Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006) - Plot & Excerpts
The Green Zone was the Baghdad headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (“CPA”)--the civilian administration that attempted to govern Iraq during the first year of occupation. The CPA built the Green Zone around one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces on the banks of the Tigris and separated the compound from the rest of Baghdad with blast-proof walls. The title, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” reflects the author’s opinion that the Green Zone was "a combination of the fantastical Wizard of Oz and 18th century Versailles." Rajiv Chandrasekaran portrays Paul Bremer, leader of the CPA, as "the boy in the bubble," because he cut himself off from real life outside the walls of the Green Zone. Inside "the bubble," life was orderly and antiseptic– Muzak, if you will– compared to the Black Metal primal scream outside the blast walls. Inside the bubble, you didn’t have to hear the muezzin’s call to prayer arising to heaven with the acrid smoke (which you didn’t have to smell) from the bombs (which you didn’t have to fear). Satellite View of the Green ZoneIt’s not that the CPA didn’t talk to Iraqis, but that they they talked to the wrong Iraqis–those who were on the CPA’s payroll. Employees made ten times the wage of an average Iraqi, in an economy with 40% unemployment, so the Iraqi employees told their employers exactly what they wanted to hear. Originally, the U.S. State Department, with its team of experts, was slated to run the occupation of Iraq. But State was skeptical of the notion of Arabic democracy, which was idée fixe of the neo-conservative thinkers at the Department of Defense (“DOD”). Thus, Jay Garner, the original director of the transitional authority, was fired within a month for his refusal to purge Saddam loyalists, and he was replaced by the DOD’s pick, Paul Bremer. The author portrays Bremer as a viceroy with complete control of all executive, legislative, and judicial powers during the transition. In addition to all this, the CPA was in charge of administering billions in reconstruction funds, much of which went missing. But, according to the author, Bremer seemed more interested in implementing a flat tax in the new Iraq rather than in projects the Iraqis wanted most such as the stabilization the power grid. Left out of the bubble were the talented State Department veterans and the more than 5,000 experts that State wanted to employ. In with Bremer, came the young ideologues, many of whom were hired directly after graduating from evangelical colleges preferred by President Bush's administration. According to the author, the CPA recruitment policy would "shame Tammany Hall" as it stocked positions with party loyalists rather than experts. The interview “process” for positions in the CPA included questions about the applicants’ views on capital punishment and abortion. (104-06) In one instance, a 24-year-old real estate agent with no finance background was given charge of building an Iraqi stock market. (110)According to the author, the general consensus seems to be that Bremer made two huge mistakes immediately upon arrival that later ruined whatever chance he might have had to succeed. Bremer issued:tOrder #1 DeBaathification- ttAll appointees from Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party were fired, thus leaving the ministries without technocrats or intellectuals. AndtOrder #2 Dissolution of the Iraqi Army– ttThus, unemployed soldiers, desperate to make a living, turned to insurgency, and the full burden of security fell upon the shoulders of the occupiers until a new police force and a new army could be built from scratch.Bremer forcefully defends these orders as necessities and blames the Pentagon for not sending enough troops for him to accomplish his grand plans for a Jeffersonian democracy. The author implies that the biggest mistake of the occupation, was the occupation itself. Rajiv Chandrasekaran was the Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post, and the book covers events from April 2003 to June 2004, at which time the CPA dissolved itself and handed civil authority over to the Iraqis. At that time, the State Department took over the Green Zone, which became the site of the largest embassy in the history of the world. This book was used as a resource for Matt Damon’s movie, “The Green Zone,” but the book contains none of the fictional exploits of Damon’s character, nor does it deal with the search for the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. May 12, 2012
The short take: bad organizational structure and writing that is really just mediocre journalistic prose.Although Chandrasekaran begins with a narrative "I," he never really identifies himself, and then launches into details about things like relationships between State department members and Pentagon members back in Washington, making one wonder where the information is coming from. There is little direct quotation, and his presentation and interpretation of events are so mixed that it's difficult to feel that it's an unbiased account. The author hence fails to be convincing in his arguments for the exact reasons and mechanisms by which the U.S. (or more specifically, the Coalition Provisional Authority) failed in Iraq. His explanation of sources given in the notes at the book's end is somewhat redeeming, but not necessarily helpful at the end of the book.Sadly, what appears to be his other goal - to provide an engaging story about the war in Iraq and paint a portrait of life inside the Green Zone - only half succeeds for some of the same reasons. There is no clear voice: sometimes you hear directly from the author, but this often slips into third-person narration, sometimes focused on a CPA employee, sometimes on the state of events in Iraq overall, but he never stays long on one given theme. These vignettes tend to feel stilted, disjointed and formulaic. His attempt to build characters out of key CPA personnel basically includes introducing each person with the same details: what they were doing before Iraq; basic physical description, including particular attention on dress and hair style; current job in the CPA; 2-3 key personality traits; if they're qualified for the job and good, reason they are soon fired; if they aren't qualified, explanation of the GOP connection that got them the job and is why they're keeping it and bungling things up in Iraq.The book is obviously supposed to outrage you at our handling of things in the early part of our presence in Iraq. That it manages fairly well: there's no missing the fact that loyalty to Bush was the main standard by which people were chosen for CPA projects, and that for the most part, this landed us with a bunch of incompetent, unknowledgable fools who were supposed to "build democracy" in the country whose infrastructure we had just destroyed in our "shock and awe" campaign. Also fairly obvious throughout the book is that the definition of "democracy" most of these people are working with looks suspiciously like the definition of "free market capitalism." The money that gets poured into privatization efforts and computerizing the Baghdad Stock Exchange, rather than into rebuilding power plants, water purification plants, or education and improved public safety, is astounding. The lack of questioning of this conflation is also amazing. Why should we think that unlimited opportunities for businessmen to make money will bring peace to a land and teach people how to govern themselves? There's an obvious lesson that we need to really examine what we mean by "democratic values" at home before we attempt to force them upon others.The other point that I find most interesting, which comes up only briefly, is that the ethnic and religious divisions fueling Iraq's civil war were largely created by us Americans. The distinctions between Kurd, Sunni, and Shiite existed, but much less so before the American occupation. (Claiming certain affiliations could be pretty dangerous under Saddam's government.) In our attempt at "fairness," however, we hardened these categories to set up governing structures equally divided among these different groups, forcing stronger affiliations, and essentially laying the groundwork for civil war. While Chandrasekaran doesn't lay this out, it lines up well with what has happened in other colonized states like Rwanda (see Mahmood Mamdani's book on this). So, all told, it was an informative book, though otherwise disappointing.
