Back in Iraq: Parts of the Iraqi capital resemble a mini-US, Burger King and all, writes Lara Marlowe in Baghdad.
In six months of occupation, US forces have transformed Baghdad Airport and their "green zone" - the former presidential complex, al Rashid Hotel and Conference Palace - into a miniature United States of America, complete with fast-food outlets, "PX" discount stores, cinemas and car-washes.
There is never a traffic jam or a power cut in the Americans' Iraq and within these giant fortresses, there is at least an illusion of security. True, rockets have been fired at the al Rashid Hotel, mortars at the airport landing strip. A missile barely missed a passenger aircraft a few weeks ago. There was an explosion, probably a rocket-propelled grenade, at the Foreign Ministry yesterday, just outside the green zone, but within their enclave, Americans feel safe enough to shed flak jackets and sunbathe beside Saddam Hussein's swimming pool.
The Americans have renamed Uday's palace next to Baghdad Airport "Fort Victory". The thinking behind the US enclaves resembles that of covered-wagon pioneers who built forts as they pushed westward in the 19th century. Few "natives" will ever see the giant warehouse in Baghdad airport with signs saying "US Postal Service" and mountains of care packages from home. The DHL and Federal Express courier services have their own containers.
If you have the right security badges, you can pop into Burger King or the Subway deli. Iraqis clean toilets for the "Toifor" company. I watched a tanker truck with hundreds of toilet-roll packages strapped to its side vacuum sewage from the latrines. An employee then swabbed them with soapy water.
A black American serviceman who looked for all the world like the film director Spike Lee watched them, holding an M-16 in one hand and scratching his back with the other. "An Iraqi will do any job for $ 5 a day," a US MP told me. "We hired a woman we call Auntie to clean our toilets. She's great - of course all Iraqi maintenance workers have to be escorted."
The "local staff" nonetheless remain the Achilles heal of the American enclaves. A source inside the Coalition Provisional Authority says guards recently discovered a grenade wired to a timer next to the office of the US administrator, Mr Paul Bremer.
The US Air Force did not touch the most lavish building in Saddam Hussein's former presidential complex, a horseshoe-shaped wonder with colonnades, miles of inlaid marble corridors, sculpted bronze doors and crystal chandeliers that glimmer down the halls, as far as the eye can see.
The US knew it would use the palace - on a par with any government building in Washington - as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority. That much, at least, was planned.
The entire building, the size of several city blocks, is air-conditioned and delicately perfumed with aerosol freshener. CPA staff complain bitterly that the toilets are clogged, so new air-conditioned toilets have been constructed in pre-fabricated buildings outside.
Four giant busts of the former dictator still adorn the corners of Mr Bremer's palace. Saddam seems to be viewed as a historical curiosity, almost a tourist attraction. His golden throne sits in the former conference room, which has been transformed into a chapel where Christian services are held every Sunday. The fresco behind the throne shows Scud missiles launched into the sky. "The missiles actually point in the direction of Israel," says US Navy Chief Petty Officer Dexter Johnson, the chaplain's assistant.
"At least a dozen people come here every day to have their pictures taken. I keep Saddam's hat and Uday's sword on my desk, as props."
Mr Johnson goes to fetch Saddam's accessories and a hand-out intended to explain the frescoes of the Al-Aqsa mosque and another showing stallions cavorting in the sky. The text, about the bondage of the children of Israel in Egypt, the Babylonian captivity and Jesus's promise to lead the people of God into the kingdom of promise, is steeped in fundamentalist Christian ideology. As we talk, a group of servicemen and women sings: "Then sings my soul, my saviour God to thee, how great thou art . . . " Choir practice.
Poolside, I meet a disgruntled Spanish expert from the CPA. "All non-American CPA officials are 'level O'," he says. "That means we have no access to information. My government sent high-ranking civil servants and the Americans won't let us do anything; we're second-class citizens. The \ Iraqi ministers are puppets, American yes-men. Nothing advances.
"There is money for this," the Spaniard says, gesturing at the pristine pool. Young male and female soldiers stand around in sunshades, shorts and T-shirts. You'd think you were in Club Med. "There's $600 million to look for WMDs that don't exist and money for a new gymnasium here in the complex, but they say it's too expensive to provide more water for the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. I asked for a generator for an institute to train Iraqis and they said there was no money."
I hitched a ride to the north gate, walked through half a kilometre of concertina barbed wire back onto the street, then headed for Our Lady of Sorrows church next to the Shorja market, to deliver a reader's letter to Father Nadheer. I'd last seen the Chaldean Catholic priest on Easter Sunday. Since then, US troops have searched his church four times.
"They asked if I had guns and they went inside the chapel with their boots and guns. They even looked under the altar! At the Coptic church next door, they arrested five people, because they had guns for self-protection. They killed two night-watchmen in the market because the watchmen heard voices and took fright and fired their guns to show they were there."
A torn photograph of Cardinal Raphael Bidawid, the Chaldean Patriarch who died in July, sits in a gold frame atop Father Nadheer's filing cabinet. "When the American soldiers saw this photo, they asked if I was a Baathist, because it showed Monsignor Bidawid with Saddam Hussein. They ordered me to tear Saddam out, while they watched me."
A middle-aged man sits at Father Nadheer's desk, with crutches beside him. "Three days ago, my secretary was carrying $900 in her handbag for me and gunmen grabbed it from her," says Dr Aouni Hikmat Gorgis, a psychiatrist. "I told her not to cry, that she was alive and that is all that matters."
Two months ago, Dr Gorgis received a new patient at his office in Baghdad Jdeideh. "I was writing the prescription and suddenly there was a blade at my throat. 'We are a gang', he said. 'Tell me where is the money'. I said I didn't have any and he said, 'If we find money, we'll slit your throat'."
The thieves bound Dr Aouni's hands and feet and left him on the floor while they ransacked the apartment. "I knew that when they found the money, they would kill me. I managed to hop to the balcony and throw myself over. I fell six metres and broke my hip. Passers-by found me unconscious on the pavement, but I am alive."
As we pushed our way through the crowd outside in Rashid Street, Kassem, my interpreter, told me how his brother was robbed with a knife to the stomach in the same place, a few weeks ago. Traffic had stopped completely and we could not find our driver. When we finally reached the bridge, there were no taxis. I stopped a battered car with a broken windscreen, driven by a skinny young man wearing spectacles. He, at least, did not look like a gunman.
His name was Aws ("It means 'wolf' in Arabic," he told me) and he was a 23-year-old medical student, a Sunni Muslim and the son of a school-teacher. "I hated Saddam," he said, "but we will fight the Americans every way we can. It is not an equal battle, but we have the strength of holy Islam. The Americans came here by force and they will leave by force - there is no other way."
I was surprised by the young man's vehemence. What did he hate the US so? "I have nothing against America," Aws said, "but it has become the weapon of Israel."
In years past, such rhetoric was dismissed as fanatical propaganda, but these days, attitudes are changing, even in the US. "The Bush team . . . has fallen so deep into the pocket of Ariel Sharon you can't even find it anymore," the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote last week.
Listening to Aws, I couldn't help remembering the words of retired Gen William Odom, the former director of the US National Security Agency, quoted last month in Le Monde.
"A little group of people, close to the Israeli Likud Party and the American religious right, wanted this war to transform the Middle East and, they thought, protect Israel," Gen Odom said. "They don't care if it's a mess now. What matters to them is that the Arabs have been weakened."