An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.
’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: ......more
An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq.
’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America—a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-’em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service—much of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of twentysomethings hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country.
In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions—a flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. His almost comic initiatives anger the locals and help fuel the insurgency.
Chandrasekaran details Bernard Kerik’s ludicrous attempt to train the Iraqi police and brings to light lesser known but typical travesties: the case of the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdad’s stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons scientists from defecting to Iran; Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on
people
with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremer’s ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule.
This is a startling portrait of an Oz-like place where a vital aspect of our government’s folly in Iraq played out. It is a book certain to be talked about for years to come.(less)
- Image from Citizen University
Baghdad’s Green Zone is a world unto itself, with its own power supply, water, restaurants. One need never leave, and many never do. The author describes the separateness of the place but uses that as a base from which to foray out to related s......more
- Image from Citizen University
Baghdad’s Green Zone is a world unto itself, with its own power supply, water, restaurants. One need never leave, and many never do. The author describes the separateness of the place but uses that as a base from which to foray out to related subjects. Some of his examples are particularly poignant. One enterprising fellow built a pizzeria just outside the compound, only to discover that the Americans all eat inside. He talks much about the plague of outsourcing and how it resulted in oddities like sending laundry to Kuwait to be done. He offers many examples of earnest people trying to do good, but being stymied by either the impracticality of their dreams or interference from a completely politicized administration. Considerable space is devoted to the process whereby so-called sovereignty was handed over to the locals. Despite the vast sums allocated by the USA for this enterprise it seems that many of those attempting to actually reconstruct Iraq were always sorely lacking in funds. There was a ridiculous level of bad-faith dealing between the CPA, which was aligned with the Defense Department, and any personnel operating at the behest of State. They refused them funds, and even threatened violence against at least one State rep.
This is yet another portrayal of the bounteous ineptitude of an administration that put ideology and partisanship ahead of any form of practicality. It continues to be shocking. Bremer features heavily here, as an imperious dictator, but with some tempering of the dark portrayal. While the gist of the content is certainly familiar, it is useful, nonetheless, to have the gist filled in with a host of details. A worthwhile if not a required read. The excellent film,
, was based, to a large extent, on this book.
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feed
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Alternate Titles for this book could have been:
1. How not to rebuild a nation you just bombed the sh*t out of
2. How to F*ck up everything you touch, the Neocon way
3. Corruption, cronyism and good old fashioned incompetence on an unforeseen scale
4. Sout......more
Alternate Titles for this book could have been:
1. How not to rebuild a nation you just bombed the sh*t out of
2. How to F*ck up everything you touch, the Neocon way
3. Corruption, cronyism and good old fashioned incompetence on an unforeseen scale
4. Southern Efficiency in the Middle East
5. A Confederacy of Dunces
6. Beavis and Butthead Do Iraq
You get the message. In other words, if 10% of what Chandasekaran writes is 10% true, then this was the greatest con job in the history of the American Republic. Seriously, people need to be in jail, starting at the very top and working on down to the lowliest Republican crony.
That they got away with it (and continue to by and large) is simply amazing. Of course, not a lot of the things written here caused a lot of outrage when reported individually. It is only when seen together that the gross misconduct and the sheer negligence and dereliction of duty by the American State Department, defense contractors and Provisional Government really shines through.(less)
The short take: bad organizational structure and writing that is really just mediocre journalistic prose.
Although Chandrasekaran begins with a narrative "I," he never really identifies himself, and then launches into details about things like relationships between State department member......more
The short take: bad organizational structure and writing that is really just mediocre journalistic prose.
Although Chandrasekaran begins with a narrative "I," he never really identifies himself, and then launches into details about things like relationships between State department members and Pentagon members back in Washington, making one wonder where the information is coming from. There is little direct quotation, and his presentation and interpretation of events are so mixed that it's difficult to feel that it's an unbiased account. The author hence fails to be convincing in his arguments for the exact reasons and mechanisms by which the U.S. (or more specifically, the Coalition Provisional Authority) failed in Iraq. His explanation of sources given in the notes at the book's end is somewhat redeeming, but not necessarily helpful at the end of the book.
Sadly, what appears to be his other goal - to provide an engaging story about the war in Iraq and paint a portrait of life inside the Green Zone - only half succeeds for some of the same reasons. There is no clear voice: sometimes you hear directly from the author, but this often slips into third-person narration, sometimes focused on a CPA employee, sometimes on the state of events in Iraq overall, but he never stays long on one given theme. These vignettes tend to feel stilted, disjointed and formulaic. His attempt to build characters out of key CPA personnel basically includes introducing each person with the same details: what they were doing before Iraq; basic physical description, including particular attention on dress and hair style; current job in the CPA; 2-3 key personality traits; if they're qualified for the job and good, reason they are soon fired; if they aren't qualified, explanation of the GOP connection that got them the job and is why they're keeping it and bungling things up in Iraq.
