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CNN Live At Daybreak

Iraqi Citizens Concerned About New Government

Aired April 09, 2003 - 06:18   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Want to take you to the Palestine Hotel where usually the Iraqi Information Minister holds his impromptu press conferences. Actually, not so impromptu, they happen every day.
Let's go to Rula Amin to talk more about that. She's in Jordan near the Iraqi border.

And this is significant, isn't it -- Rula?

RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is very significant, Carol. Not only the Information Minister didn't show up, but also none of the Iraqi officials who work at the Iraqi Information Ministry, and usually they are always at the Palestinian Hotel, didn't show up. They use -- the Information Minister has a press office downstairs in the lobby of the reception of the hotel. Every journalist cannot leave the hotel without a minder, without an escort from the ministry, and this has been the case for the last 12 years in Iraq.

Today, none of them showed up, and this was a significant sign for the journalists at the hotel. They just knew that this was a sign the regime was collapsing and that the people at the ministry are giving up. So they just left the hotel, roamed around the city. They went to Saddam City, they went into different neighborhoods in Baghdad and they reported that there were very few Iraqi security forces on the streets. Many checkpoints abandoned, many tanks, APCs abandoned, and they said very, very, very few people on the street with military uniform and with weapons -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Another thing I noticed, and let's take people back to the east central portion of Baghdad where these joyous celebrations are ongoing, and there's a large Shiite population there, yet that area of town is called Saddam City. It seems to be a slap in the face to those citizens.

AMIN: It is, Carol. It seems like this a reversal of fortune for those people. Most of them have immigrated to Baghdad from the suburbs, from the farmland, from the south. They were all put in that neighborhood. It's a very poor, overpopulated neighborhood. About two million people live there in very poor conditions, very little water supplies, most of the time a lot of power outage. There's no work and many -- high unemployment.

And those people are among the most angry at Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. They're very strong opponents of the regime. Some of their relatives have been put in prison, some of the religious leaders have been assassinated and persecuted, so they are very happy to see the regime fall, as we have expected them to do for so long. They've never hid their feelings, but they were never to express it. Today they did. They went on the streets and celebrated.

COSTELLO: And tell us again, because earlier we saw people destroying a picture of Saddam Hussein, one man spitting on it, another man hitting it with his shoe. Tell us what would happened to these people if Saddam Hussein were firmly in power still.

AMIN: They would never have been able to dare -- they wouldn't have dared to go on the streets if Saddam Hussein, or if they believed for a second that Saddam Hussein was still in power. Those people must have strong faith that he's gone and that it's over; otherwise, they wouldn't have dared to go on the streets.

We also have to remember that for the last few weeks, even before the war started, Saddam Hussein's security forces were very strongly present in Saddam City. They had it encircled. There were very large numbers of security forces, ruling Baath Party militia, they were all there in every corner making sure that those people are not going to rise against the regime.

And obviously those people, those security forces must have abandoned their positions for those people to -- the people of Saddam City to know that it's over and they can go on the street, they can go into government buildings and take whatever they can take. They went into the Trade Ministry, the universities, the government ministries, the U.N. headquarters. They took everything that's valuable and not valuable.

They are very poor people. And what seemed unvaluable to us, it will be valuable to them. We saw them even taking plastic flowers. We saw them taking documents, safe boxes, anything. Anything they can found, they took. And there were all sectors of the society there. We saw kids, we saw young men, we saw old men, we saw women. So it seems everyone is taking advantage of this break of law and order and they're doing whatever they want since very long -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well let me ask you this, you said two million people live in this area. And while they are greeting Marines joyously right now, how difficult do you think it will be for the coalition forces to control this population?

AMIN: It will be very difficult because those people here not only are resentful about the regime but they also want to make sure that any era that starts today, from today, they are going to be the one who have control over their life. Many of the Shiite leaders have made it clear, they want to see Saddam Hussein go, but they are not going to tolerate that the U.S. would continue its presence in Iraq. They always said the U.S. troops is welcome to remove Saddam Hussein, but then they have to go out.

They want to make sure they are the ones in power, they are the ones who have a say in their lives. They are -- the Shiite community is over six -- it's considered more than 60 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite and those people want to make sure they are represented in any government in -- of Iraq in the future and that they would be represented fairly. Now is this going to happen? We don't know, but we do know that they're going to press very hard so that this can happen -- Carol.

COSTELLO: President Bush has made it clear he wants -- he wants Iraqis to control Iraq. But how will the government, the U.S. government get that information to the people of Iraq to calm their fears?

