Iraq on the Edge
By Joost R. Hiltermann
New York Review of Books
1.
For the occasional visitor such as myself, various methods exist to measure America's standing in Iraq, Iraqi suspicions and aspirations, and progress in the transfer of power, but none prove as illuminating as the checkpoints into and throughout Baghdad's Green Zone, that diminishing symbol of the Bush administration's ambitions.
Armed with two pieces of picture ID, but not with a US-issued badge, I entered the Green Zone several times during my late-September visit to what had become a relatively peaceful "red" zone, i.e., the rest of this vast city. The US badge, a word that has entered Iraq's rich post-2003 lexicon as bahtch, exists in various colors, identifying the holder and denoting degrees of access. With the right color badge, you zip through checkpoints in your car; without it, you receive the same treatment accorded to many Iraqis who work in the Green Zone and daily make the crossing by foot or by car.
Dropped off at the gate by my driver, the upbeat Samir, I was accompanied by Daniel, an American friend with a press badge. We entered the gray concrete folds that mark the border between the red and green zones. First we removed the batteries from our cell phones, potential triggers for explosives we could have hidden in our clothes. A dizzying succession of ID checks, pat-downs, and bag searches followed, performed by Iraqi soldiers in the outer ring, then by Ugandan military contractors eager for friendly banter, by a sniffer dog, and at last, in the inner ring, close to the convention center housing the parliament, by Kurdish peshmerga guerrilla fighters, now enrolled in the regular army.
(More here.)
New York Review of Books
1.
For the occasional visitor such as myself, various methods exist to measure America's standing in Iraq, Iraqi suspicions and aspirations, and progress in the transfer of power, but none prove as illuminating as the checkpoints into and throughout Baghdad's Green Zone, that diminishing symbol of the Bush administration's ambitions.
Armed with two pieces of picture ID, but not with a US-issued badge, I entered the Green Zone several times during my late-September visit to what had become a relatively peaceful "red" zone, i.e., the rest of this vast city. The US badge, a word that has entered Iraq's rich post-2003 lexicon as bahtch, exists in various colors, identifying the holder and denoting degrees of access. With the right color badge, you zip through checkpoints in your car; without it, you receive the same treatment accorded to many Iraqis who work in the Green Zone and daily make the crossing by foot or by car.
Dropped off at the gate by my driver, the upbeat Samir, I was accompanied by Daniel, an American friend with a press badge. We entered the gray concrete folds that mark the border between the red and green zones. First we removed the batteries from our cell phones, potential triggers for explosives we could have hidden in our clothes. A dizzying succession of ID checks, pat-downs, and bag searches followed, performed by Iraqi soldiers in the outer ring, then by Ugandan military contractors eager for friendly banter, by a sniffer dog, and at last, in the inner ring, close to the convention center housing the parliament, by Kurdish peshmerga guerrilla fighters, now enrolled in the regular army.
(More here.)
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