Tigris tales

On every street corner in Baghdad, scores of kids hide behind electricity poles and piles of garbage, shooting at each other, though of course only if the Americans and the insurgents are playing their own game with their nasty big toys somewhere else. It's the most popular game in Baghdad, and every day scenes of scourged cars, dead bodies and huge Americans exchanging fire with shadowy insurgents provide plenty of inspiration. Merchants have realised what a huge market it is, and capitalised on it - in every street market, dozens of small Kalashnikovs and metal pistols are piled high and sold at £1 a piece. It's a thriving business.

"I know it is bad for the kids, but what can I do? It's good business, and it also helps kids empty their anger," a shop owner in a bustling market in east Baghdad told me.

In Sadr city, most of the people are impoverished and parents can't afford the plastic guns or the big metal pistols that fire the tiny pellets. But they have improvised their own toys: kids wear old clothes with holes made in them instead of ski masks, carry old table legs that work as RPG rocket launchers, and wrap a piece of green cloth, the symbol of martyrdom, around their tiny little heads.

In another street I found more kids, shooting from different plastic weapons at another gang. Fighting was not limited to pellets - a couple of tomatoes came flying across the street, and women covered their faces in fear of the flying objects.

Except for some pockets in large cities, even then though you don't see beheading on the nightly news very often.

but not really LBN.
Will move

sooner or later

But if it is so right, why not pay the cost now.