A Bit Stir Crazy

We continue to wait for the curfew to be lifted. Everyone in the villa is getting antsy. Correspondents are waiting for flights home, while others are stuck in Amman trying to get in. The Iraqi staff that we use to cook and clean hasn’t been able to get into work; laundry is piling up and meals are getting pretty tiresome. The guard force has been doing 12 on/12 off, living in the same small room for four days, sleeping on mattresses laid out on the floor.

The Iraqi government is saying that the curfew will remain in effect until tomorrow morning, when we expect a backlog of services. It will take a week or so for the city to return to some semblance of stasis.

The Curfew Continues

The live shot position moved to the garden to avoid snipers on the roofs.

Following the bombing of the Samarra mosque Baghdad is under it’s fourth day of curfew. We had planed to make a run to the airport, along with the rest of the city’s population, but no planes are flying due to problems with the airport’s fuel supply and the on-going curfew. I can’t imagine what the issue is with the fuel as no planes have taken off for three days.

Technically military and security elements are allowed to move through the city during the curfew, but those security teams that rely on blending into the normal traffic flow as a tactic (low-profile) are at a huge disadvantage. Moving around during a curfew highlights the fact that you're a security team and not just an average Iraqi going about his business, so we sit tight and wait.

We did take a short trip yesterday and I was struck at how deserted the streets were. To me it looked like a scene out of the old Clint Eastwood movies where he walks down an empty Mexican street, the only movement is a dust cloud and the mangy dog trotting up the sidewalk.