tehran diary: all articles

Iraq after the war is a place of fragmentary meanings and fragile relationships. Our Tehran columnist, who stayed in the country for three weeks after the fall of Saddam, draws on poignant shards of memory to evoke the chasms of fear, confusion and longing opening up in Iraqi hearts in the moment of ‘freedom’.

Ambitious survivalists are peeling off from Saddam’s crumbling regime and taking the freedom road from Baghdad to Kurdistan. Three conceal their faces yet offer their secrets of the last days to our intrigued Tehran correspondent.

Sulaimaniya is following the war intently, judging the moment, weighing the possibilities. With memories of exile, conscription and chemical attack, Kurds have no illusions about the Iraqi regime. In freedom, they gaze upon the people of the south – human shields of an iron regime – with wonder and pity.

The frontier between Iraqi forces and Kurdish militias is a crossroads of uncertainty and fear. The long-awaited arrival of US forces raises Kurdish hopes of a return to Kirkuk and Mosul. But in the mountains, among the thousands of displaced civilians and bitter memories, there is still intense wariness of Saddam.

On the eve of war, the borderline between Free Kurdistan and Saddam’s forces is a place of rumour. Refugees from Kirkuk - a great oil city as well as the Kurds’ emotional capital – gather there, listen to the wind, and wait for the moment of return.

What comes after regime change in Baghdad? For delegates at the Iraqi opposition conference in northern, Kurdish Iraq, the long wait for the US envoy reveals doubts about American diplomacy and Turkish intentions. Will ‘free Iraqis’ be masters of their own fate, or once again betrayed?

From Sulaimaniya to Halabja, our Tehran correspondent continues her travels in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Some Kurds dream of using the impending war to march south to oil-rich Kirkuk. But are they watching their back?

From their bases in Iran and Kurdistan, Iraqi opposition movements are longing for the moment when ‘freedom’ moves from a whisper to a roar. It is a time of hope and danger, but also of paralysis. For behind all their discussions lies a single, unanswered question: what do the Americans intend?

The Iraqi Shia exiles in Iran carry the physical and mental scars of imprisonment, torture and fear. The stories are legion, the memories indelible. Our Tehran correspondent visits Qom, and listens.

Between the cracks of legality and convention, the fuel of Iran is alcohol. A new-year tour of an earthly paradise for nostalgic hearts and parched throats.

There is disillusion and anger aplenty in Iran – from students to housewives, teashops to the bazaar. But like the shroud of pollution over Tehran, the daily business of survival suffuses every conversation.

Our columnist leaves Tehran for Iraqi Kurdistan just below the no-fly zone. The Kurds she meets have carved out a precarious life free of Saddam’s rule. But they are yet to break his hold on their minds and memories.

The campus seethes, lawyers huddle, and reformists wait. Everywhere, police and vocal loyalists hold the line. Welcome to Tehran, city of passions, slogans and stasis.

Tehran is a city where newspaper editors go to prison and the highways feature ‘Death to America’ slogans. But opinion polls, diplomatic games, and political conversation in the bazaars give our Iran-based columnist a refreshing sense of cynical, paranoid normality.