Q+A: Security, Jobs and Politics in Iraq

March 18, 2005 — -- As the newly elected Iraqi government continues to sort out its leadership, how is life going for the average citizens?ABC News Correspondent Nick Watt answers your questions from Baghdad.

Cathie in Utah asks: I am a mom to a soldier, and a mom period, I wonder how safe it is for the average Iraqi child? I wonder how much safer they were before all this started than now with the constant attacks by insurgents. How do the kids handle all this uncertainty?

Nick Watt: Children are unquestionably suffering psychological trauma as a result of the ongoing insurgency. Psychologists who treat them have told us so. We spoke to one child who bought a toy plastic gun and really thought he could protect his mother with it.

As for safety, children run the risk of being killed by suicide bombers or other insurgents. I don't know of any cases where children have been specifically targeted. But last week when we were in Balad, north of Baghdad, an insurgent detonated his car bomb outside the house of an Iraqi army major. The major was not killed, but a number of children passing by on their way to school were killed. Such tragic incidents happen all too often.

Before the invasion children were safer. Saddam Hussein ruled this country with such an iron grip that there was little crime. However, a child would have to fear his parents being taken away by the secret police to never be seen again.

Taiki in Japan asks: Are the Iraqis suffering from lifestyle problems, such as a lack of more money than they did before the war?

Watt: Average salaries in Iraq have risen since the invasion. During the last years of Saddam -- largely as a result of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq -- doctors were, for example, being paid $1 a month as the economy went into a nose dive. Items we take for granted in the developed world were not available in the shops. Salaries have risen but unemployment is now very high. One of the main reasons you'll see 300 men standing in line to join the police the day after 100 would-be recruits were killed in the same spot is that the security forces are one of the few employers still hiring. An Iraqi cop earns $235. Not a lot, but it's a job.

The main lifestyle problems people face are lack of security and intermittent electricity.

Ann in California asks: My son, an infantryman, is being deployed to Iraq "mid-year" and anticipates a long deployment -- over 12 months. Do you see any signs that 2006 will bring a decrease in U.S. troop levels, i.e. is there a chance that the tempo of the training of Iraqi soldiers will pick up significantly?

Watt: The training of Iraq's security forces is gaining momentum. The Bush Administration, the Iraqis and many mothers like you hope that U.S. troop levels can drop later this year. It is possible. There are now (by U.S. estimates that some call inflated) 140,000 trained Iraqi soldiers and police. Their level of training is questionable in some cases. But Iraqis continue to join up and more foreign countries are offering to help in the training.

U.S. soldiers I speak to are increasingly impressed by quality of the Iraq soldiers they work with. Most routine U.S. patrols are now joint patrols with the Iraqi Army. Many, as I mention above, do join up for the money. But many have a genuine desire to serve their country. They long for the day they can take over security and American soldiers can leave.

Jim in Ovid, N.Y. asks: Many of the ambushes & IEDs seem to happen in busy areas such as the road from the airport to the Green Zone. Have Iraqi civilians been at all helpful in alerting our forces to these dangers?

Watt: Iraqi civilians are increasingly alerting their own security forces to insurgent activity. Those Iraqi police and soldiers do, of course, work closely with the U.S. forces. Iraqi police we've spoken to say the number of tips they get has greatly increased since Election Day, when Iraqi police were seen doing an outstanding job protecting voters. The Iraqi public found a new faith in the police. Remember that under Saddam Hussein the police was used largely to protect Saddam and keep the people in line, rather than to protect the people. Attitudes are changing. And as people see more innocents killed by insurgents, they're more willing to do what they can to help coalition and Iraqi forces deal with the problem.

It's natural that Iraqis confide in their own security forces more readily than with the Americans. They speak the same language, share the same culture and in many cases may know their local cop. Don't forget that cooperating could mean death. Insurgents threaten and target people for cooperating.

Ned in Santa Barbara, Calif., asks: What are Sunni clerics saying (to Arabs, not to the English-speaking press) about the rash of religion-inspired bombings of other Iraqis.

