Battling the Chaos: Life Under Fire

Have we got anyone in this country that's not us?" That's the question vexing Paul Bremer--veteran American diplomat, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and current occupant of the world's toughest job--as he convenes a morning meeting inside the dusty, sprawling Baghdad palace that serves as his office and home. As is usually the case, Bremer has a crisis on his hands. An explosion at a mosque in the city of Fallujah last week killed 10 Iraqis, including the mosque's imam. U.S. soldiers who surveyed the scene say the blast was probably caused by explosives stored inside the building, but locals in Fallujah, a hotbed of anti-American militancy, are accusing the U.S. of bombing the mosque by helicopter or plane. "I'd like to get a third party in there to take a look," Bremer says. "It's one thing to say we didn't do it but quite another to get someone else to say it happened on the ground."

It's a sensible idea, with one small problem: finding a third party. An aide suggests dispatching troops from Singapore deployed in Iraq to the site, but they don't have bomb-damage-assessment experience. Someone else brings up the U.N.'s antimine unit. "The Mozambicans," Bremer ventures, referring to a group of mine-clearing specialists from Mozambique. "Are they working for us?" The idea is discussed for a few more minutes before Bremer moves on. Like so many problems in the new Iraq, this is one the U.S., for the moment, has little choice but to leave unresolved.

Three months after the fall of Baghdad, a grim fact of life for Bremer as well as his 600-member civilian staff and the 146,000 American soldiers is that they are still struggling to police Iraq's streets, restore electricity, fix the economy, rebuild schools, monitor local elections and nudge the country toward democracy--all while waging a counterinsurgency campaign against an increasingly brazen assortment of militants who have killed more than 30 U.S. and British soldiers in the past two months. It's not going well. In Baghdad recent attacks on infrastructure targets left the power and water systems in worse shape than they were in a month ago; it is a testament to the slowness of the U.S.'s rebuilding efforts so far that the traffic lights have just begun to come back on. The enthusiasm Iraqis initially showed the occupiers has largely expired, replaced by disappointment and a growing belief that everyday life was better under Saddam Hussein. "At least we had power and security," says Uday Abdul al-Wahab, 30, a shop owner in Baghdad. "Democracy is not feeding us."