Baghdad Fumes as the Americans Seek Safety in 'Tombstone' Forts
by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

Saturday, June 12, 2004
Independent/UK    
     
The US army is paralyzing the heart of Baghdad as it builds ever more
elaborate fortifications to protect its bases against suicide bombers.

"Do not enter or you will be shot," reads an abrupt notice attached to
some razor wire blocking a roundabout at what used to be the entrance
to the 14 July bridge over the Tigris. Only vehicles with permission
to enter the Green Zone, where the occupation authorities have their
headquarters, can now use it. Iraqis who want to cross the river
must fight their way to another bridge through horrendous traffic jams.

Gigantic concrete slabs, like enormous gray tombstones, now block
many roads in Baghdad. They are about 12 feet high and three feet
across and for many Iraqis have become the unloved symbol of the
occupation. Standing side by side, they form walls around the Green
Zone and other US bases, with notices saying it is illegal to stop
beside them.

It is the ever-expanding US bases and the increasing difficulties
and dangers of their daily lives which make ordinary Iraqis dismiss
declarations by President George Bush about transferring power to
a sovereign Iraqi government as meaningless. As Mr Bush and Tony
Blair were speaking this week about a new beginning for Iraq, the
supply of electricity in the country has fallen from 12 hours a day
to six hours. On Canal Street yesterday, close to the bombed-out
UN headquarters, there was a two-mile long queue of cars waiting to
buy petrol.

Salahudin Mohammed al-Rawi, an engineer, dismisses the diplomatic
maneuvers over Iraq at the UN in New York and the G8 meeting in
Georgia as an irrelevant charade. He said: "At the end of the day
they cannot cheat the Iraqi people because the Iraqis are in touch
with the real situation on the ground."

For many people in Baghdad the real situation is very grim. Twenty
years ago Abu Nawas Street on the Tigris used to be filled with
restaurants serving mazgouf, a river fish grilled over an open wood
fire and a traditional Baghdadi delicacy. These days Abu Nawas is
largely deserted and is used mainly by American armored vehicles
thundering down the road.

Shahab al-Obeidi is the manager of the Shatt al-Arab restaurant, where
dark gray fish swim in a circular pond decorated with blue tiles. They
may survive a long time. Mr Obeidi confesses that business is not
good. These days Abu Nawas can only be entered from one direction
and culminates in an American checkpoint.

We asked to see the owner of the restaurant and Mr Obeidi explained
that he "fled to Syria 40 days ago after his son was kidnapped and he
had to pay $20,000 to get him back". A problem, frequently mentioned
by Iraqis, is that US security measures appear to be solely directed
at providing security for Americans. For Iraqis, life in Baghdad is
still very dangerous.

Mr Obeidi said that "in the past 75 per cent of our business was in
the evening". Now he closes the Shatt al-Arab at 6pm and goes home. One
night he stayed open a little later for some customers who were having
a good time, but when he presented the bill they responded by pulling
out their pistols and firing volleys of shots into the ceiling and
through the windows. Mr Obeidi pointed to numerous bullet holes still
awaiting repair.

The reason why Abu Nawas is sealed off is that at the end of the street
are the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, where many foreign company
employees as well as journalists stay. A few hundred yards away
is Sadoun Street, once a main four-lane artery in central Baghdad,
but now reduced to two lanes opposite a side street leading to the
Baghdad Hotel. This was attacked by a suicide bomber last year,
without much damage to the hotel, which was universally believed
by Iraqi taxi drivers to be a center for the CIA. About 30 shops
within the cordon sanitaire around the hotel now face ruin. Nadim
al-Hussaini, who has a shop selling large air conditioners, says:
"My business has completely disappeared, first 30 to 40 per cent when
they put up a concrete barrier and 100 per cent when they closed
the road." In theory he should get compensation from the Coalition
Provisional Authority, but so far he has seen no sign of it.

Next door, Zuhaar Tuma owns a café which is not so badly affected
because he still has his regular customers, smoking hubble-bubble
pipes and playing dominoes. He was a little more understanding about
why the road had been closed, saying: "I don't want to get blown up
any more than the Americans do. But the real solution is simply for
the Americans staying at the hotel to leave it."

The same could be said of the thousands of other American officials and
soldiers in central Baghdad. Had they based themselves on the outskirts
of the capital they would have been far less visible. But, cut off as
they are in their compounds from real Iraqi life, they probably do not
know and may not care about the sea of resentment that surrounds them.