The war hits home

Corbasson leaves for Paris, where police say 90,000 people took to the streets on Saturday as a new wave of antiwar protests swept across the world. Even though he has no plans to join in demonstrations, the war will be much on the veteran's mind on his 85th birthday, which he will celebrate with family and friends Monday. "It will be a very sad day," he says. "This is the end of the world for me."

By Chené Blignaut

MOSCOW - In the past few days, Ali al-Amel's mood has swung from joy to despair as he sits glued to his TV set absorbing every scrap of news about the war in his homeland, Iraq.

Ali, a 20-year political exile from Saddam Hussein, and his Russian wife, Lyudmila, have hardly slept since the first US Cruise missiles crashed into Baghdad. "My first thoughts when I heard this news were. 'At last, we are going to be free of the bloody dictator'," says Ali. "I felt elated. I prayed that all Iraqi soldiers will give themselves up and the war would end quickly."

Ali says he is still hopeful the conflict will be over soon, but the harsh images of war - in particular Saturday's massive aerial bombardment of his hometown, Baghdad, played over and over again on Russian TV - have sobered and saddened him.

"I was stunned to see that monstrous spectacle of destruction crashing over Baghdad," he says. "At first I couldn't think, I was mesmerized by all those huge explosions. Then I began to try to identify from my memory the places that were being hit, and to listen carefully for any news about the targets."

Ali's mother and brother live very near the Rihab Palace, one of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad complexes that was struck hard during Saturday's raid. "As soon as I learned this, I reached instinctively for the telephone," he says. "But I cannot even attempt to call them. As long as Saddam is in power, it will be extremely dangerous for my family if I were to contact them."

The last news Ali had of his family was two weeks ago, when his brother phoned him according to a prearranged routine. "I am just beside myself with worry," he says.

As a youth in Baghdad, Ali joined the once-powerful Iraqi Communist Party, but had to flee from Mr. Hussein's secret police in 1981. Like many Iraqi communists, he took refuge in the Soviet Union, where he studied physics at a Moscow institute.

After the demise of the USSR, Ali went into business with some Russian friends, and is now part owner of a wholesale clothing company. "My whole daily routine is shattered," he says. Since learning of the war's onset, he rarely leaves his small flat in central Moscow. "I hardly sleep or eat, and keep drifting back to the TV set."

Despite the nightly display of US and British destructive might, Ali does not blame them for the war. "Of course it feels humiliating to see Iraqi soldiers surrendering like cowards, but it is Saddam who brought them to this," he says.

But he says he felt enraged when he learned that US Marines had raised an American flag over a captured Iraqi town. "I just want to know if they're coming as liberators or conquerors?" he says. "I haven't made up my mind about that." Ali says Lyudmila - who has never visited Iraq - has become "completely anti-American" while watching the TV images of Baghdad being bombarded. "She just sat crying through all those pictures of bombs exploding over the city last night," he says. "She told me over and over again: 'Only monsters could do this.' "

By Fred Weir

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