Soon there were millions of people in Baghdad living on the edge of destitution
Soon there were millions of people in Baghdad living on the edge of destitution. I saw men standing in the market during the furnace-like summer heat trying to sell a few plates or ungainly gilt furniture Crime became common. The government started cutting off the hands and ears of thieves and showing the results on television. One of the four chimneys of the Dohra power station, highly visible from the rest of Baghdad, was rebuilt and painted in the Iraqi colours. Saddam indulged his megalomania by building ornate palaces and giant mosques all over the city But the recovery was never as complete as it looked. The city ran out of fuel because Saddam had failed to store any. I bought black-market petrol in a market near Saddam City, but it was so watered down that my car would grind to a halt at times, emitting puffs of black smoke and white steam.
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On the surface, Baghdad recovered swiftly from the 1991 Gulf War. Reconstruction of bridges, power stations and refineries proceeded surprisingly quickly Old machinery was cannibalised. As I got closer, I could see that its interior was a mass of wreckage. Missiles has turned the military intelligence headquarters into a concrete pancake.
A great column of oil-black smoke rising from the Dohra refinery in south Baghdad was visible 30 miles away to Iraqi troops retreating from Kuwait. The physical appearance of Baghdad only began to change in 1991, during the six-week bombardment by US bombs and missiles. Explosions tore apart the bridges, power stations and oil refineries. On the morning after the first missiles landed, I walked through the mist to look at a telecommunications centre that at first sight appeared to have survived.
But the optimistic and well-educated young men I had met when I first visited the country were being forced into the army. The personality cult of Saddam Hussein reached grotesque proportions as pictures and statues of the leader, dressed as everything from Bedouin sheikh to Kurdish mountaineer, were erected in each street. At first, the manic building boom continued, using borrowed money from Arab oil states frightened by the Iranian revolution. Big new hotels such as the al-Rashid, Meridien Palestine and Ishtar Sheraton opened, their tall towers rising above the palm trees. Iraq was still one of the most secular countries in the Middle East. In Basra, the main complaint among Iraqis about Kuwaitis was that they were crossing the border and drinking the city dry of beer.