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3 ROVING IN THE RED
ZONE ATol's "Roving Eye", Pepe
Escobar, is back in Iraq and in the Red
Zone - that is, outside "Fortress USA", the Green
Zone. This is the first of his unembedded,
non-Kevlar-protected, bodyguardless
reports.
Baghdad up close and
personal By Pepe Escobar
There must be some way to get out of
here Said the joker to the thief There's too
much confusion I can't get no relief -
Bob Dylan, All Along the
Watchtower
BAGHDAD - It's noon on
Sunday right in front of the Adhamiyah wall - the
now infamous symbol of the Pentagon-devised
Baghdad
gulag. On Muhamad al-Kasem
highway, a few battered cars and vans stop, their
occupants curious to examine this prime stretch of
"ghettoization".
Behind lies Adhamiyah,
one the key arteries of the Red Zone and
privileged heartland of Sunni Arab guerrillas. The
streets are littered with all sorts of debris,
some blocked by tanks, some blocked by the usual
blast wall slalom. The road to Abu Hanifa Mosque -
where the Sunni Arab resistance was born on April
8, 2003, a little over a week after the
"liberation" of Baghdad - is also blocked. It was
in Abu Hanifa that a 3,000-strong demonstration
assembled last week to protest against the wall.
Adhamiyah is virtually encircled by US forces, but
their checkpoints are always mobile.
A few
minutes later we are still close to the heart of
Adhamiyah, on al-Mashatil Road, one of its main
streets. We are unembedded, non-Hummer
convoy-transported, non-Kevlar protected, and not
surrounded by 100 soldiers and circled overhead by
three Black Hawks and two Apaches, like US
presidential candidate John MacCain in his recent
visit ("Hello, habibi!") to Shorja market (the
next day 21 merchants and workers at the market
were ambushed and murdered). We are just three
journalists - two Iraqis, Abdel and Fatima (their
real identities should be protected) and one
foreigner, his head in a keffiah, all
aboard a civilian Toyota stuck in traffic.
There's a checkpoint ahead. Incoming
traffic has to slow down in front of a Hummer of
the Iraqi Defense Forces. A soldier is talking to
the driver of a van. Suddenly there is a shot. The
soldier falls to the ground, right before our
eyes, screaming in pain. He is not dead instantly.
His companion, by the Hummer, takes some time to
react, then also starts shooting. People duck in
their cars; general wisdom is that if these were
US troops, they would be shooting at random and
every car would be sprayed with bullets.
Some cars hit reverse and join our traffic
flow. Chador-clad women pedestrians speed
across the boulevard in panic. At first we thought
the shot came from a sniper on the roof of a house
on our side of the boulevard. But sniper shots are
silent. Soon we realize the Iraqi soldier was shot
from a passing car. Abdel quips, "If we had this
image, AP [Associated Press] would buy it for
US$100,000." Welcome to Adhamiyah.
Ten
minutes later, we are arrested.
Life
under surge The day had already started
under high tension, as US jets around 9:00am
bombed positions supposedly held by Islamic
Emirate of Iraq guerrillas in explosive Dora,
south Baghdad. We stop by the recently bombed
Sarafiya bridge over the Tigris, which links the
al-Qasra side of Sunni Adhamiyah to Shi'ite
al-Altafiyah.
Residents are adamant: the
bomb was planted "by the Americans"; one of them
says, "The night before the bombing, the Americans
were surrounding the bridge, and right after the
bomb exploded, we heard the noise of a jet." If
this is true, it would fit a perceived - by a
overwhelming majority of Sunnis and Shi'ites alike
- American strategy of inciting sectarian war:
Shi'ites are now forced to pass through turbulent
Adhamiyah if they want to go, for instance, to
al-Mustansariyah University (also recently
bombed), which is considered in Baghdad as a
"Shi'ite" university.
We are stuck yet
again in a hellish traffic jam, in the Bab
al-Madam area, before a checkpoint at the Ministry
of Health. It's an ultra-sensitive area - scene of
many battles between US forces and the Sunni Arab
resistance. Suddenly, a very bad move: a
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