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The New Year in Baghdad

A few resolutions that might improve life for both Iraqis and the U.S. occupying force

Mauricio Lima / AFP-Getty Images

The aftermath of the Nabil Restaurant bombing

WEB EXCLUSIVE

By Joe Cochrane

Newsweek

Updated: 6:05 p.m. ET Jan. 02, 2004

Jan. 2 - Najil Dhia didn't make any New Year's resolutions. In fact, the 30-year-old Iraqi didn't even ring in 2004. Sitting for hours in a mile-long queue of cars waiting for gasoline at a Baghdad service station, Dhia's frustrations with the troubled U.S.-led reconstruction effort in Iraq finally spilled over. "I have no resolutions—I'm an Iraqi-Muslim!" he shouted, cheek muscles trembling. "This is not my new year—It's the Americans'!"

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I understood what Dhia meant: The Iraqi people have seen few tangible benefits from last year's U.S.-led invasion and few feel as if they have anything to celebrate. Fuel shortages, robberies and assorted violence have become so commonplace across Iraq they get only cursory coverage in the international media. But for the country's 25 million people, they are the stuff of everyday life. A deadly New Year's Eve car bombing at a Baghdad restaurant packed with foreign and Iraqi revelers only underscored how brutal a year it had been.

At best, the Iraqi people are neutral about the U.S. occupation, and resigned to the fact that American soldiers will be here for some time. Others are clear about who they blame for their woes. "They should just leave," one Iraqi man told me as he pushed his beat-up Toyota Corolla forward in the gasoline queue. The Americans in Baghdad, meanwhile, have become increasingly hardened to the Iraqi perspective. "They are the biggest bunch of whiners I've ever seen," one journalist colleague told me.

A few New Year's resolutions—from both sides—are in order.

To start, the Iraqi people might consider altering their expectations about what the American-led Coalition can accomplish in such a short time. It will take years to get the Iraqi economy functioning again. It will be decades before the pillars of a democratic society—rule of law, civil society, an independent judiciary, free and fair elections—are firmly in place.

On the U.S. side, President George W. Bush should resolve to make fewer heady statements about democracy and prosperity flourishing in Iraq. Such promises only raise false expectations among the Iraqi people, as I found out on New Year's Eve. "They said when the Americans entered Iraq, everything would be easy," a group of Iraqis told me. "So what happened? Where is the freedom and democracy?"

This could be the year the Iraqi people resolve to ignore the endless barrage of rumors, conspiracy theories and so-called Christian-Zionist plots against them. When fuel shortages were at their worst a few months ago, many Iraqis insisted the Americans were selling the oil to Israel at cut-rate prices. Some Iraqi newspapers suggested the capture of Saddam Hussein last month was a ruse by the U.S. military to improve its image among the population. In areas of the restive Sunni Triangle region, a Saddam stronghold, hundreds of Iraqis danced in the streets and fired rifles into the air after hearing reports that American soldiers had not captured Saddam, but one of his doubles.

The Americans, meanwhile, might work at improving the flow of information to Iraqi civilians. The Iraqis don't need anyone to tell them they must wait hours for gasoline, kerosene and cooking oil. But they want to know why. "Before the war and during the war, no oil refineries were attacked," one Iraqi man told me. "The fuel was there then, so why are there shortages?" L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, should resolve to answer that question so the Iraqi people understand why their day-to-day existence appears worse than it was under Saddam's brutal regime. Bremer should also explain why Baghdad's largest power plant has only one of its four turbines operating—eight months after the war ended. As a result, daily rolling power outages continue across the capital, adding to the misery of average Iraqis in the middle of winter. One official from the Coalition Provisional Authority told me the country's power system was "still facing sabotage" by anti-American fighters, who are trying to derail the American campaign to win the hearts and minds of the population.

Both Iraqis and Americans share one 2004 goal: that the security situation improve and the insurgency by Saddam loyalists and foreign Islamic militants is crushed. Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the U.S. First Armored Division, based in Baghdad, told a New Year's Eve press briefing in Baghdad that his New Year's resolution was "to remain resolute in our work to provide a safe and secure environment for the Iraqi people." Four hours later, a car packed with more than 400 pounds of explosives ripped apart the Nabil Restaurant, killing eight people and wounding more than two dozen, mostly Iraqis. My NEWSWEEK colleagues and I rushed to the scene and spoke to an Iraqi man who had pulled a woman from the rubble, only to have her die in his arms. Some debris had fallen during his rescue attempt and cut his forehead. After telling his story, he bummed a cigarette off me and stumbled off into the darkness, holding a hand to his bloody, bandaged head. The general's resolution had been broken already.