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I am currently working on a book called Love
in Baghdad about my experiences of romance and terror in a
war zone. The story begins when I leave behind a failing relationship
on my first newspaper assignment and break into Iraq with British
troops.
From Chapter One Once we’d hit upon the scheme all thoughts of failure fled our minds. Perhaps they shouldn’t have, but we were going to have to lie and connive to get into the military zone and the best place to start was with ourselves. It was March the 17th and I, along with the journalist convoy travelling with me, knew that war could only be a few days away. We felt it in the air. Kuwait was dark and desperate with intrigue. The ‘embeds’ had come and gone in one bleak sandstorm and were now camping with their units in the desert. That left the rest of us – the ‘unilaterals’ – to plot how to break into the military zone that divided Kuwait from the Iraqi border. There were hundreds of us who weren’t going with the army, whether through choice or necessity, and we’d break each others’ legs cover the story. There was only one place to be when the war began that was riding in hot on the tail of the British and American tanks.
I hastily put on my British uniform. That was my addition to the scheme. If there was a problem I’d stop and pretend to be a British officer escorting some embeds up to the frontline. We were at the bottom of a hill that led up to Mutla ridge and the police checkpoint. The spot lights of the checkpoint glowed over the edge of the rise. There would be a couple of Kuwaitis officers with guns, a speed bump, and Allied military police and then we’d be into the zone. Endless streams of military traffic flowed past – tanks and armour on transport trucks, bulldozers and buses packed with marines straight from the airport. They’d barely have time to stop and think before war began. Mike and John were heading our group, Olga and Jens second, and me last. A phalanx of buses began to pass. I could see the red ember of John’s cigarette shine brightly and then go out. He suddenly pulled out of the layby and settled in-between vehicles out of sight. The rest of us sped into position. I had wedged myself between two large buses, whose white sides front and back looked like the sides of a cliff. A marine, peered out sleepily from the back window at me. We passed the armed police before the speed-bump. The lazy buggers weren’t moving, I realized to a growing feeling of elation. Next the speed bump and a British military policeman. I stared stoically ahead. I want to shout for joy. After waiting for 9 months, I was finally leaving the Kuwait behind. The MP tipped me the nod. Before me the motorway light traced a line ahead of me into nothingness.
** TOP 9 months before I had found some exciting things to tell the immigration officer on my first visit to Kuwait. The fat Kuwaiti behind his desk appeared tired. The long line of Pakistanis in dirty shirts and towering turbans on the flight before me had already forced him to overextend his powers of questioning, cajoling and bullying used to welcome visitors to Kuwait. ‘Why are you here?’ he began. Thrilled and uncertain at the words, I replied ‘I’m a journalist.’ In fact a barely published scribe just out of university but I was rapidly learning that people are happier to focus on the audacity rather than authenticity of their proclamations of profession. Or faith. ‘I’m here to cover the war against Iraq,’ I ventured. He didn’t look up ‘And where will you be living during your time in Kuwait. There was only one number in my note book. My mum had written it in on the first page, an old college friend of hers who she hadn’t been in contact with in 35 years. ‘I’m staying with a Kuwaiti princess. Can I just use your phone?’ It was August 2002, and I had just been appointed the Daily Telegraph’s Kuwait stringer. A stringer, the Daily Telegraph’s foreign editor Alec Russell, told me was not a job. It was barely more than the letter he handed me appointing me ‘Kuwait correspondent.’ But what it gave me, he explained, was the authority to claim a desolate corner of the world as my own. Alec himself had chosen the Balkans just before the Bosnia war, and provided a model of foreign correspondency and kindness. I’d get paid 10 p a word and they’d cover my phone bill. All I had to do was find the stories to send. It sounded like the job for me. I left university with a middling degree in English literature and the esoteric, though by no means original, conception, that as a young man I should sally forth into the world looking for danger and glory. I also wanted to write, to which end I’d already spent a year in India trying desperately to think of something grand but only ending up with a children’s story about loneliness and unhappiness. The war against Afghanistan had begun and I was listening to John Simpson massing with the Northern Alliance to enter Kabul from my little flat on edge of Calcutta’s slums. I didn’t feel that I should be there. Instead I felt the gulf