Life in Baghdad: Some suicide bombings don't even get headlines anymore
By Rod Nordland
Newsweek International
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Oct. 4 issue - Bricks and plaster blew inward from the wall, as the windows all shattered and I fell to the floor—whether from the shock wave, or just fright, it wasn't clear. The blast was so loud it sounded as if the building couldn't possibly stand, but it did. Toaster-size chunks of twisted metal fell in the yard and banged off the roof; later they'd be identified as pieces of a U.S. Army Humvee, blown up by a suicide car-bomb a full block away. No one was hurt in that building, which had been heavily blast-protected. But out on the street, 18 people perished, including one U.S. soldier; another three grunts were seriously burned and several children at a nearby Iraqi house were injured. Among the dead were three Iraqis who were incinerated in their car—which was so badly mangled it took wailing relatives more than a day to extract their corpses.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the incident was that it scarcely made the news. It was just another among a recent surge of terrorist attacks, one of two suicide car-bombs that day in the Mansour neighborhood of Baghdad. Besides, everyone was focused on the discovery of the headless corpse of American Jack Hensley, 48, found floating in the Tigris River. Gruesome videos of Hensley's beheading and that of fellow American Eugene (Jack) Armstrong, 52, played on Islamic Web sites. Armstrong's body was later dropped off only five blocks from his home, also in upscale Mansour.
<snip>
Much of that media, ourselves included, were in virtual hiding last week, as were nearly all foreign civilians—hostages have even included Russians, French, and 12 Nepalese workers, who were assassinated without any plausible justification. Intelligence that criminal gangs are kidnapping foreigners and selling them to terrorist groups has increased fears about moving around Iraq. Heavily armed convoys of contractors' SUVs, once a common sight, have all but disappeared from busy roads. "The only serious reconstruction going on now," says one Western businessman, "is inside the Green Zone," the heavily fortified area that houses Iraqi government and American Embassy offices, and is guarded by an entire U.S. Army brigade. "We're trapped in a rat's cage," says an ambassador from a non-Coalition country in Europe, who no longer leaves his bunker-like residential compound. "No area of Baghdad is risk-free."
Many foreign companies have suspended operations. Their staffs are staying off the streets, and others are refusing to come in to replace those rotating out. "We have contractors there doing nothing because of the security situation," says Will Geddes, managing director of the London-based security firm ICP Group Ltd. "There are companies that we're having to hunker down with until we feel comfortable to move them
." Even major news organizations are finding it difficult to staff the story: "We just can't find senior correspondents who will come to Iraq now," says the bureau chief for one major American newspaper.
Iraqis suffer most. In the same week the American hostages were taken and killed, at least 300 Iraqis died from terrorist attacks. Some 45 Iraqi translators working for the American military have been killed in Baghdad. The most recent case occurred last Monday, when a woman was gunned down in her car in the afternoon. Terrorists also killed a top official of the state-owned Northern Oil Co. last week, while two moderate Sunni sheiks were kidnapped and killed in Baghdad.
Newsweek
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