What do You think about Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006)?
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone is the compelling story about the U.S. occupation in Iraq and the culture of inexperience, arrogance, and cronyism within the U.S. Green Zone. My previous impression of the Iraq war was that U.S. officials were well-meaning but sometimes misguided and the U.S. media portrayed a sugar-coated view rather than the reality of life on the ground. Listening to this audiobook, I felt shocked by just how much worse the situation had been than I'd previously realized. I found Imperial Life in the Emerald City so enlightening and informative that I didn't want to take a break from listening.Ray Porter's narration more than does justice to Rajiv Chandrasekaran's story. This audiobook felt like listening to a fascinating novel rather than a nonfiction account by a newspaper journalist... the story and narration are powerful and engaging. I highly recommend this audiobook to anyone who wants to better understand the "story behind the story" of the U.S. in 2003-2004 Iraq.
—Karen
The books explains why post Saddam iraq was such a mess. You would expect a Superpower to administer better. but all the details uncovered in the book are scandals in the true meaning of the word.Competition between different US administrations and close private companies like Defense, State department,Pentagon, Halliburton..private companies,CIA and ofcourse Bremer), gross incompetence by inexperienced officials, the exception mentioned nearly was the one responsible for the iraqi science center and he had to fight his way through it...those who had good ideas weren't allowed to materialize it leaving room for opportunistic profiteering officials who had little independence since political loyalty to the president was favored not competence.whats so unfortunate and ugly about these facts. The way US dealt with Iraq post Saddam probably fueled insurgency. The disastrous sectarian exclusionary De-Ba'thfication law for example. The sectarian quotas becoming permnant in the fabric of the constitution.The failure to deal with the electricity problem...the mentality of the "clean slate", praising looting as a form of iraqis taking matters in their own hands.at the end of the book.Despite the continuous bloodbath tearing the country apart, the corruption and the theft and endless other problems. we find CPA employees congratulating themselves for a job well-done stating whatever bad things happening in the country is the fault of the iraqis alone not the americans. The audacity of such statements never ceases to amaze!!It is imperative to mention that i enjoyed the Green zone scenes. A tragi-comedy sequence of scenes at the end of each chapter about events occurring in the green zones.
—Yas
Rajiv Chandrasekaran brings depth to the story behind the headlines. He has certainly taken a large body of knowledge and distilled it for easy consumption.Now I know why stories of reconstruction were so fuzzy and few. Tommy Thompson (Secy of Health and Human Services) provides a photo-op for a new hospital --- opened in the Green Zone but not presented as such. Now I know how Casey (son of Cindy) Sheehan (and 7 others) died --- Bremer closed Moqtada al-Sadr's paper without alerting the US patrols of that area. I learned much more.This book makes me angry all over again. One of the benefits of this endeavor could have been providing a better life for the Iraqis, but it's like Katrina on a larger scale. Even seasoned disaster or war zone professionals would find this a challenge. Mr. Chandrasekaran describes how people were hired, not because they were qualified, but for their connections, starting with the top, Jerry Bremer was tied to Henry Kissinger.Did Bremer think that rendering 1/3 of the Iraqi population unemployed was a practical thing? Did Bremer think that changing the food rations (socialism) to debit cards (capitalism) in a country with no phone lines, computers, etc. was a practical thing? Fortunately a firefighter from Buffalo could explain this to him, but he may not have backed down if he hadn't had so many other problems.The 24 year old hired to open the Iraqi stock exchange impeded its opening by fanciful attempts to copy the US stock exchange technology and regulations and on pages 229 -231, takes credit for its eventual opening in a manner, if not for him could have been done months earlier. This is the template for the attitude expressed by Bremer and others in the Green Zone reunion described at the end of the book.The actions and the attitudes that spawned them clearly fit the patterns described in Conservatives without Conscience. Some participants, like John Agresto have a more realistic appraisal of what could have been and what went wrong. Others may never understand. In the meanwhile, the missed opportunity has made life for Iraqis (for insight into this Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq more difficult, and the latest news suggests little change.
—Louise
