“BUSH, Bush, listen well, we love Saddam Hussein.” This was the chant, in rhyming Arabic, of 100 white-robed tribesmen at a dusty polling station near the Shia Muslim holy city of Karbala. Some had pricked their fingers to stamp Yes on the flimsy ballots with their own blood. Others had slaughtered sheep in celebration. With such scenes repeated across Iraq, this week's referendum to extend Mr Hussein's rule produced a 100% yes vote, from a purported 100% turnout.

To its own people, the beleaguered regime was brazening its capacity to dramatise a show of national solidarity before the world's press. To outsiders, it was meant as a pointed reminder that foreign invaders will be met not just by an army, but by 25m hostile citizens.

In a society governed by fear, ruined by war and sanctions, and fractured by clan, creed and ethnicity, the truth of such an assertion is hard to gauge. Thirty-four years of rule by the Baath Party, with Mr Hussein at the helm for 23 of them, have brought disaster, but also a wary equilibrium. Many detest their leader, though virtually none dare do so openly. Yet even opponents admire his defiance, and admit the effectiveness of his propaganda.

There is little doubt that America, not the regime, takes first place on most Iraqis' hate-list. “Assuming I were to say I don't like our president, I still believe many of his positions are just,” said a Baghdad accountant-turned-taxi-driver. “Do Americans think what their Israeli friends do in Palestine is just? Do they think forcing me to look for fares, just so I can send my children to school wearing shoes, is just?”

Perceptions of American double standards translate into deep suspicion of American motives. They pretend they want to help us, goes a common refrain, but what they really want is to help Israel and get their hands on our oil. Even pro-American diplomats in Baghdad lament that the Bush administration has failed to deliver any message to assuage Iraqi fears on this score.

Many Iraqis apparently saw the referendum as an occasion to vote against George Bush rather than for Mr Hussein

Judging from the tenor of slogans festooned across the country for the referendum, many Iraqis saw it as an occasion to vote against George Bush rather than for Mr Hussein. The hostility to America, echoed by a range of Iraqis from a successful Baghdad sculptor to a village share-cropper, is understandable. Relentlessly repeated footage of Israeli brutality, often juxtaposed with images of “collateral damage” from American bombing in Afghanistan and in Iraq's “no-fly zones”, fill the state-controlled airwaves.

Meanwhile, 12 years of sanctions have given every household a personal grievance against those seen as responsible for imposing them. Baghdad, once a city of broad avenues, villas and European-standard public housing, now looks more like Kinshasa, Congo's sad capital, complete with lakes of sewage, piles of trash, beggars and straggling flea markets.

Since 1990, Iraq's mortality rate for children has risen ten times faster than Rwanda's, even throwing in those children killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Most die from the effects of malnutrition and tainted water. Despite repairs to power generation, which has brought output back to 50% of pre-war levels, most towns suffer daily electricity cuts and many villages get none at all. This is a dire problem when summer temperatures soar to 50°C (122°F) in the shade.

While pushing more than 1m Iraqis to emigrate, sanctions have increased the reliance on the state of those left behind. The UN's oil-for-food programme, started in 1996, does now provide everybody with basic monthly rations. Essential goods, including medicines, are more widely available than five years ago. Yet the average family still spends 72% of its cash income on food. Meanwhile, UN restrictions remain so stringent that one aid agency was recently denied permission to import door handles for the hospitals it has renovated.

A minefield

Yet, much as Iraqis loathe their circumstances, the fear of change could be even stronger, especially of change brought by yet another war. Cruelly oppressive though it may be, the state does provide security. “The whole society is a minefield,” said an aid worker who has travelled widely across the country. “Lift the pressure and it could really explode.”

The Kurds, who have secured relative freedom under UN protection in their northern homeland, are wary of reintegrating with the Arab majority. The small Christian minority, fairly prosperous but decimated by emigration, worries that without the protection of the secular Baathists, the Muslim religious revival which has swept the country could turn against them. Sunni Muslims, who are over-represented in government but vastly outnumbered by the Shia, fear losing their traditional dominance. Loyalists in the Baath Party and in dozens of Arab tribes—including Shia as well as Sunni clans—fear retribution. And the small core of henchmen clustered around Mr Hussein, mostly from his own clan or home region of Tikrit, fear extermination.

The tools for a bloodbath are readily to hand. Aside from a thriving black market in weapons, the government is said to have distributed arms to party cadres, retired officers and selected tribal leaders. Just as dangerously, poverty and the enfeebled infrastructure make Iraq far more vulnerable to epidemics, and possibly to widespread hunger, than it was in 1990.

Tuberculosis, cholera and typhoid, unknown before 1990, are already prevalent. In a war, even such diseases as influenza could cause fatalities. Aid officials lament that not even precautions such as stocking blood banks have been taken to avert wartime health risks.

Still, the government is making some quiet preparations. Parts of the telecommunications infrastructure have been dismantled to spare them from bombs. Masterpieces from the Iraq Museum are being kept in storage. Food rations are now being distributed in two-month instalments—though some say that is because this year's bumper grain harvest has swollen stocks after two years of drought.

Largely, however, the regime's war preparations take the form of mounting propaganda. “Every shepherd will be a fighter, every village a killing cell,” swears Ezzat Ibrahim, a senior official, in announcing the referendum results.

And if the attack comes?

Despite the pervasive public anxiety and the government's bravado, some foreign analysts reckon that most Iraqis would acquiesce in “regime change”, even one instigated from outside. Foreign observers in Baghdad believe it is a question of how quickly and cleanly the change is effected. Too long a campaign, with too much hardship inflicted on civilians, would provoke a backlash, said one aid official.

Others are more categorical. “There would be dancing in the streets if the regime fell,” said a European diplomat. “Half would be dancing because they are happy, the other half because that's what they are used to doing for whoever rules them.”

Maybe, but it is hard to find even a dissident Iraqi who is so sanguine. “We'll happily watch the American bullets fly over our heads at first,” said one disgruntled intellectual. “But after a two-year honeymoon we'll be shooting at them. Iraqis will never, ever be ruled by foreigners.”