There were the dirty-faced kids fighting over bottles of water and juice boxes torn from plastic shopping bags.
There was the slight woman with sad brown eyes wordlessly begging anyone for food.
And there were the young men stacking food-filled boxes on wheelbarrows and hauling them away a half-mile to their dusty town in this hard land.
This was the scene Wednesday when three Kuwaiti semi-trucks full of boxes of food and water, among the first large-scale shipments of humanitarian aid to arrive in southern Iraq, pulled over the Iraq border and were immediately mobbed by several hundred residents on the southern edge of Safwan.
The chaos that confronted aid workers illustrates the challenge inherent in the immense project to deliver humanitarian supplies to Iraq’s hard-pressed population. Impoverished by decades of war and years of international sanctions, around 60 percent of Iraqis rely on food handouts, and government subsidies are often the only source of income for families.
Humanitarian aid, slowed by the battle to seize the port town of Umm Qasr, began flowing in earnest into southern Iraq on Wednesday, a week after the start of the war.
Along with the Kuwaiti delivery, a convoy of British aid–food, water and medical supplies–passed the border Wednesday afternoon, headed for a new aid distribution point expected to be established south of Basra.
The British convoy included 100,000 humanitarian meals, packed in 20 metal shipping crates, and followed 80,000 liters of water shipped into Iraq on Tuesday.
Coalition soldiers also were working on building a water line from a United Nations post on the Kuwait side of the demilitarized zone to Umm Qasr.
Humanitarian aid was supposed to arrive almost immediately after the start of the war, via the deep-water port at Umm Qasr. That was delayed by the coalition’s failure to pacify the port until early this week.
The first shipment via the port is due to arrive Thursday when the RFA Sir Galahad is expected to pull in carrying 900 tons of food, water, medical supplies and other aid. Minesweeping vessels and divers have worked over the last few days to clear sea-lane mines.
Getting the aid into Iraq is only part of the problem. Delivering it to the people could also prove difficult, especially amid the fear, violence and political unrest of wartime.
Even though Iraqis reportedly have enough food stocks to survive about a month of war, food and aid are commodities that can be bartered. So tossing out boxes of food from the back of a semi was like tossing out dollar bills.
This is also why the aid drop in Safwan was both sobering and a little alarming.
In a muddy no-man’s land littered with ruined light poles and stray boulders, the distressed people of a hardscrabble town of 10,000 overwhelmed a small, disorganized staff from Kuwait’s Red Crescent Society.
Workers tossed bags of water, juice, bread and other supplies to the shoving crowd until men piled into the semis and either threw the goods out to the crowd or took them away, rushing through muddy puddles. On the roadway, military convoys rumbled by, and British troops manned the perimeters, guns at the ready.
Young men with red-and-white checkered scarves wrapped around their faces to conceal their identities chanted for gathered television cameras: “With our blood and our souls, we sacrifice for you, Saddam.”
But away from the cameras, some of those sitting on boxes of assistance confessed that “they will shoot us, they will bomb us, if we say anything against Saddam.”
The strong got the aid, the weak or the less resourceful came away empty-handed.
“This is not well-organized. We’re getting very little, and I have 10 people in my family,” said Sabah Masol, who had managed to secure only a single plastic shopping bag of food.
Others were angered, even ashamed by the handouts, in part it seemed because the aid came from their enemies to the south, the Kuwaitis.
Nasser Al Shami, a 27-year-old student with a wispy beard, gray robe and dirty black shoes, looked on in resignation as the mob fought over the boxes.
“There is food [in Iraq] but no freedom,” Al Shami said, noting that before the war families regularly received a dozen bags of flour, and five bags each of rice and sugar.
He said that since the start of the war, a hospital was looted and electrical and water supplies were cut in town.
“If they really do want to establish a democratic country, shouldn’t they take care of our buildings?” Al Shami said of coalition forces.
“I did not think of resistance or fighting the coalition,” he said, but after the chaotic food distribution “a lot of people will think like me: fighting America.”
Coalition officials view the aid delivery as a vital part of the overall war strategy, which involves not only removing Saddam Hussein’s regime but also trying to win over Iraqi society.
“This is huge. It’s as important to get this right as it is to get military action right, and that’s been recognized from the start,” said Chris Wilton, the British ambassador to Kuwait, who visited the border to see some of the first aid delivered. “We’re replacing a regime, not destroying a people. If we do this right we can persuade them we’re the good guys.”
Coalition forces have stepped up protection for supply lines, including convoys of humanitarian aid, in recent days in southern Iraq. As troops raced forward to Baghdad in the first days of the war, the rear lines were left with little protection. Now armed guards patrol the entrance to Safwan, one of the first towns over the border, and most convoys are accompanied by heavy machine guns.
“When you go forward at that speed your supply lines are vulnerable,” said Capt. Andrew Smith of the British 23 Pioneer regiment, which is leading the humanitarian aid push. “But we’ll overcome that. From now you’ll see more a tactical change, with more military escorting.”
He admitted, however, that such protection could slow the pace of troops toward Baghdad.
“When you take people off one task to another, you have to change your plan. This may slow down the advance,” he said.
Even with the additional protection, drivers in aid convoys worry that the job leaves them particularly vulnerable. Suicide bombers, for instance, could find their way into crowds like the one that mobbed aid trucks in Safwan on Wednesday, British military officials said.
A major focus of humanitarian aid delivery in coming days, planners hope, will be Basra, southern Iraq’s largest city, where power and water have been turned off for days, apparently by Hussein loyalists. British forces hope to restore water in the city but say that will be difficult until the intense fighting in the city diminishes.
