Disorder deepens in liberated Baghdad

Mr. Mutaar was less concerned with the distribution problems that are plaguing the fuel sector - the refinery tanks holding other refined products such as fuel oil are full, slowing production of gasoline - and more worried by the frightful traffic in the capital.

Double-file lines of vehicles waiting for gas - generally hundreds of yards long - block the roads, forcing traffic into oncoming lanes and snarling the streets inextricably.

Elsewhere in Baghdad, drivers routinely ignore even those traffic lights that are working, going the wrong way around traffic circles, barreling the wrong way up one-way streets, and generally converting freedom from traffic cops into citywide chaos.

That is a problem too for those citizens without cars who rely on buses. The lack of buses aggravates their difficulties. At the Sector 4 bus depot in the Shalchiya District, deputy director Adel Saddam Abdul Kudda laments that 45 of his 75 buses have been stolen.

And the drivers complain that they have been promised a $20 emergency wage packet by American soldiers four times, without results so far.

At the same time, when they take their vehicles onto the roads, "the police make problems for us, saying our old bus company identity cards are not valid," says Bassem Hashem Ahmed, a driver. They need new ones to prove they are legitimate employees, not looters, but the bus company does not have the stamp to regularize new cards. It was stolen.

At least the bus drivers are working, when they can find a vehicle to drive.

Most Iraqis have not gone back to their jobs, since the ministries and companies that employed them until the war have not yet restarted their operations.

That has left millions of citizens with no income and no secure source of food, in the absence of the ration system that prevailed under the UN administered "oil for food program" before the war.

So far, no UN food trucks have arrived in Baghdad, and food aid officials say the ration reserves that Iraqis had built up are likely to run out within a matter of weeks.

If the city streets are now clear of roadblocks and burned-out buses and trucks, (they have been dragged onto the sidewalks for collection), they are still piled with trash, uncollected for weeks. In the evenings, residents burn what they can, sending columns of acrid smoke drifting through the city, but much remains in heaps at the curbside.

While water supplies are improving - 65 percent of Iraqis now have potable water, according to retired General Garner, the outgoing head of ORHA - electricity is still a major headache in Baghdad.

Though power stations in the north and south of the country are generating more electricity than their regions need, damage to the national power grid means it cannot be distributed to the capital. There, only 50 percent of needs are being met, and some districts enjoy electricity for only two hours a day.

"Yes, there are a lot of problems, but a lot of work is being done across the board to address them," says the coalition official. "But there are huge challenges."

One challenge at least has an easy solution in Baghdad. If you have stolen a car and worry about the return of law and order, it is not hard to protect yourself. In one of the city's markets on Sunday, a hawker would sell you new license plates and vehicle ownership papers to match them (stolen, along with the necessary official stamp, from the Ministry of Transport). And he would throw in a forged driving license too, all for 30,000 dinars, the equivalent of $15.

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