Links
Baghdad today: safer, unstable and corrupt
Government official or suicide bomber, they will have to get past him first: officer Mohammed Abdullah, a 36-year-old father of eight, checkpoint guard at the ministry of oil in Baghdad. Some may consider him cannon fodder.
All the roads around this contemporary fortress of armored watchtowers, this maze of concrete blast walls raised in protection against the bombers, lead to him. He stops the cars, searches them, and, with a quiet wave, approves passage. Ministers, diplomats, oil barons; the new Iraq goes through his hands.
A fortnight after Iraq's second parliamentary election on March 7 and less than six months prior to the withdrawal of US armed forces, this was Mohammed's perspective on his country: it is safer than it has ever been in the past seven years, but politically unstable and corrupt.