
Yesterday I had an interview with a French TV channel , the subject was about the checkpoints and it’s effectiveness specially after the two bloody days with the “quality explosions” as the media say…well, I though it’s a good subject to discuss specially that many of people who haven’t been in Iraq doesn’t really know much about this subject.
Checkpoints are everywhere, and I mean literally everywhere, if you want to drive for let’s say a Kilometer you’ll probably pass through a checkpoint if not two! You can’t go anywhere without passing through a bunch of checkpoints…few days ago I had some work in Karkh (which is the other side of Baghdad) while I live in Risafa…the distance according to google earth is about 9 Km, and I passed through 28 checkpoints!!! And it took me 4 hours!! Can you believe that traveling 9Km will take 4 hours despite that it wasn’t in the rush hours.
OK, I’ll tell you what are the checkpoints…it’s either for the police or the army and both of them are pretty similar in everything except the uniform, you’ll see a long queue of cars waiting to pass through the narrow opening through the checkpoint, the street is 4 lanes for example and it is reduced into 1…you’ll wait for only god knows how long till you reach them and then there will be a bunch of soldiers, one of them is carrying a device that looks somehow like a gun with an antenna at the head and he will walk by your car, if the device’s antenna points at you then it means you have something suspicious and among the things that the device points at are (Perfumes, deodorants, hand gel, brake fluid and even amalgam teeth fillings sometimes) and then he either looks at you and say “Go” or he might search the car and most of the time the search is just a question “do you carry any weapon?” and of course whether you carry a weapon or not you will say no and then he will tell you “Go” and in few cases they will open the trunk and the hood and see if there is anything suspicious.
I’m not criticizing the soldiers or the policemen in this post, No, not at all because many are good men and they are trying to do their job as they have been told and of course there are some really bad members but this isn’t what I want to talk about, I’m trying to give you a clear idea of what is really going on in the checkpoints and how stupid the people with power who placed those checkpoints and gave them that stupid device.
Yes, the device is totally stupid, inefficient and old, it came to the streets through a dirty deal by corrupted members of the government….the sole purpose of the importing this device is to make the rich richer….a friend of mine who was an army engineer told me that if you rap a gun or explosives well by a plastic bag it will not be detected by this device, in addition to that as I said it only detects silly things.
And sometimes would pass through what we call “cooperative checkpoint” where the soldiers are even looking at the cars that passes by him, they are either busy making a phone call (like the one in the photo) or they are playing games in their mobile or they are having a chat and sometimes they are just sitting down resting.
And I wand to add some information about the explosion of the justice ministry…there is a kindergarten in the first floor of the ministry for the employees kids, after the explosion they weren’t able to find any dead body for any kid, they though they have disappeared specially they were the closest to the explosion…yesterday, I heard a rumor that the kids were found in the sewers of the ministry!!! May god forbids, imagine that happens to you and your kids…may god forbids how would you feel if your son was exploded to pieces and they were found in the sewers.As I said many soldiers are brave men and they are trying to do their best but also there are many corrupted and bad members…as I see it the checkpoints are completely useless and causes more harm than good…they cause terrible road jams, if a man wants to move his furniture from his old home to his new one he must pay a large amount of money to the checkpoints on his way as bribes because they will really give him a hard time and so is the case with trucks carrying merchandise and so on, and if they were doing any good why did we witnessed such terrible explosions in very sensitive areas? The areas where the bloody Wednesday and Sunday explosions took place are literally filled with checkpoints.
If those checkpoints want to be really efficient they should check every inch of every car that passes through them and that means the end of life, because no body will be able to reach anywhere…so what is the solution? In my opinion, I think they should reduce the number of checkpoints dramatically, I say they should remove more than 50% of them, they should only keep checkpoints between major districts, and depend on intelligence to fight terrorism, all the world whether Iraqi or Chinese are ruled very well with the stick and carrot method, there should be great prizes for the ones who tells about a terrorist act and sever punishment for the ones who does it or helps it, and providing good cash rewards for the ones who gives any intel. About terrorism and that way would be much cheaper and much more efficient that the checkpoints, in addition to that they can re-employ the former members of the intelligence and keeps them under supervision to get the advantage from their experience because there is nothing in the world like experience…I know the former intelligence were criminals; most of them but there are some members who have little blood on their hands and can be used under supervision, don’t tell me they have crimes against humanity, because most of the government and the parliament are criminals also.
Just yesterday there war another evident of how good the checkpoints are…it was an explosive pack placed near the Adhamiya mall…just think how hurt are we that we were thankful for the one who did the explosion because he did it in the morning and there was no one!!! Because if he did it at night or noon there would be terrible number of casualties…there was another explosive pack near the exploded ones but some brave citizen noticed it and called the army and some really brave army men came and destroyed it away from where it was placed and there was zero harm, thank you brave and good soldiers.
Here is a photo for the site of explosion that lead to zero casualties.
I wish the authorities would sense the inefficiency of their ways before we witness explosions in HD quality!!! As many people fear will happen as the elections are getting closer and the struggles of dirty politicians will start again.



























