From Bill Holdsworth

It's now been over a week since I returned from my journey to the Middle East and it's still hard to condense all that I saw and experienced there. No doubt, I'll keep revisiting my feelings for some time to come. But let's see if I can give you some mental snapshots.

My travel companions:
David Franken, is a friend of some thirty years, and has been my travel buddy for over a decade. Together we've journeyed to Cambodia (twice), Cuba, Easter Island, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Panama and Vietnam (four times). We started seriously chasing access to Iraq over five months ago, but kept heading into cul-de-sacs and brick walls.

It was only when I chanced upon Westmead Hospital children's cancer specialist Dr Hassan Naif being interviewed on late night news that a window of opportunity opened. His organisation, The Australian Fund For The Children Of Iraq, was defying the UN blockade by flying in with tonnes of medical and school equipment.

I was able to find his email address on the internet and sent him a request to join his group - and not a moment too soon. We literally had one day to get our paperwork together and didn't know until two days before departure that everything was okay. Even then, we didn't see our airline tickets, passports or visas until we were standing in Sydney's international terminal ready to board the plane.

Surprisingly, there was a large number of Iraqi Australians on board - this was the only way they could get into the country, and most of them left the group as soon as we arrived to stay with family.

Arriving in Baghdad:

At Damascus airport, we were formally greeted by Syrian officials, who wished us God speed - which meant sitting in the departure lounge for six hours waiting for our flight clearance. Because this flight is illegal and we're crossing airspace controlled by the UN, Baghdad wouldn't allow the plane to come until it was certain we wouldn't be shot down. (Apart from us, there are scores of moslem pilgrims on the plane - Iranian Shi'ites going to visit some of their religion's most revered shrines.) As a result, we arrived in Baghdad at 2am, to rousing cheers and a ragged brass band - only they weren't for us. They'd assembled to greet the victorious Iraqi soccer team!

Passing through the "Down With USA" exit, we board busses and are driven through Baghdad's quiet but surprisingly well-maintained arterial roads to our hotel, the Al Mansour Melia. It's described as five star and charges accordingly, but those stars have well and truly been dimmed by time. If faded 70's browns and yellows appeal, this is the place for you. At 4am, we get a night view of the legendary Tigris River from our ninth floor balcony, before trying to grab some sleep.

At 9.30am, we're up for our first function - the official welcome that was supposed to happen last night. We're addressed by Dr Hashimi, the head of the Organisation Of Friendship And Solidarity With The People Of Iraq, the people who cleared the bureaucratic hurdles for us to be here. Expecting a typical speech of pleasantries and generalities, we instead get an impassioned and quite detailed analysis of the hypocrisy and nce mentioned Kuwait), and a meeting with the Acting Minister For Health where he confirmed the rise of previously controllable diseases like cholera, malaria and leukemia, and the collapse of the Iraqi health system generally.

But two trips stand out in all this.

The first was a visit to the Amiriyya Bomb Shelter. One of 44 built across Baghdad for civilians to seek refuge during the Gulf War, it was targetted by the Americans as a military command post. First, they sent one smart bomb in to blast a hole in the roof. Five minutes later, a second went in through the hole and devastated the interior of the complex. Except that there were no military there, only women and children. Over 400 of them were incinerated. Only 14 survived. To this day, the US insists it didn't make a mistake. Now the place is a shrine to the dead, all smashed concrete and twisted metal, the walls carbonised with scorched blast patterns and shadows of the dead. There are also photographs, often of whole family groups, of those who died, along with messages of support and wreaths from various visitors. But I'll spare you the more gruesome aspects of this place.

The second was a tour of Baghdad's largest children's hospital. Iraq is being overtaken by a leukemia epidemic, which has been blamed on the use of depleted uranium during the Gulf War. As a result of the UN ban on certain drugs and the lack of basic things like blood bags, this means the hospital is crowded with kids waiting to die.  I can say things like there's (genuinely) a quiet dignity in these children and their families, and they bear their suffering with a remarkable lack of bitterness. But it's us who should be angry at what's being done in our name. Although it has a charter of alleviating poverty and disease, and of promoting peace and stability, the UN is achieving the exact opposite here. We see that the few tonnes of supplies we brought in would have made only a small ripple in this sea of unnecessary misery.

Saddam shame:

I guess it's time to talk about the man who has been the magnet of this attention, Saddam Hussein. The simple fact is he's a dictator, and a brutal one with it (but you'd know that from the reports published in the West). However, there does seem to be a level of respect for him from average Iraqis (and, frankly, from some of the Arab-Australians in our group).  That's partly due to his uncanny ability to resist all these external forces seeking to get rid of him, or at least to make him toe the line. But it's more than that. It's the way, in the withering face of the blockade, he has substantially rebuilt his country - there is hardly any evidence of the massive damage wrought by all those smart and dumb bombs. There is even a Museum Of The Challenge, which uses architects models of buildings destroyed during the war and since refurbished to prove the point. And the UN's continuing actions, the sanctions and the almost daily surgical air strikes, are having the perverse effect of actually unifying support behind him.

