Umm Qasr

By PoliPundit ~ April 13th, 2003 @ 10:14 pm

Iraq’s oil reserves could produce $20 billion/year in revenues, which works out to about $1,000 per Iraqi man, woman and child. Instead, there are scenes like this one, in Umm Qasr:

At the last stop before Kuwait turns into Iraq, the checkpoint is dotted with warning signs such as “Accident blackspot” and “Warning, You Are Approaching the Border of Iraq.” The most curious one is mounted to a steel girder near a sand berm, and says “Please do not feed the kids.” On an Umm Qasr trip the day before this one, a colleague and I asked an Australian public affairs officer why we were forbidden from feeding children. “Maybe they bite,” he said. As our bus crossed over, and we saw lean and leathery kids running alongside us, we ignored the sign. I reached into my swag bag for some gum, and handed three sticks to a colleague to shower on young supplicants outside his window. He did so, and a kid who looked to be six years old picked the sticks off the ground. An older boy ran over to him, and cracked him in the skull, taking the gum. “I guess that’s why we’re not supposed to feed them,” my colleague deduced.

Today as we drive through, it’s the same crowd, only there are lots more of them. It’s as if the circus is in town, and it’s us–which is perhaps not surprising in a city that features nothing but run-down shacks and trash-strewn lots. The only noticeable signs of urban planning are the scores of Saddam murals, freshly defaced. There are so many of them that soldiers frequently use them to give directions: Take a right by the Saddam with the three blood-red X’s on his face, then a left by the Saddam with the bullet hole in his forehead.