Sunday August 19 At 9pm I check in with Royal Jordanian at Heathrow.
Unlike British Airways, RJ does not charge excess baggage for my body
armour. “You’re a brave man,” the ticket clerk says when he sees where I’m
going. Actually I feel deep apprehension.
Monday August 20 We reach Amman at 5.30am. I sleep on an airport bench
until the Baghdad flight is announced at 8.30. Half the passengers are
private security contractors with T-shirts stretched over hulking torsos.
There are no families or children. I sit next to a young Iraqi named
Mohammed, one of 30 Ministry of Agriculture employees sent for five months’
training in Australia. It was paradise, he said. Two colleagues had stayed
to seek asylum. He wished he’d done so. He saw no hope for Iraq. “I come
back to die with my family.”
After a 90-minute flight we bank steeply in case of missiles and land at
Baghdad international airport. The gangways extending like stubby tentacles
from the terminal no longer work. We are decanted into a bus ringed by armed
guards. A trusted taxi driver takes me to a meeting place beyond the
airport’s formidable security cordons, where I am met by The Times’s drivers
and bodyguards. This is not the place for greetings. We speed into the city
along a highway lined with blast walls, coiled razor wire and land stripped
of vegetation. Overhead bridges are fenced in. We have to stop whenever
convoys of US Humvees approach. An Iraqi VIP’s Mercedes sweeps past,
escorted by vehicles bristling with gesticulating gunmen.
We enter our hotel where The Times is based through more blast walls, barriers
and checkpoints. Only there do we relax and greet each other. Our drivers –
brothers who risk their lives by working (secretly) for Westerners – have
been with us since the war and are old friends. We buy in dishes of lamb
kebabs, roast tomatoes and onions, and catch up. During my last visit in
February, Sunni extremists drove the drivers’ family from their home in west
Baghdad. They have returned, but the older driver still locks his children
in the house each day. Our equally long-serving fixer has fled to Syria,
exhausted by his double life.
Tuesday August 21 “Chemical Ali”, Saddam’s cousin, goes on trial today
for ruthlessly crushing the 1991 Shia uprising. Journalists must present
themselves at the Rasheed Hotel inside the green zone to be taken to the
court’s secret location. My drivers drop me at the July 14 bridge, the
zone’s nearest entrance. I grab a taxi and head for the Rasheed, only to
encounter a horrendous tailback at a checkpoint. I miss the rendezvous, but
it doesn’t matter. After the war, when the nightly news showed distraught
relatives exhuming mass graves, the trial would have been a big deal. Today
nobody cares. Iraqis are preoccupied with today’s miseries, not yesterday's.
At 4pm Ryan Crocker, the US Ambassador, is briefing at the US Embassy. This
time I arrive an hour early, but I’m refused entry until nearer the time. I
sit and bake in the shade of one of the concrete “duck and cover” shelters
erected around the green zone for use during mortar attacks. It is 120F
[49C] and, someone observed, “like sitting in an oven full of hair dryers”.
Wednesday August 22 Our otherwise grotty hotel has one redeeming factor
– a pool. As you swim you hear gunfire and explosions in the distance, which
somewhat mars the pleasure. This afternoon we were sitting in the bureau
when a gunfight erupted right outside the hotel. We rushed to the balcony.
There were armed guards everywhere, and vehicles strewn across the road. We
learnt later that it was a failed kidnap attempt.
Thursday August 23 Richard Mills, the Times photographer, arrived from
Basra yesterday. We are embedding with the US military in Ramadi. Once, you
could drive there in two hours, today you wait half the night for a US
Marines helicopter at LZ (landing zone) Washington in the green zone. Ours
leaves at 1am. We skim over the moonlit desert, hot air blasting in through
the open doors, and stop – like a bus – at various points en route. We reach
Camp Ramadi at 2.15am, deafened by the noise. An hour later we are collected
and left in a trailer for three hours’ sleep.
Friday August 24 We spend all day driving around in Humvees with our
body armour on. The heat is unbearable. My T-shirt is sodden. Our reward is
dinner in Camp Ramadi’s D-Fac (Dining Facility) – a cornucopia of meats,
pastas, salads, ice cream, fruit and (non-alcoholic) drinks delivered by
huge convoys from Kuwait. The larger bases have Burger Kings and Pizza Huts.
