I'm sure every employee likes to use the shortest road to reach home on one condition, the short way should be safe. This base cant be applied on me because I never use the short way home because the short way for along time used to mean death for me. The short way home passes through Sunni areas and they are not regular Sunni areas because I pass through Sunni neighborhood everyday but the Sunni neighborhood in the short road are all used to be controlled by Qaida.
Yesterday, when I wanted to return back home after a long workday, I took a taxi and told him about the road he should take. The man didn’t even discuss me and he did exactly as I told him. We found out that all the roads were closed. I had only two choices, to go back to the office and spend the night there or to take the risk and go through the high way which passes through what was considered once the most dangerous areas in Baghdad. The driver worked hard to persuade me. At the end he said “I swear I'm Shiite like you and I lost three cousins”. I told him frankly “I haven’t been there for about two years so how do u want me to trust you simply”.
After a long debate, I told him “ok, lets do it” To be honest, the idea of being kidnapped by some masked insurgents didn’t ever leave my mind. The only good thing in my mind was the violence report that we write everyday, there were no incidents mentioned by police or eyewitnesses in these neighborhoods for a real long time except for the unidentified bodies that are found from time to time and its not even like it used to be.
Anyway, we went through the areas and you could realize Im a live simply because I wrote these words. During the way home, the man did his best to assure me that everything is fine, he was pointing to the check points always. When I saw all these check points, I really felt that the situation is getting better and the government is doing its real duty, securing Baghdad, the heart of Iraq. I know how hard it is to defeat all the insurgents groups who were the real rulers of Iraq until few months ago but I know also that the most difficult step is the first step and I believe the Iraqi government stepped its first step successfully but I believe it need more efforts to rebuild the broken trust.
I hope next time im going to write about Rabei Street which passes throughout the same Sunni areas , the street where I used to spend nice time before I leave Iraq and where I deeply wish to go to have some fun with my wife and kid.
For what it's worth, I have found over time that the McClatchy Baghdad bureau's blog posts about traveling around and life in Baghdad to be the most accurate English-language record of what's it's actually like to live and work in Baghdad. Iraqi bloggers are increasingly doing a good job as well and sometimes expressing strong opinions which is excellent. The US military tries to be accurate in reporting individual facts, but when they generalize inevitably tends to report better public security than is the reality - even in public testimony to Congress.
The New York Times has had some exceptional individual reporters in Baghdad, but their general reporting is often biased toward what their New York readership wants to read. We also get glimpses of reality for the average Iraqi from the US national TV networks, but they mostly tend to reflect a corporate agenda since the networks are almost all owned by very large corporations. Therefore keep up the good work you McClatchy bloggers.
Posted by: Chris Baker | May 03, 2008 at 01:06 PM