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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

"Americans - go home !!" Now, if only the grunts
who are dying *would* ....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5973273/site/newsweek/<http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5973273/site/newsweek/>
Lost in the Green Zone
As Iraqi frustration mounts over sovereignty, Americans have a place to dance 
and eat pizza

Sept. 20 issue - President George W. Bush and his advisers like to say that 
sovereignty has been returned to the Iraqis. But the heart of the Iraqi 
capital, where the symbols of power are most concentrated, belongs to 
America. Enclosed inside a maze of blast walls, protected by Abrams tanks and 
Apache helicopters, the 10 square kilometers of the Green Zone contain some 
of Baghdad's finest real estate-the local equivalent of the White House, the 
Washington Monument and other prime sites in downtown Washington. Many 
Iraqis, including senior ministers and the mayor of Baghdad, want the 
Americans to move out of town. But the Americans won't budge, and don't have 
to.

Far from being dismantled, the Green Zone is expanding. NEWSWEEK has learned 
that at least five U.S. security and construction companies are planning to 
build compounds on the zone's perimeter, eventually to be incorporated into 
the rest of the area. That's because the fight for space inside the zone is 
intense. A small U.N. team lives in the Green Zone, and plans are underway to 
build a future U.N. compound within the area. Key command centers for the 
140,000-strong American military force occupy several of the most prominent 
buildings. Favored embassies and foreign companies are there, too. "Two 
thirds of the whole question of occupation is in those homes and those 
buildings [inside the Green Zone]," says Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdel 
Mehdi, whose office is in charge of negotiating the issue with the Americans. 
"The question of sovereignty-but also of security and national dignity, and 
even economic prosperity-is there."
Safety is the main sticking point-for the Americans, but also for the Iraqi 
interim government. Ministers like Mehdi don't want to be seen as American 
stooges, which is one reason they'd like to see the Americans leave the Green 
Zone. But they don't want to get blown up or otherwise murdered, either. 
Investors and other outsiders also need a place in the capital where they can 
feel safe. "Hand it over? No way," said one U.S. official. "The government 
wouldn't want that either. Anybody who comes here, they all want in. Who 
wouldn't? It's the safest place in town."

The Green Zone is certainly a world unto itself. Women in shorts and T shirts 
jog down broad avenues, and the Pizza Inn does a brisk business from the 
parking lot of the heavily fortified U.S. Embassy. Near the Green Zone 
Bazaar, Iraqi kids hawk pornographic DVDs to soldiers. Sheik Fuad Rashid, the 
U.S.-appointed imam of the local mosque, dresses like a nun, dyes his hair 
platinum blond and claims that Mary Mother of Jesus appeared to him in a 
vision (hence the getup). On any given night, residents can listen to 
karaoke, play badminton or frequent one of several rowdy bars, including an 
invitation-only speakeasy run by the CIA. At the Green Zone Cafe-where 
contractors toting 9mm pistols smoke hookahs while an Iraqi drummer provides 
entertainment-a sign on the door warns customers to empty their weapons 
before consuming alcohol.

To some, the Green Zone feels like a vast isolation chamber. One recent night 
at a saloon called The Bunker, a resident contractor asked, "So, what's going 
on out there in Iraq anyway?" He hadn't left the Green Zone in six months. 
"It's like Plato's republic in here, all of these well-meaning, smart people 
who want to do the right thing," says one security contractor and Green Zone 
regular. "But they never leave here and they have no idea what's happening in 
the country they're supposed to be building. It's totally absurd."

The war often intrudes. In mid-August a 13-foot FROG missile loaded with more 
than 300 pounds of explosives detonated on the roof of a U.S. Embassy 
building, causing massive damage but killing nobody. Other attacks, such as a 
mortar strike last June that hit a bus just outside the zone, have succeeded 
only in killing innocent Iraqis. Several thousand Iraqis live inside the zone 
and, with rare exception, U.S. officials have no idea whose side they're on. 
"The thugs and looters remain, and many of them are not very nice," says Lt. 
Col. Richard Allinger, a longtime Green Zone resident. Security guards 
sometimes get out of hand themselves. A recent spate of shooting incidents 
between blue-uniformed security forces inside the Green Zone led to a 
confidential report, "Blue on Blue Violence: Target Practice or What?"

The siege mentality of American occupiers feeds anger among ordinary Iraqis. 
Baghdad's mayor, Alaa al-Tamimi, has asked the Americans to withdraw not just 
from the Green Zone but also from other barricaded ghettos-sort of mini Green 
Zones-because they are an affront to Iraqi dignity, but also due to the 
severe traffic problems they create. Several key bridges and thoroughfares 
are off-limits to ordinary Iraqis. Even Abu Nawas Street, a tree-lined avenue 
across the Tigris River from the zone, has been closed since last year, when 
hotels there barricaded themselves behind blast walls and razor wire. Now 
Mayor al-Tamimi is trying to reopen the street to foot traffic. "Abu Nawas 
used to be the center of the life of the city," says al-Tamimi. "It will be 
again."

Legally, the Americans don't have to move out, at least not yet. On June 27, 
the day before Iraqi sovereignty was declared, L. Paul Bremer issued one of 
his last executive orders as Iraq's U.S. administrator. Known as Order No. 9, 
it extends the right of occupation forces to control properties until the 
Iraqi government decides otherwise. Officially, the United States is 
negotiating with the Iraqi government over the issue. But privately, U.S. 
officials say plans to move the Americans out are "fantasy."

So why doesn't the Iraqi government just demand that U.S. forces leave the 
area? Finance Minister Mehdi says he's been badgering the Americans. "We ask 
them all the time, 'When are you going to leave the zone?' " he says. "And we 
always get the same answer: that they are working on it, that they will 
inform us." But divisions within the government have complicated matters. 
Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is allegedly in favor of keeping the Green Zone 
the way it is, at least for now, partly because insurgents have targeted him 
and other officials. (Expansion plans for the zone include one to extend it 
by a full kilometer later this month in order to attach a complex of ministry 
buildings.) And pressing the issue forcefully could jeopardize vital American 
backing. "They would pay a price: potential curbs in U.S. support, friction 
on questions of aid. Iraq does not want to confront the U.S.," says Anthony 
Cordesman, a strategy specialist with the Center for Strategic and 
International Studies in Washington. But until Iraq demands otherwise, the 
biggest symbols of national sovereignty will remain in American hands.

With Christopher Dickey in Baghdad and Eve Conant in Washington

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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The photo on the far right is one of the earlier thatch roof, woven
wall-panels typical of tropical architecture.  Windows fold up,
bamboo-slat floors admit air to sleeping mats, ladder entry usually
draws up to (not very well) exclude snakes and rodents---for that you
need metal cones on all poles, and set the poles in water (any kind of
oil is better) to keep out insects.)  Water rots the poles.

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