More from the front

How to make friends and occupy people

By MARK MacKINNON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail

It's a bad day at Camp Cancer. The angry crowd is pushing forward in the hot sun. The crush of bodies between the curled barbed wire on both sides adds to the oppressive 47-degree heat. The American GIs holding the crowd back are visibly sweating, the black antiglare paint on their faces smudging until they look like heavily armed pandas.

"Get back! Get back!" one yells, pointing his M16 menacingly at the mass of humanity in front of him. It's mostly anger in his voice, but there's an undertone of panic.

Outside Camp Cancer -- a cigarette factory in eastern Baghdad that the U.S. army has turned into its local headquarters -- the natives are definitely restless. Three months after American soldiers entered the Iraqi capital, the situation has become unbearable for many citizens. While the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay this week led many in the U.S. to make optimistic forecasts of improved relations, fear of a Baath-regime comeback is not the main thing preying on these Iraqis' minds.

"No food!" shouts one man, his white, button-down shirt sticking to his back, although it's not yet 8 a.m.

"No fruit!" yells another.

Read the rest here.

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