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★阿修羅♪
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イラクで殺された2人の日本政府職員は米指揮下の占領政権の監督機関への派遣労働者だった。
日本の大手メディアは「イラク暫定政権」などと表現するが、これも、このところしきりの「意味論（語義論）の戦争」(Semantics War)の一環である。
以下のワシントンポスト記事の表現、U.S.-led occupation governmentは、直訳すれば、「アメリカの指揮下の占領政権」である。
「軍政」という言葉もあるが、現在、アメリカ軍自身が「戦争状態」を認める侵略、「討伐」行為が継続中の場所で、日本政府の外務省職員が、派遣労働者として、すでに半年以上、「アメリカの指揮下の占領政権」というよりも、それを監督する組織に、ほぼ常駐の状態で関わっていたのであるから、これは「戦死」同然である。
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40109-2003Dec5.html
Baghdad's U.S. Zone A Stand-In For Home
An Isolated Retreat For Busy Americans
By Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- In Elzain Elzain's Baghdad, they serve peanut butter, lobster and ice cream. The cell phones have a 914 area code. The television sets show Monday Night Football. The people speak English. And the strictly enforced speed limit is 35 mph.
"It's like I never left America," said Elzain, an artist from the District who works as an interpreter for the U.S.-led occupation government.
Elzain and several thousand other government workers, contractors and soldiers live and work in what is called the Green Zone. The four-square-mile area, encircled by 15-foot concrete walls and rings of barbed wire, includes Saddam Hussein's presidential palace compound, which is now the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority that rules Iraq.
Once an oasis of fabulous architecture, date palms and swimming pools, it is now an eerie mix of shiny white trailers, SUVs, Black Hawk helicopters and other symbols of occupation and ruins created by months of bomb, rocket and mortar attacks.
Some residents say they prefer the comfort of surroundings like home and are happy to stay here, rather than venture out into the real Iraq. But most people say they came to help -- and for the adventure. Their greatest frustration is that they feel trapped inside the Green Zone.
Officials say the idea was to create a "safe area" where civilian advisers and military officials trying to help the country could do their work with less risk than in Baghdad proper. In the early days of the occupation, the creation of the enclave was the subject of much debate between the United States and the United Nations, which based its staff in a hotel on one of the city's busiest streets because it felt it needed to be out in the neighborhoods and accessible to the Iraqi public. But after two devastating attacks on the U.N. personnel, the philosophical debate has been replaced by the reality of the security situation. Nearly all U.N. workers have gone to neighboring countries.
Venturing from the protection of the Green Zone is not just a chore, it's a feat. Forms must be filled out explaining the reason for the outing, requesting transportation and a protective detail. Some trips must be rescheduled three or four times, with recent trips to visit children at an orphanage, to speak at a women's center and repair a water treatment plant postponed because of security concerns.
The seclusion, many readily concede, is compounding the challenge of the reconstruction.
"The Americans are behind the walls in the palace. They have difficulty knowing what's going on. I call it the 'green area syndrome,' " said Frank Dall, project director for District-based Creative Associates International Inc., which is assisting the U.S. Agency for International Development with education reform and is housed outside the zone.
"You want to feel like you are of the people. But when you are here there are rules and you can't go out and you can't talk to them," Elzain said. "You are isolated."
Freedom Park
The heart of the Green Zone is the Republican Palace, a huge horseshoe-shape building where the interim government officials, the foreign "advisers" to the Iraqi ministries live and work.
Inside, there are marble hallways and velvet chaises mixed in with office equipment and plastic lawn chairs. Hussein's gilded throne sits in a conference room that has become a church for Christians and a praying area for Muslims. On the ceiling there's a fresco showing horses jumping into a brilliant blue sky; on one wall there's another showing the launch of Scud missiles, reportedly toward Israel. The cafeteria, run by U.S. contractor KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Inc., has retro silver tables that look like part of a "Happy Days" set. Signs printed on computer paper and taped to the walls direct visitors to offices.
