Alright so I've been back here for over a month. This morning I added my two cents to a briefing to incoming Ambassador Crocker. We talked about the possibility of another round of provincial elections in Iraq this year. I've been back in touch with all the old characters; I plan to see Riyad tomorrow and talk about the latest at the security committee; Mazin is in the hospital in Jordan right now; Mohammed Rubeiy's party last week at his district council building went off without a hitch; my good friend Ali is still here, working all the angles. Still a paradox. The place is more tense- we've had many more attacks on the IZ than I remember from last year, but on the other hand my drives around Baghdad have shown me a city that is cleaner, more normalized and somehow more ordered than the one that I left ten months ago.
I've been welcomed back here with open arms by the many Iraqi friends I have here. The past few years I have felt homeless; attending grad school, traveling through Europe, starting careers in Chicago, DC, PA and Texas - somehow coming back to Baghdad has given me a sense of being somewhere I know well, and everyone knows me. Who'd a thunk? I will say, however that it's better to be a civilian with the State Department this time around. Except for the fact that I don't get a gun. But maybe Baghdad can do with one less gun.