AMIN: There are fears and there are concerns. The people are concerned, Iraqis, whether they're Shiites or Sunnis, they're concerned that all the U.S. wants is to replace Saddam Hussein with another dictator and the only difference is that he would be an ally of Saddam Hussein, because many of the -- even the Arab governments who are around Iraq are concerned that Iraq as a result of this collapse in the regime they would be disintegrated. They have been calling on the U.S. government to make sure that Iraq stays as one Iraq, that there will be no civil war, that Iraqis won't feel that there's no law and order so the Shiites would have their own state, the Kurds will have their own state, the Sunnis will be in the middle. Everyone seems to agree on this that there has to be one Iraq, that everyone has to be represented.

How to do that, I think it depends on what kind of step the U.S. takes in the next few weeks. Will it run the country according to its own vision or will it try to bring in Iraqis, whether they are dissidents or Iraqis who have been living in Iraq, to try to bring them into that process of rebuilding Iraq -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Yes, I read an article the other day that the U.S. government has just about agreed to kind of split it up evenly between those Iraqis living outside the country and those living in and do it proportionately so that more members of Iraqis living in the country right now and who have been will control the government, but we don't know that for sure.

Let me ask you one more question about the leadership and as far as the Shiite population goes. Do they have anyone in mind who can do this right now?

AMIN: Well there are a few -- the Shiite community have a few different leaderships. They have some leaders who are based in Iran now and those people have been taking, almost staying -- they stayed on the fence. They did not fight along the Iraqi regime, they did not resist the U.S. forces; however, they did make it clear if that things don't go their way, they will fight and they will pick up arms against the U.S. troops. There are Shiite leaders who are inside Iran who have decided to stay there and they have a little bit a different view.

Because the Shiite community's leadership is spread in different countries, they are also under the influence of different countries, some are in Iran, some are in the north of Iran, some are in different -- so these people will probably have to consider the influence -- their influence, the political influence of these other countries.

But it's still too early to predict what policy will they follow, how will the community react to the U.S. presence there, how will the U.S. soldiers treat these people? We do know that just the fear among the U.S. soldiers in case there are suicide attacks and the case that there are still elements from the Iraqi security forces who will try to inflict damage among the U.S. troops, the troops have to be cautious. They are going to take certain measures that will keep them at bit a distance from the community.

And there is some analysts have been saying, cautioning against the troops provoking the Iraqis, the civilians, the civilians who are welcoming the troops now, to caution the troops that they shouldn't provoke them, they should impair their pride. This is a completely different culture, a completely different mindset. What may seem OK for U.S. soldiers to do may not sound OK for an Iraqi civilian who lives in Baghdad. So the troops will have to take very cautious steps in how to deal with this population in order not to provoke it -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And of course the specter always hanging over all of this is Saddam Hussein and whether he is alive or whether he is dead. I know that you've been somehow talking to people inside Iraq, what are their feelings about that?

AMIN: Well that's the question everyone's asking where is he and where is his army, where are his loyals? All these people who have been promising to put up a great fight in Baghdad, to defend the Iraqi capital, how did they disappear so quickly? And this is question not -- being raised not only among Iraqis but also among many Arab -- in the different Arab countries surrounding Iraq and away from Iraq.

Many didn't expect this quick fallout of the regime. They expected the regime to be defeated, but not so quickly. And so everyone's asking where is he, what happened, what went wrong and what is he going to do now? Was he killed? Is he on the run? Is he in Baghdad? Is he in his hometown Tikrit?

We have to remember Tikrit is the hometown of Saddam Hussein. That town is still under the Iraqi government's control until last night. We don't know what's happening now, but the U.S. troops are not there and the people in Tikrit are among the very few minorities in Iraq who have benefited from the regime, who are strong loyals for Saddam Hussein. How will they react now if the U.S. troops decide to go there? Will they give up? Will they try to put up a fight? And did he go there? Where is he now? No one knows -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I know the battle for Tikrit has begun because there have been some coalition airstrikes there. And apparently U.S. troops are trying to shut down the highway between Tikrit and Baghdad to make sure nobody like goes to either place. So that battle has begun as well.

AMIN: It could be. It could be. Now we do also know that some of the loyal elements for Saddam Hussein, even in Baghdad, have decided to give up because the presence of the U.S. troops in the presidential palaces, next to the Rasheed Hotel, being able to go to the heart of Baghdad for the last few days had sent a very strong message to these troops that it was futile to fight. Why should they waste their lives in order to defend a regime that obviously is collapsing and will be defeated? So maybe the same will happen in Tikrit, we don't know.

We still have we don't where is Saddam Hussein, where are his sons and where are his aids? There are also Iraqi officials, as we've been seeing on television for so long, the Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, where are all these people now and what will be their future -- Carol?

COSTELLO: I'm sure the Pentagon would really want to know the answers to those questions, and of course they're working on getting the answers to those questions now.