The book is obviously supposed to outrage you at our handling of things in the early part of our presence in Iraq. That it manages fairly well: there's no missing the fact that loyalty to Bush was the main standard by which people were chosen for CPA projects, and that for the most part, this landed us with a bunch of incompetent, unknowledgable fools who were supposed to "build democracy" in the country whose infrastructure we had just destroyed in our "shock and awe" campaign. Also fairly obvious throughout the book is that the definition of "democracy" most of these people are working with looks suspiciously like the definition of "free market capitalism." The money that gets poured into privatization efforts and computerizing the Baghdad Stock Exchange, rather than into rebuilding power plants, water purification plants, or education and improved public safety, is astounding. The lack of questioning of this conflation is also amazing. Why should we think that unlimited opportunities for businessmen to make money will bring peace to a land and teach people how to govern themselves? There's an obvious lesson that we need to really examine what we mean by "democratic values" at home before we attempt to force them upon others.
The other point that I find most interesting, which comes up only briefly, is that the ethnic and religious divisions fueling Iraq's civil war were largely created by us Americans. The distinctions between Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite existed, but much less so before the American occupation. (Claiming certain affiliations could be pretty dangerous under Saddam's government.) In our attempt at "fairness," however, we hardened these categories to set up governing structures equally divided among these different groups, forcing stronger affiliations, and essentially laying the groundwork for civil war. While Chandrasekaran doesn't lay this out, it lines up well with what has happened in other colonized states like Rwanda (see Mahmood Mamdani's book on this).
So, all told, it was an informative book, though otherwise disappointing.(less)
A brilliant satire on the occupation of a Middle Eastern country....well it would be, if it weren't true. This gives the reader a fairly shocking insight into the incompetency, arrogance and corruption involved in the Iraq occupation.
The Coalition Provisional Authority sets up shop in on......more
A brilliant satire on the occupation of a Middle Eastern country....well it would be, if it weren't true. This gives the reader a fairly shocking insight into the incompetency, arrogance and corruption involved in the Iraq occupation.
The Coalition Provisional Authority sets up shop in one of Saddam's palaces and creates a little bubble of Americana called the Green Zone surrounded by a Baghdad teetering on and, subsequently, falling into an abyss.
The author, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, restrains himself from too much editorializing and lets the main characters speak for themselves. These characters do present themselves as, in the main, honourable people who were woefully out of their depth and/or practising self-deception to a staggering level. There are also tales of corruption and plain stupidity - as well as heroism and selflessness.
An excellent piece of reportage, that is both well-written, witty and ultimately, inceredibly sad.(less)
I knew the war was hatched by a fantasy driven cabal, but this book really laid it out in detail. It's an interesting contrast to another book I recently read, titled "Muqtada," by Patrick Cockburn. Cockburn's book deals with the Iraq almost exclusively from the standpoint of (anti-U.S.) Iraqi Shias......more
I knew the war was hatched by a fantasy driven cabal, but this book really laid it out in detail. It's an interesting contrast to another book I recently read, titled "Muqtada," by Patrick Cockburn. Cockburn's book deals with the Iraq almost exclusively from the standpoint of (anti-U.S.) Iraqi Shias. This book deals with the war almost exclusively from the standpoint of the U.S. crew than ran Iraq up until the elections in 2005. Both compliment each other well.
The gist of the book is that as soon as the war was started, a hand-picked bunch of neocons, or neocon sympathizers, were put in charge of administering Iraq. Most had no idea what they were doing. As Chandrasekaran describes it, many were true believers of the neocon fantasy of rebuilding Iraq to be a shining example of democracy and free capitalism in the Middle East. Douglas Feith, the neocon in charge of setting up the CPA, though it would be accomplished in 90 days. The Coalition Provisional Authority's viceroy, Paul Bremer, dropped all trade restrictions immediately and moved to privatize industry, which the old ministers of the state owned companies were happy to do to make a bunch of money...until their workers tried to assassinate them.
Chandraskaran gives a good sense of how much the CPA really believed they were revolutionizing Iraq and his examples of how they did it make a really interesting read. He talks about people hired to deal with traffic who went about writing traffic laws based on those of Massachusetts, a professor from Johns Hopkins University hired to reconstruct the university system who set his sites on creating academic freedom rather than rebuilding the bombed out buildings, and grand plans to create an area code system well before a constitution was even written.
