"Iraq Is Finished"

Tweet "The badge syndrome becomes more apparent in one of the safest places in the Red Zone: it had to be a mini-Green Zone, in the Shi'ite Karrada neighborhood. A group of no more than 10 houses, including two hotels, is protected like a bunker. Inside this normality amid chaos, the prominent inhabitants had to be armed-to-the-teeth private security contractors - the shadow US army in Iraq. Exit a group of bulky, burly South African mercenaries who had been sipping tea in the hotel lobby over piped music. Enter a group of Nepalese Gurkhas in T-shirts whose first activity is target practice at the hotel entrance.

"This Red Zone film set (which would cost a fortune and months of work in Hollywood), "safer than the Green Zone", quips an Iraqi security guard, is the essence of Baghdad gulag territory: blast walls, badges, barbed wire, watchtowers, non-stop security checks, body searches, giant power generators, containers, dilapidated houses (some "for rent", no takers), crumbling pavement, pools of stagnant water.

"Security is provided by one of the private companies based in the compound. Baghdad condo living is expensive: power cuts are continual (most of Baghdad has no more than two hours of electricity a day), so energy is at a premium and fuel costs 88 US cents a liter. A medium-sized, three-storey hotel consumes 1,650 liters a day. Sometimes buildings have to run for two or three days on generator only.

"Muhammad is a night watchman in this "secure environment". During the day he lives in the real world, in Sadr City, one of the world's top slums. He says he faces no problems coming to work every day: after all, he has a badge. He is glad to confirm Muqtada is in Iraq, not Iran, as the White House claims. He complains heavily about "Wahabbis killing women and children" - a reference to the "Islamic Emirate of Iraq" proclaimed by al-Qaeda. And he fears a return of the Ba'athists. For his part, a Christian Kurd head waiter confirms Christians are coming in droves from explosive Dora - where ethnic cleansing by the Islamic Emirate of Iraq is in progress - to live in safety in Karrada: "East Baghdad is safe, but the west is very dangerous. Iraq is finished."

Pepe Escobar in Asia Times via Cursor.org