By David Ignatius(WASHINGTON POST, 01/04/03):
UMM QASR, Iraq -- The small sliver of land surrounding this port town is what the U.S.-led coalition can claim as a "liberated zone" in southern Iraq after 12 days of war.
It isn't much on the map, but what's happening here shows how the grasp of Saddam Hussein's regime can be loosened, town by town. It also demonstrates how long and arduous a task that may be.
The goal of American and British troops here, now that they have finally secured Umm Qasr, is to restore a semblance of normal life. After providing emergency food and water, they are putting people back to work and paying them, in U.S. dollars. But their larger aim is to break the hold of fear and coercion the Iraqi regime maintains over its people.
On Sunday, scores of young Iraqis were lined up in the baking sun, applying for jobs as service workers for the British troops here. By the end of the day, 89 of them had been processed, photographed for ID cards, checked by medical staff and vetted by security officers.
The Iraqi job-seekers were nominated by what a British officer called a "town council," a hastily organized gathering of local notables. The goal was to recruit people from different families, so that the money could be spread around town.
The British want the roughly 1,000 Iraqis who worked at the port in its heyday to come back to their jobs, too. They'll be paid a bit more than what they earned before the war, which ranged up to about $30 a month. Some of the port workers live in Basra to the north, which is still controlled by the regime, and the British hope these workers will soon be able to travel safely to Umm Qasr. The idea is to extend security and normal life north, gradually but inexorably.
"Because the Baath Party has been so powerful for so long, it is entwined in every part of society," says British Maj. Tom Ellis. "We're trying to demonstrate here with aid and jobs that we are going to see this through, and that the regime isn't going to return."
Sunday's applicants were mostly teenagers -- kids in ripped T-shirts, baggy track suits and ragged sandals. They seemed delighted at the notion of paying jobs, but they were clearly frightened by the shadows of Hussein's secret police that lurk here.
"There are still Fedayeen in Umm Qasr," whispered one young man in Arabic. They are on the run now, he said, but they'll be back as soon as the Americans and British leave. Other boys simply signaled, by glancing over their shoulders, that they believed Baath Party informers to be among the crowd.
"If they see us on TV, they'll hang us," said a boy in a brown and green shirt. Yet a few minutes later, he and his pals were strutting for the TV cameras and showing off in the style of teenage boys around the world. At least for those few minutes, their fear was gone.
A reporter later asked the boys if they'd rather be working for Saddam Hussein, whose portrait in the city center has been defaced with three X's, splattered in red. "No," said the boys. "What do we get from Saddam? Nothing!" ventured a brave youth. "He only gave money to his tribe from Tikrit. There was nothing for us."
One young man in a blue shirt was sitting cross-legged in the sand, head bowed. He said that when he went for his job interview, the Kuwaiti interpreter asked for his name, age and address. He panicked and left.
"It's too dangerous," he said. "We are scared from Saddam's people, 100 percent." He said Iraqis believe that Hussein's power is "like magic," invisible and impossible to destroy. "We will not sleep well until we know he's dead," he said.
These young men fear their new benefactors will be gone soon. "If the Americans and British back off," said the young man in the blue shirt, "he [Saddam] will kill us." A reporter asked whether the boys thought they would have a better life a year from now. "That depends on you guys," answered an 18-year-old in a brown polo shirt.
Umm Qasr, multiplied a hundred times over, could produce a new Iraq. But in a country where car bombs and guerrilla attacks are likely to continue for months, extending this zone of security across the whole of the country won't be easy.
As we left the city, emaciated children were waving bottles of mineral water that had recently been distributed by coalition forces. In this war, those water bottles may prove as powerful as cruise missiles.