The trouble with normal ...
I'm sitting in the cockpit as the plane circles over Baghdad airport. For the past two and a half years South African pilot Ignatius Kroukam has been executing the corkscrew landing that's a signature of flying into war zones where there's a danger of missiles. He makes the maneuver look effortless.
What's new is that Jordan's national airline is flying three times a week to Basra, in the south and Erbil in northern Iraq.
"It's very convenient for businessmen," Kroukam says.
While he and the co-pilot scan the horizon to see if there's anything amiss I study the rapidly-approaching ground like an old friend I'm happy to see again.
Back to Baghdad
I first started reporting from Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. In 1998 I moved here and covered the country for most of the following seven years.
After two years embedded with the U.S. Army and Marines in the most volatile places in Iraq - Fallujah, Samarra, Najaf and Tel Afar - I needed a break.
I spent the last year in New York looking at U.S. policy in Iraq and talking to Americans about what was happening here. In the U.S. everyone wants to know what to do about the war. The only thing I knew with any certainty is that it's impossible to understand what's going on here unless you're actually here.
Dangerous duty
A year ago it was a death-defying drive from the airport to the city. Now there are more concrete barriers and fewer attacks and roadside bombs.
On one of my last trips from the airport a year ago, a network colleague and I huddled on the floor of an armored car after gunfire aimed at a police convoy erupted around us. It's one of the few places where security has improved. But a year ago hardly anyone talked about Shiite-Sunni violence. Now people talk about very little else.
Outside our heavily-secured workspace you can hear gunfire and two or three times a day the horrible unmistakable thump of a car bomb exploding somewhere in the city. Even the "Green Zone" where most Americans live has lost the illusion of safety.
It's the size of a small city and access to it was completely shut down over the weekend after the U.S. military said it stopped a series of planned suicide car bombs there. Going into the Green Zone the following day I was surprised there wasn't more panic among its Western residents. "They never told us about it," one told me.
'Return to normalcy'
So when the official press release with the cheery note: "Yet another indication of Iraq's return to normalcy!" popped up in my inbox, I was a little taken aback.
It was about U.S. renovations to Baghdad's International Airport. It talked about the $13 million pumped into the facility. It didn't mention the worrying security breaches at the airport - the discovery of plastic explosives a few months ago - or fears that it had been infiltrated by one of Iraq's many militias.
But it did note the cafe was open and the duty-free shop featured a Harley-Davison motorcycle.
Life beyond the violence
EMAIL THIS
advertisement
Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
Read the Nightly News blog
"The trouble with normal is it always gets worse."
Bruce Cockburn
song "The trouble with normal"
steve sherwod (Sent Oct 3, 2006 3:45:57 PM)
If Harleys are there, peace is on the way!!
Robert, Texas (Sent Oct 3, 2006 3:58:25 PM)
Ok, I served on the road from the airport to the Green zone for most of 2004, the notion that you had to huddle in the floor of the Armored vehicle is just ridiculous, while on patrol day in and day out on Route Irish you quickly came to the realization that the media blows everything out of proportion.
Infantry (Sent Oct 3, 2006 4:00:11 PM)
The video game culture in the Americans have permeated to such an extent that they have perfected the art of breaking things along with killing innicents.
However they are yet to learn the civility of fixing things and saving lives.
Josh (Sent Oct 3, 2006 4:28:07 PM)
Jane: Thanks for this blog. I wasn't aware that any "businessmen" were doing any business in Basra and Erbil. I thought the country was still too dangerous. I'd be interested in another blog explaining what kind of business is happening in these regions. Stay safe.
Cathy, Minneapolis, MN (Sent Oct 3, 2006 4:39:11 PM)
What about the rest of the country? I want to know about the reporters who live outside of the postage stamp area of Baghdad. Is it too normal out there, or is it just not career advancing enough to report from those areas?
Jimmy Positive (Sent Oct 3, 2006 5:04:41 PM)
Scary stuff ... it's like the worst days of Northern Ireland ... on crack.
Lee Rudnicki, Los Angeles, CA (Sent Oct 3, 2006 5:21:02 PM)
I feel we must stick with this to the end, because if we fail this time the United States might loose its world standing as a Super Power. If that happens, then things will really start to change amongst our allies and especially our enemies.
This will have a much greater impact on us as a nation than Vietnam and Korea. The American people must be educated about this and realize it's a battle for survival now, not just politics....
vikn1, somewhere, NV (Sent Oct 3, 2006 5:38:12 PM)
Jane-
I cannot tell you how delighted I was when I clicked on "Blogging Baghdad", and up came your name and as an NBC Correspondent. WOW! I have admired your work for years and your first post was terrific, as would be expected. I really, really look forward to reading your posts and hopefully seeing you on Nightly! I can't welcome you to NBC, I am only a viewer, but I can enthusiastically welcome you to my home. Just BE CAREFUL, plesse. Between you and Richard Engel, NBC viewers will have no fingernails left!
Celine Segda, Jersey City NJ (Sent Oct 3, 2006 5:45:22 PM)
I'm thinking of moving to Iraq for work. I've heard of all this before going on in Iraq and I'm not surprised that not much has changed. We're going to be there for a long time.
