"I had no word from relatives in Nasiriya for the first five days" of the war, Jabar recalled, cradling a cup of mint tea in the company of Iraqi friends at a restaurant in an area known as Bangkok's Little Arabia.

Here the city's Arab and African expatriates and tourists work deals, use shady telephone service operators to call home, and linger over tea and the fragrant water pipes found in every sidewalk cafe.

Like many Arabs in Thailand, Jabar arrived as a trader eager to help export Thai goods back to his homeland.

Now, like hundreds of Iraqis living in the kingdom or seeking asylum from the United Nations office here, he frets away the hours, glued to Arabic-language TV coverage of the conflict, awaiting its speedy conclusion and praying for the survival of his family.

"We worry for our families and for our country," said Jabar, a member of the Shiite Muslim majority largely at odds with the regime of Saddam Hussein.

"If Saddam is gone it's better for me. I want the war finished quickly, but if it takes a long time," he shakes his head, his voice trailing off.

Three or four others sitting with Jabar, including 46-year-old Hesham Husein, shared similar views.

"Of course I don't like the war. My family is there, it's difficult for them," said Husein.

"I'm happy our people are strong. (US President George W.) Bush just wants to kill Iraqis."

Husein was at first hesitant to discuss Saddam, the man at the centre of the maelstrom, but eventually admitted he would be thrilled to see him deposed.

Such comments reflect the near-unanimous but seemingly divergent sentiments running up and down the alleys, or sois, of Little Arabia: that the brutish Iraqi dictator must go, but that the war is an unjustifiable invasion of a sovereign state.

Most of Thailand's Iraqis -- an estimated 200 to 1,000, members of the community say -- are "oppositionists" to Saddam's rule.

The local office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says 32 Iraqis have been recognized as refugees and 56 are currently seeking asylum. Another 50 have had their asylum claims rejected but are believed to have remained in Thailand.

Eleven Iraqi nationals, including three diplomats, were ordered expelled this month by Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who called them a threat to national security.

In the Egyptian-owned Nefertiti Restaurant, two dozen male expatriates from Egypt, Iraq, Oman, Syria and the United Arab Emirates watched intently as Al-Jazeera television broadcast the latest footage from the battlefront.

"I just want it to end, and I want Saddam to go too," said an Iraqi in his twenties who works in the seedy resort town of Pattaya, south of Bangkok.

For three years he has laid low in Thailand as the stormclouds gathered in Iraq.

He has been unable to contact his mother and two siblings since coalition forces rolled into his hometown of Basra, Iraq's second city.

"Of course I'm scared. I just think of it too much. But I can not go back right now, I have a red card," he said, alluding to a past run-in with the Iraqi military that forced him to flee.

Immigration authorities have been helpful and recently renewed his tourist visa with no questions asked, he said.

But that's doing little for business on the ground here; the tourist and business markets from the Middle East and Gulf states have dried up, and Arab traders aren't traveling.

Nighttime in Soi 3/1 normally echoes an Arab souk, its cafes teeming with life. Lately it has become listless and desperate, with cafe owners spinning beads in their palms and beckoning the few tourists who enter Little Arabia.

"Business has definitely slowed," said one Iraqi restaurateur who asked not to be named. "People from the Gulf states used to come here, but that's stopped now that there is war."

Walid El Sebai, the manager at Nefertiti's, said it was a bittersweet business in his restaurant these days.

"All of the Arab expatriates are coming here and drinking tea, but there are no tourists."

Sebai was also doubtful of a rapid rebound once the guns fell silent.

"It will take one year, two years," he said of the tourist trade. "They all want to wait and see what happens."

WAR.WIRE