By Elaine Eliah
BAGHDAD — To many Americans, convenient shopping means easy, safe parking at clean, wholesome supermarkets. In Iraq, where shoppers often risk their lives buying groceries and vendors watch produce rot for lack of electricity or transport, marketing has different requirements.
The New Baghdad Market, also known as 9 Nissan, soon will be able to meet these special needs.
The “Baghdad 2” embedded provincial reconstruction team and the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2-69th Armor Battalion have been working with the Baghdad Provincial Council, local district and neighborhood councils and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s “Inma” agribusiness program to rekindle plans for a modern community-based retail food market. "Inma" is an Arabic word that means “growth.”
The high-profile New Baghdad Market is perfectly located beside a highway, adjacent to bus transport and surrounded by a large residential community. It was designed for secure shopping, sanitary food handling and safe food storage. Built with USAID funding in 2004, the market remained unoccupied as violence and ethnic tension drove many residents away.
Local police continuously ran squatters out of the stalls, and coalition forces often found weapons caches there. As stability took hold and local residents returned to their neighborhood, hundreds of vendors commandeered nearby streets, building makeshift stalls from scrap wood and plastic sheeting to sell vegetables, chicken and meat.
“The area developed so fast economically that it attracted people even from outside the area,” said Army Capt. Alexis Perez-Cruz, who has worked for 10 months with Iraqi police and soldiers in the area of the market. “Neighborhood council meetings have now shifted focus from security to economic issues.”
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