Baghdad's Streets
Now
A Deadly Gantlet
By Patrick Quinn
15 March, 2005
Associated
Press
When Adnan Shalaal left his job at the
Sheraton Hotel on Friday afternoon, he went from being a valued employee
and father of three to a statistic on a police blotter -- one of dozens
recorded daily in one of the world's most dangerous cities.
Shalaal and his
three young children inadvertently drove through a shootout between
insurgents and police. The 30-year-old hotel administrator was shot
in the head, his blood and brains splattering over the youngsters. His
children were unharmed, but Shalaal was not expected to survive.
By day or night,
Baghdad has become a cacophony of automatic weapons fire, explosions
and sudden death, its citizens living in constant fear of being shot
by insurgents or the security forces meant to protect them.
Streets are crammed
with passenger cars fighting for space with armored vehicles and pickups
loaded with hooded and heavily armed Iraqi soldiers.
Hundreds of bombs
in recent months have made mosques, public squares, sidewalks and even
some central streets extremely dangerous places in Baghdad.
On Haifa Street,
rocket-propelled grenades sometimes fly through traffic. Rashid Street
is a favorite for roadside bombers near the Tigris River.
And then there's
Sadoun Street, once teeming with Western hotels and home to Firdous
Square -- the landmark roundabout in central Baghdad where Iraqis toppled
a statue of Saddam Hussein.
In the two years
since Hussein's ouster, Sadoun Street has become an avenue of blast
walls -- thick concrete slabs 6 to 12 feet high -- that protect government
buildings and hotels now home to the few Western contractors and journalists
who remain.
Shalaal left the
Sheraton with his two sons, aged 3 and 6, and his 12-year-old daughter.
As he turned on Sadoun Street, gunmen in a white SUV passed between
his car and the hotel regularly targeted by insurgents. Windows on the
SUV rolled down and the firing began, with guards joining in almost
reflexively.
Shalaal never made
it down the tunnel of flying lead.
"He'll be forgotten
in five minutes," one man murmured in Arabic after looking at Shalaal's
bullet-riddled white compact car. "That's Iraq today."