Iraq: Unsanctioned Voices

The suffering continued with Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War. United Nations sanctions paralyzed the economy – and the Iraqi branch of Ahmed's company – until the government agreed in 1996 to a UN program that would allow it to use oil money to buy food and medicine, begin rebuilding the country, and pay war reparations.

Ahmed began to have more to do at the office.

Thanks to the UN oil-for-food program, business is good now. But survival demands accepting the intrusions of the regime.

Ahmed suspects his international phone calls are monitored; he knows his e-mails are read by the authorities. He once complained to the state-run Internet service provider that his messages were taking days to reach their recipients. An official advised him to write more simply, presumably to speed the work of the intelligence agents vetting Ahmed's e-mail.

In his office Ahmed keeps a picture of himself and a senior member of the regime. They met only once, but Ahmed made sure to have a photograph taken.

"We keep it here in case police or people from the security services visit, so they can see we have relations with people high in the regime," he says. "So they know we are not easy people."

Party officials visit him several times a year, both at home and in the office, and require him to fill out detailed questionnaires or submit to interviews. The interrogations are always the same – about his background, his work, his travel; about whether he or anyone in his family has ever been involved in politics or been in trouble with the authorities. They are an unsubtle method of keeping tabs on Ahmed's life.

A couple of years ago, Ahmed bought a black-market satellite dish – they are banned in Iraq – and set it up where it could be seen only from the sky. He was interested mainly in better entertainment. Iraqi television presents a limited menu of Arab and Western programs and features hours of propaganda about Hussein every day.

After a month or so of enjoying his satellite television, Ahmed learned that the government was in the midst of an unannounced crackdown. Those found with dishes were being sentenced to six months in prison and fined the cost of the dish. Worse, the government was promising half the fine to informers.

Such are the methods of the regime. "You begin to worry about your neighbors," Ahmed says. "You never know when someone might overhear one of your children talk about a satellite show."

He dismantled the dish.

Ahmed's personal prosperity – the foreign company pays well, especially by the standards of Iraq's atrophied economy – brings certain liberties many Iraqis do not have, such as the freedom to travel, to own a car, to eat well. When Ahmed shops in the market, and sees people buying an egg or two as he buys 30, he knows he has it good.

But by rejecting the party and denying any voluntary support to the government, he has also created a priceless space in which he can resist the regime. This circle of freedom extends only as far as the people he trusts: his family and perhaps a dozen friends he has known since childhood.

Among these people, he can discuss the dictatorship in frank terms, even deride it. He tells a joke that ridicules the dictator. It goes like this:

Hussein hears that many people are emigrating. He can't understand why and goes the airport to investigate. He sees large numbers of people waiting to proceed through immigration and takes a place at the back of a line.

The people in line recognize him and invite him to the front. Then he realizes that the vast crowds of departing Iraqis have suddenly disappeared. He catches one man leaving the area and asks him where he is going. "Well," the man replies, "if you're leaving the country, we're staying."

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