Fear and loafing in the Green Zone

Welcome to Baghdad's post-decadent stronghold: Menacing Peruvian mercenaries, Chinese prostitutes, concealed beer and doughnuts -- and Iraqis eyeing a foreboding future.

By Arnon Grunberg

Read more: Military, War, Iraq, Opinion, Baghdad, Iraq War, Blackwater

Aug. 4, 2008 | I'd had a mental picture of Baghdad's Green Zone before I went to Iraq. I thought I was going to encounter a tightly guarded, luxurious enclave where Westerners and a select few Iraqis lived a life of decadence. More or less the way I'd found it described in "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Rajiv Chandrasekaran's excellent book about the Zone after the fall of Saddam.

It's a Tuesday morning in late May when we touch down at LZ (Landing Zone) Washington, the Zone's helicopter port. (One day later than planned, after a sandstorm had kept all chopper traffic on the ground.) This is only my second time in a Black Hawk, but I'm already getting used to the troop-carrier as flying taxi.

Inside the little building that comprises the terminal at LZ Washington, I take off my flak jacket and helmet. So this is Baghdad. Let the decadence begin. Berlin-born essayist and philosopher Walter Benjamin may have denied the very existence of periods of cultural decline ("Es gibt kein Verfallszeiten"), but we'll see.

I need a Baghdad press center pass in order to move freely in the Green Zone, so the first thing I have to do is get to the Combined Press Information Center. But when I try to leave the terminal to look around outside, a guard turns me around and points me back to the waiting room.

LZ Washington is guarded by employees of the Triple Canopy security solutions company. In Baghdad, Triple Canopy employs mostly Peruvians. Rumor has it that these guards once worked for special forces units within the Peruvian army. Having routed the Sendero Luminoso at home, they've now been dispatched to combat al-Quaida in Mesopotamia and keep an eye on things in Baghdad, where they earn $75 a day.

American soldiers speak of the mercenaries with an admixture of fear and contempt. "These guys are real bastards," one U.S. soldier tells me. I may be in Baghdad, but for the time being it looks more like Little Lima.

I try it again with the Triple Canopy employee. "Amigo," I venture. "Prensa." An added complication with these particular hirelings is that they speak little or no English. The guard flexes his right forearm, his fist clenched. I know by now what that means: Stay where you are. The language of coercion is understood around the world. He who has the bullet no longer needs poetry. The bullet is poetry. I call the press center and say: "I'm afraid you'll have to come and get me."

Twenty minutes later a G.I. shows up to escort me to the press center. There I undergo an iris scan, have my picture taken and leave behind prints of all ten of my fingers. A female soldier takes my fingers one by one and rolls them around on the screen of a little machine. Perhaps it's a by-product of my days embedded with the 25th Infantry Division, but having my fingers rolled around on that little machine feels like the erotic zenith of my existence.

Half an hour later they hand me my press pass for the Green Zone. After that no one pays attention to me anymore. A couple of Iraqis, probably journalists, are drinking Cokes and checking their e-mail on the press center's computers. I am a free man.

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In the Green Zone there is precisely one hotel, the Ar-Rashid (sometimes referred to mistakenly as the Al-Rashid). After the First Gulf War, the floor of the lobby there was decorated with a mosaic depicting former president George H. W. Bush. The tiled caption in English read: "Bush is criminal."

I'm hoping to enter the Red Zone as well later on, but I'll need backup if I want to do that. The city is quieter than it was in 2006, but a Westerner is still worth good money. And carefully filed away in my memories are the words of a colleague from the Independent, who I met in Afghanistan in 2007: "Dying isn't so bad. But being kidnapped; now that I dread very much."

There are slews of companies selling protection in Baghdad. Finally I go with Edinburgh International. They seem to know the ropes. And what's more, Edinburgh International also rents out rooms. Even with my press pass, they warn me, it would be foolhardy to cross town to the boardinghouse on my own. Alex from Edinburgh International will come and pick me up.

Alex, as it turns out, is a professional Fijian soldier who's been in Baghdad for about four years. He drives around in an old Mercedes.