that separated me from where I was and where I wanted to be. By the time I got back to England and contacted Alec about becoming Afghan stringer, the country had already slipped off the news agenda though it remained extremely dangerous. Kashmir, my next suggestion had never been on the news agenda, though it was also extremely dangerous. Needless to say I had been the only applicant for the stringerships in Afghanistan and Kashmir When I finally struck upon the idea of posting myself to Kuwait late one night in a Dorset pub, Alec was deeply relieved. ‘I think you’ve found your own little corner Jack,’ he said. I was overjoyed. Princesses, as a rule, are bad at understatement. ‘I must warn you things are rather makeshift here at the house,’ Rasha had said when I called from the airport. ‘I don’t know what you’d mother would say.’ I arrived at the palace on the shores of the Persian Gulf a short time later. It was anything but makeshift. Through great wooden doors, along a large marble hall and up a graceful twisting staircase I was led into the presence of Rasha al-Sabah, whose grandfather was Mubarak the Great was the founder of modern Kuwait. She was wearing an old T-shirt, a pair of cut off jogging bottoms, was short and squat, around 50, and had a fag in her hand. ‘You must be exhausted,’ she said with a twinkle in her eyes. ‘How long would you like to stay?’ It felt like a fairytale. My mother I assured her would be very pleased. That evening I went for a swim – on Rasha’s insistance several hundred metres away from her house. I shouldn’t be seen going for a dip outside her house, she explained, but not because she was worried about the impropriety. Rasha was first woman in Kuwaiti history to be appointed to a top post in the civil service, held a doctorate from Yale, and was a leading feminist in the Arab world. No, Rasha explained with the roguish air usually reserved for bashing Arabic chauvinism, the guards belonging to the deputy prime minister next door would probably try and shoot me if they say a naked white man diving off her sea wall. ‘This is an Arabian night afterall,’ she said, ‘and everyone is fearful of Ali baba.’ That term Ali baba was one I was to hear many times months later in Iraq during the plunder and violence that followed Saddam’s fall. But for now I pushed off into the still surprisingly warm, almost viscous water, and swam dodging between shoals of fish and a baby sea turtle that burped into the evening. The next day I had my first story. From Chapter 4 The village of Gul Ashab paid a heavy price for the welcome it gave us. One dead, eight seriously injured. The night air was filled with screams. Botty would wince and say ‘collateral damage,’ but I knew there were times when he must have wished he’d never seen the place. I certainly felt that way. Back when we first saw the village no knew that blood would be spilt. Gul Ashab was just another collection of mud hovels and half-finished concrete houses, unremarkable except that it stood at the foot of Bridge One, one of five crossings into Basra from which the British were laying siege to the city. An advance unit from squadron had been camped there for a week. The other bridges into Basra were seeing daily attacks by the fedayeen – suicide missions where Saddam’s fanatical followers pitched Kalashnikocs against the British tanks. But at Botty’s pitch the water in the Shatt al-Basra that Bridge One spanned slipped gently by. The fedayeen were consolidating themselves. At night, white pick-up trucks drove into the village and men could be seen moving on the opposite shore. A blast of 50 cal machine gun fire sent them scampering, but before there could be any push further north around Basra, Botty and the higher echelons needed to know what lay in store for them over the river. And that meant working over the villagers to find out what they knew. They weren’t keen to come forward. They were the A’dan, the Marsh Arabs, the pastorialists who once lived amongst the bulrushes, hunting fish with dynamite and feeding rushes to water buffalo. Thesinger wrote of them. Since then they’d been properly fucked by both Saddam and America. When American tanks spilled over the border from Kuwait in 1991 A’dan duly rose up in arms against the Iraqi dictator. They didn’t need much encouragement after 8 years of war against nearby Iran. Then the tanks left and it was payback time. Saddam drained the marshes, no small feat, and to do so he had to construct the vast Shatt al-Basra. Saddam’s canal the villagers call it, into which 2 million cubic tonnes of water and their livelihoods were drained. On the one side of the Bridge One, a few acres of Marsh land still stretched green and pristine, with a gentle mist in the early mornings. On the other side there was only barren mud, with the salt and mineral deposits oozing from the earth in the final process of desertification. The Marsh Arab were forced into villages to eke out an existence salt collecting. Gul Ashab was born out of the waste land. They didn’t know what to make of the British. Vague colonial