City traffic is never easy. In Iraq's chaotic capital it's something else, says Jamie Watson in Baghdad
Sergeant Suhail Naji is not having a good day. He has a whistle in his mouth and he's blowing on it for all he's worth, but the yellow and green truck making its way towards him clearly has no intention of stopping. Neither has the taxi coming from the other direction - nor, for that matter, has the line of traffic arriving at speed from the left.
Before long the intersection on Bab al-Sharqi, one of Baghdad's main thoroughfares, is a stationary mass of vehicles each playing a part in a deafening symphony of tooting horns, screaming drivers and revving engines.
It's a familiar scene in post-Saddam Baghdad. Even by the low standards of other Middle Eastern cities, the traffic in the Iraqi capital is off the scale. Everyone ignores traffic lights, roundabouts are driven around according to whichever route seems quickest and the lane markings might as well not exist.
A few blocks away from where Naji is fighting his losing battle, Rashid Hamid, also a sergeant, has given up and is hiding from the punishing afternoon glare in a shelter. Next to him sits a white Suzuki motorcycle which he once used to chase traffic offenders. He doesn't bother any more.
"What's the point," he asks. "People take no notice of us. They have no respect for us because they know we can't take any action because there is no law and there are no courts. Before, when we could fine people, everybody kept to the law. Now they just swear at us. Insulting a traffic policeman used to get you six months in jail."
Most of all Hamid, a traffic policeman for 18 years, wanted his gun back - but the US authorities in Iraq won't allow it. "How will people take us seriously unless we have a gun?"
According to him some of the drivers causing mayhem on Baghdad's roads probably don't even know they are breaking the law. The directorate of traffic was looted during the war and driving licences can now be bought on any street corner for a few dinars.
Add to that the huge influx of cars into Iraq since the fall of the regime, all tax free and duty free, and you have a recipe for traffic chaos.
Many Iraqis seem to believe the only reason the Americans search their cars is in case Saddam Hussein is hiding in the boot. "The Saddam checkpoints cause chaos and always at the busiest times," says one driver, Bader Gate. "They have blocked off one of the main bridges with their tanks and one lane of the road by the river. What do they expect to happen?"
Walid Kadem, a taxi driver in Baghdad for 10 years, agrees traffic has never been worse. He's in no doubt who's to blame: The traffic police - there are not enough of them. And they go home early - if they turn up at all."
Kadem claims to be the only driver in Baghdad who never jumps traffic lights, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances. "Sometimes with the sunlight," he says, pointing at the sky, "it's difficult to see if the lights are working. Then, what can you do?"
- Guardian News Service