But all has been overtaken by security functions, inefficiency and economic chaos: at the official rate, lunch for one costs $75, the phones are monitored constantly, employees whose only purported function is to check the ashtrays apologize after bursting into the room, the lobby is watched by ever present "minders" who keep tabs on the press. A scratchy recording of Beethoven's Fur Elise has been playing constantly for 10 days, the sound grating, nerve-racking.

Nearby is the Baathist Bauhaus enclave, where party members, wealthy Iraqis and foreign diplomats reside. Outside the Pakistani embassy, refugees from Kuwait squat next to their belongings. A few lawns away, a "PNG party" is in progress, to toast farewell to French personnel declared persona non grata. Inevitably the conversation gets around to where people plan to be when the attack comes. Most think the safest haven will be their embassy or residence. Since few buildings in Baghdad have basements, a Scandinavian says, "We will sit beneath the staircase or in a corridor with no windows and hope for the best."

Among Western ambassadors and military aides, there is virtually universal belief that war is almost inevitable and probably imminent. Representatives of countries that for 40 years opposed or ignored one another now share information, plans, intelligence, last-minute strategy. They speak emotionally of a renewed international security system made possible by the Soviet- American thaw. The Iraqis, they say, do not comprehend the change implied in the new world order or its implications for international resolve against Baghdad.

Almost all diplomats here seem to be operating on the assumption that an attack by U.S.-led forces could begin within two weeks -- as soon as the weather turns cooler in the desert and in the gulf. This is their perception, colored by living at the epicenter of the tensions and years of reading between the lines of coded cables. They say that it is the heat, and not just the desire to maximize manpower and equipment levels or the possibility of diplomacy, that has delayed a military response until now. Radar screens blacked out from the high temperatures, missile-control systems failed on some aircraft, metal alloys expanded on planes, causing leakage from fuel lines, cooling systems faltered and sand-fouled tanks and guns. These problems, the diplomats say, should ease after the first or second week of October.

Among those closest to Saddam Hussein, some aides appear to be both increasingly appreciative of how close to war the country is and at the same time stubbornly convinced that Iraq will find ways to avoid conflict and prevail through diplomacy. There are still indications that Iraq may pull back its troops in Kuwait and hold on to only that portion of the sheikdom with the most strategic and economic value: the Rumaila oil fields, two offshore islands and perhaps four harbors on the gulf.

Meanwhile, Iraq's senior officials seem convinced that an American-led attack will be launched in October or November unless they can induce one of the major powers -- France is the primary target -- to break ranks with the U.S. The Iraqis acknowledge that they badly misjudged American reaction to the annexation of Kuwait. They have been stunned by the swiftness and size of the U.S. deployment as well as by Washington's ability to rally so many European and Arab nations. Sitting in their offices, listening to their obligatory + attacks on Israel, the sheiks and the U.S., one senses that they are dazed, even desperate.

"Our hope is in the street," said a top Saddam aide, referring to the region's tens of millions of poor Arabs. "That is where America has miscalculated -- that and our ability to engage the United States in a long conflict. Iraq did not bring harm to U.S. interests. We will guarantee America's legitimate interests in the region -- low oil prices, free from the fluctuations of the past. But if we are attacked, every Iraqi will defend his homeland, his religion." It is a litany frequently heard here, and one now senses resignation -- not belligerence -- in conversations with officials.

There are also increasing indications that Saddam may be miscalculating the will of his people. TV screens are filled with images of jeering masses of civilians and of soldiers proclaiming their hatred. The reality seems far different.

Even in the intimidating atmosphere of Saddam cultism, it doesn't take long before some Iraqis share their war-weariness, their discontent, even their hatred of Saddam. Their frankness comes as a surprise; obviously, those willing to talk are the exception, not the rule, and the fact that they can speak some English indicates that they may not totally reflect the country at large. They concede their sense of powerlessness. But they are persuasive in their insistence that the undercurrent of discontent runs deep, that it is a given in discussion among friends and family who can be trusted.

"People are talking much more freely, which is astonishing," says a West European who has lived here for several years. "There has been a huge change in the past 10 days. A lot of people are saying they are ashamed of what their country is doing. You actually hear people talking about the possibility of a change in government."

A shift in the mood seems to have begun several weeks ago, when Baghdad announced a treaty agreement with Iran and gave back to its mortal enemy the few spoils of its war in hopes that Tehran would join the struggle against the U.S. "The people do not understand how Saddam could do that," says a Baghdad shopkeeper.

"Nobody likes Saddam, because we now fight all the world," claims a young man who served five years at the Iranian front. "Nobody in the world likes us anymore. All the Iraqi people feel this way," he asserts, which is clearly not the case. "If the whole world is your enemy, what kind of politics is ( that? We just finished the war. The main interest for the Iraqi people is food. And now we lack almost everything."

"In the past two weeks many people have really begun to worry, especially after all these fiery statements by Saddam," says a man in his 50s, an intellectual who has lived here all his life. "Some people have started going north to the resorts." Most, however, are working class or poor, and cannot afford resorts. "They have been led to think that fighting the Americans will be like fighting the Iranians. The leadership knows how bad it will be -- but not people in the street. Still, they are saying, 'Haven't we had enough war? Do we need another war, and why?' They don't care about Kuwait. The big mistake journalists make is to think Saddam enjoys the support of the people. We call him 'Big Charlie.' He is not popular, among ordinary people especially. There is a ferocious silent majority in the country -- silent and silenced."

Many people here, living on what could be ground zero if America's awesome military machine is unleashed, go about their business with surprising cheerfulness and equanimity. In what might be a scene from a 19th century Ottoman tapestry, two dozen men play dominoes and gamble at backgammon in a stately hall on the banks of the Tigris. At 1 a.m., on the other side of the river, some 30 young men watch Indian movies on TV in a yard behind the city's open-air fish restaurants. In the noonday sun, Irish and Dutch hostages play water polo in the hotel pool. Relatively few soldiers patrol the streets. A couple of hundred at most man defense and ministerial facilities, bridges and the outer gates of the presidential palace. In the past two weeks Saddam has not made a public appearance, but he pops up often on TV, greeting the latest Arab dignitary or Palestine Liberation Organization official who has come to Baghdad to express solidarity.

On the radio, cab drivers seem to favor Arabic rock, heavily synthesized and sounding like wailing Europop to the Western ear. AM frequencies that usually broadcast the Voice of America and BBC are jammed. The Arabic service of Radio Monte Carlo serves as a bridge to the outside world and plays American rock 'n' roll. No foreign newspapers, books or magazines are available; faxes are forbidden, and foreign travel by Iraqis has again been curtailed, as it was during the war with Iran. Still, the Deputy Foreign Minister's phone plays Home on the Range when the caller is put on hold.

! Though the wealthy can afford the Kuwaiti delicacies on sale in the fancy food shops of Masbah and Al-Mansur, ordinary Iraqis are being squeezed by rationing and rising prices at government-owned stores. The cost of Marlboros has increased threefold since the invasion. "You can find everything at the private market, but who can pay?" says a man outside a grocery.

Many restaurants have been closed; too many staples, needed for rationing over the long haul, were being consumed. There is almost no bread in the city. Though the downtown streets are jammed every night, there are few customers in the stores. "Business is very bad," concedes a senior minister. "The blockade is hurting." Meanwhile, says Information Minister Latif Jassim, "morale is very high, and the people are very strong."