memories were a lot better than the present hardships. Villagers would come late at night or first thing in the morning with Marsh Land news. There was a tank in a school building in the next town along; two mortar devices could be found behind those palm trees. One day they even brought forth a Republican Guard Sergeant who had been hiding in a chicken coup. One of the feared warriors who was holding up the American advance around the town of Nasuriya, this sergeant seemed anything but. He was short and unshaven and looking distinctly worried. The search revealed a roll of money in his sock and a card identifying him as a Republican Guard member, ‘Down with Saddam,’ he said weakly. On the front of the card, regarded as a badge of honour among Saddam’s henchmen, was a fierce-looking picture of the sergeant beneath the words ‘sent to serve god and Saddam Hussein.’ On the back was picture of Jean Claude Van Damme had been attached. ‘My hero,’ the sergeant said. He also carried a hand drawn map in his pocket, feared to be of British positions. But after close interrogation it turned out the picture of trees surrounding a little house was one he’d sketched in captivity for his wife. ‘‘I hope to plant the trees when I get home to make my wife happy, though at the moment we are having a divorce,’ he said. ‘There is much I have to do when this war is over.’ The villagers were relieved to passing the Sergeant on. Mohammed, the son of the Gul Ashab’s headman, and the point of contact with the British said,’ we can’t wait to get rid of him, he’s been eating all our eggs.’ Mohammed was a true son of Gul Ashab. Slim and regal in his flowing distasha, Mohammed was also rude, blunt, pragmatic, gullible and gregarious. He knew everyone in Gul Ashab because he was either married to them, or they his father-in-law. He hated Saddam and had an equal dislike for the side pointing guns at him, and for now that was the British. We were meeting with Mohammed everyday, distrust and guns rarely bars to business in Iraq. Mohammed wanted food and aid if the British moved into his village. ‘And you must promise not to leave us like you did in 1991,” said Mohammed. They were terms readily agreed to by Botty, who liked to honour his word but could always claim military expediency if he didn’t want to. In return Mohammed revealed how many Fedayeen occupied the village at night and where their cubby holes were. Mohammed had played a cool hand so far. He knew whose side he wanted the village to be on. Only at end of the negotiations did he reveal the knife-edge he felt Gul Ashab to be standing on in the no man’s land between the Brits and the Fedayeen. ‘Please you must come into our village and protect us,’ he implored us. After a few days of thought by Brigade, A squadron was given the order to move in. Mohammed wasn’t wrong about the knife-edge.
“Yesterday the British military’s
equivalent of meals on wheels rolled into Gul Ashab less than 24
hours after its liberation to scenes that would suggest the hearts
and minds of the Iraqi population in and around Basra have already
been won over. British soldiers drove through the village handing
out food from their ration packs to the villagers who had come out
onto the streets to welcome them. One man, Abduallah had walked
5 miles from a nearby village with daughter to offer a message from
his community: ‘Salam to the British.’ He picked up
a portion of fruit dumplings with custard and sniffed at is joyously.
‘I don’t think he knows quite what it contains,’
said Captain Rachel Thompson, attached to the unit. ‘It’s
not much we know, but after they’ve been risking their necks
to tell us where Iraqi tanks are located in the area the lads feel
we owe them something. I just hope the relief convoy comes in the
next couple of days.’ The rapture of the villager’s
welcome, in marked contrast to the scenes of violence witnessed
in newly liberated town further south, suggests that the closer
the local population has lived to the Ba’ath Party powerbase
in Basra, the greater is the feeling of liberation.” The squadron came under mortar attack a few hours later. I was writing up the story of the attack of Gul Ashab at the time, crouched over my laptop to hide the glare in an outbuildings of the factory where the squadron had parked. The first round hit a nearby rooftop. Time to move out – camouflage tents down, sleeping bags packed. I kept typing. The attack on Gul Ashab was one story I had to file. ‘Come on Jack get a fucking move-on,’ shouted Bradley, Botty’s dedicated but delinquent driver whose jeep I would follow out in convoy. Another mortar, slightly further away. The roar of tank engines. Bradley jumped into his jeep and drove over to Botty who was frantic with orders. Another mortar. They pulled out as I pressed send. Dark night, alone. I drove quickly after them. Gul Ashab was deserted. Like kings we’d
arrived but we left the place burning. The house of Mohammed’s
sister in law still smouldered where the kitchen stove had set fire
to the collapsed roofing. I saw Bradley’s tail light up ahead.
