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In Central Iraq, a Welcome and a Threat
Marines of "The Revolution" Greeted by Cheering Crowds
April 10, 2003 -- This essay was filed for npr.org by NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep, with U.S. Marines patrolling the towns south of Baghdad.
I've sent a picture from al-Amarah, Iraq, the city from which I reported the last couple of days. The U.S. Marines moved toward the city intending to smash an Iraqi armored division there, but arrived to discover that the Iraqi soldiers had fled, abandoning many of their tanks.
According to some residents, some of the soldiers put on civilian clothes and remained in the city somewhere. Others were killed in what an opposition group cheerfully described as "the revolution." Before the Marines could arrive, some prominent local residents had seized control of the town.
As one military officer put it: "Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view," the city was in the hands of a tribal sheikh, who, incidentally, enjoyed the backing of the CIA. The Marines have left the sheikh to run the place. They are not basing themselves in town, but have been making forays in from the airport.
On Thursday morning, a Marine general drove a convoy into town to inspect something his troops had discovered: an Iraqi al-Samoud missile, mounted on its mobile launcher, which was hidden beneath the bleachers of a soccer stadium. As often happens in poor neighborhoods around the world, however, the general was unable to make his inspection in peace.
As the convoy arrived, hundreds of people came running to see it -- soon, perhaps thousands were there. It was a boisterous crowd that cheered the Americans but also demanded water and electricity. People crowded around you, touching you, shouting in your face, in Arabic or whatever English they knew. The crowd began to make some people nervous.
I've seen several crowds in Iraq now, and they always whistle and cheer the Americans. On Monday I plunged into a crowd to interview several people, and as I walked away they applauded, as though the curtain had just come down on the second act of a fairly good play.
But it's never clear to me why they are cheering. Do they love America? Do they hate Saddam Hussein? Are they afraid of the Americans, who they see as their new rulers, and feel they should kowtow to their master as they did to Saddam? Are they biding their time, waiting for a chance to strike back at the foreign troops? Or do they race to watch the military convoys because they're bored, unemployed and broke, and the parade of military vehicles provides the only entertainment in their tortured lives?
Whatever the answer, I'm not sure there is pure joy out there... This is not quite the liberation of Paris. A man might kiss you on the cheek in welcome, but when you pull him aside to talk to him, the same man will tell you he wants the Americans out of his country right now.
For the record, the U.S. military likes to point to the cheering masses. Privately, Marines say they see people cheering them at the same time that they make crude gestures -- like lifting up their feet to show the soles of their shoes, which is an insult here. The Marines are baffled, because they believe they are doing this country a favor.
When the crowd gathered at the soccer stadium, the military did not like the security situation at all: about 20 heavily armed Marines were trying to control thousands of shouting people. The situation made some of the traveling reporters uneasy too, although many of us are used to crowds gathering as we work in strange places.
And to be fair, there was reason to be on guard: the crowd gathered in a city that was probably full of ex-Iraqi soldiers, a city that had been torn by looting, arson and gunfire in recent days. By their sheer numbers the people did pose a potential threat.
The general promptly got back in his Humvee, and the convoy very quickly drove away. But the crowd was also quite friendly, and before we left I snapped this photo of a young man cheerfully holding up Iraqi money -- a now worthless 50-dinar note. It is his personal portrait of Saddam Hussein.
In Depth
 April 6, 2003: Inskeep hitches a ride on a Marine Corps helicopter to central Iraq.
April 7, 2003: Marines blow up a portrait of Saddam in a village along U.S. supply routes.
Hear NPR reports by Steve Inskeep.
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