Quiet reflection, business as usual mark anniversary in Baghdad

CNN Middle East Correspondent Jane Arraf is covering Iraq's observance of the tenth anniversary of the Gulf War and the effects of ongoing economic sanctions. A CNN correspondent since 1998, she reported extensively from Iraq for Reuters in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War.

Q: What's the atmosphere like in Baghdad on the anniversary of the Gulf War?

Arraf: Well, it's certainly a lot more positive that it was just after the war. Back then, this place was gray and grim, and if you drove through the streets you would see people huddling around garbage cans trying to keep warm and actually picking through garbage for food. It's come a long way since then, and it is struggling to become a normal city again. It won't be completely normal until sanctions are lifted. These are sanctions that were to have stayed in place for six months, and they've now been in place for 10 years. They've had a dramatic impact.

The economy has been devastated, there's massive unemployment, the schools are in terrible shape, the hospitals are still in terrible shape. But Iraq has been rebuilding itself, and people have survived these last 10 years. There's a bit of optimism because things have been getting economically better. Iraq keeps saying that it's eroding the sanctions, and there's a lot more trade than there used to be. So while people are a bit more optimistic about the future, they're not optimistic that sanctions will be lifted.

Q: If sanctions were lifted tomorrow, how much and how quickly would you expect things to change for ordinary Iraqis?

A: That's a question of some debate. The Americans, of course, and their allies say that all it would take is if President Saddam Hussein made some changes to help his own people, that it's not sanctions that are causing the suffering. But people here on the ground, including the U.N. and others who have been in charge of the humanitarian program here since it began, say that there are major obstacles in that sanctions program: the fact that the infrastructure has been devastated and Iraq has never been able to repair it.

VIDEO Iraqi president Saddam Hussein addresses his nation on the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Gulf War (Part I) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media) Part II Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)     AUDIO The people of Iraq under a decade of sanctions: Jane Arraf, Correspondent reports. AIFF or WAV sound   ALSO Israelis-Palestinians set for more talks Tuesday despite a violent Monday Iraq-U.N. weapons talks postponed until after February CNN's Jane Arraf on changing attitudes in the Persian Gulf    QUICK VOTE Should sanctions on Iraq now be lifted? Yes No Scaled down but not lifted completely View Results

It requires hundreds of millions of dollars in investment, and a lot of that investment has been blocked by the sanctions committee because of concerns by the United States that some of these items -- which are as simple as pipes for oil pipelines or water tankers for water -- could be used for dual use, could be turned to military purposes.

Now, if sanctions were lifted, there would be a relatively dramatic impact, because a lot more goods would flow in, since the airport would be completely re-opened instead of having the occasional sanctions-busting flight. But it would still take a long time for this place to get back to normal. The economy has been almost totally devastated, there's virtually no industry, Iraq relies on imported food under this oil-for-food program and its oil industry, while it's recovered quite a lot, is still in pretty bad shape. So no one's under the illusion that if sanctions were lifted tomorrow, things would change overnight. People are talking about a change that would have to happen over a period of years.

Q: During the old Soviet Union days, a lot of American reporters were cautiously and quietly approached by people who wanted to speak against the government, either on or off the record. Do you have people approach you in a similar way to talk about Saddam Hussein?

A: There are quite a lot of similarities to the old Soviet Union. This is one of the most tightly controlled countries in the world, and it is not a country where there's freedom of speech. The government here says that before it makes the kind of changes that the United States says it wants to see, democratic changes, it would have to have sanctions lifted. It uses sanctions as a reason for not being able to do anything. So the bottom line is as it stands now, and as it has stood for the last couple of decades, people are not very free to speak.

What I've noticed, and most people have noticed who have been coming here over the past decade, is that there does appear to be a bit more freedom. And it seems to be because the Iraqi government has had a very tough situation, and to stay in power as long as it has without having this place explode, it has had to release a couple of safety valves. One of those safety valves is that there are more newspapers, there are magazines, there are radio stations. And people are a little more free to criticize, for instance, cabinet ministers, which you see occasionally in the newspapers. President Saddam Hussein is very much a taboo. You will not see anyone publicly criticizing him. In fact, that is one of the most serious crimes one can commit here.

Privately, people do have different opinions, and they will express them. It's gotten to a point where, after 10 years, the control isn't as it was before the war. It can't be, with sanctions and everything else that the government here has been dealing with, but it's not a situation where people will freely criticize the government, by any means.

Q: As a representative of a Western news organization, have you ever been harassed, either by officials or by crowds of civilians?

A: One of the really amazing things is, and it's really difficult to explain this to people whose view of Iraq is formed only by the media, and particularly the television media, is that Iraqis are wonderfully welcoming to visitors here. It's part of the culture, part of the Arab culture, that they're responsible for guests. And the way that manifests itself is that they tend to go out of their way to show people that they are welcome.

At times when we are made to feel we're not welcome, it's a conscious political decision. It is almost never from the people on the streets. There's an incredible curiosity and even a warmth toward foreigners here. If you walk down a street in any poor neighborhood, anyplace where these people have been under sanctions for 10 years, they've been bombed by the United States and Britain on almost a daily basis in the north and south, they've had three major bombings, there is very little bitterness about Americans here -- about North Americans in general, about foreigners, about anyone who has been connected with the attacks on Iraq.

The interesting part of that is that they draw a difference between the people and their government, because they know that they are not responsible here for everything the Iraqi government does. They do not hold Americans responsible for things that the American government does. So everyone, from the people in the street to officials, makes clear over and over that they do not have a problem with the American people. One of the interesting things is that they always say that they feel very friendly toward Americans; there are a lot of Iraqis in America and there's an incredible amount of trade going on. The United States is still the biggest single buyer of Iraqi oil, even now, and there actually are a lot of ties between the two countries.

So when there has been any hostility or animosity toward Western reporters here, it has almost always been a decision that Western reporters will not be welcome, rather than something that comes from the ground up.

Q: Has the atmosphere on the street today, the day of the anniversary, been any different from what you saw yesterday or what you expect to see tomorrow? Are there any mass demonstrations? Are people generally behaving any differently?

A: Probably the interesting thing is that they're not behaving any differently than they would have behaved a week ago. Today is in the middle of midterm exams, so students went to school at 8 in the morning to write their exams. People went to work. Iraq was officially supposed to observe a moment of silence at 8 this morning. When that happens, police stop traffic and everything comes to a complete halt. For some reason, that didn't happen.

The only things that made the atmosphere different were that the mosques broadcast special prayers this morning -- thanks to God for protecting Iraq and Iraqis, to the extent that they were protected during the Gulf War -- and the church bells rang out.

There was a speech by President Saddam Hussein at 11, and a lot of people watched that. There are only two stations that people can watch here; they're not allowed satellite TV. So a lot of people did take that in, and it was a very, very strong speech, going back to the history of the invasion, saying that Kuwait deserved to be invaded, that Iraq had triumphed against followers of evil and followers of Satan, including the United States. Other than that, it was a normal day. At dusk, the time when there are evening prayers, there was a 21-cannon salute across the Tigris River to commemorate the start of the battle. But apart from those official functions, it was really an ordinary day.

With the number of casualties in Iraq -- there were very few casualties on the side of the U.S.-allied coalition, but in Iraq there were at least 25,000 -- almost everyone here, almost every family, was affected by the Gulf War and knows someone who actually was lost in the Gulf War, who never came back. There are a lot of painful memories.