Category Archives: Dispatches

Suicide Blasts hit Green Zone

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ajaj.JPG

A dust­storm known as ajaj has set­tled over Bagh­dad.

The hazy build­ing in the back­ground is about 30 meters away.

©2005 Christo­pher Allbrit­ton

BAGHDAD–We woke today to the muted sounds of thumps and booms. One big one, fol­lowed by a smaller one. Then mor­tars flew over our home. It was another attack on the Green Zone, and it killed two people.

The first explo­sion was a car bomb that hit the for­ti­fied complex’s entrance that civil­ians, jour­nal­ists and even National Assem­bly mem­bers often use to get inside. Many a time I’ve gone through the maze of blast walls, tank traps, con­certina wire, HESCO bar­ri­cades and ID check­points think­ing that each time was a point of vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Cars from Jumhuriya Bridge and from the direc­tion of Haifa Street approach the small inter­sec­tion, often dri­ving right up to the foot of the blast walls.A small con­tin­gent of Iraqi and U.S. troops, who sit atop an M1-A1 Abrams bat­tle tank, man the entrance.

The sec­ond boom was a sui­cide bomber who rushed into the crowd that gath­ered fol­low­ing the first explo­sion and blew him­self up. There are reports that a third bomber was pos­si­bly wounded and appre­hended before he could deliver his deadly payload.

Con­tinue read­ing →

Bumps in the Road

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BAGHDAD–The Amer­i­cans have killed two Iraqi jour­nal­ists inside of a week. One was killed Fri­day and I just heard news of the other. I know a lot about the first death, but at the request of his fam­ily, I can’t pub­lish much because his widow fears ret­ri­bu­tion for her hus­band hav­ing worked for a West­ern news orga­ni­za­tion. But he was killed with a sin­gle shot to the head by Amer­i­cans in a pass­ing convoy.

[UPDATE 30÷6÷05 11:33 +0400 GMT: The jour­nal­ist I men­tion above is Yasser Sal­i­hee, who worked for Knight Rid­der. The full story is avail­able here. As Tom writes in the copy, “Knight Rid­der didn’t pre­vi­ously report on Salihee’s death because his fam­ily was wor­ried about reprisal from insur­gents, who often tar­get Iraqis work­ing for West­ern orga­ni­za­tions. The family’s wish to have Salihee’s story told now out­weighs those concerns.”]

The sec­ond I don’t know much about, as I just heard about it. Details haven’t started com­ing in yet.

[UPDATE 29÷6÷05 10:38 +0400 GMT: Sorry for the harsh­ness of my above words. I wasn’t try­ing to say that the first Iraqi jour­nal­ist was killed by Amer­i­cans for being a jour­nal­ist. There is no evi­dence that he was killed for any­thing but being near a con­voy and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. How­ever, a sin­gle shot in the head does sug­gest he was def­i­nitely tar­geted and not the vic­tim of a lucky shot.]

I think the Amer­i­cans have got­ten a lot more trigger-happy and twitchy after the cam­paign of car bombs and other vio­lence that has gripped Iraq for the last, what? Five weeks? Six? I’ve lost track. I can’t tell any­more what head­lines from the Asso­ci­ated Press list­ing the num­ber of dead are new bomb­ings or just updated casu­alty fig­ures from ear­lier in the day.

“We have a choice now,” said A., my gruff, scotch-drinking office man­ager, con­fi­dant and men­tor in all things Iraqi. “We can be killed by Zar­qawi or the Americans.“

Since return­ing, it feels like I’m lis­ten­ing to the same record I’ve been lis­ten­ing to for a year, only with the vol­ume turned up. Don­ald Rums­feld, the Amer­i­can Sec­re­tary of Defense, says U.S. is win­ning the war and that the media are focus­ing too much on bad news. I know this because the press releases from the Amer­i­can Forces Infor­ma­tion Net­work tell me so:

Progress in Iraq Takes Back Seat to Vio­lence in Media, Rums­feld Says

By Petty Offi­cer 3rd Class John R. Guardiano, USN

Amer­i­can Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 26, 2005 — The “solid progress” being made in Iraq sel­dom gets the same level of media atten­tion as ter­ror­ist killings and behead­ings there, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald H. Rums­feld said today.

More­over, the Iraqi peo­ple, he argued, are win­ning against the insur­gency and, with the help of Amer­i­can and coali­tion forces, will prevail.

