Snipers, bombs beset Baghdad's airport road

By Seattle Times news services

KHALID MOHAMMED / AP U.S. Army soldiers clean the street after a suicide car bomber detonated an explosive device Oct. 20 near a military patrol on the airport road in Baghdad, Iraq. The blast killed the bomber and injured four others, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.

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BAGHDAD, Iraq — It's perhaps the most dangerous stretch of road in Iraq.

Snipers lie in ambush. Drivers sometimes flash guns, watching one another warily as they careen through at high speed. Suicide car bombers lurk, ready to swerve into the path of a U.S. military convoy.

It's the road to Baghdad's international airport. Called Route Irish by the U.S. military, the road is also known as "ambush alley."

Barely 7 miles long, the four-lane highway is emerging as a symbol of U.S. troubles in Iraq. Despite the presence of more than 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the road is such a death trap that the American and British embassies last week declared it off limits for civilian personnel.

Diplomats now must use helicopters to get to the airport from the fortified Green Zone of ministries and embassies downtown. Anyone else who's leaving Baghdad by airplane or bringing supplies from the airport to downtown still has to brave the road, an essential link used to truck in huge amounts of military equipment and commercial goods every day.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. After Saddam Hussein's regime was toppled in April 2003, the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority predicted the road would provide a safe route within two months. Eighteen months later, a senior American official in Washington noted, "We still can't control it."

The tarmac surface is pockmarked by explosions, and off to the sides of the road, in between palm trees, lies the burnt-out wreckage of vehicles that have been attacked or used as bombs.

Roadside explosions triggered by remote control happen almost daily. Suicide car bombers are increasingly frequent, including one every day for five days straight in the past week. In the past month, 14 suicide car bombs have blown up along the highway, five of them targeting civilian convoys.

Foreign contractors and journalists needing to catch a plane scream down the highway in bulletproof cars at up to 100 mph, hitting the brakes only when they see a U.S. military convoy. When convoys move along the road, an American soldier in the last vehicle, keeping alert for suicide bombers, routinely emerges from a turret to raise a fist. It's a sign for the trailing cars to back off — or risk being fired on.

U.S. officials aren't alone in their frustration. Iraqis who once used the roadway regularly also are disturbed.

"I cannot take the airport road because it is too dangerous," said Aubaida Adnan, a taxi driver. "I was on that road once when an American tank was destroyed. The soldiers started to shoot randomly. A bullet hit my car. I tried to escape but I crashed."

"People do not like to be near the convoys because they are a target" for insurgents, said Wissam Abdul Khalik, an owner of a food store.

Khalik said he lived near the airport, so he had to drive on the perilous road to get to his shop. But he has a new strategy.

"I now use a motorbike," he said. When gunfire erupts, "it is very easy to escape."

Making the airport road safe is not easy. Identifying and stopping suicide bombers before all vehicles are searched just outside the airport is almost impossible.

U.S. officials have ordered trees cut down and fences installed, but tens of thousands of Iraqis live in neighborhoods abutting the highway, and sealing off their access isn't considered an option.

When faced with similar dilemmas, security officials in Israel have deployed bulldozers to raze Palestinian houses near roadways to make travel safer. Wary of inflaming passions, U.S. officials reject any similar tactic.

During Saddam's dictatorial regime, "It was the most beautiful and the safest road in Baghdad," recalled Essam Maiz, an artist.

But now, anti-American insurgents apparently like making international headlines with attacks on the roadway.

"It is an important road, and they know that the majority of people using it are foreigners or people working with the multinational force," said Sabah Kadhim, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Iraq's interim government has "various ideas on the table" for making the road safer, he said, declining to elaborate.

Some businesses, meanwhile, suffer quietly from the troubles along the road.

"My employees refuse to go to the airport," said the manager of Al Wafid Travel Agency, who declined to give his name. He said one worker saw a civilian car blown up along the road. "He told me, 'Even if you pay me $1 million, I won't go back there.' "

A spokesman in Baghdad said the U.S. military is "looking at various ways to try to improve security on the road."

"The insurgents are trying to do their best to shut down one of the routes we regularly use," Lt. Col. Steve Boylan said. "It's a fluid situation and we're trying to keep on top of it.

"The military, contractors and other civilian traffic are always going to be a potential target for insurgents on the road," he said.

"It's a high visibility target."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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