Combat's 'ended,' but U.S. still controls Green Zone access

[unhappycamper]

Combat's 'ended,' but U.S. still controls Green Zone access
By Shashank Bengali | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, September 16, 2010

BAGHDAD — Friends in the U.S. often are surprised to hear that, as Western journalists working in Baghdad, we don't live inside the famously fortified Green Zone. Access to the IZ, or "international zone," as it's also known, is governed by a complex and ever-changing formula of badges and placards, and every time I come into Iraq it takes me a few weeks to figure out the current system.

As a new arrival, I've applied for but haven't yet received a U.S. military-issued "green badge," which allows me to pass through the Iraqi-run checkpoints at IZ entrances and also to escort visitors. The green badges are the coin of the realm, and often difficult to get, although the U.S. military says it's trying to streamline the system. My Iraqi colleagues, who've been covering the war for McClatchy for several years, and are here year-round while we Westerners drop in and out, after several months of waiting were finally granted badges recently - but of different colors, which carry fewer privileges.

So for now I have limited access to the Green Zone, while I wait for my badge to be processed. This presents some challenges. When the U.S. Embassy invited me to a briefing earlier this week inside the Green Zone, a press officer suggested I hitch a ride with a green-badged member of another media organization. (Fortunately the Baghdad press corps is full of collegial folks, and it wasn't hard to drum up a lift.)

Yesterday, when one of my Iraqi colleagues and I had an appointment with a government official whose office is inside the Green Zone, we rather sheepishly had to ask the official to send one of his aides to pick us up from just outside one of the entrances.

~snip~

As more than one Iraqi has pointed out to me, if Iraqi security forces now control the Green Zone - American forces handed over the checkpoints in a major symbolic move three months ago - why do U.S. military-issued badges still determine who can get in and out?

[Panaconda]

1. And...

the combat hasn't ended.

The Iraqi city of Fallujah has declared three-day long mourning after a joint U.S.-Iraqi attack on the city killed at least 10 civilians and injured many others.

The raid on Wednesday has raised tensions and angered the city’s inhabitants as well as the nearly two million Muslim Sunnis who live in the Province of Anbar, west of Baghdad.

The Muslim Scholars Association, a group of powerful Muslim Sunni clerics in Iraq, described the raid as "a massacre in which two children were killed."

...

http://www.azzaman.com/english/index.asp?fname=news\2010-09-16\kurd.htm

At least 6 Iraqis killed in joint U.S.-Iraqi raid

By Janine Zacharia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 15, 2010; 9:00 PM

BAGHDAD - At least six Iraqis were killed during a joint Iraqi-American counterterrorism operation on the outskirts of Fallujah on Wednesday, in the deadliest incident involving U.S. troops since the United States declared an end to its combat operations in Iraq on Aug. 31.

Iraqi officials said eight civilians were killed, while the U.S. military said four suspected members of al-Qaeda in Iraq and two civilians died in a firefight that erupted as forces tried to capture a presumed member of the militant group who allegedly was responsible for attacks in the region.

...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/15/AR2010091501274_pf.html

[ClarkUSA]

2. Because they don't want to get blown up by a suicide bombers pretending to be what they aren't.

Sounds reasonable to me.

[Submariner]

3. Gotta protect that Billion $$$ U.S. Embassy building

that I'm sure will be either taken over when/if the Iraqi's decide to run us out (memories of Saigon), or they blow the place to smithereens with a few car bombs.