The human factor

UMM QASR, IRAQ-From the vantage point of a lookout post atop a shipping crane 50 feet above Iraq's only deepwater port, the humanitarian crisis under way in this nation unfolds as vividly as bombs bursting over Baghdad.

About 100 yards away, over the port's cracked concrete and barbed wire fence, looters pull pieces of aluminum and other salvageable material from ramshackle buildings that once housed Iraq's naval forces. They move as slowly as the stray dogs nearby. As they walk from the buildings back toward this portside town, their hand-pushed carts are not even full. Other scavengers have beaten them to the debris, taking the first crack at picking up the best of what war has left behind.

An Australian sailor, one of about 100 U.S. and allied personnel working on clearing the port of mines, peers through the telescope of his sniper-style rifle at the looters during his eight hours of watch guard duty. "We're definitely concerned about them," says the sailor. He's not concerned that the looters are a security risk, but rather that they almost surely are running low on food and water "People here need aid big time," he says.

Off to the left, the Kahwr Abd Allah River interrupts the varying shades of brown sand that cover the drab, dusty southern Iraqi landscape. For the first time since war came to this country, traffic is moving through the nation's main water route to the Persian Gulf, through which about two-thirds of the nation's food flows.

The Sir Galahad, a British supply ship led by a minesweeper and trailed by one U.S. and two Kuwaiti patrol boats, comes into view as it moves around the river's final bend and pulls into the mouth of the harbor. The ship is carrying tens of thousands of pounds of water, powdered milk, rice and medical supplies that will be distributed to Iraqis.

Jason Breaden, an Australian diver also standing watch in the makeshift guard tower, predicts that hundreds, maybe thousands, of residents and refugees from the port city will jump the walls and swarm the port when they learn aid ships are arriving. He is sympathetic to their suffering. "I have two kids back in Australia, so if I were in the same position, I hope the rest of the world would help me out," Breaden says.

Down on the dock, scores of British sailors, including one senior officer smoking a pipe, stand in formation to greet the Sir Galahad. Sailors wearing hard hats tie the vessel to a dock. A retired Kuwaiti Army general, dressed in a white and tan robe, is among the first on board, as a gesture that his nation's differences are with the Iraqi leader, not its people. A few Navy SEALs, who were among the personnel working around the clock for a week to clear the harbor of mines, stand behind the sailors and about a hundred journalists who have been bused in from Kuwait for the berthing.

Petty Officer Second Class Sean Turbie, a SEAL who set up a radio and intelligence center for the countermine operations in a squat, windowless cargo container adjacent to a port warehouse, says military leaders have told the allied forces in Umm Qasr they will not be running the port for long. The Navy wants to turn operations over to the Iraqis as soon as possible.

"We've been told not go around kicking doors any unless we have to," he says. "We want to leave this port better than we found it."