He’d driven over some barbed wire in his hurry to escape and
was hobbling back over Bridge One on a blown tire. I lost sight
of his tail-light on the far side and saw it again suddenly to my
right. It was pitch black. I could tell by the angles of the light
away from me, that I had to make a turn. There was a 8 metres drop
on either side of me. I turned the wheel slightly, and drove on.
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The
plan was deceptively simple. The military zone was protected by
a 2 metres high earthen rampart which stretched across the breadth
of the country. There were only two entrances in the wall and they
were heavily guarded. We couldn’t force our way in. Instead
we’d dovetail in with the endless bottleneck of military traffic
passing into the zone. With luck we’d slip by unnoticed. 60
miles to the north was the border crossing with Iraq and a collection
of farms where we could hide until the action began. The plan had
been struck between a group of Sunday newspaper journalists. I was
invited to join them. By any one’s standards 9 months in Kuwait
meant I was an old hand who would know my way around, and I valued
their company. Together we made a rag-tag team: Olga, a spunky Irish
who though she knew how to bat her eyelids at the right time was
very much the leader of the gang, Mike, tall and gangly with a tendency
to apply football analogies to war zones and John, who appeared
from certain angles to be no more than a huge mane of hair. He was
referred to mercilessly as the cowardly lion from wizard of Oz,
but was otherwise big hearted. And last of all there was Jens, half-photographer,
half-dreamer. We were due to leave Kuwait at 10.00 am to hit the
check-point for just after lunch when the guards might be a little
sleepy. 5 hours later we hadn’t moved an inch. Jens had just
remembered he hadn’t bought a flak jacket. When he finally
arrived in the hotel lobby he was wearing a flak jacket that looked
more like a crop top. It only had one armour plate. It might have
been a moment of humour. Instead everyone silently got back into
their jeeps. The sun was beginning to set and we were heading into
the unknown. Somewhere out there war was brewing.
Then
I saw the police lights in my rear view window. I considered accelerating.
I slowed down. Fuck. Fuck. Two Kuwaiti officers jumped out of their
car, guns drawn. ‘I’m a British officer, I lamely tried
to convince them. ‘We saw you waiting with two other vehicles,’
said the one, ‘Where are they?’ I denied all knowledge
and was led back a police cordon near the checkpoint. I noticed
for the first time the other unilaterals being escorted back down
the highway by the police, a long line of jeeps with petrol tanks
strapped to the roof, like my own, a sad breed of hunchbacks in
the night. A solitary journalist stood star struck in the bright
air raid lights. His eyes were shining with bewilderment, fear and
excitement. No doubt I looked the same. I got out of my jeep to
go and plead my case with the Kuwaits and the military police. They
only seemed to care that I was half frantic and gesturing wildly.
I told them I would get a colonel on the phone who had given me
permission to go through. It was a lie and they knew it. A short
while later the rest of my convoy returned, snagged too by the police.
I was in my jeep turning around at an officers’s bequest in
order to leave. Instead I gave Jens a wave, swung the car north
towards Iraq, and put my foot down on the accelerator. It was diesel
so the engine only turned over sluggishly at first, but that didn’t
worry me. I had an ace up my sleeve. I looked back to see two Kuwaiti
police cars giving chase. I slowed down again. But this time I merely
turned off my lights, flicked the car in 4*4 and headed off into
the desert, and I drove until it was just me, the glow of a cigarette
and stars in the desert. I was where I wanted to be.
We
entered Gul Ashab like kings. The villagers had known for several
days that we were coming after Mohammed had not been able to contain
his relief and excitement. The entire village turned out to welcome
us. They’d put on their party kit, the women in bright red
and purple robes, the men in bright white disdashas. Besides the
tanks, gangs of children ran. “Hello mister,” they shouted.
This was what liberation was meant to feel like. I wrote in the
Telegraph that evening,
There
was a ridge of earth where I went to sit at night and watch the
rockets land on Basra. They arched over the air until their taillights
disappeared before landing several seconds later with a speckling
of light and hollow boom. I had watched them over the course of
several evenings and the violence they denoted was always far away
from me, like fireworks at a display. Of course it wasn’t
me they were aiming at. I could afford to be detached. And detachment,
after all, was what a war correspondent’s was meant to feel.
Flick the safety catch on your biro, write boldly in the eye of
the storm. In Gul Ashab I had got my first taste of violence,