Rula Amin, thanks so much for your insight, much appreciate, live from Jordan.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired April 9, 2003 - 06:18   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Want to take you to the Palestine Hotel where usually the Iraqi Information Minister holds his impromptu press conferences. Actually, not so impromptu, they happen every day.
Let's go to Rula Amin to talk more about that. She's in Jordan near the Iraqi border.

And this is significant, isn't it -- Rula?

RULA AMIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is very significant, Carol. Not only the Information Minister didn't show up, but also none of the Iraqi officials who work at the Iraqi Information Ministry, and usually they are always at the Palestinian Hotel, didn't show up. They use -- the Information Minister has a press office downstairs in the lobby of the reception of the hotel. Every journalist cannot leave the hotel without a minder, without an escort from the ministry, and this has been the case for the last 12 years in Iraq.

Today, none of them showed up, and this was a significant sign for the journalists at the hotel. They just knew that this was a sign the regime was collapsing and that the people at the ministry are giving up. So they just left the hotel, roamed around the city. They went to Saddam City, they went into different neighborhoods in Baghdad and they reported that there were very few Iraqi security forces on the streets. Many checkpoints abandoned, many tanks, APCs abandoned, and they said very, very, very few people on the street with military uniform and with weapons -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Another thing I noticed, and let's take people back to the east central portion of Baghdad where these joyous celebrations are ongoing, and there's a large Shiite population there, yet that area of town is called Saddam City. It seems to be a slap in the face to those citizens.

AMIN: It is, Carol. It seems like this a reversal of fortune for those people. Most of them have immigrated to Baghdad from the suburbs, from the farmland, from the south. They were all put in that neighborhood. It's a very poor, overpopulated neighborhood. About two million people live there in very poor conditions, very little water supplies, most of the time a lot of power outage. There's no work and many -- high unemployment.

And those people are among the most angry at Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. They're very strong opponents of the regime. Some of their relatives have been put in prison, some of the religious leaders have been assassinated and persecuted, so they are very happy to see the regime fall, as we have expected them to do for so long. They've never hid their feelings, but they were never to express it. Today they did. They went on the streets and celebrated.

COSTELLO: And tell us again, because earlier we saw people destroying a picture of Saddam Hussein, one man spitting on it, another man hitting it with his shoe. Tell us what would happened to these people if Saddam Hussein were firmly in power still.

AMIN: They would never have been able to dare -- they wouldn't have dared to go on the streets if Saddam Hussein, or if they believed for a second that Saddam Hussein was still in power. Those people must have strong faith that he's gone and that it's over; otherwise, they wouldn't have dared to go on the streets.

We also have to remember that for the last few weeks, even before the war started, Saddam Hussein's security forces were very strongly present in Saddam City. They had it encircled. There were very large numbers of security forces, ruling Baath Party militia, they were all there in every corner making sure that those people are not going to rise against the regime.

And obviously those people, those security forces must have abandoned their positions for those people to -- the people of Saddam City to know that it's over and they can go on the street, they can go into government buildings and take whatever they can take. They went into the Trade Ministry, the universities, the government ministries, the U.N. headquarters. They took everything that's valuable and not valuable.

They are very poor people. And what seemed unvaluable to us, it will be valuable to them. We saw them even taking plastic flowers. We saw them taking documents, safe boxes, anything. Anything they can found, they took. And there were all sectors of the society there. We saw kids, we saw young men, we saw old men, we saw women. So it seems everyone is taking advantage of this break of law and order and they're doing whatever they want since very long -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Well let me ask you this, you said two million people live in this area. And while they are greeting Marines joyously right now, how difficult do you think it will be for the coalition forces to control this population?

AMIN: It will be very difficult because those people here not only are resentful about the regime but they also want to make sure that any era that starts today, from today, they are going to be the one who have control over their life. Many of the Shiite leaders have made it clear, they want to see Saddam Hussein go, but they are not going to tolerate that the U.S. would continue its presence in Iraq. They always said the U.S. troops is welcome to remove Saddam Hussein, but then they have to go out.

They want to make sure they are the ones in power, they are the ones who have a say in their lives. They are -- the Shiite community is over six -- it's considered more than 60 percent of Iraq's population is Shiite and those people want to make sure they are represented in any government in -- of Iraq in the future and that they would be represented fairly. Now is this going to happen? We don't know, but we do know that they're going to press very hard so that this can happen -- Carol.

COSTELLO: President Bush has made it clear he wants -- he wants Iraqis to control Iraq. But how will the government, the U.S. government get that information to the people of Iraq to calm their fears?

