At a checkpoint leading on to the airport highway in west Baghdad this week, a policeman blocked the traffic. Dressed in a blue-checked uniform, Kevlar helmet, a Kalashnikov slung on his shoulder and a whistle in his hand, the last button of his uniform was missing, exposing a hairy stomach that hung over his military belt.
The sun was setting quickly and the policeman shouted, blew his whistle and pointed his gun at a queue of impatient drivers, ordering them to stay in line.
Something was happening but none of the drivers of the dozens of cars waiting in the early evening heat knew what it was.
About 30 gunmen milled around the checkpoint. Two young men in Iraqi army uniforms sat on the front of an armoured personnel carrier. Three men, wearing blue shirts and dark blue trousers, stood next to a green SUV.
A further dozen gunmen wearing camouflage uniforms, red berets and carrying the insignia on their shoulders of the Ministry of Interior commandos stood in the shade of concrete blast walls that make the checkpoints.
The commandos are accused of being nothing but a Shia death squad, so when one of them, wearing weight-lifting wristbands, passed between cars looking at faces, the drivers’ heads sunk into their chests and they looked away.
One driver suggested that others join him in driving on a parallel road that passed through west Baghdad neighbourhoods, assuring others that the area had become safe.
“Ami [my uncle] do you want to kill us,” one driver said, raising his two hands. “The roads are filled with fake checkpoints killing people on the haweya [ID card].”
“And what do you know about this checkpoint,” answered the man and nodded towards the gunmen. “Look at them, they are militiamen.”
In that exchange lies the lottery of life in Iraq today. A wrong turn, a wrong checkpoint or a wrong ID card can sometimes be the difference between life and death.
Baghdad was never a beautiful city but as cars whizz through its emptying streets negotiating their way around concrete blocks and checkpoints, the city looks more than ever like a battle zone. But despite those indicators of a city at war, the question many Iraqis have been asking is whether the surge of troops brought in to protect them has made any difference to their lives.
With that in mind The Guardian has spent the past two days travelling the city, gauging that mood.
In the Yarmouk district, like many areas, wrecks of trucks and cars mingle with collapsed metal and sand barriers by the sides of roads. Some people have improvised their own security plan by placing tree trunks in front of shops to stop suicide bombers parking their cars there.
Concrete walls and checkpoints have divided Baghdad into isolated neighbourhoods ostensibly to prevent militia attacks. On the surface they appear to have brought some stability and better security. But in many neighbourhoods it has come only through a process of sectarian cleansing — Shia driving out Sunni and Sunni driving out Shia.
In Dora, in the south of Baghdad, Sunni extremists have fought street battles against Shia militias and have now cleansed the area of its Shia residents. The American security plan has divided the northern part of the district into fenced neighbourhoods with checkpoints at all the entrances.
“Bodies were piled in the street outside my house every morning,” said one resident, a shopkeeper, remembering the fighting. “We live in an isolated area, but at least we have peace — we don’t leave our area because once we are on the highway, we have to pass through the commandos’ checkpoints and we will be killed.”
Another resident, a father-of-three who lives in the south section of the divided Dora, in the Mechanik district, says gunmen still roam the streets freely. “I see them in the streets all the time; the American and the Iraqi army don’t dare to come into our areas, the gunmen only hide when they see US planes — they drive in cars with no windows so they can attack easily.
“Most of them are fighters from other areas who have settled here. I just saw two gunmen kidnap a man this morning from the highway; it’s my morning routine. I have to leave this area, I have to leave but where do I go.”
Another area mentioned as an example of progress is Ameriya, a once secular neighbourhood in west Baghdad that had become a base for Sunni al-Qaeda insurgents.
Laith, in his mid-20s, his three brothers and two uncles are working with Ameriya Revolutionaries, a local militia that is cooperating with US forces to drive al-Qaeda gunmen out. “We can walk in the streets now, we have shops reopening,” he said. “All the al-Qaeda fighters have fled into neighbouring Khadra’a area.”
But just like Dora the sense of security is accompanied by a ghetto arrangement. “When we wanted to bring trucks to clean the area, we had to bring them from Ramadi [100km away]. Do you think we can bring trucks from Shu’ala [a neighbouring Shia area]? Of course not, they are Mahdi army.”
The frontlines between Jihad, once a Sunni area and now totally Shia, and Ameriya are sealed with blast-walls but mortars are still falling.
“When I leave my area, I have another ID card,” says Laith. “Do I dare to come with my own? No.” He pauses for a second and then says: “But as long as I can stand in front of my house, that’s fine for me.”
Mahmoud, who lives in Karrada, now a Shia neighbourhood, says: “The kidnapping is less these days, but the sectarianism is all the same. We are strangers in our own city. Baghdad has been divided; I can’t cross to the west, and I can’t cross the canal into Sadr City to the east. This bit of Baghdad is my city now.”
At the checkpoint on the airport highway the portly policeman was still holding up traffic. Ahmad chatted with another driver. “It’s too late now; where do we get petrol from now?”
“For now?” asked the other driver as he leaned on his old, red Toyota.
“No, for tomorrow,” said Ahmad.
“Let’s live till tomorrow,” said the driver, “and then worry about petrol.” — Â