Behind Saddam’s mask, Baghdad is scared

In Baghdad, even the most hardline of the Iraqi leadership have changed their tune lately. Up until a few days ago, one of Saddam Hussein’s senior officials, gun-toting vice-president Taha Yassin Ramadan, was telling visiting delegations that Iraq would ‘‘never’’ let weapons inspectors return. Asked the same question over the weekend, Ramadan, rarely at a loss for words, said he had no comment.

‘‘We say negotiations should continue and take their time,’’ he told reporters. ‘‘He’s been told to keep quiet,’’ said a diplomat. Envoys here have been advised by the Foreign Ministry that Iraq is indeed willing to discuss letting the weapons inspectors return — a feeling backed by a noticeable decline in the anti-American and British demonstrations and flag-burnings routinely organised by the Iraqi government.

Senior Iraqi officials have fanned out throughout the region this week, concentrating on countries visited by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, to warn of the consequences of a US-led strike on Iraq — an attempt more serious for the absence of public rhetoric.

‘‘Why should we say anything?’’ says an official. ‘‘It would only be used against us.’’ Amid the diplomatic flurry, the leadership is publicly lying low. Visa requests from Western journalists lie in stacks at the Information Ministry — almost all of them frozen until ‘‘the situation is more settled’’. The ever-elastic security atmosphere is tightening. New black Mercedes cars carrying mid-level officials glide through the streets with armed soldiers in white four-wheel drive vehicles behind them. Traffic is diverted for more senior members of the leadership.

People in the streets aren’t allowed to talk to television journalists. Or rather the journalists aren’t allowed to talk to them. ‘‘Why do you want to ask them political questions? They’re not qualified to answer,’’ an official says.

More than most countries, there’s a large gap in Iraq between what people profess in public for their own safety and what they say in private.

The public fiction is that a defiant Iraq is thriving, despite 11 years of sanctions, regular bombings by US and British planes in the no-fly zones in Iraq and the almost ever-present threat of war.

In fashionable neighbourhoods, you might think that was the case. Government subsidies on bricks and building materials have prompted a mini-boom in restaurants and small shops, selling everything from computers imported through the Gulf States to suits from Italy. Major investment though is halted — no one is willing to take the risk.

Venturing into the side streets, there are homes darkened by electricity cuts, sewage running through the gutters, old women carefully counting out their devalued dinars to buy eggs. The only visible growth industry is mythology.

In a city already bursting with portraits and statues of the Iraqi President, the government is unveiling more every week. Many of them boast Saddam Hussein raising a rifle — an image used as a symbol of Iraqi support for the Palestinian uprising.

A swarm of workmen at one of the gates to the presidential palace have been building a replica of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. This week workers on scaffolding were putting finishing touches on tiles and gilding the dome. Like the palaces, the gate is meant to be admired from afar.

The Iraqi leader’s perceived support for Palestinians against Israel is the main reason for his continued popularity in the streets of other Arab capitals, no matter what they think of him at home.

Publicly, the government newspapers highlight positive stories — such as Labour MPs threatening to quit if Britain backs an attack on Iraq. Privately, there is an overriding sense of pessimism. That no matter what Iraq’s allies say about rejecting an attack on Iraq, the country is essentially alone, being blamed for a leader whom most believe only an outside army could dislodge. ‘‘If we let the weapons inspectors back in, then they will just find another excuse to attack us,’’ said one Iraqi. ‘‘They won’t stop until they destroy this country.’’

The writer is the Baghdad bureau chief for the international news network CNN