Unsafe Haven

For several days there was a lull. But then rockets and mortars started slamming into the Green Zone on Sunday afternoon and kept coming well into the night, as if the Shiite fighters in Sadr City were making up for the respite. A heavy dust storm choked Baghdad, adding a sense of claustrophobia while providing the insurgents cover. "They're getting closer and closer," noted veteran security expert Mike Arrighi. Arrighi, who works and lives in the tightly defended Zone, says that this week's barrage shows the same "consistency, intensity and ferocity" of the initial attacks that began almost a month ago. That bombardment tapered off after the first week, as the U.S. military quickly neutralized many Shiite launch sites. But this week's barrage suggested that the militants haven't yet had the fight knocked out of them.

This could turn into a drawn-out siege. Infuriated by recent Iraqi government crackdowns on Shiite militias and criminals in Basra and southern Baghdad, the insurgents in the impoverished neighborhood of Sadr City appear have set their sights on the psychologically important Green Zone. The shelling has killed two American soldiers and two civilians who worked for the U.S. government or military and injured at least two dozen others. In Sadr City, U.S. and Iraqi retaliation has left dozens dead. U.S and Iraqi Army brass say they have crippled the insurgents' ability to fire rockets into the area, but this week's renewed shelling has some worried that the Green Zone may become a new battleground in the struggle for Iraq.

Cornered in their sprawling inburb of about 2.5 million people and stoked by incendiary rhetoric from radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who threatened all-out war against the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Shiite groups have lashed out at the Zone with heavy mortars and Katyusha rockets. They had few options other than the airborne offensive. Heavy fortifications and massive concrete barriers make small-arms attacks virtually impossible. The ground campaign ordered by Maliki has thinned their numbers. Rigorous security at checkpoints and ever vigilant Zone police patrols have made car bombs, IEDS and suicide bombings much harder to organize. "They have to go over our heads," says a U.S. embassy staffer who requested anonymity.

The recent salvos forced even veteran security consultants to contemplate some drastic measures. "We've looked at a number of contingencies, all the way up to a fall-of-Saigon scenario," says Arrighi, security manager for a construction company. That may be hyperbolic. Certainly, American officials would say so. "The actual number of rockets and mortars is falling, and the number reaching the International Zone [the formal name for the Green Zone] is also falling," says Rear Adm. Greg Smith, outgoing Multi-National Force spokesman. Of about 700 rockets and mortar rounds fired since March 23, about 120 struck the Zone. Ten hit at the height of the shelling, on March 27, according to U.S. military figures, and Iraqi officials say as many as 12 hit the area Sunday, from among the almost two dozen fired across the city. Smith says the recent attacks may seem worse than they were, because "people here were never prepared to be in combat. It certainly brought the war closer, and they had to get used to that. But they are adjusting."

Not all are. A few dozen contract employees left the Green Zone, including about 30 from a company that provides logistics to the American military "who headed straight to the airport" in the first two days of shelling, says the embassy staffer. Arrighi always tells clients they should worry only when he says they should. "This time I told them, 'I'm not saying it's time to worry, but it is time to think about worrying'." More than 1,000 State Department and military staffers work in the American Embassy, which is housed in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace. Most live in trailers on the palace grounds, and many of them began sleeping in the embassy when the bombardments began and have yet to return to their trailer beds. "There have been cots all over the embassy and people sleeping in stairwells and hallways," says a State Department analyst who would not be named discussing embassy matters. Many are afraid to sleep in their cramped metal containers, which are considered flimsy and inadequately protected. The trailers sit next to each other in rows of two, three or more. A rocket destroyed a row of trailers and people were "just freaked out," says the embassy staffer. "If somebody had given me a gun and told me 'five guys are coming to kill you,' that would have been preferable to going to sleep in this tin can not knowing if you're going to wake up," adds the embassy analyst. KBR, the engineering and construction contractor, is hiring more people to sandbag housing areas at the embassy in response to an embassy request, according to a company memo. The company asked for volunteers to help with the sandbagging and said that the project will now be completed by June rather than October. The number of heavy concrete barriers, called T-walls, will also be increased.

Meanwhile, diplomats are taking no chances. As the attacks continued into Monday afternoon, with a projectile apparently landing near the U.S. Embassy grounds, staffers there were issued a memo discouraging them from driving around the Zone and recommending that they keep "Personal Protective Equipment" readily available in living quarters. "Personnel should minimize time outside as much as possible," the memo said. "… It is recommended you spend as much time as possible in hardened facilities with overhead cover. It is also recommended that you sleep in hardened facilities with overhead cover … If you decide to sleep in your trailer, please remember that your ability to quickly react could save your life."