- BAGHDAD -- The US army is
paralysing the heart of Baghdad as it builds ever more elaborate fortifications
to protect its bases against suicide bombers.
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- "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.
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- Gigantic concrete slabs, like enormous grey 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.
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- 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.
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- Salahudin Mohammed al-Rawi, an engineer, dismisses the
diplomatic manoeuvres 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."
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- 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 armoured vehicles thundering down
the road.
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- Shahab al-Obeidi is the manager of the Shatt al-Arab
restaurant, where dark grey 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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 centre 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.
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- Next door, Zuhaar Tuma owns a cafÈ 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."
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- 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.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=530692
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