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News Analysis

Baghdad's highway of death takes on new life

AFP, Baghdad
Sales in Baghdad of peaked caps boasting "I survived Route Irish" have slumped as reaching the capital's international airport is no longer the perilous dash it used to be.
Not only is the term losing its relevance, says police Colonel Hamoud Lafta al-Asadi, the 12-km stretch of highway, termed "Route Irish" by the US military, is now among the safest in Iraq.
And, promises the tall, wiry policeman with a neatly clipped moustache, it is set to become even safer.
"We are turning it into an impregnable security corridor. No one will be able tQ penetrate it JQ be able to plant roadside bombs," Colonel Asadi told AFP, while inspecting one of the endless checkpoints set up along the four-lane highway.
In February, he said, only one roadside bomb was discovered along the route, which is also known as the "rhino run" because Rhino Runner armoured buses are often used to ferry passengers to and from the airport.
The US military said, without elaborating, that during February "there were a low number of drive-by shootings on Route Irish."
The statistics are a far cry from November 2004, when violence along the highway peaked. That month, US military statistics show, insurgents launched 52 attacks, including by car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire.
The highway is heavily used by US forces, contractors and diplomats, with most traffic going to or
from the airport or the large American base that surrounds it. Both are prime targets for insurgents.
Colonel Ahmed Hatam Hamid, commander of the police First Motorised Batallion, says the turnaround came when his unit was assigned to patrol the highway in late 2004.
"We started out with 150 men and our numbers have since increased to 425," said the roundfaced colonel, sitting at his desk in a dilapidated roadside building, midway between the highly secured Green Zone and the airport, that now serves as battalion headquarters.
Patrolling continues day and night, starting each morning with a foot patrol. This is followed by continuous sweeps through the area by police armed with AK-47s and Austrian Glock pistols, riding aboard Chevrolet Lux 4WD pickups mounted with Russian DKC machineguns.
Iraqi and US troops have also felled the date palms that once lined the road, cleared away refuse, moved guard rails and cut back vegetation to make it difficult to conceal roadside bombs.
Now, according to Colonel Hamid, the aim is to clear the dense neighbourhoods through which the airport highway passes of al-Qaeda fighters.
"We want to give the terrorists no place to hide,” said the colonel, the eagle and sword battalion emblem painted in bright colours on the wall behind him adding menace to his words. "They have evil in their hearts. Human lives are cheap for them." The police casualtyrate has been high.
For commuters, however, the endless checkpoints and spot checks, including by sniffer dogs, make the trip to the airport arduous. Sometimes it takes two hours or even longer to cover.
Taxi driver Hussein al-Saadi admits the delays are irritating but says that at least it gives him and his passengers a better chance of arriving at the other end alive.
"We need all this security," he said as policemen in light blue camouflage uniforms searched his car and scanned its underbelly with a mirror on the end of a steel rod.
"I have seen too many lEDs (improvised explosive devices)," he said, adding that his most recent experience of the horrors that stalk Baghdad was on February 17 when a female suicide bomber blew herself up as she was confronted by troops at a checkpoint in central Karada neighbourhood.
Back at the palm-treed camp headquarters of the First Motorised Brigade — under whose command Colonel Hamid and his men fall — Major Shaker Lafta Abdul Redha admits there is still some way to go before the highway is fully secure.
"It's a game of cat and mouse. Over time both sides are getting wiser — but the terrorists are getting weaker while we are getting stronger," said the major, who is in overall Iraqi police control of the project to tame the airport highway.
Should he succeed, the bottom is likely to drop right out of the market for the somewhat anachronistic peaked caps that foreign contractors are still seen to be buying as macho souvenirs of their tour in Iraq.