One of Ours

I’ve moved down the street. This has mainly advantages but one notable disadvantage in that I’m a couple of hundred metres closer to “The Green Zone”, as in “They’re bombing the…” The Green Zone, for those who have never needed to know, is the heavily fortified bit which most of the decision makers and foreign workers in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) never leave because of a theory that it’s somehow more dangerous to be on the streets of Baghdad than walled into the most heavily attacked part of it.

Sure enough, first thing in the morning there was a car bomb just outside it...

...The US military says it will begin patrols through the town again on May 10th. The many people of Falluja that I’ve talked to say they can never accept US troops on their streets again after all they’ve done. They say the Mujahedin are still there, are waiting, will kill them if they try to re-enter the town.

Perhaps the US command is hoping that, having gone home after so long away, people will have lost their will to go through it all again and will beg their sons and brothers and fathers not to fight anymore, leaving the troops an unhindered passage back into the town...

...The extra difficulty in Najaf – apart from the obvious one of US troops preparing to attack the city - is the increasing number of factions involved. The various leaders are starting to publicly express disagreement, and people in the town, dependent on the pilgrim trade for their income, are none too impressed with the economic effects of the stand off...

...A few things have changed at the camp at Shuala [a Palestinian refugee camp]. There’s been no aid at all for a month, partly because most of what was available went to Falluja and partly because most of the international organisations had to pull out for security reasons. There are no jobs for the same reasons – the security problems and the fighting. Even we are afraid to go out, they said, even the Iraqis. Wasn’t I afraid to go out?...