Life in Baghdad: Better and worse

Last month, attacks on US forces reached an average of 87 per day, the highest to date. And this week in Baghdad, youths fired on and disabled a US Bradley fighting vehicle. Within minutes, children arrived cheering and celebrating in ways reminiscent of last April's gruesome killing of four American contractors in Fallujah. A US helicopter arrived and fired on the scene - killing some of the celebrating children.

The result of such scenes - but even more of the kidnappings and other crimes that haunt Baghdadis every day - is that every Iraqi seems to have security on the tip of his tongue. Except, perhaps, for the newborns at Al Hayaat Maternity Hospital, who, anecdotal evidence would suggest, are part of an Iraqi population boom.

Last Saturday alone, the small clinic run by Dominican sisters in Baghdad's Hayy al Wahdaa neighborhood delivered 20 babies - an almost unprecedented flurry for Al Hayaat's sisters.

Why are Iraqis having more babies? "People have more money than before, so they think they can afford more children," says Sister Bushra Farach, Al Hayaat's manager. She adds that her clinic's clientele has changed in the postwar period.

"We are private and have to charge, so we used to have only the wealthy. But now I notice men of very different social classes bringing their wives here. I even suspect some of them of making their new money from thievery," she adds, "but we are happy to deliver their little ones."

Asked if the Baghdad baby boom suggests a latent optimism about Iraq's future, Sister Bushra says she doesn't think so. "I think Iraqis are saying, 'Even if we can't have happiness in our time, maybe we create more chances for happiness the more children we have."

Plying Baghdad's streets, one notices some new commercial and residential construction, particularly of shops in the tonier sections of town and high-end residences, often in barricaded and barb-wired compounds. But most striking is how dozens of government buildings, still the most prominent structures, remain bombed-out and looted hulks.

Still, in the topsy-turvy postwar Baghdad, even some of these icons of the bygone regime have offered unimagined opportunities to the dispossessed. Take the 600 poor squatter families that now occupy in relative grandeur what were once the stables, swimming club, and brothel of Saddam's son Uday.

"This home is a gift from God. We have made it a haven from all the terrible things happening in Iraq now," says Jawdat Majeed, who with his two wives and 17 children occupies spare but spacious quarters once inhabited by one of Uday's horse trainers.

Outside Mr. Majeed's abode, a small town of Shiite families inhabits the barns, pool house, movie theater, and even a former military command post once part of Uday's domain. "If this government tries to push us out then it is no better than what we lived with under Saddam," says camp leader Rassoul Al-Hussainy.

Despite such complaints, some Baghdadis do express hope that the new government can reverse the security crisis and make the streets safe again. In the busy Karada neighborhood, hardware store owner Hassan Mufeed says his business is better than before the war. But what gives him confidence in the future was a small incident that took place across from his shop. "A few days ago some garbage collectors reported a bomb right there," he says, pointing to the sidewalk outside a bank across the street. "Before long the ICDC [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps] arrived, and with the help of the Americans they took it out."

To Mr. Mufeed, that one incident told him that, despite the dangers, democracy has a chance in Iraq.

It's a sentiment found in various surveys of public opinion, from a CSIS "Iraqi Voices" survey done in July toa recent national poll conducted by the Iraq office of the International Republican Institute.

Indeed, back at the Uday stables squatters' camp, residents say they don't plan to bow to government pressures without a fight. Suggesting he's already learned something about living in a democracy, camp leader Mr. Al-Hussainy says he's planning an anti-eviction demonstration. "Our only weapons are our voices," he says. "Isn't that how a democracy is supposed to work?"

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