The police are chatting, sipping tea and, in general, relaxing. Not one is directing traffic.
Andalus Square, deprived of working traffic lights by the lack of electricity, immediately descends into horn-blaring gridlock.
“Chaos!” exclaims taxi driver Fakhir Zighaer, after four officers finally move in to untangle the mess like a knot of twisted phone cord.
Even under President Saddam Hussein’s heavy-handed government, traffic could be maddening. But Baghdad residents say the clogged streets are worse now, because of the out-of-order lights, randomly placed road barriers, weakened police authority and frustration borne of long gas lines.
Sensing a green light to drive as they choose, motorists have aggressively rewritten the rules of the road. Lanes blocked? Just hop the median and drive the wrong way. Or take the sidewalk, pedestrians or not. Miss an exit? Back up, into traffic.
Such is the chaos that few people seem to take note of a BMW, its forward gears apparently jammed, traveling with the flow of traffic but being driven in reverse, including around corners.
During the war, traffic congestion was not much of an issue. Aside from American tanks and Army trucks, few vehicles ventured onto the roads, in part because few drivers wanted to find themselves in the middle of combat.
But as the city has recovered, its broad boulevards, roundabouts and narrow side streets have re-filled with cars, buses, trucks, motorcycles, double-decker buses, minibuses and donkey carts, along with Army Humvees and tanks.
Road rules
This has long been the land of the pre-emptive honk, where drivers use their horns less to say, “Watch out” than, “Here I come, buster.” There are well-practiced games of chicken – when a car approaches another head-on, both speed up. This remains true even if pedestrians happen to be between them.
The war and its aftermath have added to the problems. A gasoline shortage, for example, has generated long lines of cars that block lanes of traffic. Many of the boulders, tree stumps and concrete blocks laid across some streets to discourage looters remain in place because of lingering concerns about safety, so cars must swerve or take detours.
U.S. military checkpoints take a toll on traffic as well. On Abu Niwas Street, along the Tigris River, a defunct checkpoint’s S-curve of concrete barricades was meant to slow cars, but many race through it.
And even though the S-curve does not allow for two-way traffic, some motorists insist on it, refusing to yield until movement stops completely in either direction. Then the horns take over.
On the other hand, traffic could be even worse, residents say. Zighaer, the exasperated cabbie, estimates that only about half as many cars as usual occupy the capital’s streets.
That may be because many drivers do not want to deal with gas station hassles. And with so many people out of work, there is less need to travel by car.
A rash of armed carjackings has made driving at dusk a risky proposition. Zighaer, 48, said several men wounded his brother in the side while stealing his car Monday.
Such attacks used to be much rarer, he says. “There was a law to protect people.”
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Even traffic police are frightened of bandits. Maj. Ali Farhan found out how dangerous his job can be when, armed with just a pistol, he tried to stop a truck loaded with armed men.
“They shot him twice,” says Lt. Mohammed Hulaiel, but he survived.
Hulaiel, 35, is in charge of traffic operations at Andalus Square. Shemeran Yosif, who lives in an apartment overlooking the junction, says he is doing a lousy job.
Among her complaints is that police leave every day at 2 p.m., though they stayed until 10 p.m. before the war. It falls to ordinary souls to step in or let chaos take over in the afternoon.
“Many accidents, very crowded, traffic jams everywhere,” says Yosif, 60. She is used to street noise but says it is worse now – it seems there are more horns, but with the electricity out, she cannot drown out the racket with her television.
Two sides of story
“They are very lazy,” she says, gazing from her third-story balcony at the officers below. “They don’t like to work. I don’t know why.”
But Hulaiel argues just the opposite, saying that he and his colleagues are on duty even though they have not been paid in weeks.
“I’m going to work even without being paid because I enjoy it,” he says.
Hulaiel knows how bad it looks for 17 officers to gather at one intersection, and for most to do no apparent work. But it’s not his fault, he says. Commanders ordered that 200 officers in his district be posted at just four locations, compared with 65 before the war. He says he does not understand the order but does as he is told.
When one or two officers do direct traffic, most drivers seem to heed their whistled instructions, if impatiently. Hulaiel longs for the day when drivers once again have a healthy respect for the law.
Before the war, he says, anyone running a red light faced a $5 fine – a not inconsequential sum for most Iraqis – and the loss of his car for three days. Now, all that police can do is lecture.
“We’ll say to drivers, ‘This is not the way to go through intersections,'” he says, sadly. “We have no power.”
<!– ART CREDITSCOTT CALVERT : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTWith traffic lights out, Baghdad's busy Andalus Square is a scene of horn-blaring gridlock despite fewer cars in the city's streets.
CUTLINE TEXT–>