“The fact of the mat­ter is that the progress has been solid,” Rums­feld told George Stephanopou­los on the ABC News pro­gram “This Week.”

“It’s amaz­ing, it’s his­toric, what’s taken place,” he said. “Twenty-five mil­lion Iraqi peo­ple have been lib­er­ated, and they have now have a sov­er­eign gov­ern­ment. And they’ve had a suc­cess­ful elec­tion, and the hos­pi­tals and the schools are open, and they’re mak­ing good progress on devel­op­ing a con­sti­tu­tion. And they’re going to have a final elec­tion in Decem­ber of this year.”

Yet, none of these facts is well known to the Amer­i­can pub­lic, the sec­re­tary said. “They’re not as news­wor­thy, appar­ently, because (they) don’t get reported as much,” Rums­feld said. “What gets reported is that 10 Iraqis are killed (by) a sui­cide bomber, or an Amer­i­can sol­dier is killed.”

The sec­re­tary said this is not the media’s fault; it’s just the nature of wartime reporting.

“War is a tough, dif­fi­cult, dirty busi­ness,” he explained. “And when it’s reported, it leaves peo­ple with the impression–correctly–that it’s a ter­ri­ble thing. It’s everybody’s last choice, nobody’s first choice.”

Rums­feld said this has been true through­out Amer­i­can his­tory. “We know that this has been true in the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War. We know it was true in the Civil War. We know it was true in World War II (sic) and World War II,” he said. “If all peo­ple know is what they see on tele­vi­sion or read in the press–the neg­a­tives,” he explained, then they don’t see the progress that is being made.

Army Gen. John Abizaid, com­man­der of U.S. Cen­tral Com­mand, and Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., com­man­der of Multi­na­tional Force Iraq, are the peo­ple with the most direct knowl­edge of what’s tran­spir­ing in Iraq, and they “feel very good about the progress that’s being made,” Rums­feld said.

Casey told the Sen­ate Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee last week that only “one-tenth of 1 per­cent” of Iraqis are involved in the insurgency.

“For those of us who have spent many months in the field,” Abizaid told the com­mit­tee, “we see good progress in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We sense good progress against the extrem­ism that once seemed so per­va­sive in the region. … Progress in coun­terin­sur­gency and counter-terrorist work is not eas­ily rec­og­nized. Set­backs, casu­al­ties and dif­fi­cult prob­lems undoubt­edly remain ahead. … We will need patience and strength to achieve success.”

But while neg­a­tive media cov­er­age of war has been the his­toric norm, tele­vi­sion and the mod­ern media may have exac­er­bated the prob­lem in recent history.

On the NBC News pro­gram “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert, the sec­re­tary noted that accord­ing to his­to­rian David McCul­lough, author of a new book titled “1776,” if the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War had had the same type of media cov­er­age as the Iraq war, then “there wouldn’t have been a suc­cess­ful revolution.”

As far as Iraq is con­cerned, “the progress is impres­sive,” Rums­feld said. “I think they’re going to choose the path of light­ness. The sweep of human his­tory is for free­dom. Look at what’s hap­pened in Lebanon and Kyr­gyzs­tan and the Ukraine.”

The sec­re­tary said the Amer­i­can peo­ple can be opti­mistic about a good out­come in Iraq, but the opti­mism must be tem­pered with an under­stand­ing of real­ity. “We have to rec­og­nize that it’s a tough, tough, tough world, and there are going to be bumps in the road between now and then,” he said.

“Bumps in the road”? Just ear­lier today, pre­sum­ably before the Iraqi jour­nal­ist was killed, an Iraqi mem­ber of par­lia­ment was killed in a car bomb attack. I can’t even begin to tell you how many Iraqis have been killed in the weeks I was away. And how many more Iraqis, jour­nal­ists or oth­er­wise, will die because the Amer­i­cans can’t tell who’s friend or foe? Those aren’t “bumps in the road.” Those are signs that you went off the road with­out a map a long time ago.

Where do you even begin com­bat­ting the head-in-the-sandism, brazen pro­pa­ganda and revi­sion­ism of the above release. (By the way, it’s about the fourth or fifth one I’ve received in the last few days tout­ing the same theme, appar­ently in con­cert with Pres­i­dent Bush’s push to let Amer­i­cans know that every­thing is going hunky-dory.)

