Inside the Green Zone

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It's a bittersweet gift. Under Saddam, the apartment buildings down the road from the Republican Palace were limited to the dictator's henchmen and their families. Today it houses many of those trying to build a new Iraq, including members of parliament and the families of officials who work in the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. One afternoon, officials from the government's judicial branch squared off in a soccer game against employees of the executive branch. It was the kind of scene you almost never see on the evening news: teenagers from the neighborhood playing freely while men at a nearby outdoor café talked politics over sheesha and sweet amber-colored Iraqi tea. Some played barefoot; those with shoes traded them off when they substituted out. The center forward for the executive branch, a close adviser to al-Maliki, was the only one wearing cleats.

And yet like everything else here, the game had the aura of unreality. The players all knew it could never happen outside the walls of the Green Zone since many of them are on insurgent hit lists. After the cafeteria bombing, it's doubtful that any of the same officials would take part in such an exposed activity. Baghdad's sectarian hatreds have seeped inside the walls as well. Fuad Saeed, the Sunni imam of the biggest mosque in the Green Zone, has made gestures of religious unity, handing out to Shi'ite worshippers the coin-size holy clay tablets used by Shi'ites when they pray. He once even prayed with his hands straight down, a distinction the Shi'ites made from the Sunnis more than 1,000 years ago, in front of his congregation. "The words are not important," he says. "I care about the heart." And yet for his magnanimity, Saeed has been shunned by most of his fellow clerics. He now rarely leaves the mosque compound, let alone the Green Zone.

Fear permeates the lives of the Iraqis who remain inside the walls. Some have long since lost their jobs working for contractors or the Army but won't leave the Green Zone because too many of their neighbors and relatives know they worked for the U.S., and they are afraid of being killed. The Iraqis who live here have a simple word, barra, that they use over and over again to refer to the rest of Baghdad outside the Green Zone. It means "out there." If they were anywhere but Iraq, their stories would sound like paranoid delusions. All the gates are watched, they say. Their names are on hit lists. One woman, who used to do laundry for a British security firm and now lives in an abandoned market stall with her three children, has received messages on her cell phone telling her "Your blood will wash all over your body." She's afraid to go out of the Green Zone because of the threats, and since she lost her job and handed in her ID badge, she wouldn't be able to get back in without an escort.

Pretty soon, the choice may be made for her. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq claimed in an April 13 statement to have had "support troops" that infiltrated the Green Zone to launch the attack on the parliament cafeteria. As a result, squatters who continue to live in the Green Zone without official permission are now considered an unacceptable security risk. A family that fled the first battle of Fallujah in 2004 was told last week by U.S. military police that by June 1 they will have to leave the hallway they converted into an apartment or they'll be kicked out.

By ratcheting up security measures and evicting all nonofficial personnel, the U.S. and Iraqi authorities may be able to restore some of the Green Zone's former impregnability. But there's no guarantee that will last, and it comes at a cost. With the new security restrictions being erected and a bunker mentality increasingly taking hold, the U.S. civilian presence is likely to retreat inward, behind the walls of its new embassy--and even further away from the reality of Iraq's dysfunction.

That's why the Baghdad Country Club is digging in. If the U.S. military fails to pacify Baghdad and disengagement from Iraq's problems becomes the unspoken U.S. policy, the BCC may just become the last refuge in Iraq. The liquor store, called the Winery, is doing a booming business. In preparation for the holy month of Ramadan, when alcohol is particularly hard to get in Iraq, the club stockpiled so many cases of beer and wine on its roof that it began to bow inward. They managed to sell it all. The club also sells merchandise such as polo shirts, golf balls and golf towels. "If there wasn't demand for it, I wouldn't sell it," says James Thornett, 33, the Brit who owns the club. "It's not set up to make money off of misery. I'm providing a place for people to go and take their minds off what is happening."

At a table in the bar, Manikas is describing his daily routine. He wakes up at 4 a.m. in the company's villa down the street, has coffee, eats breakfast and is on a bus at 6, headed for the new embassy. After his shift he comes back, and if there has been a big bombing in Baghdad that day, he calls home. "Every time the media shows something on TV," he says, "I have to call my wife and say it wasn't near me." He feels safe in the Green Zone. "It is written in my karma where I am going to die," he says, "and it's not here."