Iraqis taste freedom and chaos
Free speech and real elections grow, but security, gas, and money are still lacking.
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Gasoline, however, is scarce all over the country, available only at prohibitive prices on the black market unless one is willing to wait up to 12 hours in a line stretching hundreds of yards from the pump. That situation is expected to ease with the passage Thursday of a United Nations Security Council resolution lifting the 13-year-old sanctions against Iraq.
When the country can export its oil, refineries that have not been able to produce enough gasoline because they had nowhere to put a bulky side-product, fuel oil, will be able to work at full speed again. A resumption of oil production would mean more output of gas, used to fuel some power stations here, which should ease the electricity crisis somewhat as well, officials predict. Equally important, oil sales will swell the Iraqi budget, to be set by coalition officials, and pump money into the economy and long-term reconstruction.
ORHA officials say that Iraq's political recovery must take more time than local political leaders would like. They had hoped, when General Garner was in charge, that by early next month they would have been able to form a provisional government that would have sovereignty and take policy decisions, even if under US tutelage. But Bremer said Wednesday that it could be mid-July before an Iraqi national conference is convened to help choose an interim authority.
Bremer and his British counterpart, John Sawers, are worried that the five former opposition leaders grouped in the "leadership council" are not united enough to form a government that could meet the challenges facing Iraq, officials close to the two men say. Washington and London are also anxious to broaden the council to make it more representative of the general population before it organizes a national conference.
The prospect that an interim Iraqi authority would play little more than an advisory role to the occupation government is especially displeasing to Iranian-backed politicians from the majority Shiite sect, who generally mistrust US intentions in Iraq.
If no Iraqi government with real power is likely to be formed in the foreseeable future, the government of occupation has been strengthened by Bremer's arrival last week, ORHA officials say. After an uncertain start under General Garner, they are pleased to have a leader who has the power to make policy, and who is clearly in charge. The White House has told the US military that its job is to support Bremer in his work. "I think the military will start showing up to meetings at ORHA now," says one senior US Army officer. "Before, they often wouldn't bother."
That will reassure ORHA officials frustrated by the unexpected difficulties of putting Iraq back to work, sequestered in rudimentary living conditions behind the high walls of Hussein's Republican Palace, and tired of being accused of dithering.
On the wall of an office in the Republican Palace, someone has taped ORHA's "Core Media Script," the message spokesmen are meant to drum into reporters' notebooks: "Nobody is underestimating the huge challenge ahead," it reads, "but I believe slowly but surely we are getting Baghdad and Iraq back on its feet. Nobody is pretending things are anything but difficult. We are turning the corner and piece by piece getting the country moving again."
After the euphoria that attended the coalition's quick military victory in Iraq, that message sums up the approach US officials here are taking now: deflect criticism, lower expectations, and project cautious hope. Now they have to sell the message to the Iraqi people. "Endings are defined by beginnings," says Adel Abdul Mahdi, an aide to Ayatollah Hakim, leader of the Iran-backed Shiite group Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "This period is very critical."
• Danna Harman contributed to this story from northern and southern Iraq.
