عاصمة الرشيد

This is golf, Green Zone style.
The nine-hole Crossed Swords Golf Course is closed in by 15-foot concrete blast walls and watched over by humorless Gurkha guards from Nepal.
The course—a total of 479 rugged, dusty and nerve-fraying yards—was created a year ago by a British military officer who was part of a NATO training mission. Its name comes from one of Saddam Hussein’s eccentric architectural legacies that’s now a Green Zone landmark: two giant hands holding curved sabers that served as an archway for the late dictator’s parade grounds.

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