Baghdad safer, but it's a life behind walls

Mini fortified 'green zones' are cropping up, improving security but leaving many residents feeling penned in.

from the December 10, 2007 edition

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In northeast Baghdad and down the Canal Street expressway, miles of 6-foot-high walls ring neighborhoods like Jamila, Jazayer, and Ur on the edge of the predominantly Shiite slum of Sadr City. "Rafah crossing" is scrawled on a concrete wall near an Iraqi Army-manned entry point – a sarcastic reference to the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

"We are not free, our neighborhood is barricaded … and our officials are over there in the Green Zone," says Hazem Mahmoud, a retired Iraqi Army officer out on an afternoon stroll with his wife on Rubaie Street.

A few miles from Jamila, down the Muhammad al-Qasim highway, massive 12-foot walls surround staunchly Sunni neighborhoods like Adhamiyah and Sulaikh.

"Luke was here," is sprayed on the Adhamiyah wall, probably by a patrolling US soldier. Residents demonstrated against US plans to build the wall earlier this year, but a similar wall went up around Sulaikh about two weeks ago without much of a stir. "If our leaders are happy with it, you expect us, the poor people, to speak up," says Ahmed Abdullah, a Sulaikh resident. "We feel like prisoners in our own country."

Passing through an entry point manned by two AK-47-toting teenage neighborhood guards, Faiza Faiq says: "Thank God the situation is better; we have peace of mind. But in the past 10 days, with these walls, you feel imprisoned a bit."

Suddenly, US troops descend and take over the checkpoint. "It's policing during the day and soldiering at night," quips one US soldier, explaining that the Iraqi guards in Sulaikh are not fully trusted yet.

Mr. Rajab, the Ghazaliya resident who endured a three-hour, cross-town trip that should take 30 minutes to visit a friend in Sulaikh, is thoroughly interrogated.

The idea of protective zones is spreading to the city center. Large segments of the main market, Shorja, are ringed with blast walls and guarded entry points.

In a bid to boost besieged Baghdadis, US and Iraqi military officials held a street party to mark the reopening of Abu Nawas, named for a 6th-century poet, following a $5 million US-funded renovation.

US-paid private guards, seen on a recent visit, were manning a new checkpoint. US soldiers patrol the area. Scenes of ancient Babylon adorn protective walls; side streets are blocked. Cars are few, and the only customers at a street cafe are four undercover Iraqi security agents. "We need this; the Baghdad security plan is only 60 percent done," says one.

At Akkad Gallery, two artists commiserate. "We must live in a situation that the world knows is occupation," says Ali Kamal. Bilal Baher says he misses Adhamiyah's famed sites, now off-limits. "The limits are encroaching on our souls," he says.

The only ones having fun on Abu Nawas were boys playing soccer in the park, as the Green Zone loomed across the Tigris River.

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