- The Observer,
- Sunday March 30 2003
Dr Makiya, a prominent Iraqi architect and urban planner living in exile in London, is a fierce opponent of the Baghdad regime. But in 1980, despite his dissident status, Saddam invited him to help redesign Baghdad, impressed by his reputation as a visionary architect in the Islamic tradition. He worked on the Khulafa Central Mosque in the Iraqi capital and the military parade ground in the dictator's home city of Tikrit.
But he knew his vision of the flourishing Arab city as a modern oasis surrounded by palms could never be realised with the Baath party in power. Authoritarian regimes don't trust palm trees - they provide somewhere to talk, to plot - and in post-Gulf war Iraq they were chopped down in their thousands.
At 89, Makiya may not see his dream fulfilled, but is hopeful the coalition invasion may allow the reconstruction of Iraq. He does not welcome the suffering the bombs bring to his people, but he will be happy to see the destruction of the buildings he designed as long as the regime falls.
'As a planner I accept the reality. I accept the horror,' he said. 'But I just hope they have a strategy worked out to reconstruct the cities on a human scale.'
Makiya, a Shia from Baghdad, runs the Kufa Gallery in Westbourne Grove, London, which acts as a focus for Arab intellectuals in the capital. On the shelves are piled his plans for Basra and Baghdad, but no one from the British or US governments has consulted him on the reconstruction of Iraq. 'I am a conductor without an orchestra,' he says.
Across from the gallery, the Baghdad restaurant has become the focus of international media attention since the start of the war.
Jamal, a 33-year-old Iraqi Kurd from Kirkuk in the north of Iraq, hadn't heard from his family for three days and every evening his wife takes four hours to get through to relatives.
She grew up not far from Halabja, the site of Saddam's notorious chemical weapons attack in 1988. The couple have been told by British doctors that his disabled five-year-old son, who was born with a hole in his heart and severe digestive abnormalities, is almost certainly the victim of chemical weapons.
'It is a bad situation. I should be happy in a way, but I am very sorry for the innocent people. When I see it on the television I can't stand it. And it's not just the Iraqi people, it's the British soldiers too.'
Dr Abdulhadi Jiad, an Iraqi Shia journalist living in Britain, who worked as a BBC stringer in Baghdad during the last Gulf war, said there were many in the Iraqi community predicting resistance would be fierce before the start of the conflict. Last October Jiad returned to Iraq for the first time in 12 years and found a deep hostility to the United States. 'I travelled all over: Baghdad, Karbala, Najaf, Hilla. I met dozens of people, officials, tribal leaders, intellectuals, poets. Most agreed that they would love to see Saddam removed, but none would accept a foreign power coming to remove him. In the Iraqi mind there is still the memory of the long British occupation after World War I and the British used exactly the same words about freedom that the Americans are using now.'
Dr Shatha Besarani, co-ordinator of the British Iraqi Community Association, spent last week dealing with people terrified for their relatives in Iraq, including one man whose brother was killed in Wednesday's bombing at al-Shaab market in northern Baghdad. 'Britain was wrong about Iraqi uprisings, but what did they expect? People in Iraq are tired from the sanctions. When they rose up in 1991 and 1996 they didn't have any support. Why should they trust the British and Americans now?'
With the British Army stalled outside Basra, 25 million palm trees are yet a distant dream.
