Ordinary Iraqi families getting ready to fight
Baghdad — Om Hussein, wrapped in her black abaya, lists the contents of the family’s walk-in storage closet: three 175-pound cases of rice, two 33-pound cases of cooking fat, six cases of canned tomatoes, three crates of assorted legumes, a one-month supply of drinking water, frozen chicken livers in the freezer. And in the garage, jerry cans filled with fuel are piled floor to ceiling.
Om Hussein, who was reluctant to give her full name, and her Shiite family are preparing for war. They’ve stocked up on food. They bought a Kalashnikov rifle and a second car — so that there is space for all 13 members of their extended family should they need to flee in a hurry.
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In the past week, President Bush has tried to assure Americans that Iraq has stepped back from the brink of civil war. “Iraqis have shown the world they want a future of freedom and peace,” he told the Foundation for Defense of Democracies on Monday.Few Iraqis, however, share Bush’s view that the crisis has been averted. They are readying themselves for the worst, fleeing likely flash points, stockpiling weapons and basic foodstuffs, barricading their neighborhoods, and drawing lines in the sand delineating Sunni and Shiite territory.
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“There is no security right now, and I don’t expect things to get better,” says Tahrir Aboud Karim, 25, an abstract painter who has laid down his brushes and taken up arms to defend his largely Sunni neighborhood against roving Shiite militias. “I’m an artist, so I have a sense of what people need. When things were peaceful in Iraq, the people were lacking beauty, so I painted. Now the people need security, so I have become a soldier.”
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Mohammed Hussein, a 32-year-old Shiite shopkeeper from the Sunni-dominated suburb of Abu Ghraib, near the infamous prison, has taken shelter here. The day after the bombing of the Shiite shrine in Samarra, he says, he found a notice pasted to the door of his women’s clothing store in the Abu Ghraib market.“We have information that you are engaged in suspicious activities and have cooperated with suspicious people,” the notice read. “You have 48 hours to leave.” It was signed by a group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigades. Hussein collected his family and fled that same day.
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The migration to safer neighborhoods and provinces has upended property values across Iraq. Real estate prices in Baghdad have plummeted, while rents in onetime backwaters such as Nasiriya have skyrocketed. For many Shiites, that relatively calm southern city has become a sought-after haven from the sectarian bloodshed roiling Baghdad and central Iraq.“You could buy a house in Nasiriya for $1,500 before the war,” says Hussein Ali, a real estate broker in Baghdad. “That same house today is worth between $50,000 and $60,000 because now, especially after the Samarra bombings, people are desperate to live someplace safe.”
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[A] hobbling arms dealer [in Baya, speaking anonymously out of fear for his safety,] stands behind the counter of his gun repair shop polishing the barrel of a Russian-made Makarov pistol. His succinct appraisal of the Iraqi weapons market suggests what may lie ahead:“This is not the time to sell guns, only to buy guns.”