Near the swimming pool in the back is a giant television screen, which usually is showing sports events. On the rare occasions when people are able to break away from work, they come out here, often in shorts and T-shirts. There's a new gym with free weights and yoga classes.
Around the main palace are smaller but just as grand buildings, a convention center, a hospital, a military command center.
Some companies that work with the coalition government have separate camps. Bechtel Inc., which has a major contract to rebuild power plants, schools and other infrastructure, is based in a trailer park near Uday Hussein's palace. The one small luxury is a tiny recreation room with twin pool tables and satellite TV. Next door, the Research Triangle Institute, which is helping set up local representative councils, has modeled a garden in its complex after one at its North Carolina headquarters.
The streets are populated by joggers and people in casual clothes carrying around cell phones that are part of the only operating network in Iraq, run by MCI Communications Corp. To reach someone, even just a few miles away in Baghdad, you call an upstate New York area code.
Because of concerns that food could be poisoned or contaminated, nearly everything is imported. Cases of Aqua Gulf bottled water come from Kuwait and the frozen food is sent from the United States.
Some local Iraqi entrepreneurs set up the Green Zone Restaurant and Coffee Shop to provide an alternative to cafeteria fare. The most popular choice is an Iraqi grilled chicken, says the 54-year-old owner, who goes by Abu Fadi, or father of Fadi. The second and the third choices: American hamburgers and pizza -- that is, the Iraqi versions.
The restaurant is popular because people are looking for a break. The accommodations befit summer campers more than royalty. Many junior workers sleep by the dozens in the hallways of the Republican Palace or in trailers. Almost without exception, people work seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to at least 8 p.m. and sometimes until midnight. The only break comes on Friday, traditionally the weekend in Iraq. But that's only because the country's top civil administrator, American L. Paul Bremer, ordered it. And it's only for the morning.
There are smaller versions of the Green Zone throughout the country, in the various provisional government command posts. In the Kurdish town of Irbil, the Coalition Provisional Authority's bunker is inside a new luxury hotel high on a hill overlooking acres of lush farmland. In Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, the food in the compound is served by waiters in white shirts, black pants and black bow ties. And in Mosul, north of the capital, symbols of Hussein's regime in the palace compound have been replaced by the screaming eagle banners of the 101st Airborne Division.
Even on the sparsest military base in the most remote area, residents have gone to great lengths to re-create at least some of America. In Sinjar near the Syrian border, for example, the commander ripped pictures of fitness equipment out of a magazine and a local builder created barbells and other weightlifting equipment for a gym at the camp.
In or Out?
Government officials have no choice but to live in the Green Zone. For contractors, deciding whether to be in or out is among the most agonizing questions they face.
When Dall began scouting offices in Baghdad in the spring, he felt strongly that Creative Associates' workers should be in the neighborhoods and accessible to local Iraqis. The company rented houses, in which the staff lived and worked. But now the street in front of their three villas is closed to traffic. A new booth was built to house the armed guards who pat down every visitor. The effect is a mini-Green Zone outside the Green Zone.
In late October, contractors were spooked by warnings of "imminent" attacks in the Karrada District of Baghdad where many are staying. As a result, 55 employees of McLean-based BearingPoint Inc. fled their hotel and set up a camp in the Green Zone. Interpreters, cleaning workers and others who work for the coalition have also begged for space in the Green Zone.
But recent nighttime mortar and rocket attacks inside the zone have forced many to question the wisdom of any such moves. Bechtel has barricaded its compound with two new layers of sandbags. RTI is scoping out a new place across the Tigris River because it is so difficult for consultants to get in and out and do their jobs. Elzain and some co-workers from Worldwide Language Resources Inc. are thinking about leaving, too.
Elzain, 38, who is on leave from the Museum of Contemporary Art DC, lives in a trailer north of the palace. Living outside the zone would help his sense of belonging to the country he came to assist, he said. But though he loves his job helping out with interrogations of detainees, he will be eager to get home when his one-year contract ends next fall.
"Sometimes you feel really homesick," he said, "despite the fact that everything here is American."
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