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 pattern
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 Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles 
#1354843 - 03/06/03 10:33 AM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles
http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/03/06/baghdad/index.html
March 6, 2003 | BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Baghdad residents are snapping up pistols and hunting rifles; trenches and sandbagged gun positions are multiplying. Militiamen loyal to Saddam Hussein say they're ready for a fight to the death.
Baghdad is gearing up for what could be a street-to-street fight against American troops, if President Bush gives the order to invade. Saddam appears nightly on television to reassure Iraqis the Americans would be no match in a ground battle.
Iraqis echo his words. But some say privately they are preparing to fight off another enemy: gunmen who may try to settle old scores or simply take advantage of a power vacuum to rob and loot.
"A lot of it is going to depend on motivation and the level of loyalty to Saddam, and that's difficult to gauge," Ian Kemp of Jane's Defense Weekly said Thursday in a telephone interview from London.
The United States and Britain have nearly 300,000 troops in the Persian Gulf region -- and expect to have 100,000 more within weeks -- for a threatened invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam from power and ensure Iraq isn't hiding weapons of mass destruction.
In a week, this city of 5 million people on the banks of the Tigris River has taken on the appearance of a defense line, where preparations for battle are visible at almost every corner.
Residents say the number of sandbagged positions has almost tripled in two weeks. There are at least twice as many armed policemen in full combat gear as there were a week ago.
Guns are very common in Iraq. Even so, gun shop owners say business has risen by 25 percent over the past month, with cheap pistols priced under $100 in highest demand. The shops are not allowed to sell assault rifles, but store owners say hunting rifles are selling fast.
"This is a business like any other business, and the present situation makes everyone want to think he's equipped to defend himself and his family," gun shop owner Mahmoud Mahdi said Thursday.
Mohiey Khalaf, 72, has been in the business of repairing and maintaining firearms for over 40 years. On Thursday, he was busy fixing a black revolver at his workshop in a small pedestrian alley.
"Business has been good. A lot of people are trying to make sure their firearms work," he said, holding a torch in one hand and a red-hot piece of metal in the other.
On Wednesday, in an ominous sign of what may be in store if American troops attempt to capture the city, 60 men clad in white paraded through Baghdad, pledging to give their lives in suicide attacks on U.S. troops.
Members of Saddam's ruling Baath Party say they've set up neighborhood brigades with a structure of command that ensures uninterrupted communication if fighting breaks out.
"How can they possibly try and enter Baghdad?" said Ali Mohammed, a 30-year-old local Baath leader in the working class district of Al-Habibiyah. "They dare not come in because they will meet a certain defeat."
Emerging from a gun repair shop, he tucked his pistol into his belt.
Mohammed, like millions of Baath Party members and militiamen loyal to Saddam, also has a Kalashnikov, the weapon of preference for most Iraqis. Occasional violence between rival tribes and Iraqis' love of hunting mean hardly an Iraqi household is without at least one firearm.
Saddam has for weeks been feeding the notion that Iraqis fighting on home terrain would have an edge over the better-armed Americans. Meeting with infantry commanders Wednesday, he catalogued the features of a U.S. aircraft carrier he did not identify: a nuclear power station, a water desalination plant, nine stories and 20,000 meals a day.
"But does it have tires to reach Baghdad? Certainly not. The one thing that will finally decide the battle is a soldier on his feet," he said.
Many in Baghdad agreed.
"My family taught me how to use a gun at age 5," said Nazer Qahtan Khalil, co-owner of one of Baghdad's estimated 45 gun shops. "Would you allow someone to enter your home uninvited? God willing, Baghdad will be the grave of the Americans."
In addition to the danger posed by street battles in Baghdad, experts and some Iraqis warn any power vacuum, however brief, would tempt looters or people who want to settle scores among the city's many clans and tribes.
Residents of the capital are reluctant to speak openly about the prospect of violence between Iraqis, preferring instead to stick to the official line that every citizen would rise to the defense of his country against foreign invaders.
But Hussein, a 31-year-old Baghdad taxi driver who wouldn't give his last name, said while Iraqis would indeed fight for their country, some of the city's residents fear Iraqis could attack their local enemies if lawlessness breaks out.
"Without government officials mediating as they always do, there could be a lot of fighting," he said.
My take: Vietnam 2 - The Urban Jungles of Baghdad.
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man = monkey + mushroom
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Anonymous
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1354889 - 03/06/03 11:05 AM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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awesome. i hope they make good movies and shit about it. yeah, that and i hope that it's like the 60's again.
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pattern
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: ]
#1354894 - 03/06/03 11:08 AM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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"All the fighting of Black Hawk Down with the epic drama of Titanic!"
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man = monkey + mushroom
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pattern
multiplayer
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Posts: 2,185
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1355318 - 03/06/03 03:30 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2825377.stm
Iraqis prepare for the worst
By Nick Pelham
BBC Baghdad
As the American military presence in the Gulf continues to build ahead of a possible US-led attack against Iraq, the people of Baghdad are preparing to stand and fight.
The city's defences are being boosted, with sandbags dotted around street corners and young and old readying themselves to take up arms.
There is a thin veneer of normality as people go about their daily chores
But the battle to keep fear and panic at bay is not easily won.
