Quote:
When I first came here I could walk the streets of Baghdad with no protection, drink coffee while I was waiting to have my hair cut, smoke hubble bubble at a cafe, go shopping at King of Dates. The problems were already profound. I quickly learned key words -karaba makou, benzin makou, amal makou- no electricity, no petrol, no work. But there was also a strong sense that people were enjoying their freedom from the oppressive and homicidal regime of Saddam Hussein. And that they felt cautiously optimistic that their lives would, one day, improve.
Now I can go nowhere without armed protection and I can only travel in an armoured private car. I can never spend much more than a quarter of an hour at a cafe or a shop in case an opportunistic informer, perhaps simply desperate for money, makes a mobile telephone call to kidnap us.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...nt/5109828.stm |
So one would get the impression things have gotten worse, at least in this journalist's perspective. The difference between the situation before and now is what, due to the intervention or the insurgency?