This is a war where it is possible to grow fat. Afterwards I play chess with
a young captain who married a fellow soldier two years ago. They have since
spent only three weeks together. But like every other soldier I meet he is
dedicated, uncomplaining, unquestioning.
Saturday August 25 In February Ramadi was a warzone. Today it is in
ruins but peaceful, the locals having expelled al-Qaeda’s terrorists. We
visit the souk, buy kebabs from an outdoor restaurant, walk down the “street
of death” where, the mayor tells me, children would comb the hair of severed
heads left on the corpses of al-Qaeda's opponents. The transformation is
astounding.
Sunday August 26 Sheikh Sittar, a 36-year-old tribal leader, led the
uprising. A convoy of Humvees had delivered us to his heavily fortified
compound near the Baghdad-Amman highway. He is a sheikh from central casting
– urbane, mysterious and dressed in pristine white robes. We sat outside and
drank chai as his young son hovered near by. He joked about his grandfather
fighting the British after the First World War. He talked about a planned
trip to America. He is al-Qaeda’s top target, but said he did not fear death
– “Allah gives you your first day on this Earth, and your last.”
But the strain was obvious from the way he chain-smoked, fiddled with prayer
beads and fretted that Richard’s long lenses were a disguised weapon. He
invited us to dinner but our Humvees awaited. As we left he gave me his
beads. I told Richard to guard his pictures well because one day we would
hear that Sittar had been killed.
Tuesday August 28 Four years after the war Baghdad’s sweltering
citizens get barely two hours’ electricity a day. The city’s only growth
industry is generators. Our translator failed to appear this morning. She
called to say her uncle had been carrying gasoline from his car to his
rooftop generator when it caught fire in his kitchen. He and his son were
killed.
Later, walking into the green zone, I fall in beside an Iraqi woman who speaks
English. She and her husband lived in Manchester. They returned to Iraq
after Saddam’s removal. Two years ago he was kidnapped and has not been
heard of since. Her children want her to join them in Los Angeles, but she
will not leave until she finds out what happened to her husband. So much
suffering.
Wednesday August 29 A 45-minute drive through central Baghdad to
interview the Iraqi Foreign Minister. I see a ruin of a city – pitted
streets, crumbling pavements, bombed buildings, clapped-out jalopies, piles
of rubbish, broken traffic lights, plastic bags flapping from razor wire.
Half the population has fled or been killed but checkpoints and blocked-off
roads cause constant traffic jams. There is nothing uplifting unless you
count the blast-wall murals commissioned by the US military. Local artists
may depict anything nonpolitical. Most paint idealised scenes from happier
periods of Iraq’s history.
Thursday August 30 To the Babylon hotel, whose roof offers an aerial
view of Baghdad’s only big building project – the giant new US Embassy that
will officially be completed on Saturday. US officials have asked the hotel
to ban photographers, but we go up and take pictures anyway. If Westerners
can get on to the roof, Iraqi terrorists certainly can. The Babylon was once
a showpiece hotel. Today its 600 rooms and marbled lobbies are empty and
dust gathers in its pool.
Saturday September 1 We are embedded in Ghazaliyah, west Baghdad. Last
night a shopkeeper calmly told us how two of his sons, aged 17 and 25, were
abducted at different times last year. One was found in the back of a pickup
truck with 17 other corpses. The other was never seen again. Every Iraqi has
a story to tell.
Today we watched a US patrol push its way into the home of a family it
suspected knew the whereabouts of a local militia leader. The father was
taken outside and the two daughters sobbed while a young captain, sporting a
semi-automatic and sunglasses, interrogated the mother. Don’t lie, he warned
her. Tell us where he is. The mother was terrified. To tell him would be to
sign her own death warrant. She shrieked and wailed but professed ignorance.
The captain gave up and started on the father. To my astonishment, she
fetched cold drinks for the soldiers.
Sunday September 2 At 11pm the phone wakes me. The British are pulling
out of Basra Palace, ending four years in the city. Every British newspaper
had asked to cover this landmark event. The Government’s news manipulators
in London refused point-blank, fearing stories of “defeat”, “retreat” or
“humiliation”. They are almost Soviet in their mentality. By contrast, the
US military is a model of openness and transparency.
