BAGHDAD: Unending stretches of concrete blocks set up to prevent insurgent attacks have virtually walled in Baghdad, but in the process have also created a canvas for artists to paint Iraq’s natural beauty.

The wall sections, each nine metres long and two metres high, are part of the vast network of concrete blocks and concertina wires that carve up the capital, where bloody attacks are still a daily occurrence.

Dubbed ‘concrete caterpillars’ by the US military, the walls have in some places boxed in entire neighbourhoods and markets to protect them from bombings.

However, Iraqi artists, backed by the municipality which wants to spruce up the city, are now using them as canvases on which to paint images from Iraq’s thousands-years-old civilisation.

“We have changed these dreadful barriers into a beautiful canvas,” says artist Ahmed, 45, while painting a concrete block near the Baghdad governorate building on the west bank of the Tigris River.

“The municipality wanted us to paint scenes from the city’s daily life. I am free to choose what I want to paint.” Ahmed says most residents appreciate what the artists are doing and sometimes even stop by and praise their work.

“But of course sometimes there are people who say it would be better to put the money into repairing the electricity grid rather than into pots of paints,” he adds with a smile.

The most striking work on the blast walls is to be seen on the road from Baghdad international airport into the city, where dozens of painters are busy drawing the entire history of the archaeologically rich country.

A private company working at the airport has agreed to sponsor the decoration of a 4km stretch of the wall. The company provides paint and other materials and pays $20 a day to each artist, many of them students from an arts college in Baghdad who keep a large book containing pictures from Iraqi history on hand for inspiration.

Najji Hussein, 60, a professor from the arts college says that artistically striking as they may be, he wants the walls to be quickly dismantled once peace returns to Baghdad.—AFP