John Milner, Las Vegas, NV (Sent Oct 3, 2006 6:00:56 PM)
Jane Arraf points out here that one can hardly understand what's going on in Baghdad unless you're there, in that city. This fact is highlighted by her comment about the press release she received with its abundant arbitrary selections of what is news (versus what is ignored). I have had the same (often stunning) response myself since creating the website bringhome172nd.org. (NBC Nightly News covered the website in mid-August.) Since that time I've become very familiar with the machinery of the military's self-reporting press. I am able to compare the reporting of the military press releases to what soldiers on the ground are actually posting at the site. Sometimes, I have to wonder if the military reporter is really boots down in the nation of Iraq. Was the press release issued from some sort of Zone of Alternate Reality? Also, some of the blurbs with positive spin seem so oblique as to almost smack of sarcasm against the alleged objective of ... well, spreading the "good news" about Iraq. Just as Jane Arraf quotes this particular press release which harks "Yet another indication of return to normalcy!" ... 1,500 bodies showed up in the Baghdad morgue during the month of August. Is this sort of normalcy into which we are leading the Iraqi people??
Travis Pittman (Sent Oct 3, 2006 7:06:36 PM)
Interesting to listen to one actually there..who can speak English well. I read blogs and communcate often with "on-site" residents...a different story for sure than our local "reports"...
Keep up the good work...and "keep up the good fight?"
I don't believe there is such a thing..neither do the victims.
David...Boise, Idaho (Sent Oct 4, 2006 4:53:23 AM)
I find it very indicative of the government's stance on this war that they would lie directly to the people in the Green Zone about the level of danger. Every effort seems to be made to coat this situation with a veneer of hope. Those who don't fall for the veneer are heaped with derision as non-patriots and not caring about 'the feelings of the troops'.
Is my government still printing lies in Iraqi newspapers for 'morale purposes'? I think the Soviet Union did similar things in the 80s and Americans derided them for having to lie to their people.
Sean, Torrington CT (Sent Oct 4, 2006 9:33:20 AM)
God Bless all the good deed doers in Iraq. Things will settle down when civilized humans really ask God to help them and Stop the Hate of discrimination.
The natives need to evolve and stop the riduculous
killing of innocent people.Learn,Grow,be at Peace.
Sherri, New Jersey (Sent Oct 4, 2006 10:24:13 AM)
The real indicator of whether the American people are waking up will be the elections in November.
Personally I think Iraq will end up being another Vietnam like blot on our American History.
Will Americans finally pull their head out of the sand and wake up to the reality of what is happening or will they continue to focus on "Dancing with the Stars", "Survivor" and other drivel while their country is being run into the ground?
Mark (Sent Oct 4, 2006 12:41:24 PM)
What I don't understand is why were in Iraq still. The criteria we laid out for victory, a stable unity government and the building of the security forces has been acheived. We went from zero men under arms to 300,000 in the security forces and their government has survived. It's time to leave it up to them. Despite the Bush Administrations failures the military has accomplised what we've asked of them, it's time to "stand down", because they've "stood up".
Mike Winegardner, Mt.Pleasant Michigan (Sent Oct 4, 2006 12:48:54 PM)
I agree whith a previous post. Tell us more about the day to day business activities that are going on. It sounds like the reporter was on a routine flight from Atlant to Jacksonville.
As to the violence, if you compiled the overnight crime reports in the US from the twenty five largest cities, you might be surprised to find that we are about as violent as Iraq.
Jim Ammons (Sent Oct 4, 2006 10:23:29 PM)
10-01-07
Wake the FCC
The vanguard of our national air waves, should seek to achieve its mission purpose and better govern Americas national air waves.
National air waves the vulnerable American public is reliant and dependent on for information of events and occurrences that citizens globally utilize to shape their local, state, national, international and world views.
Vulnerable, reliant, unsuspecting, citizens, whose, world views, opinions and conclusions directly affect the safety of Americans at home and aboard.
I strongly suggest that our elected officials move quickly against the unbridled bias international organizations that have misused and or monopolized our national air waves.
These same International organizations purpose has become the deliberate, unauthorized, presumptuous, representation of citizen, state and nation.
International organizations that deliberately select and distribute self serving, bias, opinionated information, mixed in with actual events and occurrences in such a manor to deliberately manipulate the desired opinions and reactions of an unsuspecting, trusting and reliant viewing population.
I suggest these activities represent a clear and present danger to the United States government, our elected officials and U.S. citizens at home and abroad.
These same bias opinionated organizations presume the unauthorized representation of every citizen and every national representative of every country they visit in the guise of free speech and or freedom of the press.
I personally resent their misuse of our national air waves.
I pray our elected representatives will stop their damaging and abusive activities and will begin work to insure unbiased news gathering, distribution, accurate information and policy representation for America's future and safety.
Garland Monceaux Scottown, OH (Sent Oct 7, 2006 3:38:49 PM)
...Let me restate my Question (which got lost somewhere along the way here):
Is that post above some sort of Joke?
Is whatever kind of Belief you have so weak that you need to play Guardian to "protect" unsuspecting- and presumably completely un-educated, naive and stupid- US-Citizens from any potential Exposure to another Opinion, on the Ground that it's not "American"?
Well- why stop there? How about *any* kind of Opinion other then your own? If you want to be consequent, then you would have to ban it all.
Well, good Luck with that. And, in the Words of Charlie Chaplin: BIG SMILE! BIG SMILE! BIG SMILE!
Josef Balzer Askeaton Ireland (Sent Oct 19, 2006 4:12:27 PM)
SEND A COMMENT
PLEASE READ: All comments must be approved before appearing in the thread; time and space constraints prevent all comments from appearing. We will only approve comments that are directly related to this post, use appropriate language and are not attacking the comments of others.