Word: iraq
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...pictures of Iraq's revival...
...took eight days of phone calls and e-mails before I saw my bag again. But the shocking thing is that the luggage eventually showed up, safe and sound, in Baghdad, even escaping the airport's notoriously sticky-fingered baggage handlers. It was a small but telling sign that Iraq is indeed entering a new phase, not just in troop levels and casualty counts but also in smaller areas of security. Foreign reporters like me who return to the country can now stress out more about baggage than about roadside bombs on the way home from the airport. (For more...
...clothes and toiletries. Though the selection was somewhat limited, I ended up with a pair of rhinestone-studded jeans and a pink tracksuit. The fact that our security was willing to let me peruse the shops was a marked change from months before. (See pictures of the revival in Iraq's street life...
...lost the suitcase on my first trip to Iraq eight months ago, as Iraqi and U.S. forces clashed with radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, I would have been forced to wear whatever our male Iraqi security guards picked out without me. Last March, I arrived to an onslaught of rockets and mortars fired at the nearby Green Zone, along with retaliatory coalition air strikes and the near constant thunder of helicopter blades overhead. As with other foreign reporters, my movements were always calculated, and I often donned a long black abaya and head scarf. But this time...
...Iraq is still a war zone, where approximately 9,000 Iraqi civilians and more than 300 U.S. soldiers lost their lives this past year, according to independent monitoring organizations Iraq Body Count and icasualties.org. As the country enters its latest incarnation, it remains difficult to speculate on whether the relative stability will last. What is certain, however, is that Iraq is far more secure than it was two years ago or even six months ago. And I have a recovered suitcase and new pink tracksuit to show...