Billboard ads, posters offer Baghdad hope against a backdrop of despair

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Media: The Associated Press
Byline: HAMZA HENDAWI
Date: 15 October 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of posters and billboards dot Baghdad with
messages of hope for a city of gloom, where residents largely stay home,
afraid of the streets, their pain and grief deepening every day amid
unending violence.

"No matter how strong the storm, it will go away in the end," declares the
message on one poster, with a picture of a worried young woman clasping a
boy to her body, her hand protectively placed over his head, her hair
fluttering in the wind.

Hundreds of copies of the poster - and at least one giant one on a billboard
- can be seen throughout the city, pasted on concrete blast walls and
outside buildings.

Even with the attempt to instill hope, the messages, sponsored by the
government, are an unusually blunt acknowledgment of just how grave
conditions have become.

"You have the power to pull Iraq out of this darkness," declares another
billboard overlooking a square. The words are inscribed next to a burning
map of Iraq painted in the red, black and white colors of the country's
national flag.

The images are in stark contrast to the blitz of upbeat street ads that
filled the Iraqi capital in the two years after Saddam Hussein's ouster in
2003. Those showed optimistic Iraqis casting ballots or engaged in
rebuilding. They prescribed democracy as the key to a better life and free
elections and a new constitution as the tonic for the ills of society.

During two general elections last year, there was hardly a wall in Baghdad
not plastered with candidates' campaign posters.

U.S. and Iraqi authorities have long used billboards and posters to get
their message out to a public confused by the rapid change that followed
Saddam's overthrow. As far back as early 2004, authorities used posters and
billboards to rally support for the country's nascent security forces in the
midst of a growing Sunni insurgency. The U.S. military at times put up
posters with congratulatory messages to Iraqis on religious occasions,
trying to counter its image as a foreign occupier.

The use of images is a particularly important part of Iraq's public life.

Portraits of key religious figures, including some who died centuries ago,
hang in homes and streets by Iraq's Shiite majority to display their
religious identity and their post-Saddam political empowerment.

But the new crop of billboards and posters in Baghdad reflect the dark mood
resulting from a marked worsening of conditions in the Tigris River
metropolis, where contemporary reality has made a cruel joke of its former
boast of being "the city of peace."

Iraqis had adjusted to suicide bombings and other attacks by Sunni
insurgents. But for the past six months they've faced a new brand of
violence, sectarian killings blamed on Shiite death squads and reprisal
slayings by Sunni militants. The violence, in which neighbor is turned
against neighbor, is deadly and deeply demoralizing.

"Two years ago, I thought it could not get any worse than this," said barber
Qais al-Sharaa. "But it has every day since." In view of his shop was a
giant billboard reading "Terrorism has no religion," with the word
"terrorism" in red and dripping what looks like blood drops.

The sectarian violence has centered on Baghdad, and security operations by
U.S. and Iraqi forces have brought little relief.

The city witnessed an average of 36 attacks a day in the past three weeks,
an increase of nearly 30 percent over the preceding seven weeks and 60
percent higher than from mid-March to mid-June, according to U.S. military
figures.

The sight of what in any other world capital would pass for a nightmare has
become the daytime reality of Baghdadis. On any given day, citizens step
from their homes to see police trucks loaded with dead, blood-drenched
corpses, the beheaded bodies of men snatched from their homes or workplace
by gunmen in police uniforms, body parts strewn across a street or dangling
from a roof in the wake of a bombing.

Many residents, therefore, are holed up, going out only when necessary.
Traffic has thinned, and the once congested streets and sidewalks are nearly
vacant by late afternoon, hours before a sunset curfew that has been in
place for months.

Baghdad has an unemployment rate of a staggering 30 percent. Power outages
are routine and last up to three days at a time. The price of gasoline has
risen by as much as 12-fold since Saddam's ouster and fuel is often scarce.

A sign on Mansour street in central Baghdad _ once a thriving commercial
district that now is frequently hit by bomb blasts _ speaks to two of the
city's worst problems, security and uncollected garbage.

"Uncollected garbage attracts explosive devices as well as rats," the sign
warns. Insurgents often conceal roadside bombs in garbage. Like much of the
capital, Mansour street is now defined by ubiquitous concrete blast
barriers, security checkpoints and barbed wire that has snagged windblown
plastic bags.

The owners of one of Baghdad's best known pastry shops, also on Mansour
street, have given up on replacing the glass on the store's front windows
after several blasts shattered it. Al-Khaski's now has concrete wall
instead.

"The sight of Baghdad streets remind me of the tragedy in which we live,"
said Ibrahim Haidar, a 41-year-old father of two who lives in the volatile
New Baghdad district. "It makes me feel I could die any second."

Yet, against all odds, the street ads try to offer some hope to a city
teetering above an abyss of failed statehood and civil war.

The billboard shows the dark silhouettes of arms stretched skyward as if
from a grave in front of a melancholy, dusky sky. The message: "The will of
honorable people will enable Iraq to rise."
 
Back
Top