BAGHDAD - So Baghdad has been bombed again, but it seemed Friday that this is only a minor problem. People have got used to the bombardment one hears - if ever bombardment is something you can get used to.

They are going to starve us. The American soldier will never come and fight on the streets of Baghdad. They will just wait for all our food to finish, wait for our water to finish, they will wait for us to be finished.

Baghdad Shopkeeper

After the bombing of Al-Sha'ab nobody believes in precision bombs any more. ”It is a matter of luck,” says a shopkeeper, who is still getting a daily supply of fresh tomatoes to sell. Most bombs are expected to be precision-delivered, the rest are a small chance.

And that kind of small chance at least Baghdad has learnt to take in its stride.

It is not these chances that worry people, it is the growing certainties that have spread new fear. As the British and U.S. troops close in around Baghdad, the fear is that they will close that circle, and stay there.

”They are going to starve us,” says a shopper at the souk. ”The American soldier will never come and fight on the streets of Baghdad,” he says. ”They will just wait for all our food to finish, wait for our water to finish, they will wait for us to be finished.”

Baghdad is preparing for siege. It is preparing for siege in a summer when temperatures can rise to 50 degrees Celsius, without electricity, without enough water, and with only the most basic food. Baghdad is learning to fear a future that will make the years of crippling sanctions seem like a picnic.

Residents are beginning to fear whether humanitarian aid will ever get through. The aid that feeds the people would also feed Iraqi military resistance to the forces laying siege.

There are fears also over the fate of the millions who live in the suburbs of Baghdad. No one knows their situation, and certainly not the journalists living in Palestine hotel or the Rashid hotel. ”Let's face it, we are reporting from our hotels, and really from the basement of our hotels,” says a cameraman for a British channel.

The intense bombing of Saddam Hussein's Palace of Peace and other government buildings on Friday of last week gave journalists a rare ringside view of the war. Since then all that Baghdad has seen is mostly smoke in the distance.

Most journalists do not want to step out when there is fear of bombing. And few can wander far anyhow; the minders take care of that. Journalists reporting Baghdad are reporting really the Iraqi official briefings, and a stretch of downtown Baghdad around the Tigris. When Baghdad begins to suffer, not even the journalists in Baghdad will be there to tell the story.

At the vegetable market they say the roads to Baghdad are open from the north.

No one knows for how long. Reports are coming in now of U.S. troops landing in the north with tanks, clearly for an assault from the north. It matters little what Iraqi television says, or even that there is no cable to link you with Al Jazeeera.

The radio tells people more than television can. And somehow everyone always seems to know what Al Jazeera puts out.

”They will try to divide the city against itself,” says an Iraqi at the souk speaking perfect English; he does not say who he is and what he does for a living. ”They will try to set the people against the government, they will try to separate Sunni from Shia. This city is going to become a hell, I tell you, and we can all see that.” Nobody believes the military will surrender to the Americans. Nobody believes that men from the Ba'ath party in their tens of thousands will exchange their Kalashnikovs for submission to the Americans.

The Palestine Hotel is a comfortable place for now. It would probably be among the last places in Baghdad to feel the worst of what Baghdad will suffer. But even here the hotel guests - journalists mostly - have been warned that once things get really bad, they will be on their own.

After a brave week or so Baghdad is beginning to shut down. Most shops now remain closed. Few parents care to send their children to school, office buildings open, but workers spend their time talking about what is to come.

There is still no panic, but there is a desperation now to the attempts people are making to store food and water. Over the last few days they have become more precious than dinars.

This will be the hottest summer Baghdad has ever known.

Copyright 2003 Inter Press Service

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