Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

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Coming to cinemas soon courtesy of Bourne Ultimatum crack squad Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, this withering reportage offers a glimpse of life inside Iraq's Green Zone: four square miles of compounded Yanksville in the middle of Baghdad. It was here, between April 2003 and June 2004, that the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority holed up, kipping in Saddam's former palace and chomping through industrial quantities of beer and pork (dished up by luckless Muslims). But the meat and potatoes of this excellent exposé isn't cultural crassness. It's strategic incompetence on a scale that seems inconceivable - until you watch the news and see the results.

Synopsis from Foyles.co.ukFrom inside a surreal bubble of pure Americana known as the Green Zone, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority attempted to rule Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. Drawing on interviews and internal documents, Rajiv Chandrasekaran tells the memorable story of this ill-prepared attempt to build American democracy in a war-torn Middle Eastern country, detailing not only the risky disbanding of the Iraqi army and the ludicrous attempt to train the new police force, but absurdities such as the aide who based Baghdad's new traffic laws on those of the state of Maryland, downloaded from the net, and the twenty-four-year-old who had never worked in finance put in charge of revitalising Baghdad's stock exchange. "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" is American reportage at its best.