News flash: Iraq is a dis­as­ter. I’ve been back one day, and the air­port road was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We had to go around a fire-fight between mujahideen and Amer­i­cans while Iraqi forces sat in the shade of date palms on the side of the road, their rifles rest­ing across their laps. My dri­ver pointed to a group of men in a white pickup next to me. “They are mujahideen,” he said. “They are watch­ing the Amer­i­cans.” Indeed, they were, and so intently that they paid no atten­tion to me in the car next to them. We detoured around two pos­si­ble car bombs that had been cor­doned off while Iraqis cau­tiously approached.

Rumsfeld’s assess­ment of “good progress” on the con­sti­tu­tion is not accu­rate, as the com­mit­tee to draw it up still hasn’t com­pletely agreed on how the Sun­nis will take part.

When I was in Ramadi, I found the morale to be lower than expected. It wasn’t rock-bottom among the Marines of the 1st Bat­tal­ion, 5th Marine Reg­i­ment, but it wasn’t great. Most of the ones I talked to weren’t con­fi­dent they were doing any­thing worth­while, and were instead focused on get­ting home alive. If a few Iraqis had to die to make that hap­pen, well, war is hell.

I’m not sure who’s win­ning this war, the Amer­i­cans or the insur­gents. But I know who is los­ing it: the Iraqi peo­ple. Those bumps in the road are their graves.

In Ramadi

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FORT AL-RAMADI, Ramadi, Iraq–Made it here last night after a cou­ple of chop­per rides from the Green Zone. Chi­nooks and CH-46 Sea Knights (the Army and Marine heavy-lifting chop­per, respec­tively) are frickin’ loud. But all went well. We should be going out later today, although I’m not yet sure where we’re destined.

More later as time permits.

The Trouble with Weekends

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BAGHDAD — Iraq is a funny place some­times, not the least because of its peo­ple. For instance, they can be warm, funny and gen­er­ous. And yet, get a group of, say, 10 men together, and they soon fall to argu­ing about the lit­tlest thing. Hell, I’ve seen them argue even when they agree with one another. And I’ve seen a small group of men turn into a lynch mob like a light switch had been flipped.

But this is not a “look at the wacky Iraqis” post. This is a post about the hair-trigger tem­per of a pop­u­lace under the twin pres­sures of occu­pa­tion and ran­dom hor­ri­ble vio­lence. This post is about a peo­ple who, prior to the 1991 Gulf war and the sub­se­quent sanc­tions, were warmer, more hos­pitable and more gen­er­ous than they are now. And while Iraqis have always been sus­pi­cious of out­siders, they are now pos­i­tively para­noid. Dan­ger­ously so.

The lat­est out­rage to hit Iraq is the revised plan for the week­end. When I left on Feb. 2, Iraqis observed their own week­end: half a day off on Thurs­day and a full day off on Fri­day, the Islamic holy day. This was a lit­tle incon­ve­nient for us west­ern­ers work­ing here, since that meant we started work on a Sat­ur­day while our edi­tors were tak­ing these two days off. The only real over­lap in the Iraqi work­week and the rest of the world’s was Mon­day through Wednes­day and that drat­ted half-day on Thursday.

Well, three weeks ago, the Iraqi interim gov­ern­ment decreed that the week­end would hence­forth be two full days: Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. On the sur­face, this makes a lot of sense. It means gov­ern­ment work­ers won’t be mak­ing the haz­ardous trip to and from work quite as often, and it will allow Iraqis to inter­act with the rest of the world four out of five busi­ness days. But col­lege stu­dents, many of them belong­ing to orga­ni­za­tions pro­fess­ing loy­alty to pop­ulist cleric Moq­tada al-Sadr, are out­raged. They’re demon­strat­ing on uni­ver­sity cam­puses all over Iraq denounc­ing Saturday-as-holiday as a “Zion­ist con­spir­acy.” Why? Because Sat­ur­day is the Jew­ish sab­bath, and Jews are, well, the bad guys in Iraq. One of my staff here at the TIME house is furi­ous with the idea of tak­ing Sat­ur­day off, say­ing, “The Jews occupy Iraq and they want to take their day off.” (He also believes the Ira­ni­ans occupy Iraq because of the Sis­tani coalition’s vic­tory in the Jan. 30 elec­tions. He’s Sunni.)

At any rate, it now appears the Allawi gov­ern­ment will back down and make Thurs­day and Fri­day the “new” week­end, giv­ing the Iraqis only three work­days in com­mon with most of the rest of the world. But hell, that’s OK. I’m a free­lancer. I’m all in favor of set­ting your own sched­ule. [UPDATE: I couldn’t find any inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion on this, so I’m cut­ting it.]