To me, Chandraskran is operating a little too much within the official story--he says the occupation ended when sovereignty was handed over and at times suggests that a free market might not be such a bad idea--but it's his total immersion within their fantasy world that makes the book good. His illustrations of life inside the Green Zone, where people used water shipped from Kuwait and had their laundry done there too, are emblematic of US involvement in Iraq: they have their own little world, where they pat each other on the back for being pioneers of freedom, while hell reigns down around them.(less)
This was a well-researched and shocking look at the attempt to provide Iraq with a democratic, capitalistic government and way of life after its US invasion/liberation. That such a massive undertaking was began without a clear idea of the next step is a strange truth that is drilled home again and a......more
This was a well-researched and shocking look at the attempt to provide Iraq with a democratic, capitalistic government and way of life after its US invasion/liberation. That such a massive undertaking was began without a clear idea of the next step is a strange truth that is drilled home again and again. Missteps, misguided actions, and good-but-not-thoroughly-thought-through-intentions make up most of this book, but the insights into day-to-day life in the green zone are no less compelling.
Heavily recommended.(less)
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone is the compelling story about the U.S. occupation in Iraq and the culture of inexperience, arrogance, and cronyism within the U.S. Green Zone. My previous impression of the Iraq war was that U.S. officials were well-meaning but sometimes mi......more
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone is the compelling story about the U.S. occupation in Iraq and the culture of inexperience, arrogance, and cronyism within the U.S. Green Zone. My previous impression of the Iraq war was that U.S. officials were well-meaning but sometimes misguided and the U.S. media portrayed a sugar-coated view rather than the reality of life on the ground. Listening to this audiobook, I felt shocked by just how much worse the situation had been than I'd previously realized. I found Imperial Life in the Emerald City so enlightening and informative that I didn't want to take a break from listening.
Ray Porter's narration more than does justice to Rajiv Chandrasekaran's story. This audiobook felt like listening to a fascinating novel rather than a nonfiction account by a newspaper journalist... the story and narration are powerful and engaging. I highly recommend this audiobook to anyone who wants to better understand the "story behind the story" of the U.S. in 2003-2004 Iraq.(less)
I read this during Spring Break. A very informative book. It is kind of depressing to see how the U.S. Government has allowed private contractors carte blanche as well as establishing a bureacracy in the middle of the war zone in Iraq that would compare with any on Capitol Hill. It made this die-har......more
I read this during Spring Break. A very informative book. It is kind of depressing to see how the U.S. Government has allowed private contractors carte blanche as well as establishing a bureacracy in the middle of the war zone in Iraq that would compare with any on Capitol Hill. It made this die-hard Conservative wonder about the effectiveness of our involvement in Iraq.(less)
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book is journalism at its best, and the loss will be irreparable if newspaper journalists fade into extinction. The Emerald City is an image reminiscent of the Raj – Americans relaxing around a swimming pool, in a 7 square mile enclave, enjoying drinks, eating American food, r......more
Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book is journalism at its best, and the loss will be irreparable if newspaper journalists fade into extinction. The Emerald City is an image reminiscent of the Raj – Americans relaxing around a swimming pool, in a 7 square mile enclave, enjoying drinks, eating American food, relaxing in clean clothing in the middle of Baghdad. The segregation from the real Iraq was genuine; the relaxed lifestyle an illusion. The occupation of Iraq brought a flood of ill-prepared, idealistic visionaries with conflicting goals to reconstruct a society that was already broken before the American invasion. They enjoyed the comfort of air-conditioning, laundry service carted out to neighboring Kuwait, and a modern hospital facility run by the 28th Combat Unit. What they lacked was the time to scale the steep learning curve ahead of them, an overall plan that included knowledge of Iraqi political and economic realities, and an incentive to leave this cocoon of safety.
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY; INSIDE IRAQ'S GREEN ZONE, intersperses anecdotal “scenes” of individual lives and vignettes of ironic humor with in-depth analysis of the events from the fall of Baghdad to June 2004 when an interim Iraqi government took over and Viceroy Bremer departed. The arbitrary decision making that affected these lives is at times disturbing.