AMIN: There are fears and there are concerns. The people are concerned, Iraqis, whether they're Shiites or Sunnis, they're concerned that all the U.S. wants is to replace Saddam Hussein with another dictator and the only difference is that he would be an ally of Saddam Hussein, because many of the -- even the Arab governments who are around Iraq are concerned that Iraq as a result of this collapse in the regime they would be disintegrated. They have been calling on the U.S. government to make sure that Iraq stays as one Iraq, that there will be no civil war, that Iraqis won't feel that there's no law and order so the Shiites would have their own state, the Kurds will have their own state, the Sunnis will be in the middle. Everyone seems to agree on this that there has to be one Iraq, that everyone has to be represented.

How to do that, I think it depends on what kind of step the U.S. takes in the next few weeks. Will it run the country according to its own vision or will it try to bring in Iraqis, whether they are dissidents or Iraqis who have been living in Iraq, to try to bring them into that process of rebuilding Iraq -- Carol.

COSTELLO: Yes, I read an article the other day that the U.S. government has just about agreed to kind of split it up evenly between those Iraqis living outside the country and those living in and do it proportionately so that more members of Iraqis living in the country right now and who have been will control the government, but we don't know that for sure.

Let me ask you one more question about the leadership and as far as the Shiite population goes. Do they have anyone in mind who can do this right now?

AMIN: Well there are a few -- the Shiite community have a few different leaderships. They have some leaders who are based in Iran now and those people have been taking, almost staying -- they stayed on the fence. They did not fight along the Iraqi regime, they did not resist the U.S. forces; however, they did make it clear if that things don't go their way, they will fight and they will pick up arms against the U.S. troops. There are Shiite leaders who are inside Iran who have decided to stay there and they have a little bit a different view.

Because the Shiite community's leadership is spread in different countries, they are also under the influence of different countries, some are in Iran, some are in the north of Iran, some are in different -- so these people will probably have to consider the influence -- their influence, the political influence of these other countries.

But it's still too early to predict what policy will they follow, how will the community react to the U.S. presence there, how will the U.S. soldiers treat these people? We do know that just the fear among the U.S. soldiers in case there are suicide attacks and the case that there are still elements from the Iraqi security forces who will try to inflict damage among the U.S. troops, the troops have to be cautious. They are going to take certain measures that will keep them at bit a distance from the community.

And there is some analysts have been saying, cautioning against the troops provoking the Iraqis, the civilians, the civilians who are welcoming the troops now, to caution the troops that they shouldn't provoke them, they should impair their pride. This is a completely different culture, a completely different mindset. What may seem OK for U.S. soldiers to do may not sound OK for an Iraqi civilian who lives in Baghdad. So the troops will have to take very cautious steps in how to deal with this population in order not to provoke it -- Carol.

COSTELLO: And of course the specter always hanging over all of this is Saddam Hussein and whether he is alive or whether he is dead. I know that you've been somehow talking to people inside Iraq, what are their feelings about that?

AMIN: Well that's the question everyone's asking where is he and where is his army, where are his loyals? All these people who have been promising to put up a great fight in Baghdad, to defend the Iraqi capital, how did they disappear so quickly? And this is question not -- being raised not only among Iraqis but also among many Arab -- in the different Arab countries surrounding Iraq and away from Iraq.

Many didn't expect this quick fallout of the regime. They expected the regime to be defeated, but not so quickly. And so everyone's asking where is he, what happened, what went wrong and what is he going to do now? Was he killed? Is he on the run? Is he in Baghdad? Is he in his hometown Tikrit?

We have to remember Tikrit is the hometown of Saddam Hussein. That town is still under the Iraqi government's control until last night. We don't know what's happening now, but the U.S. troops are not there and the people in Tikrit are among the very few minorities in Iraq who have benefited from the regime, who are strong loyals for Saddam Hussein. How will they react now if the U.S. troops decide to go there? Will they give up? Will they try to put up a fight? And did he go there? Where is he now? No one knows -- Carol.

COSTELLO: I know the battle for Tikrit has begun because there have been some coalition airstrikes there. And apparently U.S. troops are trying to shut down the highway between Tikrit and Baghdad to make sure nobody like goes to either place. So that battle has begun as well.

AMIN: It could be. It could be. Now we do also know that some of the loyal elements for Saddam Hussein, even in Baghdad, have decided to give up because the presence of the U.S. troops in the presidential palaces, next to the Rasheed Hotel, being able to go to the heart of Baghdad for the last few days had sent a very strong message to these troops that it was futile to fight. Why should they waste their lives in order to defend a regime that obviously is collapsing and will be defeated? So maybe the same will happen in Tikrit, we don't know.

We still have we don't where is Saddam Hussein, where are his sons and where are his aids? There are also Iraqi officials, as we've been seeing on television for so long, the Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, Tariq Aziz, Deputy Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, where are all these people now and what will be their future -- Carol?

COSTELLO: I'm sure the Pentagon would really want to know the answers to those questions, and of course they're working on getting the answers to those questions now.

Rula Amin, thanks so much for your insight, much appreciate, live from Jordan.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com