The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime 20 years ago was immortalized in the image of the destruction of a statue in Baghdad’s Paraíso Square, the first of many, in a transition that led Iraq into chaos.
The US military took Baghdad without much resistance on April 9, 2003, with the entire regime on the run. The search for the protagonists was symbolized by the invaders by a deck of cards, the “trump card” being the Iraqi dictator, whose ubiquitous statues in the capital fell one by one.
And nothing replaced the Iraqi regime and the capital became a complete chaos, as witnessed at the time by a Portuguese journalist and photojournalist working for the Visão magazine.
A week after the fall of Saddam’s regime, preparations were made for the fall of another, even larger, bronze statue. Since 3 p.m., a mob tried to bring down the giant statue, the one already missing the left arm, while the right one continued to salute that popular one. Aimed with slippers at the head of the statue, with a cable wrapped around its neck, pulled by arms that combined its strength with that of a garbage truck.
Suddenly a warning – “Caution!” – and a command – “Run!” – and Kalashnikov outbursts departed from a yellow car of “fedayins” still loyal to the dictator, half a minute of fire that caused dozens of people to flee. But gradually the crowd regrouped. I wasn’t scared, I was in a trance. The ‘party’ was not spoiled and more shots were fired.
During the occupation of Baghdad, the aglo-American forces effortlessly overthrew the regime and its last opponents, the “fedayins” and the Republican Guard, fallen on their knees in the streets of the Iraqi capital next to their automatic weapons or missiles. launchers RPG-7.
General disorder began to subside all over the city.
“We have no security, there is no water to drink, no electricity in the houses, no money, because the businesses are closed,” said Khaid Ibrahim, 33, an English teacher who watched those chaotic moments. “But we have wild savages and gunfire all over the place, all the time – this is the freedom promised by [George W.] shrub and [Tony] Blair?” he wondered in reference to the then US president and the British prime minister respectively.
Waleed Alheeti, a 65-year-old doctor, presented himself at the door of Yarmuk Hospital in a blue dress, but turned down a patient who appeared in his arms with a bullet in his stomach. “I can’t help you, no one else is being treated here”. And he sent the injured to another medical institution. Yarmuk was closed and the only patient present died during the journalists’ visit.
The Baghdad bombings destroyed three of the hospital’s four generators. Without electricity and threatened by the wave of looting that has swept the city since the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which did not spare these and other hospital wards, the doctors stayed at home. When they returned, they found 24 bodies inside Yarmuk, which the relatives did not claim. They were buried in the garden of the hospital.
With no electricity and threatened by the wave of looting that has swept the city since the end of Saddam Hussein’s regime, most of Baghdad’s arteries showed a picture of broken-bar shops. Some buildings had bricked doors and windows. More and more traffic, with lots of horns, crotches, an almost total disregard for the code, like a game of “tetris” at intersections. Car trunks were filled to the brim with furniture, appliances, rugs, and necessities.
Vehicles drive down the wide, dirty avenues, between unkempt, bare buildings and the wreckage of Iraqi cavalry and infantry. All stolen from every public building open to the marauding madness of the populace.
Anglo-American troops turn a blind eye. The armored vehicles went through the looting, eventually accompanied by a soundtrack of machine gun fire, leaving the ministries to fend for themselves.
All but one: the Petroleum, on the outskirts of the Iraqi capital, protected by two soldiers, in a revealing protection documented by photojournalist Gonçalo Rosa da Silva.
The entrance to the Ministry of Justice was flanked by two statues with their hands clasped together and their eyes turned to heaven, as if asking for divine mercy. Between the two images, dozens of people escaped with furniture and any object that had a plug to plug into an electrical outlet. The inevitable portrait of the dictator Saddam Hussein was still there in Justice, intact, with scales in his hands and eyes wide open, for his justice was not blind.
The scene repeated itself everywhere. At the Central Bank, in a narrow street where one of the buildings was completely gutted by the impact of a rocket, some looters euphorically threw banknotes into the air. Others rushed in screaming, as if they were taking over a castle.
“We have to eat,” justified a middle-aged man with a white ‘jellabah’, fair complexion and blue eyes, carrying a chair and a neon lamp.
Expired dinars, bearing Saddam’s effigy, were scattered in the entrance to the Central Bank, also expired – the dictator would be hanged three years later, when the “ace of trump” was discovered on the outskirts of Tikrit, his hometown.
Ahmed Shaker, age 51, wondered, “When will these lowly thieves stop?”. Calm at first, then crescendo, remembering that the US military was now responsible for the security of the city and that above them was the then president of the US. And, already annoyed and with slippers in hand, he shouted forcefully “No Bush!”.
“Ali Babas! Thieves!” protested Satta Khatra, aged 38: “The Americans did not come.” He screamed fearlessly at the robbers of the lost city, risking a response to the law of the bullet – apparently the only one still in existence.
In the early days of the Anglo-American occupation, thousands of thieves spared hospitals, clinical laboratories and the memory of the country.
Machine gun fire could be heard in the quarters, but it wasn’t because of the shots that Downi George’s hands were jittery. The director of research and antiquities at the National Museum opened the padlock that was useless to stop one of the most publicized looting in Baghdad.
In the offices, which housed studies of excavations over the past hundred years, almost every room contained only photographs of Saddam, on papers, files, microfilms, and stationery scattered across the floor. The rest was looted when Iraqi police left the site and American tanks, too late, entered the opposite street.
Archaeologist Mohsen Kadhenisd was in the museum and looked at everything. He ran to warn the Americans that space was surrounded and about to be invaded. “But they didn’t come,” despite previous warnings from UNESCO.
The National Library and the Islamic Library were also looted. According to an official, one of the oldest versions of the Quran and one of the most important assets in the Middle East has disappeared. “If this country returns to normal, students and researchers will have many difficulties,” said Ali Al-Guzay, 45, a translator.
At the same time, the Shia majority, subjugated by the Sunni minority under the ironclad power of Saddam Hussein, occupied part of the void left by the fall of the regime, on a symbolic pilgrimage to Kerbala, just over a hundred kilometers from the capital . The imams promised a holy war if the Americans took positions that conflicted with the interests of the Shia in Iraq.
Between April 21 and 23, they showed their strength and faith by announcing the gathering of five million believers in Kerbala. It will never be known whether there were that many, but no estimate puts the number in attendance among one and a half million people.
Many pilgrims walked barefoot and with nothing in their hands – not even a bag of groceries – to the temples of Hussein Ibn Ali and his brother Abbas, the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, who died in 680 AD. disappeared in the battle of Taf. This pilgrimage was banned and suppressed by Saddam. In April 2003, hundreds of thousands of people walked from Baghdad, as well as from Syria and Iran.
Shia demonstrations extended to Baghdad, in front of the Palestine Hotel, in protest against the arrest of Mohamed Fartoussi, a major religious leaderO.
Saddam City, Baghdad’s gigantic satellite neighborhood home to more than 2 million people, soon took on the name of Al-Sadr, the iconic leader of the poor Shiites who had a home there.
Within a few days, and with the regime already on the ground, the uprising turned to a new target: the West led by the United States. And the continuous shooting in Baghdad became a kind of compass that would mark the rhythm of the following years.
Source: DN
