Saddam's Freeway bears Witness to Slaughter by Mark Baker The Age 1:35pm 17th Apr, 2003   April 17 2003    The reality of regime change is becoming apparent on an eerily deserted road littered with hundreds of mangled and burnt vehicles. Mark Baker reports after arriving in Baghdad.    Saddam Hussein still reigns on the last frontier of his Wild West, at least in two dimensions. A huge portrait of the dictator wearing princely Arabian robes stares imperiously back towards Jordan from the Iraqi border checkpoint.    A plaque beside the arched gates and another heroic statue of Saddam on horseback declares: "Welcome to the hosts of Iraq and the Great Leader". The simple erasure of his name at the end of the sentence provides neatly ambiguous confirmation of the reality of regime change.    The men of the new order are wary but courteous. US soldiers cradling submachine guns step forward from beside their tank. "Going to Baghdad? Have a nice day," says the sergeant, before waving the convoy through.    But there is nothing nice about the scene that lies ahead across the vast desert of the central Arabian peninsula.    The modern freeway that stretches 500 kilometres from the Jordanian border to Baghdad - a grandiose folly six lanes wide in places and now more eerily deserted than ever -is a highway of hell.    Hundreds of mangled and burnt military and civilian vehicles form a Mad Max landscape that bears grim witness to perhaps one of the most one-sided conflicts in history.    This might not have been the "turkey shoot" that marked the gruesome end of the 1991 Gulf War - when thousands of Iraqi troops were mowed down by US attack aircraft as they desperately scrambled to flee north away from Kuwait, their tomb a jumble of wrecked vehicles still rusting in the desert. But the slaughter here seems to have been equally indiscriminate and merciless.    These men, trapped and incinerated in the antiquated fighting hardware of another generation, never stood a chance against the satellite and laser-guided sophistication of the superpower adversary. Most would never have known, let alone seen, what hit them.    And it is clear that they were not the only targets in the coalition's sights. The air crews appear to have shot at everything that moved - buses, private cars, utilities and commercial transport vehicles, as well as the obvious military targets.    Villagers and herdsmen living along the route say that several of the bombed out buses were carrying passengers from Syria - presumed it seems by the allies to be bringing some of the Arab militants who volunteered to fight with the doomed Iraqi forces.    But the locals say many of those aboard the buses were civilians, like the drivers and passengers in scores of private cars, taxis and mini-vans who took direct hits or careered off the highway under fire.    On a bridge halfway to Baghdad, its huge span twisted and holed by heavy bombardment, the skeleton of a tourist coach lies in a pool of black debris. "Everyone died here. There were many men but also women and children," says Ayman Hoseen, a veteran Jordanian taxi driver who shuttles journalists to the war.    Issan al-Bahrani, an Iraqi-born Canadian businessman was driving back to Baghdad with his family last week when an American tank opened fire on his car without warning, about 180 kilometres west of the capital at night.    They stopped immediately, stepped out with their hands held up and waved a white sheet. Two soldiers climbed down from the tank and opened fire from about 500 metres away, killing Mr al-Bahrani's 16-year-old son Farid.    "The bullet passed straight through his head. He died in my arms," Mr al-Bahrani says, tears streaming down his cheeks. "I never had anything to do with Saddam's regime. I have never held a gun. I had nothing to do with this war. Why did these Americans do these things?"    After hiding by the roadside for several hours, he and his family made their way back to Baghdad. There they found the family hotel in ruins, trashed by looters, and their neighbour's house destroyed by a bomb - with only a six-month-old baby surviving.    "Of course we all want peace, but this country has gone mad," Mr al-Bahrani says. Visit the related web page
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