Mind you, we found there is some disquiet about Saddam's enthusiasm for another war. The current rallying cry in Iraq is to liberate Palestine, and Saddam has signed up millions of "volunteers", supposedly with the aim of training them militarily and sending them off to do battle with Israel. Of course, some of his support is manufactured in the way of all dictators. Apart from two government-controlled TV channels singing his praises (often literally - every night, they have a different song about his warmth, courage, devotion, generosity, magnanimity, military prowess, etc, etc), you can't go anywhere without his image beneficently beaming at you - from framed portraits in shops and hotels to concrete and tile billboards in the major squares. His image is even woven into carpets - good for wiping your feet on, I suppose.

Then there's the public buildings - the Saddam International Airport, the Saddam Tower, the Saddam Children's Hospital, the Saddam Art Centre, the under-construction Saddam Mosque (to be the largest in the world). As one cynical taxi driver said to us, "What's next? The Saddam Massage Parlour? The Saddam Toilet?". Add to that some 37 palaces scattered across the country, the strategic placement of which meant we were prevented from taking certain photos at Babylon, from the Saddam Tower, etc. We were even prevented by soldiers from crossing a particular bridge because it afforded a view of a new palace that we might be tempted to take pictures of. Speaking of illegal photos. . . .

Our detention:

David and I were feeling constrained by the tour itinerary, and decided to strike out on our own. Hiring an English-speaking taxi driver, we went to find the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier, the Martyrs Monument, the giant Four Swords Of Triumph (symbolising Saddam's, ahem, victory in the Iran-Iraq War) and various other significant sites.

During this sprint around town, we pass Zawra Park, where there's a large bronze statue of Saddam pointing, presumably to the future. A good photo opportunity, you might think. Except that the moment we take our pictures, we're nabbed by a secret police officer. First he demands our cameras. When we refuse, he calls over a second guy, also secret police. They decide to settle for the film, which we still won't hand over. So two uniformed police are brought over. Again, we're giving them nothing. In the meantime, our cabbie is beside himself, pleading with us to give in, and pleading with them to let us go. They begin to threaten him with confiscation of his licence because he's abetted two foreign spies. Worse - if we are formally charged, it might have implications on the whole Australian Delegation. So, understandably, we're also a little panicky.

When they ominously take the driver away for a private chat, we take the chance to change our film over for blanks, snapping off some discreet but pointless shots in readiness to "surrender" them. But, after 40 minutes of haranguing, the driver and one of the secret police return all chummy - they've settled on a bribe price of about A$20. It doesn't sound much but it's the equivalent of two month's salary in Iraq. More than that, this little incident highlights two things - the power of the police and the pervasiveness of corruption.

Babylon:

Iraq is, to put it simply, where the foundations of western civilian were laid down. The valley between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers is not only where agriculture is thought to originate, it's also where the first city-states arose, where the first codified laws were put in place, and where writing was invented. Along with the Chaldeans, the Sumerians and the Assyrians, probably the most famous ancient civilisation of this region was Babylon. Everyone has heard of the Tower Of Babel and the wonder of the hanging gardens. Babylon has a history dating back at least 6,000 years, but reached its peak during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar about 2,600 years ago. He rebuilt the city and made it one of the marvels of its day. It was subsequently destroyed by the Persians and then Alexander The Great.  So, as you can imagine, it's now a major archaeological site. But what is there will surprise and possibly shock many people. Saddam has decided to rebuild the city, using the historic foundations as the basis for the new work. So a new Babylon has risen on top of the ancient clay bricks of the original. But there's even more to it. When Nebuchadnezzar did his rebuilding, he ensured every single brick had an inscription with his name on it, proclaiming to the world who had done these mighty works. So when Saddam came to perform his own Babylonian resurrection, guess what! Every brick had his name on it.

Of course, what's worse is that nearly all the best examples of Babylon's art and architecture has been plundered by the museums of Europe and America. So if you want to see the Ishtar Gate, for example, you have to go to Germany. At Babylon, they've had to make do with a less than life-size replica.

Observations:

There's much more I could tell you about, from our visit to the holy Shi'ite city of Kerbala to checking out what's on sale in the souks. And I haven't even touched on my time in Syria and Lebanon. (Despite their both being armed military camps, with the usual sensitivities that come with that, after Iraq they were relatively easy. But more on them another time, perhaps.) So I'll leave this with some observations.

Apart from the attentiveness of the police, and despite a lot of propaganda (from their side and from ours), our experience suggests the average Iraqi is very pleased to have foreigners visit. But for that to happen, the sanctions issue has to be resolved, and the Iraq's reluctance to open its doors to ordinary travellers will have to soften.

Either way, the lot of the average Iraqi is in limbo until then. The last decade has seen their world turned upside down, to the point where a once thriving middle class has been all but wiped out. Those with professional skills have left the country because they can't make ends meet. Those who stay either learn the tricks of corruption, or take on unlikely jobs with the promise of more pay (English-speaking cabbies, for example), or they become the new poor.

Meanwhile, the rich and powerful are hardly bothered by the sanctions at all, having access, via smuggling and other devious methods, to all the goodies they had before all this started. If the UN sanctions were wielded like a hammer, they've flattened the wrong fly. But, like other small nations that have been pushed to the wall by the West (Vietnam, Cuba), they've found within themselves a resilient and wily resourcefulness that keeps things running well past the point where you or I would have thrown them away - and I suspect that includes their government.