Life In The Bubble
Mission imperial - [While Iraqis struggled in the chaos of Baghdad after the invasion, the Americans sent to rebuild the nation led a cocooned existence in the centre of the capital - complete with booze, hot dogs and luxury villas. In the first of three extracts from his new book, Rajiv Chandrasekaran exposes life in the Green Zone.]
"From inside the Green Zone, the real Baghdad - the checkpoints, the bombed-out buildings, the paralysing traffic jams - could have been a world away. The horns, the gunshots, the muezzin's call to prayer, never drifted over the walls. The fear on the faces of US troops was rarely seen by the denizens of the palace. The acrid smoke of a detonated car bomb didn't fill the air. The sub-Saharan privation and wild-west lawlessness that gripped one of the world's most ancient cities swirled around the walls, but on the inside, the calm sterility of a US subdivision prevailed."
"From inside the Green Zone, the real Baghdad - the checkpoints, the bombed-out buildings, the paralysing traffic jams - could have been a world away. The horns, the gunshots, the muezzin's call to prayer, never drifted over the walls. The fear on the faces of US troops was rarely seen by the denizens of the palace. The acrid smoke of a detonated car bomb didn't fill the air. The sub-Saharan privation and wild-west lawlessness that gripped one of the world's most ancient cities swirled around the walls, but on the inside, the calm sterility of a US subdivision prevailed."
posted by nolocontendere at 1:08 AM
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