"We were hungry for change, but nothing changed," Fadil Abdul Amir, a butcher said. "Only Saddam is gone."
"The first bombs began falling unexpectedly on this village at 3:30 one morning in March. Ali Kazim Hamza was shepherding his family into what he hoped would be a safe room when one bomb landed outside his front door."
The blast crumbled the front of the house and hurled him across the entryway. He cradled his son, Muhammad, in his beefy arms. Shrapnel or perhaps flying shards of brick had sliced through the boy's forehead, killing him. He was 2.
Eight months ago, this small, dusty village on the Euphrates became an unexpected obstacle to the American assault on Baghdad. Massed a few miles west, the Army's Third Infantry Division ordered its forces across the river and into the village to cut off Iraqi reinforcements headed toward Najaf.
What followed was some of the most intense fighting that the division's First Brigade encountered, and it left deep scars.
Now, Kifl is one measure of America's halting progress since Saddam Hussein's overthrow. [Violence continued Saturday, as a missile reportedly hit a civilian plane in Baghdad and bombers killed 14 people at two police stations near the capital.]
The people of Kifl — all Shiites repressed under Mr. Hussein's rule — relish their new freedom but fear the uncertainty that freedom has brought. They have rebuilt some of what was destroyed.
But they also angrily complain that their expectations — of aid and compensation, of democracy and security — remain unmet. And some of what was lost can never be restored.
"We are breathing freedom," Mr. Hamza said.
For him, though, more than for most, it came at a cost — a son's short life. "Yes," he said, "it was too expensive a price."
…Kifl is an oasis that fulfills much of the Bush administration's vision for a new Iraq. Today there are no foreign forces here, no barriers of concrete and concertina wire. The covered market pulses beneath ancient brick vaults, its stalls full of trinkets and cheap goods. Its main street — eight months ago a shattered mess, strewn with charred wreckage and a gruesome trail of death — is now a cacophonic bustle of crowds, cars and carts.
Beneath the outward peace, however, runs an undercurrent of need and grievance and simmering resentment that has not boiled over but easily could.
There was no electricity for three days this week. Trash and sewage foul the streets. The bridge over the Euphrates, which Iraqi forces blew up on March 25 after the First Brigade's troops crossed it, remains buckled and blocked to traffic, severing the city from Najaf to the south and Karbala to the north.
There have been 21 cases of cholera and smaller outbreaks of other infectious diseases, including typhoid and meningitis. The hospital has no medicine at all.
On the main street an agitated crowd quickly gathered as Sheik Aziz Izzi al-Abud explained that Kifl had welcomed the American overthrow of Mr. Hussein, only to grow wary and increasingly impatient.
The men shouted and shoved as they voiced their complaints. It is not safe to drive at night. There are no new jobs. Pensions are delayed. The prices of staples — gas, cooking oil, grains, sheep — have skyrocketed. The mayor's friends have skimmed off what aid has come, they complained, while the rest of the village's residents have gone wanting.
"We have had a lot of unjust treatment," Sheik Izzi said. "For 13 years we were under embargo. The Americans promised everything. All the good would come with the tanks, and it didn't."
What becomes clear on the streets of Kifl, as in other parts of Iraq, is that a cold calculation is being made, as people tally the dinars in their pockets. Freedom and democracy, it would seem, are often beside the point. Some people have more than they did under Mr. Hussein, and others have less.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/23/international/23BATT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
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