Page 2 of 3 ROVING IN THE
RED ZONE Baghdad up close and
personal By Pepe Escobar
policeman spots a foreign-looking
individual in a car with a video camera.
Police at this stretch are all from
Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army. In
their minds this instantly means spying. The Iraqi
journalists produce their credentials to no avail.
Cries of "Sahafa!" ("journalists") don't
cut it. We - and the camera - are in
fact
apprehended by the Mehdi Army. Abdel goes to the
ministry to try to solve the problem.
Meanwhile, Fatima's expensive mobile goes
missing. After some waiting, we are also summoned
to the first floor bureau of Abu Sama, head of
security and also spokesman for the ministry.
There are posters of Muqtada and Imam Hussein
everywhere. Security at the ministry is all Mehdi
Army. The minister is a Sadrist himself. If we had
the chance to go to one of the upper floors we
would be able to see, through the windows,
autopsies performed on the ground at the
neighboring Baghdad morgue.
The tortuous
ensuing conversation is like a dadaist manifesto.
Abu Sama - and his attending score of assistants
and policemen - turn the whole episode into a
diatribe against the evils of Saddam Hussein,
while suggesting Fatima's phone was not really
stolen, and examining the guilty images in the
camera with barely a passing glance.
They
are all southern Shi'ites - from Najaf, Diwaniyah,
Nassiriyah - more eager to display their tribal
affiliation as a badge of honor than discussing
the incident. It all finishes with excuses
("people here at the ministry are very tense"),
cups of tea and invitations to visit again. Abdel
then reveals what really happened.
At
checkpoints, the Mehdi Army often provokes some
confusion so as to have mobile phones stolen: this
is a business. But in the case of the camera, the
threat to us was real. Abdel happened to have
installed a radio station in Sadr City, so he
knows key Mehdi Army officials. Otherwise, he
said, we would have been branded as "spies" and
shot on sight. Right by the curbside. Just like
the soldier at the checkpoint. We would thus join
the ranks of the 188 journalists killed since the
"liberation" in 2003.
A few minutes later
we learn that the very popular Amal al-Mudarris,
58, host of the top radio show Studio Asha, aired
every day at 10am, has been the victim of an
assassination attempt in al-Khadraa, west Baghdad.
She survived, but in critical condition.
The hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed
since April 2003, the more than 4 million exiled
and internally displaced, the overlapping ethnic
cleansing neighborhood by neighborhood, the
abysmal impotence of the Nuri al-Maliki government
to seriously work with the Sunni Arab elite, the
American imposition of the Baghdad gulag: all
these factors dissolve in the deadly daily embrace
of the Red Zone - where a human life means
absolutely nothing and to stay alive in one piece
is a victory to be earned minute by minute.
The Red Zone soundtrack is the hum of the
power generator, punctuated by Kalashnikov shots,
explosions, bombings, the sirens of police cars
and ambulances and the roar of US choppers flying
almost at roof level.
The air is heavy,
dusty and the sun usually does not shine through
the thick haze - a Hollywood-like special effect.
The Baghdad gulag has the feel of an eerie version
of post-apocalyptic Los Angeles - dusty and dead
instead of glitzy palm trees, living-dead
characters covered by a thick layer of sand and
soot. The urban tissue is of a dissected cadaver -
filthy, exposed parts separated from one another,
fear and loathing impressed on blood, sweat, tears
and viscera.
This is the real face of
Bush's surgeland.
All along the
watchtower Baghdad - former Saddam -
International Airport is the only airport in the
world where immigration does not ask you for your
passport: they want your badge. Incoming planes
still have to circle overhead at least five times
before a mad dash towards the
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