Jogging in Baghdad's Green Zone
In the latest Reporter's Notebook, an occasional series of essays written for npr.org by NPR reporters and correspondents, Ivan Watson describes a run through the Green Zone, a cordoned-off area of Baghdad that is protected from the city's dangers -- and its hustle and bustle.
Dec. 24, 2003 -- Several times a week I throw on shorts and a T-shirt and head out to run some miles in the Green Zone.
The Green Zone is a chunk of central Baghdad that has been cordoned off from the rest of the capital with barbed wire, concrete barriers and U.S. military checkpoints. The idea has been to create a band of safe, secure territory around Saddam's old Republican Palace... which, for the past eight months, has been the headquarters for the U.S. occupation authority.
Unfortunately, this is perhaps the only place in Baghdad where a person with my conspicuously Slavic-Wasp features can jog safely. Given the current hostile climate in Iraq, my translator has strongly advised that any attempt to go out exploring even Baghdad's more affluent neighborhoods on foot is likely to attract trouble from angry residents.
Entering the grounds of this massive fortress is a strange transition from the streets of Baghdad. Gone are the crushing traffic jams, the mile-long lines at the gas stations, the calls of street vendors pushing their wagons and the chatter of neighbors gossiping on street corners.
Behind its 10-foot-high concrete walls, the Green Zone's broad streets are almost empty. The eerie quiet here is broken only by the periodic roar of Blackhawk helicopters zooming overhead... as well as the occasional Humvees and SUVs that race past ferrying troops and American officials to different parts of the sprawling compound.
The U.S. occupation has not been kind to this network of palaces and Baathist monuments, which were designed to celebrate the glories of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
With its kitschy, landscaped canals and fountains, the place feels like some artificial Disneyland complex that's been taken over by the army and transformed into a giant military base.
Airstrikes reduced some of the palaces to bombed-out, gutted shells. Meanwhile, the lawns and once meticulously pruned gardens are brown and withered from eight months of neglect. In recent weeks, workers on a crane have decapitated the four 30-foot tall, helmeted busts of Saddam Hussein that were perched on the roof of the central Republican Palace. This building is the nerve center of the U.S. occupation and though it is deep within the confines of the Green Zone, the military isn't taking any chances. Coils of razor wire, sandbags and guard towers protect the entrance to the Republican Palace Gates.
I'm certainly not the only person running along the dusty, barbed-wire lined sidewalks here. When I went to the Green Zone to cover a morale-boosting 10-kilometer road race dubbed the "Camel Trot" early Thanksgiving Day, one American official told me he was a founding member of a popular Baghdad running club. On every run, I see a number of other joggers. Most of them are soldiers wearing signature gray Army T-shirts. Sometimes we give each other a wave and a breathless "hey there" as we pass each other.
The new residents here have gone to some lengths to make Saddam's old neighborhood more livable. Contractors have turned at least one building into a gym. On one street corner, foreign and local staff relax sipping drinks at tables outside the Green Zone Café. Not long ago, I noticed a sign advertising a new Chinese restaurant. And in recent weeks, a man-sized Santa Claus figure has been placed above the entrance to the military hospital. The candy cane Christmas decorations do little to mask the tragedy and pain inside, however. This hospital is one of the destinations for the handful of soldiers who are hit every day by mines, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.
It may surprise some to learn that the Green Zone also encompasses an entire Iraqi residential neighborhood. These locals appear to have accepted their new American neighbors. In fact, I learned early on not to run through this roughly eight-by-four block community, because within minutes of cutting through this neighborhood, I would inevitably end up leading a Pied Piper-like entourage of amused children, who usually chased me singing a chorus of "How are you's."
I assume that at least some of the neighborhood's residents are the proprietors of the little colony of roadside souvenir stands that have cropped up near the Republican Palace. Here, you can see soldiers standing next to their parked Humvees, browsing past stalls displaying carpets, Iraqi flags, pirate DVDs and oriental brass pitchers.
One of the highlights comes at the end of my run, when I pass under yet another of Saddam's triumphal, golden-domed arches. Through a window, you can see several desk-bound soldiers hard at work in a room inside one of the arch's columns. Despite the awe-inspiring structure, the officers' makeshift office looks as mundane as can be... down to the mousepads next to their laptops and the photos of loved ones sitting on their desks.
Just behind the arch sits a place I've nicknamed the Tank Wash. Periodically, soldiers will park their tanks and armored personnel carriers here... and you'll see a crew of Iraqis, hard at work, hosing and scrubbing out the inside of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
The sad irony of the Green Zone, though, is that it's not entirely safe. Guerilla insurgents continue to shell the area with makeshift mortars on a weekly basis. Though there have been some casualties as a result of these strikes, thankfully the insurgency has yet to hit one of the flimsy trailers that house untold numbers of civilian officials and contractors. Several months ago, one departing American official told me this was one of his greatest fears... since he predicted that such a strike would result in devastating casualties.
Because of the short winter days, I usually finish up my runs after sunset with a sprint past a pair of helmeted soldiers who sit on guard duty atop their parked Bradley, past retired Nepalese Gurkhas from the British military who now work as contracted security guards protecting several of the Green Zone's buildings.
Then in a matter of minutes, I'm outside the daunting perimeter of barbed wire and concrete... sweaty, winded and back in the troubled and chaotic city we call Baghdad.
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