THE money traders are thriving on al-Saadon Street in central Baghdad. As war looms, the dollar keeps strengthening and those with cash to spare are rushing to convert it.

Among Baghdad’s really rich, there is a “last-days-of-the-Roman Empire” mood. Chic restaurants like the Black and White, which features an outdoor swimming pool and luxurious scattered kilim rugs, are packed with big spenders who make money through sanctions-busting.

The al-Rashid Hotel has grand wedding parties nearly every weekend, with bride and groom kitted out in European-style finery. There are bottles of Johnny Walker Red to be found for those who seek them.

But for the majority of Iraqis, the poor and brutalised, there is little they can do but stoically await their fate. A recent report issued by the British affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War said that up to four million people could die in Iraq in a nuclear war.

For a conventional war the figures are lower but still frightening: between 48,000 and 260,000 during a conflict and in the following three months. The aftermath could also include civil war, famine and epidemics. “This war might be worse than the last one,” said Abdel Amir Salman, a minor government official who lives in grinding poverty in the al-Kuraimat neighbourhood, which was originally settled by the British.

Steaming piles of rubbish smoke in unpaved alleys with open sewers. Despite the onset of winter the children are all barefoot.

“We are poor enough,” he said. “Now we are going to be poorer.” Salman, who lives in two airless, sour-smelling rooms with six other relatives, exists on a monthly government food package.

He remembers the last “American war” because the house next door was bombed and his has not been repaired since. He points to a ceiling patched together with plasterboard and says that he spent most of the war in the bomb shelter at the nearby Ministry of Judgment. To him, the wars are started for no reason by an odd Texan family called Bush. “I can’t understand why they are doing this to us,” he said.

He has not yet begun to stockpile food, mostly because on a combined monthly household income of $100 (£64), the family can barely survive day to day.

Sana Rani is a beggar in the al-Shorja market, the main bazaar that supplies all Iraqi towns with food and goods. “My concern is my daughter, if there is a war. I will have even less money,” she said. Rani, who wears glasses with one lens broken because she cannot afford to get it replaced, begs every day for the family dinner. Her husband, a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war in which he lost both legs, stays at home.

Aid workers and UN agencies have already expressed concern about the effect of a new conflict; all agree it will take a worse toll than the 1991 war.

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