Nowhere to Hide 
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad is now effectively a dozen different cities; they are all at war. On walls there are slogans in black paint saying ‘Death to Spies’. A Shia caught in a Sunni district will be killed and vice versa. Each side has its checkpoints: armed men in civilian clothes demand identity cards from drivers, and wave to one side those they suspect of being of the opposite religion; these people are then interrogated, tortured and killed. The checkpoints are difficult to avoid: they spring up without advance warning. Between thirty and fifty bodies, often mutilated, are picked up by the police every day.
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Patrick Cockburn is a foreign correspondent on the Independent and has been visiting Iraq since 1977. Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq was published in April.
Other articles by this contributor:
Diary · Patrick Cockburn reports from a divided Iraq
Diary · The End of Iraq
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