SKIRMISHER

You think James Bond’s work is edge-of-your-seat dangerous–until you hear about Iraq’s garbage collectors.

They evade, roll over, duck, crawl, and do all the other “kiss, kiss, bang bang” action. In Baghdad, collecting garbage off the streets is like jumping into the raging path of a blasting machine gun.

Terry McCarthy explains why:

Many of the roadside bombs in Baghdad — they call them IEDs here, or Improvised Explosive Devices — are hidden in garbage piles. On dirt roads outside the city the insurgents generally bury their bombs, but with the hardtop roads inside the city they need to conceal them over ground — and trash is a convenient cover.

Which makes the job of garbage collection extremely dangerous — in the last year 350 garbage collectors have been killed. According to the head of Baghdad’s municipal garbage services that makes garbage collection the third most dangerous job in the city after the police and the army. And for wages of about $5 a day. Some of the collectors have died by inadvertently setting off bombs as they scoop up piles of waste. Others are shot by the insurgents for informing the police when they find a device. Now there are some neighborhoods where garbage collectors will simply not go to work, because insurgents will shoot at them to prevent them clearing the streets at all.

With that level of danger, collecting filth [which is roughly the same thing we’re doing in the Skirmisher] must be one of the highest-paying jobs in that part of the world. So maybe the next logical question would be: Where do I sign up?

GARBAGE BOMBS

Views:1809
Stumble it!