STEPHEN LEWIS talks to the Scud Stud who is making waves with his new book about Iraq and is heading to York next week to talk about it.

FOR a war correspondent dubbed the Scud Stud by the British tabloids, Rageh Omaar is surprisingly diffident. He is not the kind of man who will let himself be drawn into easy black-and-white statements about what is right or wrong.

Were British and US troops right to invade Iraq, for instance? He ums and ers at the end of the telephone line. Then: "It's not really for me to say," he says, in that rich BBC accent of his. "I'm still a practising journalist."

Not all war correspondents are so shy with their own opinions. Omaar, however, seems determinedly un-opinionated. Pressed on the war, he gives a delicately ambiguous answer.

"The war in Iraq is certainly going to have enormous consequences," he says carefully.

"A terrible, terrible dictatorship has been gotten rid of. Iraqis have on the face of it freedoms they could only dream of under Saddam.

"But at the moment those freedoms are half freedoms because they live in a country that's racked by violence and insecurity. They have the right to say what they want, and to read newspapers - but it is undermined by the fact that you are frightened to let your children go out into the street."

The Somalia-born war correspondent's studied, compassionate reporting for the BBC from a Baghdad under siege brought him a legion of fans. The sight of him crouching on the roof of the Palestine Hotel as US shells flew past is one of the enduring images of the second Gulf War, bringing home to viewers the sheer claustrophobia and fear of those trapped in the besieged city.

He has reportedly said that the most frightening moment of the war came when he and his BBC team encountered American soldiers advancing into Baghdad for the first time. It was the kind of statement likely to win him few friends in a British government already moaning about the BBC's hostile coverage of the war.

Read his account of that meeting in his book Revolution Day: The Human Story Of The Battle For Iraq, however, and it becomes clear that it wasn't intended as an anti-American statement. It was a frightening moment because the Americans themselves were frightened; because of the sheer tension of the situation.

"Just before one o'clock we saw them," he writes. "Never in the past six years of reporting from Baghdad had I been able to imagine American soldiers on the streets of the city. They looked so out of place, so peculiar in front of the familiar shop fronts with the small portraits of Saddam Hussein hanging over the doors.

"They seemed unsure of their next move. Three of them were crouching behind a Humvee, scanning the rooftops for snipers. They all looked so young. One of them still had faint wisps of adolescent hair covering his chin. One or two young Iraqi boys approached them awkwardly and tried to say hello.... 'Mister, mister! Hello, mister,' they said. The marines acknowledged them briefly before turning back to stare down the sights of their guns."

Revolution Day is full of such vivid moments that illuminate the war, and also the soul of a brutalised nation.

Omaar had been the BBC's official correspondent in Iraq for six years before the war began. Fluent in Arabic, he had travelled extensively in the country and had made many friends.

His book is a compelling, first-hand account of what it was like to be a foreign journalist covering the war, and of what it was like to be in Baghdad in those last few days and hours as the Americans advanced.

He describes the atmosphere among the people he knew on the night the first bombs hit; the horror they felt as they watched their city burn; the anarchy that followed.

But he wanted the book to be more than just an account of the war, he says. He wanted to try to give a glimpse at least of what Iraq under Saddam was like, and of the people and the country the Americans and British went to liberate.

He was no lover of Saddam. The dictator had brutalised 24 million people. It wasn't just the viciousness, the killings and tortures that made it such a hellish place to be.

"It was a dictatorship that reached into every living room, every house. It was a cult of personality. Imagine you live in a country where from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to bed, you're constantly in the presence of the dictator. His face peering down from every building on the way to work, from every school. It was a horrendous, awful dictatorship that left a whole nation in trauma."

Tragically, the UN sanctions intended to undermine Saddam only served to strengthen his stranglehold on the country, Omaar says. The food and medicine aid supplied to the starving country was left to be distributed by the Iraqi government. "So people needed Saddam to eat. That was the devastating thing."

The effect of those sanctions accounts in part for the ambiguous attitude of ordinary Iraqis towards the occupying British and American forces, Omaar says. But what his friends in Iraq are most bewildered about is how an overwhelming military force such as that the Americans and British have in Iraq still cannot bring peace to the troubled country.

The capture of Saddam will have helped Iraqis to begin to believe at last that they can shake of the shadow of his brutal regime. But months after the war ended, violence and fear remain routine.

The kidnapping of ordinary Iraqi children has become a growth industry he says. Islamist extremists linked to al Qaeda are being chillingly effective, through their campaign of bombings targeted as often as not at Iraqis themselves, in undermining any attempts to bring stability to the country.

Stability is what ordinary Iraqis need now above all, he says, for themselves and their families, and the chance to find a job and earn a living. It's on those things that they will judge the American and British occupation of their country.

So there is a cold and evil logic, he says, to the actions of the Islamist extremist groups - whether they are operating under the umbrella of al Qaeda, or are simply Saddam loyalists out to cause as much damage and bloodshed as they can.

What he fears is that the continuing bloodshed and violence could speed up the withdrawal of British and American forces from Iraq - so that they pull out before the country is ready, leaving behind a dangerous power vacuum. Attacks on the fledgling Iraqi police force are clearly designed to destabilise the situation still further, and to "make people fearful of 'collaborating' with the new state".

He doesn't sound optimistic about Iraq's future. "I want to be optimistic more than anything else, because I have got friends there," he says. "But I cannot say hand on heart that I see much to make me enormously optimistic."

There is one glimmer of light, he says - the signing a couple of days ago of an interim constitution for a new Iraq. But while the bombing and terror goes on, it is a faint glimmer indeed. There is a long way to go yet before his friends in Iraq will get the kind of stability they yearn for.

Revolution Day: The Human Story Of The Battle For Iraq is published by Viking, priced £17.99. Rageh Omaar will be at Borders in York at 6.30pm on Thursday March 18 to talk about his book and sign copies.

RAGEH ON HUTTON

He may be reluctant to comment on the invasion of Iraq second time around, but Rageh Omaar has no such reservations when it comes to the Hutton report.

He recently left the BBC to go freelance. But he was, he says, "as shocked as everyone else" at the way the Hutton report savaged the Beeb and exonerated the Government over the Andrew Gilligan/David Kelly affair. "The report disquieted a lot of people at the BBC," he says.

He does not, however, believe it will affect the quality and independence of the BBC's journalism. "I think it will remain vital and strong and its journalism will be as excellent and brilliant and valued around the world as it has always been," he says.

Updated: 10:14 Wednesday, March 10, 2004