by Oliver PooleFrom the publisher:
Imagine cheering on your national football team as your country falls apart; risking suicide bombers and kidnappers to go to the shops; or driving your wife to hospital through roadblocks manned by terrorists as she's about to give birth... Red Zone: Five Bloody Years in Baghdad is Oliver Poole's extraordinary account of daily life for Iraqis, as well as the British and American soldiers sent to Iraq. It's also the story of Ahmed Ali, tourist guide turned Telegraph interpreter, a job that made him an insurgent target.
Poole first crossed into Iraq in March 2003, from Kuwait, as a Daily Telegraph reporter, 'embedded' in the back of an American armoured vehicle. Three weeks later, his unit had fought their way to Baghdad. But when Poole returned to London, he was haunted by the dead: had the bloodshed been worthwhile?
Eighteen months later, as the Telegraph's Baghdad Bureau Chief, he came back to find a country racked by suicide bombs and the burgeoning horror of the Sunni-Shia civil war. There he met Ahmed, his closest friend in Baghdad. For the next two years, they worked out of the Baghdad hotel suite where Poole lived. Inevitably, they could not remain unscathed: Poole's hotel-home was blown up and finally Ahmed's family, part Shia, part Sunni, tainted by their international connections, became engulfed by the violence.