Watt: Most Sunni and Shiite imams preach against such attacks in Friday prayers. What they say to the Arab or Western press is the same -- they condemn the attacks. These attacks are condemned by most people in the Arab world.

Remember that most of the people killed by insurgents here are Iraqis and are Muslims. Killing innocents is entirely against the teachings of Islam. Insurgents have hijacked religion. Remember that the religious fanatics are only a small part of the insurgency. U.S. intelligence suggests they are only 5 percent of insurgents on the north of the country -- where Saddam loyalists are the backbone of the movement.

Now both Sunni and Shiite clerics have, at times, fomented revolt against the U.S. troops and the Iraqi troops that serve with them. But that's different from encouraging bombings of civilians.

An Iraqi government source told us that some Sunni clerics are involved in the criminal end of the insurgency. They lost the subsidies they received under Saddam, so now function as local crime lords. I stress that these guys are a minority.

When al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for a garbage truck bombing two weeks ago they took the unusual step of saying the blast occurred at 0630 to reduce the risk of killing "muslim passers by." It was the first time I'd heard them make such a claim. Had they turned a corner? Realized the widespread revulsion their attacks on civilians have spawned? Then they hit a funeral at a mosque in Mosul two days later and killed more than 50. There went my theory.

The short answer is, in general Sunni clerics condemn "religious" bombings. There are exceptions to every rule.

Chris in Kentucky asks: The news concentrates on all the negative events that are happening. How about covering things like:How many schools are open again? Or how many new schools? How many hospitals are open again? Exactly how much money from oil pipeline operations is going to Iraq? How many roads have been rebuilt? How many bridges? How much housing has been built? How are the telecommunications and news distribution coming along?

Watt: Most of the stories we cover here revolve around security and insurgent attacks. The reason is simple. Almost every Iraqi I have spoken to (and I speak to a lot of them) lists security as his or her primary concern. These are not negative stories. These are the stories of what is happening here.

We do cover the reconstruction stories you mention. But they're hard to cover because the security situation makes it difficult for us to get around the country. And remember that reconstructions stories are not all "good news" stories. I was in Sadr City today where people still have to wade through six inches of sewage to get to the vegetable market. The new sewage system they've been promised still hasn't been installed.

David in Oklahoma asks: Given the high price of gas at the pump, what are the prospects for getting more oil out of Iraq?

Watt: Security is the main issue here again. Insurgents know that blowing pipelines cripples Iraq and pipelines are hard to protect. There is now a special Iraqi unit trying to do the job. But the short answer here is that more oil will flow when the security situation is dealt with. There are no shortages of western oil companies and governments only too eager to help get the oil out of Iraq. What that will do to the price of oil at your pump is another question and best directed to Betsy Stark, ABC's correspondent who covers the oil markets.

This question was posted on the ABCNEWS.com Iraq message board from "Mythical_WMD": Are the Kurds in anyway preparing to split from the rest of Iraq?

Watt: We went to Kurdistan last month and every single Kurd told us the same thing: 'We want independence, we want to split from Iraq, but we're not going to do it right now.'

Kurds are not Arabs, like Iraqis from the south. They wear different clothes, speak a different language and have a different culture. Iraq is really an unnatural alliance of Arabs and Kurds formed by the British during colonial rule. Since 1991, they enjoyed a form of autonomy when the U.S. set up a no-fly zone in the north of Iraq to protect them from Saddam's troops.

But here's why they won't split just yet. Firstly, the U.S. wouldn't support it. It's not current U.S. policy to divide Iraq. And what the U.S. says still goes around here. Also, neighboring Turkey, Syria and Iran all have sizeable Kurdish minorities and fear an independent Kurdistan would try to annex chunks of their territory. They would fight Kurdish separation or at the very least close their borders and strangle Iraqi Kurdistan's booming economy. The Kurds say they will give the Baghdad government a chance. They're asking for a ... state in which they enjoy autonomy. But if the Shiites that dominate the Baghdad political scene don't give the Kurds what they want, then that is when they might try to split from the rest of Iraq.