The desert winds called hamis are blowing now, and with them Baghdad seems enveloped in a surreal haze: diplomats drop out of the sky to plead with Saddam Hussein for a solution before it is too late; hostages lounge by the pool and pin their hopes on each new arrival; ministers hint of divisions within the government; reporters interview the most recent terrorists to take up residence here; the Muzak in the state-owned hotel plays Hava Nagila.
Increasingly there is talk that Saddam may not survive the winter, that before an American-led military offensive occurs, his own generals may move against him. Or (a more favored scenario) that someone in the inner circle will assassinate him. The talk -- some of it wishful thinking, perhaps -- comes from well-connected Iraqis, Russians and Western intelligence specialists. They draw parallels with Romania, though the idea of an organized mass opposition is improbable. There are reports of protests and desertions in the army.
It is impossible not to feel the change in atmosphere. Intrigue, speculation and confusion abound. For more than an hour last week, the national soccer team refused to leave its field so the ragtag People's Army could parade before foreign television cameras. In private, high-ranking government officials acknowledge that there is widespread dismay and despair among Iraqis over the consequences of the nation's invasion of Kuwait. Influential citizens claim knowledge that the attack was opposed by 18 colonels and generals, as well as by several senior ministers.
Aside from Saddam's principal aides and Baath Party regulars, the only Iraqis who publicly pretend enthusiasm for the coming struggle are schoolchildren. Several thousand parade past the U.S. embassy, shouting, "Down, down Bush!" Each day in their classrooms they salute their leader, are taught the lessons of the reunification of Kuwait and are drilled in the ugly designs of the Americans and Zionists.
Since the invasion, more than 1 million foreign workers have left the country, almost all of them maintenance and service employees. Street cleaning seems to have ceased; boilers and generators are out of order for days. The combined effect of economic sanctions, emigrant flight and international isolation is not "strangling" the country; rather, those actions are demoralizing and destabilizing Iraq, and rendering the place increasingly dysfunctional. In the hotel elevator, a prosperous businessman, fortyish and due to report for army duty in the morning, vows he will flee. "I have a brother-in-law in Chicago," he confides.
Caught in the midst of this psychological battering are 17,000 "guests." These include the 700 Americans, Britons, French, Germans and Japanese tethered to military and strategic sites; 2,000 foreign nationals still hiding in Kuwait; 5,000 Western and Japanese men and 200 women (most of them Irish nurses) who cannot leave because they have contracts with the Ministry of Trade, Consumer Goods and Shopping Centers (yes, thats the title); and 5,000 Russians and 4,000 Yugoslavs, most of them workers in the oil fields and construction projects.