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Chaos and Calm Are 2 Realities for U.S. in Iraq
By DEXTER FILKINS

August 24, 2003


IWANIYA, Iraq, Aug. 19 ・As the area around Baghdad endured a week of repeated violence, a happier scene unfolded in this city, a two-hour drive to the south.

American soldiers, without helmets or flak jackets, attended graduation ceremonies of the Diwaniya University Medical School. At ease with the Iraqi students and their parents, the American marines laughed, joked and posed in photographs. One by one, the students walked up to thank them, for Marine doctors had taught classes in surgery and gynecology and helped draw up the final exams.

"We like the Americans very much here," said Zainab Khaledy, 22, who received her medical degree last Sunday. "We feel better than under the old regime. We have problems, like security, but everything is getting better."

Such is the dual reality that is coming to define the American enterprise in Iraq, a country increasingly divided between those willing to put up with the American occupation and those determined to fight it. While the areas stretching west and north from Baghdad roil and burn, much of the rest of the country remains, most of the time, remarkably calm. [On Saturday, three British soldiers were killed in the south, in Basra.]

Rather than fight the Americans, most Iraqis appear to be readily accepting the benefits of a wide-ranging reconstruction.

The two faces of the occupation give American policy makers something to take solace in and something to worry over. Four months into the occupation, the rebellion against American forces, though fierce, is still largely limited to the Arab Sunni Muslim population and its foreign supporters and confined to a relatively limited geographic area.

In much of the rest of the country, in places like Diwaniya and Mosul and Amara, American and British soldiers are finding a population that has, at least for now, made a fragile and tentative peace with the occupation. Violence still breaks out but increasingly in broad regions it no longer seems the norm.

In the north, the Kurds, long the beneficiaries of American protection, count themselves as America's most enthusiastic supporters. In the south, the country's Shiite majority, while restive and suspicious, has largely chosen to go along for now.

"I don't accept the definition of a country in chaos," L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator, said this month. "Most of this country is at peace."

But the violence in and around the capital, and the growing incidence of terrorism, seen in the suicide-bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, pose a grave threat to the American rebuilding plan. Both undercut the establishment of democratic rule, and make the Americans less confident about handing over political power to the Iraqis.

With the capital under threat of attacks, the Iraqi Governing Council, the 25-member body ultimately expected to assume the reins of power, has increasingly conducted its business behind the marble walls of the presidential palace ・away from danger, but away from the people.

The atmosphere in Diwaniya is far different. The 2,300 marines based here move freely about the city, tossing candy to the children, waving back to the parents. Not a single marine in Diwaniya has been lost to hostile fire since their arrival in April. There is not even a curfew.

"This is not Baghdad," said Lt. Col. Patrick Malay, who commands a force of about 950 marines in Diwaniya. "The Iraqis love us here."