Safer Baghdad Becomes A City Of Green Zones

Christian Science Monitor:

Abu Nawas, Baghdad's storied riverbank thoroughfare, reopened amid much official fanfare two weeks ago. But three years since they last saw business, merchants on the street are facing a new challenge, say some local merchants: overwhelming security.

Abu Nawas - once witness to frequent suicide car bombs and mortar attacks - now hums with activity of a different sort. The newly fortified area is patrolled by Humvees and guarded by US-funded private security companies that search every entering vehicle and scrupulously monitor shopkeepers and residents - and occasional intrepid visitors.

Read the whole story: Christian Science Monitor

Comments

[ajax2]

Is Bush creating a Stalinist Iron Curtain in the Mid-East? Mr. Bush tear down this wall.

[StillAmused]

Junior and his privileged cronies think this is a big step forward... Iraq's own rendition of America's "gated communities".

They haven't worked out those nettlesome suicide bombings, kidnap killings and IED attacks yet, but freedom's definitely on the march.

[loki]

Wait. So now we have green zones , in the green zones ? So I guess now haliburton employees can rape women all over Baghdad, and you know Haliburton and the people involved in this will not be touched. Just like those ahole killers of Blackwater go free and still roam in Iraq killing at their pleasure. Which may be a good thing otherwise those killers would all be back here looking for jobs, that Im sure Capitalist would be eager to oblige them of their mental madness.
Anyway, I would hope that this women would end up owning the company, so she can close it down and pocket the billions, and she gets to choose punishment of the men who did this to her as well as the ones who covered it up. Maybe she could use the money from selling off Haliburton in pieces and have someone build an huge back door rape machine, strap them all into it and turn it on for 2o years, spiked probes and lubricant free. And she still wouldnt have proper restitution. But it would be a start.

[Marichu]

That isn't living, it's more along the lines of house arrest except that it encompasses neighborhoods. They've given up a part of their freedom for a relative sense of security. And of course, it is the poor, the disenfranchised that suffer the most. They have no voice, no control over their lives and have to accept the dictates of the government, the occupational force, security contractors and the insurgents. It is always a no-win situation for the poor.

[Maxbyte]

Wow! Cool. Once they get Green Zonettes built for every group with a gripe in Baghdad, we can sit back and watch Iraqis and al-Qaeda tunnel from Green Zone to Green Zone to blow up their neighbors.

I'll bet Bush got the idea from his nifty "Kill Muslims" game box.

Quayle said it best: "A wasted presidential mind is a terrible thing to save."

[getoffmedz]

Seems to me there was another huge warlike state that built walls after WWII and crumbled under it's own criminality?

[MikeDu]

Early in the occupation they were bulldozing the family homes of Iraqis who were fighting the occupation. Then they bulldozed a 400m open space back from all the main roads for clear lines of fire. Then they bulldozed berms entirely around the city of Samarrah and Fallugha to bkock the cities in. And they erected Bremmer walls around their own compounds, then walls around the main travel avenues, now walls separating ethnically clensed neighborhoods. The U.S. has obviously been taking advice from Isreli 'experts' on how to construct mega-ghettos for arabs.

[totalliberal]

Get used to it in America as well, as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Stick all your money into Be-Safe U.S.A.


(Blackwaters new America friendly name.)

[GuiltyByStander]

I'd like to hear more from Abu Nawas and his fellow merchants and citizens, and less from the peanut gallery over here.

Clearly he's not selling anything to Blackwater mercenaries, but then, he's not getting killed either. One step back or two steps forward?

At some point in every conflict that takes place within a civilian population you have to start by separating the bombers from their intended victims. Not easy. And we're probably making mistakes. But these errors are easier to correct than death and injury.

As Iraqis decide how their federation is going to work, we'll see more of this.

In case you assume that I'm a "surge apologist" let me quote Juan Cole from his August 2007 blog where he argues that the sunny troop death counts that came out in July 2007 were true. Compare 2007 on the left to 2006 -- just the way any accountant would compare seasonal changes "year-over-year" -- but at the END of the month -- the good news about troop deaths came out on July 24th!

----------

Here are the US troop death via Icasualties.org.

8-2007 77 8-2006 65
7-2007 79 7-2006 43
6-2007 101 6-2006 61
5-2007 126 5-2006 69
4-2007 104 4-2006 76
3-2007 81 3-2006 31
2-2007 81 2-2006 55
1-2007 83 1-2006 62

I mean, how brain dead do the Bushies think we are, peddling this horse manure that US troop deaths have fallen? (There are always seasonal variations because in the summer it is 120 F. in the shade and guerrillas are too heat-exhausted to fight; but the summer 2007 numbers are much greater than those for summer 2006; that isn't progress.) And why does our corporate media keep repeating this Goebbels-like propaganda? Do we really live in an Orwellian state?

[Ginzaman]

I wonder how the Iraqis feel about this? After all, it is their country....

[MissLouise]

So...is this artificial situation sustainable indefinitely? How exactly did we solve the sectarian problem in a lasting way? The minute our troops (and all those "security contractors") leave, Iraq will become what it will become--and it might not be pretty. We might end up wishing we hadn't armed entire Sunni militias, in fact.

[Canukistani]

Mr. Bush, tear down these walls.

[outnow]

The New World Order of the Bushes is a Banana Republic where the rich grow richer. These people are corporations who are not loyal to the US. Only the name of the company is "American."

The poor will be walled of as the rich extract resources by privatizing and invasions. Look at Brazil or Mexico City.

Africa is next.

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Now THAT outta help with "political reconcilliation."

[SunshineDaydream]

guarded by US-funded private security companies that search every entering vehicle and scrupulously monitor shopkeepers and residents - and occasional intrepid visitors

is this what bush calls freedom and peace? i cannot imagine the fear and hatred this will bring our country from the children growing up amidst this madness done in our name, with our dollars.