Monday September 3 Richard has food poisoning. The hotel kitchen is a
horror. Before our fixers leave each day we have them bring us Iraqi bread
stuffed with meat, which we eat later with cold beer – one of our few
pleasures.
Tuesday September 4 To lunch with Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno,
the US second-in-command. This is an all-day exercise. A drive to the green
zone, taxi to LZ Washington, helicopter to Camp Victory at Baghdad airport
and minibus to the general’s private quarters near one of Saddam’s old
palaces. The house overlooks a beautiful lake. Unfortunately the view
through is completely obscured by blast walls.
Wednesday September 5 Crossing the July 14 bridge, I saw a dead horse
caught in the flotsam. This is an improvement. From the same spot in
February I saw two human corpses, one scored with vivid red slashes. I
dislike the green zone. It is neat, clean, safe and complacent. Its
inhabitants rarely visit the dreaded “red zone” outside – or want to. A
soldier finishing a one-year tour proudly told me he had not left it once –
“I can only tell you what Baghdad sounds like”. At least you can walk freely
along its broad avenues. Back at our hotel I find an elderly Iraqi walking
round and round the pool for exercise. The streets outside are too
dangerous.
Thursday September 6 We are embedded at a US combat support hospital.
We watch a catalogue of horrors arrive by Humvee and helicopter, including a
soldier with all four limbs blown off and an Iraqi with his eyes gouged out
and tongue cut off. The medics treat everyone – Americans, Iraqis,
insurgents – with the same skill and black humour. They tell extraordinary
stories of, for example, finding a suicide bomber’s thumb embedded in a
victim’s chest. Major William White, the nurse manager, gives me a T-shirt
emblazoned “Good Medicine in a Bad Place”. At lunch I meet Captain Diana
Jenkins, 28, a nurse from Spokane [Washington State], who has just got
engaged to a colleague. What a place for love to blossom.
Saturday September 8 How to watch England’s opening World Cup rugby
match? I call a friend at The New York Times, which has by far the biggest,
most luxurious bureau in Baghdad. Come over, he says. I watch the game and
stay the night as you cannot drive around the city after dark. Our own
television receives numerous satellite channels, but most are Arabic and a
disproportionate number are pornographic.
Sunday September 9 Our old fixer is back after six months in Syria. He
no longer recognises Iraq’s Balkanised capital. He cannot visit his old
home, all his friends and relatives have left and prices have doubled.
Tuesday September 11 Our new fixer arrives, covered in cuts. He went
out to start his generator last night when a stray mortar hit a neighbour’s
house, spraying him with shrapnel. The Times wants reaction to General David
Petraeus’s congressional testimony on President Bush’s troops surge. The
truth is that after so many broken promises, false dawns and fine words
nobody here gives a damn. They just want to survive.
To lunch with an economics expert at the US Embassy. Four years after the war,
Iraqis still pay no tax and still receive Saddam-era ration packs.
Wednesday September 12 I learn of two Iraqi interpreters who have
narrowly escaped execution by Shia militias. An Iraqi security chief in
Basra tells us the militias are actively hunting “collaborators” now that
the British have quit the city. I conveyed this yesterday to Major Mike
Shearer, the British Army spokesman in Basra. Late this evening I get a
terse e-mail saying that the interpreters should address their claims
directly to the army and “there is nothing substantial for us to comment
on”. No expression of concern for the interpreters’ safety, no effort to
check their stories, no acknowledgement that they are turning to us because
the Government does nothing – just the usual attempt to stonewall. I tell
Shearer the response is shameful.
Thursday September 13 This morning the US military showed Richard and
me around the Camp Cropper detention centre where it holds 4,000 suspect
insurgents, including 800 children, in huge pens. We took pictures. We could
ask anything of any official. What a contrast to Britain’s obstructive
Ministry of Defence.
Later we learn that Sheikh Sittar has been blown up by a roadside bomb outside
his compound. Al-Qaeda has got him. I am stunned and sickened. I remember
him telling me his vision for Iraq: “In place of every improvised explosive
device we will plant a flower.”
