SULAIMANIYAH, Kurdistan Region, Iraq — Baghdad hasn’t changed all that much since I last saw it three years ago. It is still the “City of Cement,” an excellent title my late colleague Anthony Shadid had used for an article. Huge concrete blocks placed to thwart car bombs encircling the Green Zone and its vicinity had long turned the once fabulous and legendary city of yore to a full-fledged “City of Cement.”
If Baghdad is a “City of Cement,” then the highways linking the city to other parts of the country can be called “Routes of Checkpoints.” So much so that in some places you pass through three checkpoints within 100 meters (328 feet). Traffic jams for ordinary people form long queues of cars and trucks. If you have special passes or cards given by military intelligence, you can take the liberty of driving in the opposite lane, never mind the oncoming traffic, creating an additional danger to already hazardous traffic. And there are many people enjoying those rights.
