Free A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal by Åsne Seierstad, Ingrid Christophersen

regime but have actually made people more dependent on it. Sanctions have isolated the country from the outside world and have made it easier to reward loyalty and punish deviation. It is virtually impossible to operate on any large scale without the regime keeping track.
     
    Saddam Hussein makes sure that people are moderately well fed by rationing staple foodstuffs. At the same time, the monopolies caused by the sanctions render it easy for him to favour hangers-on. But woe betide them if they become too mighty or too independent. The regime constantly sends people to their death for corruption or economic activity.
     
    Al-Arasat is Baghdad’s Champs Elysées. Here exclusive Armani suits are for sale, soft velvet sofas, all brands of cigars, perfume and luxury articles. Here are up-to-date computers, shops full of exclusive TVs, stereos, videos and other electronic hardware. In spite of the sanctions, in spite of import embargos.
     
    But Al-Arasat too suffers from any comparison to former days. In several places the pavements have been replaced by gravel walks and rubbish is everywhere; but the neon lights keep on shining. Here is the nightclub and restaurant ‘Black and White’ with a large swimming pool in the garden. Here the well-to-do celebrate weddings and birthdays. Here can be seen videos never shown on state-owned TV channels, and here alcohol is served, if the liquid is discreetly poured into the glass and the bottle hidden under the table. Once upon a time Iraq was one of the most liberal countries in the Arab world, but a few years ago Saddam realised that Islam could help him. Alcohol disappeared from the restaurants and an increasing number of women took to wearing the headscarf. Even Saddam himself, before usually portrayed holding a gun, is now shown at prayer.
     
    The country’s social hierarchy has been fundamentally changed by the hyper inflation of the 1990s. Iraq’s middle classes were once highly educated and well to do and the country’s literacy and writing proficiency among the highest in the Arab world. The salaried classes are the losers. Many have sunk into poverty.
     
    A quarter of an hour’s drive away, in a poor part of Baghdad, Wahida and her sons await the month’s rations. Here the roads have not been paved for many years, there are potholes everywhere, and the doors to the shops and homes hang crookedly. As no one knows what conditions will be like next month, the UN, for the first time, are handing out two months’ rations in one go. During the last seven years Wahida’s staple food requirements have been provided for by the Oil for Food programme. The programme means that Iraq can export oil as long as the income is earmarked for ‘humanitarian aid’. To this end approximately two million barrels are exported every day.
     
    The agent, as she is called, measures up on scales with large iron weights. Every Iraqi gets 9 kilos of wheat, 3 kilos of rice, 2 kilos of sugar, 200 grams of tea, half a kilo of washing powder, and a quarter kilo of soap. In addition they receive a small portion of beans, peas, food oil, salt and powdered milk.
     
    Since the Oil for Food programme started, the number of undernourished and malnourished people has decreased. Sanctions had then been in place since 1991, originally introduced to force Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. But in spite of Oil for Food alleviating the situation somewhat, a quarter of Iraqi children suffer from chronic malnutrition. That and diarrhoea are the most common causes of death amongst the youngest children.
     
    The agent in this part of town is called Karima. She runs a little general store which she took over when her husband died. - Once upon a time we had ten brands of tea, all sorts of cakes, soap in all colours and smells. Today I have one type of tea, one of soap, no cakes. When people get tea through the rations they don’t buy any other brand except for a very special occasion. The tea they get in the rations