Friday September 14 The British Army is playing cricket against its
Australian counterparts at Tallil, a US airbase in southern Iraq. This being
a “good news” story, it has pulled out all the stops. Richard and I are
flown down from Baghdad in a large Antonov cargo/passenger plane owned by
Skylink Arabia, a private aviation company sponsoring the game. We arrive in
time to visit the nearby Zigurrat of Ur. I wanted to see whether this
4,000-year-old edifice had been looted or damaged – like so many other
archaeological sites – during the past four years. We find it was far more
seriously defiled by Saddam, who destroyed its authenticity by almost
entirely rebuilding its walls. The ruins of the ancient city of Ur, ringed
by concertina wire, are far more interesting. Nearby are an empty car park,
locked-up souvenir hut and forlorn picnic tables.
The British players arrive by helicopter. I’m asked not to approach Brigadier
James Bashall, who is in trouble with London for suggesting that US pressure
delayed the Basra Palace pullout. Later we meet walking round the boundary.
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” the brigadier grins sheepishly. A shame.
He seems charming.
The game is hilarious. It is 110F. The pitch is a strip of concrete in the
sand. American and Romanian soldiers, Skylink’s Russian pilots and an
Italian reconstruction team watch bemused. How refreshing to see people
enjoying themselves in Iraq.
The game ends too late for us to reach Baghdad airport before dark. No
problem. The Antonov simply flies us to Arbil in the relatively peaceful
Kurdish north. It is another world. People out at night, new buildings,
pavement cafés, working street lights. We dine off weiner schnitzel and
Bavarian beer in the garden of a German restaurant, then sleep at a Skylink
house.
Sunday September 16 An Iraqi interpreter has been murdered in Basra.
Last night I sent the facts to Major Shearer. By late this afternoon he
still has not responded. I call him. The army has no record of employing the
man, he says. We run the story anyway - with his denial.
Monday September 17 Gertrude Bell was the British diplomat who caused
much of Iraq’s present misery by forcing Shias, Sunnis and Kurds into a
single artificial state after the First World War. I want to visit her grave
in the old British cemetery in east Baghdad. Our security advisers say we
can stay 15 minutes maximum. I had expected the cemetery to be as rundown as
the rest of Baghdad, but it has been lovingly tended by an old caretaker and
his wife. Outside its walls the country Miss Bell created tears itself
apart. Inside she rests in peace beneath the date palms.
Tuesday September 18 I say fond farewells to Iraqi colleagues who have
daily risked their lives for me. I feel guilty about flying off to safety
and leaving them behind. The plane speeds down the runway. In minutes we’ll
be beyond the range of missiles. As Iraq fades into the haze below you can
sense the passengers relax.
This says it all. What a mess the US and UK have made of the country. Electricity for only 2 hours a day?? Congratulations to Martin Fletcher for some brave reporting.
Ian, Bangkok, Thailand
This article is absolutely outstanding. I had gone off the Times recently because of their biaised views about Europe but this article, which makes no claims at being politically correct, is one of the best things I have read for a long time. Congratulations
Michele Wheatley, London, UK
who won the cricket?
Pete, Empire Bay, Australia
At last somebody has said it. The misery of Iraq was created long ago by the British (Gertrude Bell).
Iraq is an artificial entity.
The answer is to divide it into its natural components. Kurdistan in the North.
Mesopotamia (th fertile lland bewteen the Tigris and Euphrates.
The tribal territory of the marsh Arabs (under a UN mandate?) in the South.
Multiculturalism is a myth loved only by out of touch intellectuals. Read the history of The Balkans.
Nationality is not a piece of paper.
William Richards, Rahima, Saudi Arabia
Sometimes I feel that all of us who have been to Iraq as part of this war in what ever role we played are different from the pilgrims, who move thru there for Shia shrines or on to Mecca as part of a haj, in only the chaos that we create as we move about to nowhere on our trajectories in and out.
Bill Keller, BASKING RIDGE, New Jersey
Great reporting. If the neo-cons (among which I number myself)are proved right and we can stand up a democracy in Iraq in which people can plant flowers instead of IEDs, it will have been worth it. But I wish the government would start enlisting old-timers and send us to prove our theories instead of these kids.
Richard Miniter, Stone Ridge, New York, USA