My first glimpse of the Green Zone is a disappointment -- dusty, rundown and inhospitable. It turns out that it is not a single zone but a number of them, separated by checkpoints manned by the Peruvians of Triple Canopy. The neighborhood within the Zone known as Little Venice, for example, where several prominent Iraqi politicians live, is off-limits to those without the right connections. To get in there, one needs an invitation.

Within the Zone you have different passes of different colors. The more badges you have, the faster you get through the checkpoints. My press pass places me on a par with an Iraqi just barely allowed into the Zone at all. Alex, too, is a hireling without privilege.

After waiting for half an hour it's our turn, along with about 20 other drivers. The doors of each car must be opened wide, as well as the hood and the trunk. The passengers have to stand behind a wall so they can't see what's happening to their car while it's being searched.

Cell phones and weapons are placed on a plastic tray. There are signs posted that read: "Deadly force authorized."

Someone, I believe one of the Peruvians, has made a painting on the wall: A mountain, and written beneath it in Spanish, "Lord, forgive us our iniquities."

I am the only Westerner in a group of about 40 Iraqis. Some of the Iraqis stare at me in puzzlement. A Peruvian tosses a bottle of water to an elderly Iraqi. I have never seen people wait so passively. This is a dedicated kind of waiting. I have the feeling that I'm in a monastery, but then one where deadly force is authorized.

Twenty minutes later our group is given the sign to move on. A checkpoint by definition, whether in Iraq or down at the local airport, is there for our safety. Yet anyone who has waited at a few checkpoints in Baghdad soon gets the feeling that the checkpoint is not a means but an end in itself. We live in order that we might pass through it. And what comes after the checkpoint is another checkpoint.

Edinburgh International's boardinghouse is located along a sandy backstreet and doubles, as it turns out, as the Iraqi headquarters of Edinburgh International. I am welcomed by Adam, whose job description is "Operations Officer." Particularly talkative Adam is not. "Take your stuff upstairs," he says. "Then you can grab some lunch."

The other guests at the boardinghouse seem to be hirelings as well. Later, an American diplomat will explain to me that most security firms work with mercenaries from a specific country. Blackwater with Americans, Triple Canopy primarily with Peruvians, Edinburgh International largely with South Africans. The Edinburgh International people once belonged to the special forces of the South African army. Now they're protecting me in Baghdad.

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There is a guidebook for tourists to the Green Zone, written by the American diplomat Richard H. Houghton III. The first edition of the guidebook had as a subtitle: "Written by tourists for the tourist." That subtitle has since been removed.

Houghton is prepared to meet me, as long as I promise not to talk about American politics. The Green Zone has almost no restaurants for us to meet in. In "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Chandrasekaran speaks of countless Chinese restaurants -- all gone now. But next door to Freedom Café and Supermarket, which Houghton says is pretty much the only restaurant in the Zone, Freedom Chinese Food opened its doors only a few days ago. (Later, in another section of the Zone, I discover the restaurant Arabian Nights, with its souvenirs on sale including little wooden camels, small lamps and a selection of carpets.)

To get to Freedom Chinese Food you have to cross a little bridge. The bridge's sole purpose is a decorative one, and it's so slippery that you have to hold onto the railing for dear life as you go. The Chinese girls there, newly imported from China, look like transvestites but also seem to be prostitutes.

Richard Houghton is a tall American in short trousers. He sports a large tattoo. He speaks English, German, French, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic.

"So what about the Baghdad Country Club?" I ask. The "Baghdad Country Club" was once the Green Zone's premiere nightspot. The place where it all went down.

Houghton laughs. "It's been boarded up," he says. "One of the guys who started the Baghdad Country Club went on to open a liquor store, and then a restaurant. But then he had to close the place; the people who worked for him didn't have the right badges."

Without the right badges in the Green Zone, one is dead meat. "You know," Houghton adds, "the days when everything around here was wide open are pretty much finished. The party is over."

Next page: A costly trip into the Red Zone, accompanied by a van full of armed men and a jeep bristling with weapons