A primary obstacle to reconstruction was the hasty selection of a team lacking in experience – especially post-conflict experience. Some quickly adapted. Steve Browning's name is frequently mentioned. Originally with the Army Corp of Engineers, he succeeded in providing generators for the country's hospitals, and distributing medicine sitting idly in warehouses to the places they were needed. He also tried to learn some Arabic and to observe respect for Iraqi customs. Unfortunately, his story was the exception rather than the rule. Too many appointees were selected because of their Republican Party affiliations. One such recruit tried to make an anti-smoking campaign a public health priority. The occupation lasted for less than 9 months. It was too short a time to learn from mistakes, but long enough for mistakes to accumulate in an increasing number of Iraqi minds.
The occupation began with no overall plan, but with conflicting political agendas in Washington. The Pentagon wanted to stabilize Iraq and favored installation of Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi. The State Department and the CIA did not trust Chalabi and wanted their own people included in the reconstruction process. The NSC initially left the details in the hands of the Defense Department. By Fall they were re-thinking the domestic implications of Bremer's plans and began exerting greater control. Colin Powell learned the details of Bremer's transition plan from the op-ed pages of the Washington Post.
Internal communication was not the only problem. The Green Zone was an island of safety. Few Americans ventured out of it or were curious about Iraqi customs or learning Arabic. A major misstep was the failure to recognize the importance of religion – even for secular moderates. Insistence on an American-style separation of Church and State made no sense in Iraq. Similarly, no one in a leadership position understood the importance of the Shiite leader, Sayyid Ali al-Sistani. Another miscalculation was the structure of the Baath Party under Saadam. Bremer's de-Baathification policy disqualified many of the most able and well-educated from a role in the new Iraq.
IMPERIAL LIFE IN THE EMERALD CITY is a long book portraying dozens of people, and includes interviews with dozens of others. Chandrasekaran holds our interest by organizing various stories – the obsession with privatization, the problems with the electric grid, the escalation of violence, the ill-conceived awarding of an airport security contract to an inexperienced start-up which went on to scam the government out of millions due to fraud. However, this can, at the same time, make for a confusing narrative. The astute reader would be wise to keep a brief chronology of events, and a list of names mentioned in order to grasp the structure of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). (If you want mine, I'm happy to oblige).
Chandrasekaran obviously wonders if fewer mistakes would have led to a better outcome. Yet, he does not force the reader to agree with him. By presenting a many-faceted story, he allows each reader to judge for himself. I finished this book with the sad conclusion that failure was inevitable. Rather than finding fault with any particular individual, his story seems to tell the saga of a classical tragedy brought on by hubris.(less)
A review of the book when it first came out a few years back:
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is with the Washington Post; he has spent time in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the American missions in both places. His experiences in Iraq as well as his interviews with those in Iraq during the time o......more
A review of the book when it first came out a few years back:
Rajiv Chandrasekaran is with the Washington Post; he has spent time in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the American missions in both places. His experiences in Iraq as well as his interviews with those in Iraq during the time of the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority, under the control of Paul Bremer) and the precursor organization (under Jay Garner)provide important bases for this work. The picture is not pretty, and ties in with arguments advanced by other books on Iraq written of late.
First, as readers already know, there was no real plan for after the war. The book makes it clear that much of the redevelopment of Iraq was ad hoc. Since no one understood how much in tatters the electrical grid was, there was no real preparation for dealing with the degraded system. And the end result was that infrastructure was worse after the war as compared with before. And the CPA was unable to do much to restore power and make the system work better.
Second, many of the "leaders" selected by the CPA were chosen for their political connections. For instance, very young (twenty something) people who had built IOUs from the Administration for, for instance, working in the Bush election campaign, were selected to head units for which they had no expertise at all. Sometimes, seasoned administrators were pushed aside, occasionally because they were not gung ho enough politically.
Third, the CPA was fairly clueless about what was happening on the ground in Iraq. They were slow to pick up on the insurgency, for example. It took them some time to understand the importance of the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They became landlocked in the "Green Zone," as conditions worsened outside.
The book begins with a quotation from T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia), who said in 1917: "Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them."
The book indicates the number of times when Iraqis were given secondary status to Americans, whether in running organizations or on political decision-making. One important neoconservative, on reflection of his experiences in Iraq, became most disillusioned. He commented to the author: "I'm a neoconservative who's been mugged by reality (page 5)." What began as an easy military victory turned into a quagmire. As the American involvement moved from liberation to occupation, things began to disintegrate. As one Iraqi told the author (page 290): "The biggest mistake of the occupation was the occupation itself."
All in all, one of the more powerful books about the American incursion into Iraq; it is also one of the best descriptions of the CPA's reign in Iraq. It triangulates strongly with other volumes.(less)