What can Petraeus tell Iraqis?

Although I've worked in Iraq a number of times since Saddam Hussein's reign was ended, this is my first time ensconced within the Green Zone, or to use its preferred name these days, the International Zone.

The International is accurate in the sense that it's certainly not Iraq. It's the United States, with a South American flourish, and Third World hired help.

The flourish stems from the Peruvian guardsmen who check your cars and your personage at numerous checkpoints on the way back and forth across the zone.

Hidden behind the requisite dark glasses, and wearing some kind of uniform, possibly chosen from a catalogue available on the internet, their shirts are emblazoned with the words "Avert, Assess, Achieve".

In the downtime between averting, assessing and achieving, as well as checking cars, and patting down other private security employees, they graffiti on the breeze walls of their roadside bunkers.

There is one drawing of Christ, with "GOD FORGIVE OUR SINS" written next to it in large letters.

At the same checkpoint is scrawled "LAGRIMAS DEL SOL". The Sol is the name of the Peruvian currency. But, Tears of the Sun is also the name of a fairly terrible war movie, where Bruce Willis and some beefy comrades go against orders and save a bunch of Africans in a fictional war.

I hope their bosses aren't bothered by them potentially following Bruce's lead - and scooping up some Shia who they then deliver safely to Iran. Maybe they just liked the movie.

They work for a company called Triple Canopy. It's just one of the many private security firms who provide guards, logistics, drivers, supplies to oxygenate the International Zone - that's IZ to you.

According to IZ gossip, these guards are paid amounts which are small by IZ standards, but large by Peruvian standards. Their bosses are, as they say, making a killing.

Rather than international, the landscape of the IZ is plain surreal. It's salted over with dust, and piles of empty water bottles kick about the mostly empty roads.

Once grand hotels stand forlorn, and abandoned. Rather than a perfect bubble, representing the best of nation-building American stylee - it's ramshackle, damaged, and windswept.

Around the paraphernalia of Saddam's Iraq - the infamous crossed swords, the modernist Tomb of the Unnamed Soldier - hundreds of Iraqis still negotiate their way inside the International Zone.

Some work with the Americans - some work with security firms - others work with the shiny new Iraqi administration. The most senior get to live inside, protected from the harsh realities of their countrymen and women by the achieving Peruvians, and even more assertive Americans.

But even the high walls, the barbed wire, and the checkpoints can't keep out the stories of violent disintegration: the kidnappings and the corruption; the desperate exodus of tens of thousands of Baghdad's citizens; the brutal and dirty habits of the police; neighbourhoods held to ransom by militias; and a government in which even the truest believers no longer have any faith.

When General Petraeus speaks to Congress and the Senate this week, America will be listening. But in Iraq, there's little interest in what he has to say. Here, they know the truth already.

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