BAGHDAD -- With each pitch of his shovel, new droplets of sweat formed on Shakir Mahmoud's suntanned forehead as he dug into a pile of garbage that had collected among the brown, neglected shrubs growing in the median of a wide boulevard.
The city was just waking up around him, and it was quiet except for the sound of metal shovels hitting pebbles and the swish of soft broom bristles on the dusty street. Occasionally, a car passed, the driver slowing to take in the scene.
Safa Razouki, one of thousands of Iraqis working to clean Baghdad's streets, scoops up trash that has accumulated since the U.S.-led invasion.
(Jackie Spinner -- The Washington Post)
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Mahmoud, 26, tall and thick-necked, is one of 21,000 laborers and 5,100 students being hired this month as part of an enormous effort to rid Baghdad of the mountains of food waste, soda cans, plastic bags and spare car parts that have piled up since the U.S.-led invasion 16 months ago.
The garbage has been one of the most visible signs of the disorder that followed the war. Residents complained that the only way to get rid of it was to bribe municipal trash collectors, who simply moved it to another neighborhood.
Since the beginning of July, the city of Baghdad, through a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has spent $12 million hauling off the garbage. The program has two goals: to clean up the city and to create jobs for the unemployed.
"People need to think that Baghdad is their home," said Alaa Mahmood Tamimi, the mayor. "Just as we are responsible for our private house, we have a responsibility to keep Baghdad clean. We need to re-create this link between the city and the citizen."
Residents said that link was broken after the war, when looters demolished government buildings, stealing anything they could carry away. With a U.S.-led government in control, people said it was hard to connect to their municipal leaders, who had little autonomy under the occupation.
Another phenomenon was also playing out; many Iraqis were using their newfound freedom as a license to do anything they wanted. If traffic backed up, they would drive on wrong side of the road, a practice that continues. For many people, freedom also meant they could chuck their trash out the window of their cars, and nobody would fine them or even try to stop them. Police were busy chasing car bombers and insurgents.
Adel Abdul Hamed, 76, was walking home from a mosque in his neighborhood, Ameria, when he passed a large park, once green and filled with children and men strolling with their prayer beads. The park is now littered with garbage, including a large broken generator and a burned-out minibus.
"I cannot blame Baghdad municipality or the U.S. forces for that because they do their best to help the Iraqi people," he said, his brown eyes taking in the trash-strewn park from behind plastic spectacles. "I just saw a woman throw her trash in the park and I asked her, 'What are you doing? You are putting your country in hell.' She never paid any attention."
His wife, wearing an orange dress, came out of their house to listen to the conversation. After a few minutes, she interrupted. "Before, in Saddam's regime, we didn't have these things," she said. "But the people think this is freedom."
In another neighborhood, Asia Shawkat, 46, and her brother, Ragheed Shawkat, 35, gingerly walked around a green stream of rotten-smelling sewage water that had pooled in their street. Three dead cats floated belly-up in the water, their paws outstretched stiffly.
Asia Shawkat said her family had lived with the sewage and garbage for two decades. Her largely Shiite neighborhood was ignored by former president Saddam Hussein, who directed the city's municipal services to his supporters.
"Even my children cannot play outside," she said. "When will they solve our problems? We're humans. My children get sick, and sometimes we fall in this dirty water."
