Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

A reportage account of the Green Zone in post-invasion Iraq, told from the perspective of a reporter who worked there. It vividly captures the confusion, bureaucracy, and disconnection from reality inside the protected zone.

warjournalismIraqpoliticsnonfiction

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Work Information

The safer the zone, the more unstable reality becomes.

By moving through the inside of the Green Zone, the book shows how complicated reconstruction was and how far it drifted from reality. It combines the urgency of journalism with the cumulative power of long-form nonfiction.

Review Summaries

Readers praise the on-the-ground detail and the way the book makes institutional failure concrete. Its abundance of information is both a strength and a factor that can narrow its audience.

Book Information

Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2006-09-19
Pages: 336 pages
Language: 英語
Size: 15.14 x 3.35 x 24.31 cm
ISBN-13: 9781400044870
ISBN-10: 1400044871
Price: 1638 JPY
Category: 洋書/Politics & Social Sciences/Politics & Government/International & World Politics/Middle Eastern

An unprecedented account of life in Baghdad’s Green Zone, a walled-off enclave of towering plants, posh villas, and sparkling swimming pools that was the headquarters for the American occupation of Iraq. The Washington Post ’s former Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran takes us with him into the Zone: into a bubble, cut off from wartime realities, where the task of reconstructing a devastated nation competed with the distractions of a Little America—a half-dozen bars stocked with cold beer, a disco where women showed up in hot pants, a movie theater that screened shoot-’em-up films, an all-you-could-eat buffet piled high with pork, a shopping mall that sold pornographic movies, a parking lot filled with shiny new SUVs, and a snappy dry-cleaning service—much of it run by Halliburton. Most Iraqis were barred from entering the Emerald City for fear they would blow it up. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and internal documents, Chandrasekaran tells the story of the people and ideas that inhabited the Green Zone during the occupation, from the imperial viceroy L. Paul Bremer III to the fleet of twentysomethings hired to implement the idea that Americans could build a Jeffersonian democracy in an embattled Middle Eastern country. In the vacuum of postwar planning, Bremer ignores what Iraqis tell him they want or need and instead pursues irrelevant neoconservative solutions—a flat tax, a sell-off of Iraqi government assets, and an end to food rationing. His underlings spend their days drawing up pie-in-the-sky policies, among them a new traffic code and a law protecting microchip designs, instead of rebuilding looted buildings and restoring electricity production. His almost comic initiatives anger the locals and help fuel the insurgency. Chandrasekaran details Bernard Kerik’s ludicrous attempt to train the Iraqi police and brings to light lesser known but typical travesties: the case of the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of reestablishing Baghdad’s stock exchange; a contractor with no previous experience paid millions to guard a closed airport; a State Department employee forced to bribe Americans to enlist their help in preventing Iraqi weapons scientists from defecting to Iran; Americans willing to serve in Iraq screened by White House officials for their views on Roe v. Wade; people with prior expertise in the Middle East excluded in favor of lesser-qualified Republican Party loyalists. Finally, he describes Bremer’s ignominious departure in 2004, fleeing secretly in a helicopter two days ahead of schedule. This is a startling portrait of an Oz-like place where a vital aspect of our government’s folly in Iraq played out. It is a book certain to be talked about for years to come.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1994. He previously served the Post as a bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo, and Southeast Asia, and as a correspondent covering the war in Afghanistan. He recently completed a term as journalist-in-residence at the International Reporting Project at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, and was a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

