DON MURRAY:
The siege
January 28, 2005 | More from Don Murray
Don Murray is one of the most prolific of the CBC's foreign correspondents, filing hundreds of reports - in French and English - from China, Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. He is currently based in London as the senior European correspondent for CBC Television News.
During his 30 years with CBC, Murray has covered a multitude of major stories, including the advent of perestroika and glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union. He wrote A Democracy of Despots, a book documenting that collapse and the rebirth of Russia. While in Berlin, he covered the peace agreement ending the war in Bosnia and, in London, covered the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the peace agreement in Northern Ireland. He authored Family Wars, a major feature article for the International Journal paralleling the troubles in Northern Ireland and the war in Bosnia. In recent years he has covered the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Baghdad, on the eve of elections, is a dangerous and nervous city.
We flew in as rain fell from the sky in torrential sheets. The flight had been delayed for two hours "for security reasons." As the plane approached the Baghdad airport, passengers were told there would be another delay before landing "for security reasons." The aircraft circled tightly for half an hour and then dove for the runway.
We landed in a city within a city. The airport sits in the middle of what is now known as Camp Victory. This is a vast American military compound where thousands of American soldiers are dug in and fortified against the shadowy insurgents who roam the streets of Baghdad beyond the perimeter.
Somewhere in this vast area the prized prisoners who led the former regime – Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants – are awaiting their trials and their fate.
"You from CBC News? Awesome!" This was a young, excited soldier who explained his family lived just below the Canadian border in Maine. He had grown up watching and listening to the CBC and its news, "kick-ass news" as he put it. This was a concept that, while apparently flattering, was unfamiliar to me.
The soldier was excited because he was going home after a year of duty in Iraq. Where had he served? I asked. He hesitated. "Abu Ghraib," he said after a pause. "But I came after...after all that." All that was, of course, the scandal of prisoner abuse at the prison photographed by the abusers themselves.
The rain could not dampen his nervous enthusiasm. He was escaping a country that he and his colleagues had come to see as a sort of prison for them. His enthusiasm was tempered by two things. He was a hockey fan but he would return to darkened NHL arenas. And his escape from Iraq was likely to be short-lived. He would almost certainly be posted back in the coming weeks.
It took half an hour to drive to the edge of the airport area, the frontiers of Camp Victory. It was now past 8 p.m. and dark. This, the security experts had advised, was not the time to be out, or the road to be on. In the days that followed our arrival, roadside bombs on the main highway leading to the airport were set off, killing one American soldier and injuring several Australian soldiers.
We quickly left the main highway and worked our way through Baghdad's suburbs on smaller streets. They were wet and almost empty. As we came to the centre of the city, all the buildings were dark. The city looked abandoned. The storm had knocked out the already shaky electricity supply.
It seemed that insurgents liked the heavy rain no more than we did. Our trip to our hotel was quick and without incident. Others had not been so lucky.
In the week before our arrival, according to figures kept by Western security companies with access to data compiled by the American military, Baghdad was hit by seven suicide car bombings, 37 roadside bombs and 52 insurgent attacks involving automatic rifles or rocket-propelled grenades. The suicide bombs alone killed at least 60 people and injured 150 others.
Western journalists appear to be particular targets of insurgents. Several have been kidnapped. The French government has warned all its journalists to stay away. Two French reporters were held for four months, and released only in January. Days later another reporter was kidnapped along with her interpreter. They haven't been heard from since.
The overwhelming temptation is to resort to what is now called "hotel journalism" – sitting in a barricaded fortress, phoning around, sending out Iraqi "fixers" to talk to people, and then packaging the result.
The safety of our fortress depends on American troops stationed around the area and, more particularly, on the Babylon Eagles, quietly rebaptized the Babylon Beagles by hotel residents. This is a group of Iraqi security men who replaced a private American security firm a few weeks ago.
They could best be described as intermittently painstaking, although perhaps not thorough. On the night of our arrival we stood in the rain for 45 minutes while they went through our cases. To our bemusement, they spent much more time going through our clothes than our electronic gear.
We were accompanied by two armed security men. One was scratching his head hours later. "I showed them my gun but they seemed much more interested in taking my mobile phone apart."
Gone are the days of a year or even nine months ago when you could just leave your hotel and go out to ask people what they thought of the political situation or the bombs. Now it is simply too dangerous.
But we (producer Heather Abbott, cameraman Richard Devey, and Chris and Mick, the two armed security men) have been out. Each trip is planned, each route is analysed and each excursion is to meet someone – a politician, an Iraqi commentator, a foreign adviser.
The irony is that, at the other end, we find these people, too, are barricaded in, frequently accompanied by men with guns.
We talked with one Iraqi who described the bleakness of his daily life. "The house on my left, the man was shot and killed. On my right, the crazies kidnapped my neighbour. The pharmacy at the end of the street? They murdered the pharmacist. I like to sit and talk with friends at night. But no one goes out at night now. I sit at home alone and have a drink. It's bad."
He sent his wife and children to Jordan two weeks ago.
Trips around Baghdad are quick. Gone are the immense traffic jams of a year ago. The fear of car bombs and of straying too close to American patrols now keeps many Baghdad residents off the roads.
So does the lack of gas. On our rushed trips we usually see one or two immense lineups of cars. They're waiting to get to the gas station. The rule of thumb now is that you must set aside a whole day to fill up. Some men send their wives. The lineups are segregated by sex. The women's line is shorter.
The worst trips have been to the heart of power, the media centre in the fortified Green Zone. The American military put up new, temporary roadblocks on the approach roads each day. The last time we drove it took us 45 minutes to reach the aptly-named Assassin's Gate. A year ago it would have taken 15 minutes. Then we had to walk in, through five checkpoints. One hour and 25 minutes later we were inside.
There chaos reigned. Angry crowds surged around doors. At one, a man with a large dog on a leash appeared to force the hordes back. These were journalists, mostly Iraqi, clamouring for passes from the Ministry of the Interior and the Electoral Commission.
Inside the rooms, anarchy aptly described the scene. Each journalist had to fill out a form. Many of these were on the floor, seemingly never to be recovered. At a table harried officials were hunched over their documents. One checked completed forms. A second signed them. Another filled out the necessary press cards. A fourth stamped them. Someone else presided over the plastification of the documents. The process took several draining hours.
In the end these credentials will be all but useless. The country is being shut down and sealed off for the elections. The borders and the Baghdad airport are closing. Road travel between cities and within cities is banned for more than three days.
Only a maniac would walk around Baghdad, and even a press card wouldn't get him into a polling station. Only a privileged few have been issued those credentials. It is a dubious privilege. Insurgents have polling stations in their sights.
Several Iraqis we've talked to are going home to wait out the election siege. They won't vote. They're too fearful. But for everyone who won't vote there is at least one who will. People talk of it as their duty, despite the danger. They see it as their only rampart against the insurgents.
They also see it as a way of arming their new government with the legitimacy to deal with the Americans. Most Iraqis probably welcomed the coalition invasion that toppled Saddam. Now very many would like to see the Americans leave. Their vote, they hope, will equip their new leaders with the power to call for that departure.
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