Iraqis lose no sleep over war threat

Mustafa took a long draw on his hookah. The smoke bubbled through its bowl and, exhaled through his nostrils, it rose in two spreading clouds towards the roof of the Hassan Azmi coffee shop. "War?" he said. "Maybe".

Then he shrugged. After an eight-year conflict with Iran in the Eighties which claimed a quarter of a million lives, the 1991 clash with America and her allies over Kuwait, and more than a decade of almost daily air attacks by the US and Britain, ordinary Iraqis are losing very little sleep over the latest threats of "regime change" emanating from the White House.

Baghdad is "Unwarwise", as Evelyn Waugh would have put it. For the time being, Iraq is enjoying a winning streak on the diplomatic front. Russia, sweetened with a trade deal worth £25billion over 10 years, is adamant that Iraq should not be attacked. France and Germany have refused to countenance sending troops.

And Nelson Mandela has accused the US of "spreading chaos" with its anti-Saddam Hussein policy. The Iraqis are delighted that a gulf is emerging between the British and their leaders over Iraq. Within hours of a Daily Mirror/GMTV poll being published on Monday, everyone in Baghdad knew that 71 per cent of Britons would not support attacks on Iraq without UN sanction.

But they are sure war is coming. Many speculate it will start shortly before the midterm Congressional elections in November. Others think air strikes and a full-scale invasion are only days away and read reports of big ferries carrying US heavy armour into the Arabian Gulf with detached interest.

"We're not worried. We're used to war. But the Americans are not. How many of their young men can they afford to lose before they give up? They lost 13 in a battle in Mogadishu and went home. This is a city of five or six million people and all the men have guns. Can the Americans come here with infantry and take it? No way," said Mustafa between puffs.

Baghdad last endured heavy bombing in December 1998 when Saddam's regime was punished for expelling UN weapons inspectors. Almost every significant government building, along with Saddam's Ba'ath Party headquarters, were blasted to rubble. Most have already been rebuilt in a defiantly neo-classical style.

While debate over what to do about Iraq rages across the Atlantic, Baghdad has indulged in an air of quiet confidence.

Outside a juice shop in Khadder Street, Salman sipped a passion fruit juice. A graduate in English from the Saddam University of Baghdad who now sells cigarettes from a stall, he pointed with his nose towards a portrait of the "beloved leader" firing a rifle into the air at a rally, and said: "This isn't about him any more, it's about us.

"You don't have to love Saddam to want to defend your country. But because of him we've all had some kind of military training and we're going to use it if we're attacked. If foreign troops try to take over Iraq, then even Saddam's enemies will fight".

But there are very few visible defensive preparations. Two anti-aircraft cannons guard the entrance gates to Saddam's palace in the Iraqi capital but row upon row of heavy artillery is still parked in military bases watched by soldiers seeking respite from the blistering summer heat in guard houses made of mud.

Nonetheless, the Ba'ath Party faithful are in full sloganeering song. Iraqi vice president Taha Ramadan, a member of the party's Regional Command Council, returned to the language of the Seventies to rally Iraqis. "The enemy must know that the masses are very different than they were in 1991 they are more active [across the Arab world] and they are mobilising".

The secretary for external relations for the Iraqi federation of women, a 1.7million member "non-governmental organisation", proudly declares: "The whole country is 100 per cent behind Saddam Hussein."

Perhaps. But in Iraq, no one is likely to say any thing else. There is no doubt that all Iraqis believe that George Bush Junior, as they call him, is pursuing a policy of double standards in allowing Israel's prime minister an entirely free hand in the Palestinian territories while threatening Iraq.

But, they are very, very relaxed in the face of demands for "regime change". "If it could be done without bloodshed, no one would lose any sleep about that," whispered a shopkeeper in Baghdad's smart abu Nawas Street. "Why can't Bush be clever and organise a coup?"