Comment: All thanks to Anglo-American-Israeli interests wholly dedicated to bringing democracy to Iraq.... Well, they certainly brought something...
Huddled in the back seat of our convoy, I got a blurred view of Baghdad as we passed through the city centre. It was hard to catch a glimpse of anything when our car was topping 90 miles an hour. The reason our driver was gunning through the area was simple – four bombings in the area that morning, and more happening every day. Our fixer in Baghdad said in broken English, "If the news says a number of dead, double it. Then you maybe have a number near the death." Most of the blasts here are carried out by Sunni militants against the Shiite population huddling in their cars or out shopping for food in the markets.
Gone are the days of suicide bombers with vests. These days, the explosions are timed meticulously and set off in conjunction with peak traffic. The old school move of ripping off your jacket and screaming, "God is great!" just doesn’t fit any more. Try six parked cars packed full of explosives, nails and other nasty shit, all remotely detonated by a man sipping a coffee from his apartment far above the blast radius. Welcome to modern, post-US-withdrawal Baghdad. Boys with toys, breathtaking anger management issues and religious zeal that would make Gary Busey look sane in comparison.
We hurtled through the dirty, charred streets on the outskirts of the city on our way to visit some families struggling with day-to-day life in one of the nine districts in Baghdad known as Al-Jidida, or "New Baghdad". Our guide through the city was Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest living in the city's red zone. He was making his weekly parish visits, complete with a three-car convoy and Iraqi soldiers with more guns than Texas.
Coincidentally, most of the guns actually come from the United States. Canon White very calmly informed me that the streets we were speeding through were the most dangerous in the city, and not just because of bombings; they also happen to be hotbeds for gang activity. This explained why the soldiers in the pickup truck in front stopped joking around and looked like they were in the first stages of slowly rethinking their career choice.
We drove past endless rows of sheep being decapitated in the street and
a severed head getting cooked with a blowtorch by a young kid. There’s
nothing quite like waking up to the smell of incinerated sheep skulls in
the morning.
As we passed into the residential area, there were shacks and tool sheds masquerading as houses, and power lines strung up like a drunk spider decided to get artsy. The wires hanging down practically invited everyone to come and shake hands with 10,000 volts of electricity.
In between the homes were open sewers. Shit overflowed and steamed into the streets.
Read more
Dylan Roberts
Huddled in the back seat of our convoy, I got a blurred view of Baghdad as we passed through the city centre. It was hard to catch a glimpse of anything when our car was topping 90 miles an hour. The reason our driver was gunning through the area was simple – four bombings in the area that morning, and more happening every day. Our fixer in Baghdad said in broken English, "If the news says a number of dead, double it. Then you maybe have a number near the death." Most of the blasts here are carried out by Sunni militants against the Shiite population huddling in their cars or out shopping for food in the markets.
Gone are the days of suicide bombers with vests. These days, the explosions are timed meticulously and set off in conjunction with peak traffic. The old school move of ripping off your jacket and screaming, "God is great!" just doesn’t fit any more. Try six parked cars packed full of explosives, nails and other nasty shit, all remotely detonated by a man sipping a coffee from his apartment far above the blast radius. Welcome to modern, post-US-withdrawal Baghdad. Boys with toys, breathtaking anger management issues and religious zeal that would make Gary Busey look sane in comparison.
We hurtled through the dirty, charred streets on the outskirts of the city on our way to visit some families struggling with day-to-day life in one of the nine districts in Baghdad known as Al-Jidida, or "New Baghdad". Our guide through the city was Canon Andrew White, an Anglican priest living in the city's red zone. He was making his weekly parish visits, complete with a three-car convoy and Iraqi soldiers with more guns than Texas.
Coincidentally, most of the guns actually come from the United States. Canon White very calmly informed me that the streets we were speeding through were the most dangerous in the city, and not just because of bombings; they also happen to be hotbeds for gang activity. This explained why the soldiers in the pickup truck in front stopped joking around and looked like they were in the first stages of slowly rethinking their career choice.
As we passed into the residential area, there were shacks and tool sheds masquerading as houses, and power lines strung up like a drunk spider decided to get artsy. The wires hanging down practically invited everyone to come and shake hands with 10,000 volts of electricity.
In between the homes were open sewers. Shit overflowed and steamed into the streets.
Read more
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