Baghdad Journal

On the Roof

It was after curfew, close to midnight. There were two men in the street. One limped, the other listed. They walked slowly in the orange light of the street lamps. They might've been drunk, but most likely they were wounded.

When they passed, the night watchman, watering the sidewalk across from the Alrabiya, blew his whistle. In the next block down Al-Karrada street a man wearing a dishdasha and holding a small club whistled. And then another man, somewhere we couldn't see, did the same.

Meanwhile, a small pack of stray dogs roamed the empty streets and the trash blew like something alive and growing. Fighting cats screamed in someone's yard. Generators rumbled as loud as diesal truck engines. A convoy raced down the street with soldiers behind guns locked into the tops of humvees. Two young men without shirts ducked down and lied flat in their makeshift, rooftop beds. "How did they know the troops were coming?" Brandon said. When the trucks and troops were out of sight, the two sleeping on the roof brought their heads up and looked around. They spotted Brandon and I. I didn't like them knowing we were there on the roof, so we retreated to our rooms.

Security has been a problem since the end of major combat was declared May 1. Brandon and I found out later that neighborhoods like this one in the Al- Karrada district have hired their own watchmen. They blow the whistles all night to alert the alibabas, the thieves, that the people are watching, protecting their sleeping neighborhoods. Their whistling had nothing to do with the military convoys.

From the roof I can see the street in the larger city, much of which is not safe to roam. So we're confined to our apartment, until we have an escort to take us out to help avoid the dangers, the threats, what ever they might be. We've been fortunate enough not to see any shit go down, but that leaves us feeling maybe it's not so bad, that it's safer than the stories. But we've been trying to get clear on what the dangers are.

Yesterday, we attended an American Town Hall Meeting at the Iraq Forum Conference Center led by the U.S. Consul officer, Beth Payne [see entry "Welcome to Baghdad"]. We were after information about our security. It was the first meeting for "private American citizens" working and living in Iraq.

When Brandon and I arrived thirty minutes late, we quietly joined the 40 others in the room. Payne was finishing up an initial briefing on what the consul could and couldn't do for us--no assurance of medical emergency evacuation unless you have your own private insurance and no passports issued---then introduced U.S. Army Captain Steven Barnhart, who was there to give us a slide presentation on security problems and safety issues. He had a shorn rectangle of orange hair on a square head and no neck. He talked from the throat.

Captain Barnhart opened up by giving his contact info. "If you need to get in touch with me, I'll be glad to tell you what the bad guys did over night," he said, then proceeded with the presentation. "My goal here is to make you smart, or smarter, than you were, regarding security issues. It is dangerous in Eye-raq, and especially to be an American in Eye-raq, it is dangerous," he said, pacing back and forth in front of the room. "So, you may know many many things, but you may see one more thing here that'll make you a little bit smarter, to keep you alive one more day in Eye-raq."

He nodded to the soldier behind the slide projector. He began by telling us things to watch out for: spiked-metal strips in the road, children throwing rocks, blocking traffic, potholes filled with mines. Don't drive over potholes, trash or dead animals, he said, they all may be packed with explosive devices. "Anything in the road you do not recognize, including sandbags, trash, etcetera, it could be an explosive device in side of it." (As I write this, there is news of an American civilian contractor killed today from an "anti-tank" mine near Tikrit, according to Reuters. The report reported he was the first American civilian killed since Saddam's regime was toppled.)

There's a slide for WMD, chemical/biological agents contaminating food, water, sodas, and cigarettes. "They haven't had that many opportunities to use chemical or biological weapons, but if they see they have an opportunity to use them they will, to poison our food, our water," he said.

Careful of a new threat: exploding coke cans filled with shrapnel. Don't take cigarettes from strangers; they may have incendiary devices concealed within. Don't attend to the sick or the dead, they may be acting. "As Americans, we're pretty humane. Usually we would stop and try to help that person. But this may be a set-up to try to kill you," he said.

They like to throw grenades from bridges; they like to toss them into car windows. Keep your windows up, hopefully you have AC. And they like to fire RPGs--rocket-propelled grenades. "You've seen these in movies like Clear and Present Danger or something or another," he said. "Just watch those explosive devices--they aren't good for cars, they aren't good for people." We should beware of vehicles attempting to ram us. "If you've lived in Iraq you know there are point-blank assassinations going on," Captain Barnhart said. "So keep your eyes out."

One slide tells us that a "variety of criminal gunmen remain at large: criminal elements, regime elements, and transnational terrorism." Travel anywhere in Iraq entails a risk, Captain Barnhart told us. Recent pattern of attacks continues to occur at night--over 80%--and in the early morning. With his slide presentation concluded, he opens the floor to questions.

I ask Captain Barnhart if he can tell us how many people have actually been the victims of crimes in the last couple of weeks. With so many potential dangers, threats, I want some idea of my actual risk.

He said he had some data he could share with me back at the office, but can't tell me anything off the top of his head. Payne jumped in and said, "There's not an organized crime statistics bureau that's keeping crime statistics."

I pressed on. "In general what have you heard," I asked. She sidestepped the question by telling us how she's planning to compile the incident reports into coherent data, and in the meanwhile, if any crimes occur against us please report it to her.

"So you can't tell us what our biggest threat might be?" I was determined to push a concrete answer out of them.

"Kidnapping...," Payne said.

"...and car-jacking," Captain Barnhart added.

"And car accidents," Payne said. She said two Americans died in car accidents in the last week. "Car accidents are your biggest threat, are your biggest risk, to be perfectly honest." Somehow our biggest threat escaped Captain Barnhart's slide presentation. I was thinking if he was trying to help us stay alive, he wasn't doing a very good job. (It's custom here not to wear seat belts. Iraqis have enough worries.) "What we're not seeing is private Americans being targeted as private Americans," Payne added. "But there's a lot of crime here. Based upon my experience overseas, I would place the criminal element risk here as something similar to Nairobi."

Captain Barnhart was still pacing the floor: "To be a little bit of a Chicken Little, 'The sky is falling, the sky is falling!,' I'll remind you just before we came here into Iraq, Saddam released the whole prison population, a thousand that we know of, prisoners, criminals, hardened criminals, released to go out and do bad stuff." Chicken Little was right about the prisoners, which Saddam released in October before the U.S. began their initial bombing, but he was wrong about the number. There were tens of thousands of murderers, rapists and thieves released, and it does seem now they're swarming Baghdad. Al-hamdu-lillah, we haven't seen them in action.

On the roof a few days ago, Brandon and I could see a kite rocking gently in the hot wind, ascending into the early evening zenith. Beyond it, in the distance, helicopters hovered. We could hear the faint sound of their blades chopping the air. There was a crescent moon descending in another part of the sky. Traffic was thinning on the street below, but people were still flowing in and out of the shops.

I felt safe overlooking Baghdad, above the streets, standing with the satellite dishes and antennas. When the light disappeared an hour later, a military convoy raced down the street. We heard shots popping off in the smaller streets behind the Alrabiya. Brandon and I flinched. We hunkered down on the roof to investigate--they sound like the gunshots we think we hear in our sleep. After a few seconds, we realize that the streets of Karrada have been beseiged by bored kids lighting firecrackers.

Posted by Adam Shemper at August 5, 2003 12:18 PM | TrackBack