Subscribe 

Baghdad’s Green Zone reopens: ‘The politicians inside are sleeping on money’

Kareem Talal twice helped to bring down the concrete walls surrounding Baghdad’s Green Zone. In 2016 he was among thousands of angry protesters loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who broke into the fortified enclave that houses government institutions and foreign embassies. And in a recent – and this time legitimate – effort to dismantle the […]

Simona Foltyn writes for The Guardian:

Kareem Talal twice helped to bring down the concrete walls surrounding Baghdad’s Green Zone.

In 2016 he was among thousands of angry protesters loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who broke into the fortified enclave that houses government institutions and foreign embassies.

And in a recent – and this time legitimate – effort to dismantle the barriers, Talal was part of a team of municipality workers who removed concrete blocks in the lead-up to the partial reopening of the central district last Monday.