Chaos erupted in the Green Zone Saturday. Dozens of armed men in trucks tore through the streets of the only secure (relatively speaking) area of Baghdad, firing automatic weapons into the air and screaming aggressively. But nobody in this jittery town worried.

The shooting was actually to celebrate Iraq’s win Saturday evening in the quarterfinals of the Asian Football Cup. The underdog team is something of a Cinderella story for the millions of Iraqi soccer fans, and is now in the semi-finals. Given the sectarian violence that’s stretching the country to the breaking point, it’s worth enduring some gunfire if it’s unifying Iraq behind a bunch of footballers.

Baghdad can be a surprising place even in the best of times. Not to mention amusing. Grumbles and gasps could be heard among the expatriates here during the weekend when word spread that the only remaining restaurant in the Green Zone had begun enforcing a dress code.

The idea sounded ridiculous, but everyone understood when they learned that, because of daily attacks on the Zone, the jacket they were being forced to wear into the Blue Star Café simply to eat a sweet-and-sour chicken or smoke from a shisha pipe had to be lined with Kevlar or steel plates. OK, wearing body armor and a combat helmet to dinner can’t be classified as normal, though I have to admit the khaki-colored flak jacket my dinner companion brought did match the dust in the air and camouflage paint on the Iraqi Army helicopters buzzing overhead.

The aftermath of the truck bomb blast in Armali on July 8. AFP-Getty Images

It was clearly bad luck. A sand fly buzzing around Amman’s international airport on Saturday got trapped on a commercial flight bound for Baghdad. As I sat in seat 1C watching the insect bounce pointlessly against the window as the plane’s door closed, I could only shake my head and smile. The poor little fly’s lifespan was probably only month or less, and it was going to spend its final days in an increasingly dangerous Iraqi capital.

Of course, I was going to Baghdad as well, and the fly’s misfortune rubbed off on me. My suitcase never arrived at baggage claim, and I was told by a colleague that it could take weeks before it was found. I barely had time to ponder the implications of wearing the same clothes for that time in 100-plus degree heat before more important issues came to light. The biggest: the continuing deterioration of security since my first assignments here in 2003 and today.

The Green Zone, the only place that seemed to promise guaranteed security in Baghdad, cannot boast that anymore. The proliferation of “duck and cover” shelters like fast food restaurants, to protect people from the daily mortar and rocket attacks, are testament to that, as is the tripling or even quadrupling of security checks and body searches inside the perimeter. Jogging or even walking out of doors is not advisable, though some continue to do so amid the occasional sirens warning of incoming projectiles.

I also needed to get my head around the latest with the U.S. military “surge” and the Iraqi political process, the latter of which, all sides agree, is the only way to secure a lasting peace here. It’s been 22 months since my last assignment here, but it’s clear that things are not going well. Consider events just this past weekend: Car bombs in and around Baghdad killed at least 220 people; some Shiite and Sunni political parties continued to boycott both cabinet and parliament sessions; there was renewed opposition to a draft bill governing Iraq’s oil industry, whose passage is one of the progress “benchmarks” set by the United States, and rumors of a pending no confidence vote against Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with whom the Bush administration has pinned its hopes for political reconciliation and progress.