Bad day in Najaf

NAJAF – I don’t know what the news is from the rest of Iraq or even what’s going on with the gov­er­nor of Najaf. I do know what’s hap­pen­ing with the police depart­ment, how­ever. They’re raid­ing the Sea of Najaf hotel and round­ing the 100 or so jour­nal­ists at gun­point and sub­ject­ing them to mass arrest.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

We started out to the shrine again today, using a dif­fer­ent route. The front is con­stantly shift­ing and the fight­ing is very fierce between the Mahdi, the Amer­i­cans and the New Iraqi Army. Sev­eral times my group — which included reporters and pho­tog­ra­phers from the New York Times, the Observer and CNN – had to turn back because of tanks and Bradleys fir­ing on Mahdi posi­tions. It seemed a lit­tle pre­sump­tu­ous to ask them to stop fir­ing so a gag­gle of jour­nal­ists could cross the street.

We ended up going through the Sea of Najaf, the for­est and vil­lage on the skirts of the old city. In typ­i­cal Iraqi humor, it’s not a sea at all, but a hot, burn­ing fur­nace of a destroyed vil­lage. It was a 2-hour walk through rub­ble and sniper posi­tions, con­stantly being on the look­out. It was here that my trou­ble started.

We didn’t encounter any fir­ing, but I fell vic­tim — again — to heat exhaus­tion. It set in and I was able to hold it together until we got to the front gates of the Imam Ali Shrine, but from there, I just had to sit and rest.

Then the bombs started. Mas­sive muni­tions were land­ing no more than 50 or 100m from us, and a pho­tog­ra­pher said a mis­sile struck the bar­ri­cade that pro­tected the peo­ple run­ning in and out of the shrine, set­ting the bar­rier on fire. I didn’t see it, but there was so many things explod­ing. We stayed with a group of Mahdi who gave me ice and water to cool me off while my trans­la­tor did a few inter­views for me. I felt like the biggest loser on the planet that I was so wiped just as we had got­ten where we wanted to go.

We couldn’t get into the Shrine; the path was under too much fire. The entrance to the Shrine sits at the meet­ing point of two streets which end at the Shrines gate. We rested in a pro­tected area on one street, and the other street con­tained Grand Aya­tol­lah Ali Sistani’s offices. As I sat, we heard incom­ing scream­ing in, but I was too exhausted to do much but cover my ears and lean closer to a wall. We kept hav­ing to fall back as the Amer­i­cans bombed closer and closer to our position.

There is a small alley­way con­nect­ing the two streets. Feel­ing a lit­tle less wiped, I crossed over to the other street to catch up with the oth­ers. As I rounded the cor­ner, I heard one of the other reporters say, “We can wheel him out of here in a trolley.”

“You’re not doing that,” I said as I approached them. “I’m walk­ing out of here.”

CRACK CRACK! Scram­ble, dust in the eyes, yells of “sniper!” and we all scram­bled for cover. My fixer and I dove into a open store front, pushed by three Mahdi guys who were nearby. My col­leagues ran round the cor­ner. We were pinned.

The Mahdi mil­i­tants were as friendly as they could be under the cir­cum­stance and urgently pressed me to the ground, pro­tect­ing me. One stuck his head out the door only to be answered with more sniper fire. He jerked back.

As I sat on the floor with the three armed me around me, I looked up at them. “So,” I said. “Shaku maku?” (Iraqi slang for “What’s hap­pen­ing?”) They started to crack up and then turned seri­ous again and told me how they were fight­ing to pro­tect the Shrine. At the moment, they were pro­tect­ing me and I thanked them.

After a few min­utes, we gin­gerly crept out and reunited wit the oth­ers. After the sniper fire, my adren­a­line was puls­ing and I wasn’t exhausted any­more. We decided it was time to head home.

How­ever, we had to go back through the Sea of Najaf again. And I gave out again from the heat. Luck­ily, we found a taxi and were able to get back to the hotel where I re-hydrated, rested and felt a bit better.

Until tonight. I was on the roof try­ing to get my BGan to con­nect when Najaf’s finest burst onto the roof with a Kalash­nikov and order me and the other jour­nal­ists down to the lobby. The cops had raided the hotel and forced all the jour­nal­ists out onto the street. We were ter­ri­fied. The cops yelled at us and pointed their weapons toward us. Sev­eral large trucks were wait­ing and knew we would be loaded onto them. Then they started shooting.

“Yella, yella” they ordered us. BANG BANG! They fired their weapons just over our heads forc­ing us to crouch. The for­eign jour­nal­ists and the Arab media were sep­a­rated into sep­a­rate trucks and we were all brought to the police sta­tion at gun­point. On the way, they con­tin­ued to scream at us and point their weapons in our faces. I tried to put my money in my bag, but a young police offi­cer thrust his Kalash­nikov at me and rifled through my bag.

Finally, we made it to the police sta­tion. My friend Phillip urged me to ride it out, be calm, smile a lit­tle. Then we were herded into the police chief’s office for the most bizarre press con­fer­ence of my life.

The Shrine would be stormed tonight, he said, and we would be allowed to get on a bus and go visit it tomor­row to see the dam­age the Mahdi Army had done to it. The Sis­tani pro­test­ers in Kufa were really Mahdi guys and they had to be killed. Oh, and thank you for coming.

A few of us put up a fight, demand­ing why they couldn’t just invite us down for a presser instead of kid­nap­ping us. Oh, no, the com­man­der said, that must have been a mis­take. I just asked them to bring you to me… There was no order to bran­dish weapons, push jour­nal­ists around and fire into the air. One cop, a lieu­tenant, just smiled at us when we pointed our fin­gers at him and said he was the one lead­ing the raid, yelling and point­ing his side arm at us.

These are Najaf’s finest. They’re like the old regime, only less dis­ci­plined. They’re ter­ri­fy­ing and they’re the most dan­ger­ous ele­ment in this con­flict. The Amer­i­cans and the Mahdi Army have pretty set posi­tions and you know they’re not tar­get­ing jour­nal­ists. But the police here have been engag­ing in a sys­tem­atic intim­i­da­tion of us for three weeks now. The gov­er­nor of Najaf has report­edly threat­ened to jail jour­nal­ists who don’t write down exactly what he says when he says it in interviews.

So we were returned to the hotel on bus. This was another warn­ing to stop cov­er­ing the Mahdi Army. To get out. My office man­ager in Bagh­dad is urg­ing me to leave, but I really want to stay. I’m unsure what to do, and the cops’ unpre­dictabil­ity is unnerving.

(Sorry this is not bet­ter writ­ten; I’m still pretty exhausted and it’s late here.)

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