IRAQ

Independent/ZMAG: The Troops Are Afraid To Go Out At Night
by Robert Fisk

I was travelling into the Shia Muslim Iraqi city of Nasiriyah on Friday evening when three American soldiers jumped in front of my car. "Stop the car, stop the car!" one of them shouted, waving a pistol at the windscreen. I screamed at the driver to stop. He hadn't seen them step into the road. Nor had I. Two other soldiers approached from the rear, rifles pointed at our vehicle. I showed our identity passes and the officer, wearing a floppy camouflage hat, was polite but short. "You should have seen our checkpoint," he snapped, then added: "Have a good stay in Nasiriyah but don't go out after dark. It's not safe."

What he meant, I think, was that it wasn't safe for American soldiers after dark. Hours later, I went out in the streets of Nasiriyah for a chicken burger and the Iraqis who served me in a run-down cafe couldn't have been friendlier. There were the usual apologies for the dirt on the table and the lack of paper napkins, along with the usual grimy square on the wall where, just two months ago, a portrait of Saddam Hussein must have been hanging. So what was going on? The "liberators" were already entering the wilderness of occupation while our masters in London and Washington were still braying about victory and courage and - here I quote Tony Blair on the same day, addressing British troops 60 miles further south in Basra - of how they "went on to try to make something of the country you liberated".