Price of Arrogance

The book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is excellent. This book chronicles the life of the CPA, Coalition Provisional Authority from start to finish. It really almost reads as a humor book if it wasn't true. The book shows how Bush's arrogance took shape in the policies of the occupation. You can sort of see why the outside world views the US as they do. The book shows how the CPA came into Iraq, told the Iraqis to bend over and then say to the Iraqis we are here to help you. A reader can see how ideology and political spoils guided policy over all else. If as a reader you don't agree with that point then the Administration comes off as dangerously naïve, incompetent, and just plain stupid. The author fills his book with scores of stories that really shows the environment that was the CPA and guided its daily actions. These stories give depth and text to the history of the CPA. Through those stories a reader can see how the arrogance of the neocons in the Bush administration blinded them to reality in almost a humorous way. Almost every page of the book reads like a Saturday Night Live skit. When the desires driven by ideology came up against the reality of the situation reality was ignored. The author shows from the start how the administration thought because they willed something it should be done. The how was immaterial. They could overrule history, culture, environment and reality because they George Bush said so. . One of the best stories to illustrate that was how they insisted that the Iraqi stock market be a carbon copy of the New York stock exchange with computers, licensed brokers and everything else. The facts of the situation like few people in the country ever touched a computer was irrelevant. This pursuit of theory was to take place over everything else. The local stock market traders offered to bring the exchange up in months if they could use the old methods. That offer was rebuffed in the interest of pursing theory, even if it meant success of a more limiting nature. The stock market never did reach that ideal state even after the US taxpayer dolled out millions in this quest. Another example was in the CPA's efforts to rebuild Iraqi Universities. They wanted to install academic freedom in parts of Iraq that still would not let women appear in public without their burkas. Then the administration starts to doll out assistance grants to US universities to help out on various academic subjects with Iraqi universities which literally did not even have buildings. Anther humorous story was in the hiring decisions of the CPA. One would think that if you were going to redesign a whole country you would bring your best and brightest. No, that wasn't the case with the CPA. Only the best connected were hired. Frequently the CPA staffers were sons and daughters of Republican contributors back home. Their stint with the CPA was their first real job out of college. Experience or education in the field didn't matter. One guy was hired whose previous work experience was driving an ice cream truck. The person in charge of designing the new stock market didn't have any job experience in the field nor a degree in business or finance. The author also brings to light the effect of environment on decision making in the CPA. The CPA flew into Baghdad with their "dreams" but it didn't reflect upon the environment. They treated it like a game they played at the international club back at Yale, not reality where people were dying every day. . Few CPA staffers would leave the coalition space called the green zone. They immersed themselves in American culture. They did not take time to understand the real environment of Iraq. Then they would try to force American solutions to Iraqi problems without even talking to the Iraqis. They totally lacked the ability to see what was happening around them. Frequently this blindness was humorous. It was almost like Baghdad Bob in reverse. The CPA would spout how life was good in Iraq because of them while fierce battles raged mere miles from where they stood. They seemed to be totally blind to how life for the average citizen in Iraq had actually grown worse under CPA rule. However they the CPA press releases would be quick to bring up some small fact like immunizations given. These press releases were given to an Iraqi public that were sitting in the dark, morning the loss of a relative, or dodging shrapnel in the streets. All of this is chronicled in the book. It is a good page turner that is easy to read. I think all would enjoy it.
I recommend it to everyone I know

Genuinely the most interesting, most engaging, most entertaining and most depressing book I've ever read, with no hyperbole. I recommend it to everyone I know.
Come ti distruggo un paese: la critica alla gestione del dopo-Saddam.

Un saggio che vi apre gli occhi sulla amministrazione americana dell'amministrazione dell'Iraq dopo la cacciata di Saddam Hussein, vista e analizzata dall'interno. Una critica feroce e obiettiva alle scelte dell'amministrazione Bush.
Still matters after two decades

See Green Zone, read the book and be amazed! Journalism in the best of American tradition.
Oz Through the Looking Glass

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone describes the American administration of Iraq as a corporate free-for-all, an absurdity of dogmatic devotion to free market pillaging, and poses the question of where well-intentioned incompetence ends and criminality takes over. The reader is left with the impression that the good old boys who were given the job of rebuilding an ancient culture in the image of a Dallas shopping mall were hand picked for their ignorance and encouraged by the Bush administration to promote redneck bigotry in occupied Iraq as a virtue. This book should be required reading for everyone too young or too distracted to follow the dogmatic absurdity of the aftermath of invasion.