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LINDSEY HILSUM IN IRAQ

Read more about life in Iraq from our correspondant Lindsey Hilsum

Feb 24: The human impact

Feb 18: Waiting in Baghdad

Feb 15: Day of Protests

Feb 13: The first "Canine Shield"

Feb 12: Eid in Mosul




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If you have any questions you want to put to Lindsey Hilsum and the Channel 4 News team in Baghdad, e-mail us at news@channel4.com

Or you can text us: type VIEW then write your message and send to 83188. Texts cost 25p.


INTERNET LINKS

CARE's website
Margaret Hassan briefs the UN on the status of the current humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Jan 2003.

CARE: Birmingham visit
An article about CARE's Iraqi director Margaret Hassan's visit to Birmingham last summer, where she spoke about the humanitarian situation in Iraq
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Baghdad diary
Iraq



Published: 02-Mar-2003
By: Lindsey Hilsum



The Channel 4 News team reporting from Baghdad give you an insight into their conditions and preparations ahead of a possible war.


Bulldozers in action - the Iraqis say they crushed another six al Samoud missiles today.



But they don't want the Iraqi people to see, so they won't release any pictures.



General Amir al Saadi, the President's Chief Weapons Inspector, said the impact on the Iraqi people would be "too harsh".



The Iraqi government clearly feels that the destruction programme is a sacrifice, and too much information about it might lower morale.



General al Saadi was on good form at his press conference tonight. On other occasions, he's seemed dispirited, but tonight he was fighting back.



The weapons inspectors, off the record, have briefed that they are not happy - not enough private interviews with Iraqi scientists, the al Samoud destruction programme started at the last moment and they suspect it will be slow and faltering.



So General al Saadi hit back, asserting that Iraq has answered all the questions about biological and chemical weapons missing after the Gulf War - his task, he said, was to remove all excuses for waging war on Iraq.



But - as I've said before - no-one really believes this will stop the war.



So Iraq's making other preparations. We've been looking at how tribal loyalty will play in the coming conflict.



The Americans went stealthily into Afghanistan during the war there, carrying suitcases of hundred dollar bills with which they bought the allegiance of warlords. Are they doing the same here?



President Saddam Hussein has secured the loyalty of tribal leaders by giving them property and weapons, and restoring their status.



We met a senior member of the Hamdani tribe at his residence just outside Baghdad. We were received in a huge room and as I tried to interview him, old men in black and white kuffiyeh headscarfs kept appearing to pay their respects to his father, the sheikh.



The President, we were told, had praised the Hamdanis for defending Arabs against the Crusaders in the eleventh and twelfth centuries - Iraq, he said, was playing the same role now.



The Hamdanis said they would remain loyal to President Saddam Hussein and the nation.



But will the tribal structure withstand an American invasion?



The British co-opted tribes during the colonial era, but frequently found that working with one sheikh meant making an enemy of another.



It's another complex, cultural issue for the Americans to grapple with - and another source of uncertainty for President Saddam Hussein.


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