A Real Iraqi Benchmark

It's axiomatic that if you want to know the true morale of a military unit, you ask the private. So hats off today to the Washington Post for doing essentially that in attempting to gauge how Iraqis themselves feel about the security situation in their county. WaPo asked Baghdad's cab drivers:

Haider Abbas, a 36-year-old taxi driver, had only a few moments to answer what is often a life-or-death question in this city: Would he drive a passenger home?

The home, on that scorching afternoon last month, happened to be in Adhamiyah, a notoriously dangerous neighborhood where several cabbies had been gunned down. Abbas hadn't been there in two years. But the fare pleaded that it had become safer, so the cabbie reluctantly agreed to go.

"To tell you the truth, I thought I had just traded my life for 5,000 dinars," or $4, said Abbas, who was shocked when he arrived in the traffic-jammed streets of Adhamiyah to see shops open and people strolling in the road. "Then I suddenly realized that security really is returning to Baghdad."

In a city where few residents believe official statements on declining violence, whether from the U.S. military or the Iraqi government, some of the most reliable figures on security improvements can be found on the odometers of Baghdad's taxi drivers.

After years of sectarian warfare whittled down the list of neighborhoods where they could safely work, cabbies are once again crisscrossing nearly all of Baghdad. Every day they assess the constantly shifting boundaries between danger and security, hoping that life will return to normal, but mindful that this is still a city where anyone could be killed at any moment for no particular reason.

. . . According to interviews with a dozen cabbies across the city, however, the mood now is far more hopeful than at any point since the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which plunged the country to the brink of civil war.

Abu Ahmed, 32, who lives just outside the fortresslike Green Zone, said that after the attack on the Shiite shrine, about 65 miles north of Baghdad, he could no longer drive on roads leading out of the capital. Even within the city, he said, it would have been suicide to travel to neighborhoods such as Ghazaliyah, Sholeh and Amiriyah.

"If you took a passenger to those areas," he said, "there was a good chance you would never come back."

Today, Abu Ahmed said, he takes passengers to any neighborhood in the city and any region of the country except for volatile Diyala province. "But I never go onto the side streets in the dangerous neighborhoods -- just the main roads," he said. "And sometimes I still have fear in my heart."

The office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says the number of attacks in Baghdad has plummeted from 1,442 in April to 323 last month. But instead of official pronouncements, the cabbies rely more on friends, family members, fellow drivers and what some consider a sort of innate intuition about the roads.

"We call the taxi driver in Iraq a roving reporter," said Haider Abbas, the driver who was surprised by the bustle in Adhamiyah. "We know every single neighborhood, and we can read the minds and hearts of the people who hire us."

. . . Cabbies gripe that the improved security situation also makes it harder to eke out a living. A growing number of Baghdad residents now feel comfortable driving their own cars around the city, obviating the need for taxis. The skyrocketing cost of fuel has made it harder to make ends meet. And high unemployment has led many young men to plop a yellow "TAXI" sign atop their vehicles, adding to the competition for passengers.

For taxi drivers who used to take passengers from Baghdad to Syria, the increased sense of security -- combined with strict new visa rules in Syria -- has stopped the exodus to the border, ending their source of income. . . .

Read the entire story.