After the post-election glow, Baghdad is back in the real world. The streets are clogged with vehicles honking and people hawking. Men are walking to work (or, more likely, looking for jobs); women are out shopping (if their husbands are lucky enough to have jobs). The posters of politicians sag, peel off the blast walls, and fall face down, trampled under the shoes of millions.
Three days after Iraqis voted amid a barrage of bombs and Hollywood awarded Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker six Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director), I’m at Baghdad’s General Counter Explosive Directorate, the center of Iraq’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal programs.
Under the quarter moon, in the high beams of their armored vehicles, US soldiers are gearing up for the most important day of the Iraq War. Seven years ago, this month, the United States and its “Coalition of the Willing” invaded in a bid to oust Saddam Hussein and seize his cache of weapons of mass destruction. When WMDs turned out to be a mirage, bringing democracy to Iraq became the war’s new raison d’être. Seven years after the beginning of the war, on March 7, 2010, the reality of Iraqi democracy is put to the test.
Dimiter Kenarov, for the Pulitzer Center
Baghdad, Iraq
Friday. A day for prayer. Two days before the national elections. Still warm and sunny.
A lieutenant from the US Army offers to escort me inside the compound of the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC). It is, supposedly, the most heavily-guarded building in Iraq right now, the high fortress of democracy, the central control room of the Iraqi parliamentary elections. I haven't registered with the IHEC, so I doubt they will let me in but decide to try my luck anyway.
Pickup trucks, SUVs, military trucks, Humvees, fire trucks, ambulances. Honking. Singing. It all looks like a big tailgate party. “If we were in America, there’d be shitloads of beer,” observes Dave Lee, a US Airman and now a cop with the International Zone Police in Baghdad, as we slowly drive past the commotion. It is the 4th of March, sunny, high 60s. Today all Iraqi Security Forces—army, police, and emergency personnel—are scheduled to cast ballots, a few days ahead of the official elections, when their job will be securing other people’s right to vote.
The sky over Baghdad is deep blue. Last night’s rain has washed the air spick-and-span. The day billows with promise—all green palms and golden mosques. Even the Aerostats, the ominous zeppelin-shaped surveillance balloons floating on the outer perimeter of the city, look somehow festive, like balloons at a party, and the bombed-out dome
“Lock the rear door.” The voice of our turret gunner is calm, almost weary, like the voice of a steward on a commercial flight from New York to Paris. “Passenger weapon status is amber. Insert magazine, but do not load a round in the chamber. I repeat, do not load a round in the chamber.”
A frantic voice came over the radio: a blast had just destroyed Guinea-Bissau's military headquarters. I drove toward the compound and, when I arrived, everyone was still shouting and running through the smoking ruins of the building. Bissau's only ambulance was shuttling back and forth from the hospital, ferrying the bodies of victims. All that four heavily armed soldiers would tell me was that General Batista Tagme Na Wai, head of the army, had just been assassinated.
As we sped through the dusty heat of rural Somaliland on one of the region's few paved roads, an armed escort behind us and the hills of Ethiopia ahead, Dr. Adan Abokor told me his story. Abokor is sixty-two years old with thinning, gray hair, and his steady, measured voice can mask his emotions, but his energy is undiminished, and his memories of 1982 are still raw. "I was a member of the Hargeisa Group," he began.
Israel did its best to keep me out of the Gaza Strip. Not just me—all international media. For two weeks, we watched from the Egyptian side of Gaza's southern border as plumes of smoke erupted from around Rafah, and the wounded trickled out, one by one, in battered Palestinian ambulances on their way to intensive care units in Cairo. Finally, in the last week of Operation Cast Lead, something gave, and the Egyptian government unexpectedly opened the gates.
As the crowd of chanting men grew around us, my translator gave me a sidelong glance.
"We should leave now," he said.
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