CONFIDENTIAL MEMO
FROM: US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Baghdad
TO: Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
SUBJECT: SNAPSHOTS FROM THE OFFICE
SENSITIVE

2. Two of our three female employees report stepped up harassment beginning in mid-May. One, a Shia who favors Western clothing, was advised by an unknown woman in her Baghdad neighbourhood to wear a veil and not to drive her own car. She said some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.

13. We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their "cover". A Sunni Arab female employee tells us family pressures and the inability to share details of her employment is very tough; she told her family she was in Jordon when we sent her on training to the US. Mounting criticism of the US at home among family members also makes her life difficult. She told us in mid-June that most of her family believes the US - which is widely perceived as fully controlling the country and tolerating the malaise - is punishing the population as Saddam did (but with Sunnis and very poor Shia now at the bottom of the list). Otherwise, she says, the allocation of power and security would not be so arbitrary.

14. Some of our staff do not take home their American cell phones, as it makes them a target. They use code names for friends and colleagues and contacts entered into Iraq cell phones. For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff for translation at on-camera press events.