Near The Front Line: A City Braces For Battle

In the fading light, two flatbed trucks trundle slowly up the highway from Basra to Baghdad, bearing a precarious cargo: a pair of Soviet-era T-52 tanks, their long gun barrels pointed defiantly at the sky. Rumor has it that Iraqi heavy armor is deliberately being moved around in full display to allay public concerns about the army's fighting capabilities. If that is indeed the intention, then the T-52s are being hauled in the wrong direction. The folks who most need that kind of reassurance are the citizens of Basra.

Iraq's southernmost city is just an hour's drive from Kuwait. If the U.S. goes to war with Iraq, American forces will almost surely secure Basra early on as they push north toward Baghdad. They will want a continuing presence in the area to keep potentially rebellious Iraqi Shi'ites, who are concentrated around Basra, under control. And if the stories about Saddam Hussein's scorched-earth strategy are true, then Basra, ringed as it is with oil fields, could turn into an environmental deathtrap. "We know we're heading for a disaster," says surgeon Akram Hamoodi, director of the Saddam Teaching Hospital, the city's largest. "We're doing whatever we can to prepare for it. And we're praying a lot."

It's a familiar predicament for Basra. Strategically poised on the bank of the Shatt al Arab, one of the Middle East's busiest waterways, the city has been a juicy target for raiders, including the Persians, Turks and British, for more than 600 years. It was heavily shelled by the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. In the 1991 Gulf War, allied forces controlled access to the city but did not need to enter it in strength; the Iraqi army had pulled out without much of a fight. Could Iraqi soldiers turn and run again? That's a prospect nobody here wants to contemplate. "It's not possible," says Hamoodi. "I can't imagine that the army will allow Basra to be separated from Iraq."

So, drawing from long experience and with a minimum of fuss, Basra is preparing for a prolonged conflict. The hospital is building up its blood bank, aiming for at least a month's supply of 100 pints daily, from the normal demand of 20 pints. "The one good thing about the war with Iran is that it made us experts at this kind of situation," Hamoodi says.

In recent weeks, free government rations of such essentials as flour, rice, sugar and tea have been doubled to allow for household stockpiling. Remembering the fuel shortages of 1991, many Basrans are hoarding gasoline and cooking gas as well. It's accepted wisdom that power stations would be destroyed in the first wave of U.S. bombing, so the longest, most chaotic lines in the city are at the kerosene depots, where residents bring every kind of container--from soft-drink bottles to steel drums--to fill up with fuel for lamps and stoves.

The one thing people aren't doing is leaving. Basrans know that the army would not allow a mass exodus. And besides, where would people go? "During the war with Iran, people sent their children to the north, away from the front lines," says Abdul-Razak Mohamed, vice president of Basra University. "But now no place is safe from American bombs."