Baghdad professor Wamidh Nadhmi runs through a list of his fears: "We worry about the loss of electricity, about water, about how smart smart bombs are, about Iraqi tanks ploughing into our neighbourhood and turning us into military targets, and about mass-hysteria."
The fear has grown so great that his students can no longer concentrate.
Emergency preparations
On the streets, a gritty determination keeps away signs of panic. Traffic wardens issue parking tickets, nervous brides and grooms still turn up at the stall of Said Ali Mudeaagha, neatly-bedecked in a black and white turban, and the Sharia courts are still crammed with fractious couples seeking divorce.
But celebrations for this week's holiday to mark the Muslim New Year were downbeat, and fewer families than usual went to picnic in the palm groves that ring Baghdad.
Iraqis scour the papers for news of the escalating crisis
Instead, Iraqis spent the day digging boreholes through the foundations of their homes, selling their last assets for vital cash to buy a small generator for when the bombs hit the power stations, and shopping for canaries in the bird market of Old Baghdad.
Iraqis hope the canaries might detect any use of chemical weapons before it is too late, but the only civilians in the city with gas masks are foreign journalists.
Museum emptied
Look more closely, and you find that the Arab world's largest museum has packed up its priceless collection of Mesopotamian art and closed its doors.
And at street corners you'll see piles of sandbags - tell-tale signs, say Baghdadis, that the authorities are digging in for a siege.
"However many planes the Americans fly, they will still have to enter the cities," says Hassib Obeidi, a senior ideologue in the Baath, the political party that has ruled Iraq for the past 35 years.
"The battle for Iraq will be fought in the cities. This isn't Kuwait."
Few find reassurance in the message that Baghdad will be the place where the Baath plan to make their last stand.
Suicide bombers have volunteered to defend the city
Iraq was the first Arab state of the 20th Century to win its independence, and its people do not relish the prospect of becoming the first state to lose it in the 21st.
Young and old vow they will take up arms, of the physical kind if they lack guns, once war begins.
Sixty suicide bombers responded to President Saddam Hussein's appeal for martyrs to join his "army of Jihad".
Armed with dreams of paradise, they marched through the streets of Baghdad on Wednesday vowing to blow themselves up should the US army arrive at the city gates.
But should the patriotism falter and there be a challenge to central authority, Baath apparatchiks armed with machine guns have begun night-time patrols of the streets.
The party has also notified residents that a curfew will be imposed to keep Baghdadis in their homes once the bombing begins.
Even at this late hour, the passport offices are packed.
Religious fever
Threatened from within and without, terrorised Baghdadis are flocking to their houses of prayer for their last hope of salvation.
Sunnis cite the tale of Abraham saved from the fires of hell.
The people of Baghdad are turning to religion for hope of salvation
Christians scour the Book of Isaiah, studying the tale of Sennacherib, a biblical Assyrian king whose massive army was wiped out by the angel of the Lord as it assembled at the gates of Jerusalem.
Shias recount fabulous reports of levitating turbans as proof that God is working a miracle.
Secular men splutter Marx at daughters and wives fast-donning the veil.
The retreat into religious communities also has proved problematic, sparking fears of a flare-up of sectarian tension.
"Worst of all," says Professor Nadhmi. "Iraqis are now afraid of other Iraqis."
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man = monkey + mushroom
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TheCaptain
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1355417 - 03/06/03 04:26 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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Heh...
I dont blame em really, we'd do the same thing if we were getting invaded.
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"I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are."
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 GabbaDj
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1355527 - 03/06/03 05:36 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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I wonder if we will go into Bagdhad at all? The majority of Iraqis dont like the US, many of them know someone killed or injured by us in the last war, they know that its our interfierence in their culture and way of life that keeping them in poverty.
Sure many of them dont want to fight and many will run but even those people who do see us as an invaiding force, not liberators and their will be children with Ak-47's on street corners gunning at out troops.
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GabbaDj
FAMM.ORG
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pattern
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: GabbaDj]
#1355628 - 03/06/03 06:43 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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> I wonder if we will go into Bagdhad at all?
The other option is to lay seige to the city, surround it, starve it and bomb it until Saddam surrenders.
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man = monkey + mushroom
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TheCaptain
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1356228 - 03/07/03 03:59 AM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
The other option is to lay seige to the city, surround it, starve it and bomb it until Saddam surrenders.
Which he wont do, i dont think. Man, with all this talk hes probably so well prepared he might be able to last years under seige.
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"I mean, it's real hard to be free when you are bought and sold in the marketplace. 'Course, don't ever tell anybody that they're not free 'cause then they're gonna get real busy killin' and maimin' to prove to you that they are."
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pattern
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Posts: 2,185
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: TheCaptain]
#1356714 - 03/07/03 06:10 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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I think the USA should give Iraq 4 months to disarm.
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man = monkey + mushroom
Edited by pattern (03/07/03 06:11 PM)
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Anonymous
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1356774 - 03/07/03 06:38 PM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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but what if they do and bush doesn't get to grab up some nice middle eastern oil for the united states ?
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Chills420 version2
Poo Pie Maker
Registered: 01/25/03
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Last seen: 20 years, 8 months
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Re: Baghdad's residents snap up guns, rifles [Re: pattern]
#1357287 - 03/08/03 03:04 AM (21 years, 6 months ago) |
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Well he just fucked up
If he disarms and isn't attacked I wonder how long his people will put up with his shit now that there armed?
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You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
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