Learning to line up in Baghdad

Living in Baghdad sometimes feels like being in one long queue.
To go anywhere I have to drive down crowded streets, often sitting motionless in traffic for extended periods of time. The experience is particularly unpleasant due to the added risk of a possible suicide bomber lurking in the car behind.
Filling up for petrol is also a notoriously painful chore.
People endure what can be a day-long wait under a relentless sun outside a petrol station with their car and its empty tank.
Mazen Haaki, a 39-year-old lawyer, was one of scores of frustrated drivers queuing for fuel at the al-Horea petrol station in central Baghdad earlier this week.
“For most of the year we have a fuel problem,” Mr Haaki said. “I wait a quarter of the day just to buy petrol.”
Iraqis also need fuel to run the generators they use in their houses to power electrical items when the electricity cuts off – a frequent hazard across the country thanks to the patchy electricity grid.

Mr Haaki said that during Saddam Hussein’s time such queues were unnecessary because all houses in Baghdad had 24 hours of power.
The president used to redirect power from northern and southern Iraq to the capital to ensure that he and the people closest to him had ample electricity while the rest of the country suffered in the dark.
More than four years after the invasion, power generation is above pre-war levels but it is being distributed more evenly around Iraq so people in Baghdad have much less electricity than they did before.
“Also there were not as many cars in Iraq as there are now so we did not need fuel as much,” said Mr Haaki.
A different type of gas station sells oil for cooking, creating another reason for people, usually housewives, to stand in line and wait.
Queues for food at the supermarket are also a daily ritual.
Security fears keep people away from larger stores, which are seen as more likely targets for a bomb attack. Instead they head to the local shop, along with the rest of their particular neighbourhood.
In addition, a desire to be off the streets before nightfall means many shopkeepers close early, leaving their customers with a smaller window than before the 2003 invasion to buy their groceries.
As a Westerner in this city, the queue I face most frequently is the line of cars waiting to enter Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone.
Unless you are in a Humvee or an overt, armed, private security convoy with special badges then you are forced to sit in a sometimes agonisingly slow line to go through various security checks.
Once within the walled enclave further checkpoints, queues and frustration await.
As a result, attending a 30-minute press conference can end up becoming a four-hour round trip, largely spent waiting in line.
Queues, whether at petrol stations, supermarkets or even the local baker's, are popular targets for suicide bombers intent on killing as many people as possible.
Fears about this danger were highlighted when a journalist researching the problem of queuing, recently quizzed a woman waiting in line to buy samoon (a delicious form of Iraqi bread) at a bakery in Baghdad.
One of the bakers heard him ask her when the busiest time was to buy bread. Growing suspicious, he hauled the reporter inside the shop. The young man was forced to explain that he was just a journalist doing his work. Not a suicide bomber checking out a potential target.

(Pictures: Cars line up for petrol in Baghdad)

Comments

[Zappy Corleone]

"A different type of gas station sells oil for cooking" its Keorosene