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situation.
    The people couldn’t do anything about the dictator. I’m sure a lot of Iraqis farther north wanted to be rid of Saddam, too. He had brought terrible times to the country. But he still had much power. Though defeated, the army remained loyal to him. The Fedayeen Saddam—a special paramilitary group aligned with the Ba’ath Party and loyal to Saddam personally—enforced discipline. ( Fedayeen means, roughly, “man who sacrifices”; in theory these thugs were supposed to sacrifice their lives for Saddam. In reality, they generally sacrificed others for their own benefit.) The Ba’ath Party was the only viable political organization in the country. Saddam had everyone’s arm, everyone’s leg, tied to his.
    It was not simply a matter of threats or violence. Saddam’s dictatorship was the only thing the people had ever known. For many, imagining an Iraq free from him was unimaginable.
    Except in the south, where there had been a lot of destruction, things quickly returned to normal. Within a few weeks, life was about the same as it had been before the invasion.
    Don’t take that to mean things were perfect, or even good. Prices had been climbing slowly before the war. They continued to do that after the conflict. It was a classic situation of supply and demand. With less and less available, things became more precious. The price of beef escalated from roughly fifteen hundred dinar (between two and three dollars at the time) a kilo to twelve thousand dinar. Anything that had to be imported became very expensive. Gasoline, regulated by the state and refined in Iraq, was an exception, but even things like electricity increased greatly in price.
    This didn’t happen overnight. Things got worse gradually, then accelerated as the United Nations clamped down because Saddam didn’t comply with its stipulations following the war. UN sanctions squeezed imports and made it difficult to export anything. Little by little, jobs began to disappear. Each day, things got a little worse. You didn’t notice it until you thought back to the previous month.
    The electrical shortages became worse and worse. Power was cut for two hours each day in Mosul. Then, after some time passed, three hours, then four. Finally, power might be cut for ten or twelve hours, turned on for two, then cut off for another long stretch.
    Why didn’t Saddam comply with the UN? Why did he let the sanctions get worse and the economy shrivel?
    In retrospect, it seems ridiculous. He had to know that the Americans were not fooling around. And he had no serious nuclear program; even if he had, it would have been a foolish waste of money and resources.
    I can’t read the mind of a crazed dictator. I can only make guesses.
    I think perhaps he didn’t want the rest of the world to know that he’d been bluffing about weapons of mass destruction. I think he thought if other nations—Iran in particular—found that out, we would be attacked. Or that people in Iraq would rise up against him.
    Or maybe it had nothing to do with protecting either himself or the country. Maybe it was more his pride. Pretending to have weapons meant he could pretend to be strong. If others thought he was strong, then in his mind maybe he was strong.
    But the reality was that he and Iraq were really very weak. Defying the UN was foolish. It hurt only Iraqis—and ultimately led to Saddam’s downfall.
    But it took a few years for things to get desperately bad. We were sliding down the hill but didn’t really know it.
     
    THE GULF WAR ended in February 1991. My military service finished a few months later. I was released from the army and returned to Mosul, where my sister’s husband gave me a job in his construction business operating heavy machinery—bulldozers, earthmovers, and my favorite of all, graders.
    Construction may not be a glamorous job, but to me there’s something important in building things, whether they’re roads or skyscrapers. Creating is a critical