Posted on 10/29/2003 6:04:19 AM PST by TomB
A lot of Americans in Baghdad now are desperately reviewing their personal security, especially after Sunday’s attacks on the al Rashid Hotel and Monday’s half-hour rampage of six suicide car bombings around the city. If even Paul Wolfowitz isn’t safe (his room was only one floor away from taking a direct hit from a rocket), then who is? Here’s a primer for those who really must go.
GETTING THERE
If you don’t have a military flight, or a seat on a military convoy, then there are four main ways in to Iraq, all of them bad.
You can drive up from Kuwait, the safest route. There are downsides, though. For one, you need a visa from Kuwait, which is hard to get. Then you need permission to cross the border from Kuwait’s Ministry of Interior, which is even harder to get. If you have a car you can take into Iraq, fine; otherwise you’ll have to walk across the border at Safwan, where mobs will greet you as you try to fight your way into a car-for-hire waiting for you on the Iraqi side. Sometimes they stone travelers. After that, the road is relatively safe, although armed highway robbery happens fairly often, several times a week. Lie down on the back seat or, if you’re a woman, put on a chador so no one knows you’re American.
You can drive down from Turkey. Visas are no problem from Turkey, and obtaining permission to cross the border takes only three days or so. Most of the route through northern Iraq is safe. The downside to this plan? For the last 100 miles or so there’s a risk of roadside bombs and armed highway robbery.
You can drive in from Amman, across the 600 miles of the Western Desert. No visas or border permissions needed, and this is probably the fastest route. Downsides: it’s also the most dangerous. Highway robberies and even attacks on armed convoys happen daily, sometimes several times a day. Forget about trying to hide your money. The thieves will either find it, or kill you for not having it.
You can take a charter flight from Amman into Baghdad International Airport. The roundtrip fare from Amman will set you back as much as $1,100. And missiles may be fired at aircraft as they land, though none has so far hit anything and the attackers don’t seem to target civilian planes. All this may make the option of going in with the military sound attractive, if you can swing permission. But military flights have had missiles fired at them (though defensive measures like chaff and flares have deflected them). And military convoys are routinely hit by ambushes and roadside bombs.
WHERE TO STAY
Once in Baghdad you have to decide where to live. Baghdad now is essentially divided into two broad zones: the Green Zone and everything else. It’s not clear when everyone started calling the Green Zone that, anymore than it’s clear when everyone started calling Iraq Rummy World, though it predated Doonesbury. The Green Zone is also widely called The Bubble, but that’s considered derogatory. Perhaps it got that name because the zone does include some of the only green space in Baghdad, including most of the Zawra Park and Zoo, the Festival and Parade Ground, the vast grounds of the New Unknown Soldier monument, the Convention Center, the al Rashid hotel, the Republican Guard presidential palace, the National Assembly complex, the Hands of Victory monument, the 14th of July Monument and all or parts of five city neighborhoods.
Around the four-mile square Green Zone, a triple perimeter has been erected, consisting of an outer blast wall of concrete barriers 15-feet high, inside of which are coils of barbed wire, a space, and another row of barriers and concertina wire. The eastern side also fronts the Tigris River. The entire area now has one main entry point, next to the al Jumhariya Bridge, where 1st Armored Division soldiers, backed up by British rapid reaction commando teams, are on duty. Tanks are located at key points, with machine gun nests on buildings and teams of snipers on rooftops.
*******SNIP to the REALLY bad part, click here for the rest of the bilge************
By this point you may well have decided that you’ll feel SAFEr living in the Green Zone, and if you have a military contract or a job with a high-profile American company, you may qualify. Once in the Green Zone, past the usual vehicle and body searches, you’ll find a whole other world. There are trees and parkland, palaces and spacious open areas around the monuments, lakes, fountains, canals, and even Westerners out jogging. You can drive your big SUV, without being stopped and searched, from the CPA Palace, to the back entrances of the Convention Center, where you can meet with your triple-searched Iraqi contacts, to the Al Rashid, living quarters for coalition and soldiers on duty, and to the Governing Council office building. There are motor pools, and Internet cafes, cafeterias and video lounges. There’s even a blog from inside the Green Zone, put out by someone who says he’s a military intelligence soldier using the psuedonym Chief Wiggles (http://chiefwiggles.blogspot.com). Lately the boosterish Chief Wiggles has been using his blog to find donors to give him bicycles so soldiers can pedal around the zone giving out toys to children. Things are, as they say, getting better, at least inside the Bubble. The air conditioning works in the buildings now and most places when the power fails there’s no roar of generators, so common out in Baghdad proper. Best of all, from a personal safety point of view, you’ll hardly ever see Iraqis wandering around, unless they’re escorted or under guard, or getting toys from Chief Wiggles’ mounted associates. Oh yes, there’s also a jail in the Green Zone, although by the time you leave Baghdad you may well feel you’ve already been in one.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.com ...
BTW, you can donate toy to Chief Wiggles here.
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