After a week of planning in Kuwait City, the other journalists and I were finally ready to try to re-enter Iraq. We met at the French TV crew’s hotel an hour before dawn. Under cover of darkness and with GPS technology, we followed the coastline away from all Kuwaiti patrols and found ourselves past all checkpoints and at the border at Abdali, Kuwait, just meters away from Safwan, Iraq.
We spent until six o’clock that evening driving along the Iraqi border with Kuwait. We drove from one checkpoint to another and were turned back at each one. Defeated, we decided to give up for the evening. We rented a bedroom and a meeting room at a rest stop in Abdali, Kuwait and sat down to strategize.
The following morning, Victor Silva, the Portuguese RTP-TV cameraman suggested we find a break in the fence along the Kuwaiti border between two of the Kuwaiti checkpoints and try to cross there. After spending some time searching, we realized that there was a point along the border where the fence was down, but a sand anti-tank wall had been constructed. At that point we had been trying to get into Iraq for more than a day and were getting desperate. I looked around us and saw that we were a group of 12 people armed with shovels and four 4X4 vehicles. The only thing left for us to do was to dig over the anti-tank wall.
An hour later, we had dug down and flattened the wall enough to allow three out of the four trucks to drive over it. The fourth car, a four-wheel drive Subaru driven by Artis, a Latvian newspaper journalist and photographer kept getting caught on top, so we hooked up two tow straps to it and dragged it over the wall using my Mitsubishi and France TV2’s Toyota.
For the next three hours we drove slowly through the Iraqi desert following one another’s tracks exactly, as we were worried about land mines. I stayed at the very back of the convoy in the event a mine exploded. The other journalists I was with had covered 10 wars in the last six years and were more experienced than I when it came to safety and mine detection.
After some rough four-wheel driving, for almost an hour, we saw several soldiers suddenly jump up out of the ground, grab their rifles, then jump back into another hole in the ground. We had unknowingly come across a small American military encampment in the middle of the desert. Since the camp was far off in the distance, we were unsure whether the other trucks in our convoy had seen them, so we decided to stop where we were, not want to become victims of American “friendly fire”. The British had told us of several incidents where American soldiers shot first and asked questions later. As the cars ahead of us in the still-advancing convoy approached the American soldiers, several of them jumped out of the ground pointing their machine guns at the approaching journalists. From half a kilometer’s distance, my friend and I watched as the other journalists had their credentials checked by the surprised American soldiers. Once the situation had been diffused, we approached. As we drove by the now smiling and reassured soldiers, I made sure they could see my hands.
One soldier with some stripes on his arm explained that we were the first journalists he had seen in that part of the desert. He said he would radio ahead to the other camp 15 kilometers ahead to let them know we were approaching. “Just follow the fuel pipeline to the other camp,” he said.
Less than an hour later, a Maj. Steve of the United States Marine Corps was greeting us. He welcomed us and offered to allow us to stay at their camp for the night. It was almost dark, so we accepted. He explained that his troops were responsible for the construction and maintenance of a military fuel pipeline that supplied the troops north of us. To show our appreciation, the other journalists and I allowed all 177 soldiers in the camp to call their families in the United States, using our satellite phones. It was very touching to hear them all speak with their wives, mothers, fathers, children and friends. It was clear that they missed their homes and lives, and I was very surprised to see tears in the eyes of some of them.
As the evening progressed, we set up our shisha, to smoke with the Marines. As several Marines gathered around to try smoking our hubbly bubbly, I started talking to them. What was clear from the conversation was that most of them did not want to be there, and many of them were questioning the legitimacy of this war. Many of them asked me: “Are the people of Iraq behind us?”
I said that, based on conversations I had had previously with the Iraqi citizens of Umm Qasr and Basra, most of the people of Iraq wanted to see Saddam Hussein and his government gone. But of course no one wanted it to happen at the cost of hundreds and thousands of innocent Iraqi civilian lives. I told the troops that as the days would go by and the coalition forces move further and further north, more and more civilians would get killed. As the stories of innocent lives lost made their way north, more and more people would turn against this war and the American troops. I explained that there was no humanitarian aid as yet at Umm Qasr and Basra, and that was turning people against the war also.
And that is what happened. When I first arrived in Umm Qasr and Basra during my first entry into Iraq, I spoke with dozens of Iraqis. At that point, innocent civilian casualties were at a minimum and supplies of food and water stored by the Iraqis had not been depleted. The majority of those I spoke with were ecstatic that Saddam was on his way out. However, as the days went by and I moved further and further north, I saw the innocent lives lost and the destruction, I myself began to turn against the war.
Growing up, my grandfather always told me to avoid speaking about politics, religion and sports, because, he said: “You are bound to upset or offend someone. Just sit and listen to the people talking, and see what you can learn.” As a result, I try to keep my opinions out of my writing. But as I kept moving north towards Baghdad, I kept seeing the death and destruction of civilians along the way. This might have affected me, perhaps more than I realized, because when I returned from Iraq during the third week of April, I saw a major shift in American and Arab opinion in the e-mails I received.
At first I was being accused of being pro-American by the Arabs because I was “a propagandist loyal to the USA and UK,” because I was saying the people of Iraq wanted the removal of Saddam “at any cost.” Then, later on, American readers wrote: “What is clear about Essam is he is a clever distorter of the truth. He ignores the possibilities, the realities, and any information that doesn’t fit his virulent anti-American slant. He is not a journalist.” I lived in America for 15 years. I went to high school in the UK. My family gave me the best of both the Arab and Western cultures. I feel that I understand both. As a journalist, I simply report the facts avoiding any personal bias. The facts were that hundreds of innocent Iraqi men, women and children, were being killed.
As we drove through the city of As Samawah, an Iraqi taxi driver approached our jeep, which was clearly marked as a press vehicle, and told me that several people were looking for survivors under the rubble of a collapsed Baath Party building nearby.
We made our way there and started to dig with the rescuers. Under one slab of concrete, we discovered the dead body of an eight-year-old boy, crushed by a wall that fell on him as he walked by when the bombing of the building started. Just inches away from him was his father, also dead. The boy’s uncle collapsed in the arm of some witnesses, wailing as the bodies of his nephew and brother were discovered.
I spent the next two days in Najaf reporting on the Shiite Muslims there. One night I received a call informing me that Baghdad had fallen. Against the advice of the veteran war journalists in our team, I decided to set off for Baghdad, driving the distance at night.
Approximately 60 kilometers south of Baghdad, six bandits armed with AK-47s stopped us. At gunpoint, they forced us out of our Pajero and started taking our watches and wallets and sifting through our belongings in the truck. When I told one of them we were Arab and Muslim journalists, he ordered the others to return our belongings and let us go. As we climbed back in our jeep, happy that all our belongings were being returned one bandit protested and ordered me out of the jeep just as I was getting back into it. I told him that the others told me to leave, but there was no discussing the situation with this particular bandit, as he fired four shots at my jeep hitting the rear door on the driver side. We ran for cover as he jumped in the truck and left. At that point, the neighborhood citizens heard the shots fired, and began firing at the rest of the bandits as well as us. We hit the ground immediately as we saw and heard the bullets land literally inches away from us.
When the shooting stopped, we found ourselves completely alone. Our jeep was gone along with all our equipment. We had nothing but a small still digital camera and a satellite phone. How was I going to report from Baghdad, which was still 60 kilometers ahead, without my equipment?
(Third and concluding part next week)
- Arab News Features 10 July 2003
