Out Of The Wreckage

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And he's written another play, a light comedy called Where Is the Government? about a busload of Iraqis who find out that their regime has fallen. The play is a gentle poke at the hypocritical behavior that followed Saddam's fall. One passenger responds to the news by taking off her veil and declaring that she's a belly dancer, another immediately starts to pick the pocket of his friend in the next seat.

Earlier this month Minathar's new play premiered in the northern city of Sulaymaniya, where the autonomous Kurdish government is funding some performances. "I was always trying to get people to protest against the regime," he says. "But now the regime is gone so I have to find something new to protest." — By Joshua Kucera / Baghdad

Good Morning, Baghdad!!
Back when he worked at the Palestine Hotel, videotaping and photographing visiting dignitaries and businessmen, Jaleel Banie could only dream of a different life. For as long as he could remember, his ambition had been to become a radio broadcaster. "It was what I really loved to work with," he says. But Banie, 45, knew it couldn't happen: in the eyes of the Ministry of Information, which ran all of Iraq's radio stations, he was politically tainted. In the early 1990s, the regime had executed Banie's cousin for belonging to the Dawa Party, an Islamic opposition group. "They knew about my cousin. It was useless to even apply for a job," he says, "because it was so obvious that they wouldn't approve of me."

But two months ago, the opportunity finally came — and Banie seized it. Two days after the fall of Baghdad, he was in the Palestine looking for work in the U.S. military's press center when a U.S. commander asked for volunteers to restart radio transmissions in the city. Banie immediately grabbed his friend Mohammed Hassan, who had worked as a radio engineer in the old regime, and set out to find a functioning radio transmitter. Every station in Baghdad had been burned or looted, but Hassan, 33, knew that the Ministry of Information had stashed a 1-KW emergency transmitter in a storage closet in a children's amusement park on the edge of Saddam's presidential compound, just in case of emergency. U.S. troops had moved into the park, and when Hassan and Banie got there, they found the transmitter intact. "It was the last place to look," Banie says. With the help of a handful of friends, the two hooked up Hassan's personal computer and a sound mixer to the transmitter. On April 12, they started broadcasting — the first radio station to go on air in Baghdad after the war.

Baghdad Radio (AM 1026) has since moved into the abandoned outdoor movie theater next to the park. Around 25 volunteers, most of whom worked for official radio stations before the war, keep the station on air, broadcasting to all of Baghdad — and as far west as the city of Ramadi — for 12 hours a day. The programming schedule remains prosaic: hourly news updates provide a summary of articles culled from Iraqi newspapers and some foreign sources, such as the BBC and Agence France-Presse; for the rest of the time, there's music, and the DJs' tastes seem to lean toward Arabic easy listening. But in Iraq, this counts as a minor media revolution. "In the old regime, every daily broadcast began with, 'Good Morning, Saddam Hussein,'" says Hassan. "All news, programs and songs were focused on him. You were forbidden from broadcasting foreign news. No one could think of doing anything like what we're doing here."

Now they do. In Baghdad alone, more than 20 new radio stations have hit the airwaves since the fall of Saddam. That's in addition to the dozens of independent newspapers hawked all over the city's sidewalks, put out by student groups, religious leaders and political parties. Most, like Baghdad Radio, operate on a shoestring — but even by the standards of their fellow media pioneers, Banie and Hassan run a spartan enterprise. Despite its roomier new digs, the station hasn't managed to upgrade its equipment and has so far subsisted on a single grant of $200 from the Iraqi Media Network, a group set up by the U.S.'s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance to support local journalists. The network also supplies the newspapers and website printouts read by the station's on-air personalities. Office staffers dine solely on the ready-to-eat meals donated to them by U.S. troops stationed nearby.

Banie and Hassan wonder why the Americans aren't doing more. They are bewildered, for instance, that no coalition officials have come by to check up on them. "We've been working for two months, but don't know who we're working for, who the authority is, who's in charge of our station," says Banie. So used are they to the idea of state control, it hasn't yet sunk in that they are in charge of their station, or that controlling Baghdad Radio is the last thing the Americans want to do. What Banie and Hassan could use are some quick lessons in American-style sales and marketing. They haven't even tried to solicit advertising from local merchants. When asked whether they have hired a business manager to try to raise funds for the station, Hassan and Banie shoot each other quizzical looks. The idea doesn't seem to have occurred to them. "No one wants to give anyone money because of the looters" who might steal the cash before it can be used, Banie says finally.

Though it's hard to find an Iraqi who won't complain about the slow pace of economic recovery, most, like Hassan and Banie, know that money isn't everything. Last month they were approached by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), offering to buy the station and make it the kdp's house organ. "We thought about it," says Banie. "And we decided that we're serving the Iraqi people and we won't work for any political movement. No matter what happens, we will not be connected to any political movement, group or ideology." On their own, sentiments like that won't be enough to remake Iraq. But they're a pretty good place to start. — By Romesh Ratnesar / Baghdad