On the sur­face this is silly. And some could point to this as just another exam­ple of the para­noid mind­set of many young Iraqis. But there’s a rea­son for this mind­set: For years, Iraqis have had to eat and breath con­spir­acy the­o­ries because so often there were con­spir­a­cies to con­tend with. (You think total­i­tar­ian states oper­ate with trans­parency?) And the dam­age of the United Nations sanc­tions over 12 years hard­ened Iraqis’ atti­tudes toward the world, caus­ing them to think, not unrea­son­ably, that the world was out to get them. A peo­ple who already sus­pi­cious of out­siders because of their Bedouin/tribal her­itage came to hate for­eign­ers because the cause of many of their prob­lems were for­eign­ers med­dling in Iraq. The list is long: The Amer­i­cans who betrayed them in 1991, the Secu­rity Coun­cil that aban­doned them in the years that fol­lowed, The Amer­i­cans in 2003 to the present, and now the wide­spread belief that Syria and Jor­dan (among the Shi’ites) and Iran (among the Sun­nis) are fur­ther med­dling behind the scenes to destroy Iraq by sup­port­ing either “ter­ror­ists” or Per­sian cats paws.

It’s not a coin­ci­dence that Iraq cur­rently has tense rela­tions with all three coun­tries in some form or another. The Kurds’ prickly rela­tions with Iran and Turkey aren’t help­ing mat­ters either. Until the Iraqis are able to stand up to their neigh­bors, who really are med­dling in many dis­rep­utable ways, they’ll never be able to dis­pel their dis­trust of the out­side world, work­weeks will remain unco­or­di­nated and the Jews will remain per­pe­tra­tors of dark plots to under­mine Iraq and Islam. Until the people’s con­fi­dence returns, regard­less of who runs this place, you’re going to have a coun­try that’s not ready to play well with others.

Back in Baghdad

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BAGHDAD — Yes­ter­day was an unevent­ful arrival day, spent meet­ing with the staff, say­ing hello and enjoy­ing the labors of our new chef (who can make a mean lasagna, oddly enough.) All was well. Until 9 p.m. or so.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Three loud explo­sions, close ones, split the quiet of the night. All the jour­nal­ists in the house — three of us — ran out­side to see a white plume of smoke ris­ing close by in the north. One of our guards told us another explo­sion hap­pened behind a build­ing to the west. And the third dropped a lit­tle to the left of that one. In short, three mor­tars or rock­ets hit close to the perime­ter of our com­pound. By and large they hit empty build­ings, and no one was hurt, but it was disconcerting.

We all piled into a sin­gle car with cam­eras and guns to look for the dam­age. Not the smartest of strate­gies, because as it turned out, every­one of us had for­got­ten phones, press IDs and other nec­es­sary items for trav­el­ing around Bagh­dad and inter­act­ing with police. The idea to head out was our photographer’s, who is so bored stuck here in Bagh­dad he’ll go chas­ing inef­fec­tual mor­tar attacks. After about 20 min­utes of cruis­ing the streets and get­ting ner­vous that the cops were not really cops, we decided to head back and we made it to the house with­out incident.

A real dan­ger in Bagh­dad, and one which is has appar­ently got­ten worse, is the fake check­point scheme. Insur­gents and/or ban­dits will set up a check­point while wear­ing stolen cop uni­forms. Once they see you’re a west­erner, they’ll rob you, shoot you, kid­nap you or attempt some other ghastly action against you. The way to stay “safe” in Bagh­dad is to Trust No One.

Our guards all joked that it was the insur­gents’ wel­come for me back to Bagh­dad. It had been quiet for two weeks until I showed up, they said. And then they laughed. Such a nice a wake-up call. Car bombs in Beirut seem almost quaint com­pared to this place, and I’d for­got­ten how casu­ally vio­lent it is here.

But it’s good to see every­one again. All our staff were all glad to see me and I returned the sen­ti­ment. It’s amaz­ing that these guys con­tinue to put their lives on the line to work for us and help us, and I just can’t believe it’s only for the money. We pay them well, but not that well. There’s a real affec­tion among these guys for us.

Any­way, that’s the lat­est from Bagh­dad this morn­ing. No real news to speak of, just what’s hap­pen­ing around our home.

On a some­what related note, my lat­est arti­cle for TIME is online and available.