Driving a cab in Baghdad

It's still dangerous, but not as bad as it used to be:

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers.

After years of sectarian warfare whittled down the list of neighborhoods where they could safely work, cabbies are once again crisscrossing nearly all of Baghdad. Every day they assess the constantly shifting boundaries between danger and security, hoping that life will return to normal, but mindful that this is still a city where anyone could be killed at any moment for no particular reason.

"There is a saying in Iraq that once you have seen death, you will not mind even if you have a life-threatening fever," said cabbie Haider Salim, 38, a resident of the Kadhimiyah neighborhood who drives a light blue Brazilian-made Volkswagen. "Of course Baghdad is still very, very dangerous. But we can live with this fever, because we are so hopeful that the situation will improve even more."

[...]

According to interviews with a dozen cabbies across the city, however, the mood now is far more hopeful than at any point since the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which plunged the country to the brink of civil war.

Abu Ahmed, 32, who lives just outside the fortresslike Green Zone, said that after the attack on the Shiite shrine, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, he could no longer drive on roads leading out of the capital. Even within the city, he said, it would have been suicide to travel to neighborhoods such as Ghazaliyah, Sholeh and Amiriyah.

"If you took a passenger to those areas," he said, "there was a good chance you would never come back."

Today, Abu Ahmed said, he takes passengers to any neighborhood in the city and any region of the country except for volatile Diyala province. "But I never go onto the side streets in the dangerous neighborhoods -- just the main roads," he said. "And sometimes I still have fear in my heart."

Damian P.

Posted by damian at November 28, 2007 07:43 AM