US Army Paralyses Baghdad with Fortifications

Baghdad Fumes as the Americans Seek Safety in ’Tombstone’
Forts

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=530692&host=3&dir=75

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.