Iraqis call it Assur, the Fence. In English everyone calls it the Wall, and in the past two years it has grown and grown until it has become an almost continuous rampart, at least 16km in circumference, around the seat of US power in Baghdad.
The wall is not a small factor in the lives of ordinary Iraqis outside it. Khalid Daoud, an employee at the Culture Ministry, still looks in disbelief at the barrier of 3.6m high five-tonne slabs that cuts through his garden.
This is one snapshot of life for countless Iraqis who live, work, shop and kick soccer balls around in the shadow of the structure. Many despise the wall, a few are strangely drawn to it, but no one can ignore it. Fortifications of one kind or another abound in the city, but there is nothing that compares to the snaking, zigzagging loop that is the wall.
PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Sometimes likened to the Berlin Wall by those who are not happy about its presence, the structure cleanly divides the relative safety of the Green Zone, which includes Saddam Hussein's old palace and ministry complex, now used by the US authorities and heavily patrolled by US troops, from the Red Zone -- most of the rest of Baghdad -- where security ranges from adequate to nonexistent.
But for all the problems faced by residents across the city, the neighborhoods within a few blocks of the wall have become a world apart. Mortar rounds and rockets fired at the Green Zone fall short and land there. Suicide bombers, unable to breach the wall, explode in shops just outside it. And the maze of checkpoints, blocked streets and rumbling US armor may be thicker here than anywhere else in Baghdad.
"We are the new Palestine," said Saman Abdel Aziz Rahman, owner of the Serawan kebab restaurant, hard upon the northern reaches of the wall.
Two weeks ago a man walked into a restaurant a few doors from the Serawan and blew himself up at lunchtime, killing 23 people, wounding 36 and sending pieces of flesh all the way to Rahman's establishment.
One of the paradoxes of the wall is that while many are repelled by it, others are drawn by the feeling that they will be protected by the overwhelming might that lies just on the other side. US foot patrols, rarely seen elsewhere in Baghdad, are fairly routine along the outside of the wall, and residents know that any sustained guerrilla incursion near the zone would draw a swarm of Apache helicopters and Humvees, as well as a tank or two if necessary.
The stretch of wall near the Serawan, which is faced with a stucco-like material, is not new. It is there that the wall encloses the Assassin's Gate, the bulky arch above a boulevard leading to Saddam's former Republican Palace. Even though the Americans doubled its height with a chain-link fence, barbed wire and a green tarpaulin on top, there is little sense that the structure has blighted the neighborhood.
Soad Harb, an engineer who lives with her family next to the July 14th Bridge in a well-appointed apartment that senior officials in Saddam's government abandoned in 2003, said she was happy to live so close to the southern boundary of the Green Zone, where she sometimes finds work with Fluor, a big US contractor.
Harb said that while the US checkpoint at the end of the bridge made the neighborhood dangerous and noisy, the soldiers who walked through the area talking with children made the barrier seem less intimidating.
But the same cannot be said in the middle-class district of Harithiya, just beyond the western edge of the Green Zone, where the great concrete slabs arrived about two months ago.
Sometimes called blast walls because the steel reinforcing inside is designed to withstand explosions, the slabs are a looming, sinister presence facing a long line of family homes from across Al-Shawaf Street in Harithiya.
Haider al-Shawaf, a 35-year-old businessman who grew up here, first described the unpleasantness of the wall with a crude US expression. Then, as helicopters clattered to and fro overhead, Shawaf said nervously, "I am afraid of the Americans here -- afraid of this wall."
Trinidad and Tobago declared a new state of emergency on Friday after authorities accused a criminal network operating in prisons across the country of plotting to kill key government officials and attack public institutions. It is the second state of emergency to be declared in the twin-island republic in a matter of months. In December last year, authorities took similar action, citing concerns about gang violence. That state of emergency lasted until mid-April. Police said that smuggled cellphones enabled those involved in the plot to exchange encrypted messages. Months of intelligence gathering led investigators to believe the targets included senior police officers,
FOREST SITE: A rescue helicopter spotted the burning fuselage of the plane in a forested area, with rescue personnel saying they saw no evidence of survivors A passenger plane carrying nearly 50 people crashed yesterday in a remote spot in Russia’s far eastern region of Amur, with no immediate signs of survivors, authorities said. The aircraft, a twin-propeller Antonov-24 operated by Angara Airlines, was headed to the town of Tynda from the city of Blagoveshchensk when it disappeared from radar at about 1pm. A rescue helicopter later spotted the burning fuselage of the plane on a forested mountain slope about 16km from Tynda. Videos published by Russian investigators showed what appeared to be columns of smoke billowing from the wreckage of the plane in a dense, forested area. Rescuers in
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr is to meet US President Donald Trump this week, hoping Manila’s status as a key Asian ally would secure a more favorable trade deal before the deadline on Friday next week. Marcos would be the first Southeast Asian leader to meet Trump in his second term. Trump has already struck trade deals with two of Manila’s regional partners, Vietnam and Indonesia, driving tough bargains in trade talks even with close allies that Washington needs to keep onside in its strategic rivalry with China. “I expect our discussions to focus on security and defense, of course, but also