Mission accomplished? Not for the Iraqi people

"Baghdad is still a great city," 68-year-old architect Muaffaq al-Taie - a new acquaintance and enthusiastic volunteer tour guide - assures me as we drive through the neighborhood of Sheikh Marouf. We are literally on sacred ground. Nearby are the graves of Old Testament prophet Yeshua, the graves of seventh-century Christian monks and shrines to Sufi saints. We are on a rather dangerous excursion (stopped twice by Iraqi police, once by young toughs) to visit the tomb of Zubaida, an Abassid-era monument from the 12th century that by all rights should be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Instead, it lies in disrepair across the street from a shantytown of corrugated tin shacks inhabited by a few dozen of Iraq's 3 million internally displaced. This exquisite example of Seljuk-style architecture and the tomb of a great caliph's wife stands next to a garbage dump that runs along the sectarian fault lines that erupted so violently a few years ago.