A City On the Brink

摘要

Night After Night, Since the start of the war, the message boomed into the darkness from the loudspeakers of Baghdad's 14th of Ramadan Mosque. Sometimes the haunting, hypnotic baritone almost drowned out the fearsome din of the air war: "God is great!" the voice repeated. "God is almighty!" In person, the mosque's assistant imam, Murtadha Mustafa al-Zaidi, is a soft-spoken 30-year-old in a long gray robe and dusty flip-flops. "Residents from the neighborhood come to me and thank me," he said on a sunny afternoon last week as U.S. ground forces prepared to enter the capital. "They say my message makes them forget their fear." Birds were cluttering in the trees outside. He added: "The Americans are attacking Iraq, thinking they are the world's greatest power. But we remind them that Allah is even greater." A night later the loudspeaker went silent: Baghdad's electricity had been cut. According to U.S. officials, the Iraqi regime had turned out the lights. Whatever that ploy was supposed to accomplish, it only worsened the public's anxiety without slowing the Coalition's advance. Before the end of the next day, U.S. forces had taken over the city's airport. By Saturday morning a column of American tanks was rolling through part of the capital. The Information Ministry desperately insisted that Iraq's forces were routing the invaders, but it was increasingly obvious that Saddam Hussein's rule was nearing its end. A desperate crush of people fleeing the city created a traffic snarl that stretched for miles.