The Hindu Business Line : Mission Impossible

IT was the last week of September 2003, when one made a maiden trip to Iraq to report on the goings on in that troubled and occupied nation. Nothing could have prepared us for what we found in Iraq then and the contradictions that confronted us were simply mind-boggling.

The same angry, frustrated and militant people you find in images, dancing in delight and triumphing over the charred bodies of American contractors or soldiers, some of which they have gruesomely and inhumanly dangled from atop a bridge, screaming their lungs out and asking the Americans to leave appeared as gentle as doves. Gentle, smiling, friendly and generous in the face of immeasurable adversity. An added bonus was the fact that they simply loved India and Indians. The moment you said, Indian, they would place their hand on the heart and say, "then you are more welcome. India is a great country."

In those days the wide and superbly laid out highways and freeways leading up to Baghdad were effectively reduced to less than half their width by American tanks and humvees and rolls of barbed wire flung across the roads to block them. Traffic which should have otherwise moved easily at an average of 60 km per hour had to crawl as the American soldiers mounted atop armoured vehicles scrutinised each and every vehicle, barking out at some of the drivers to pull alongside the road while the vehicles and its contents were searched and its occupants frisked.

As one wearily sat through huge traffic jams, and felt an immense sense of tragedy at finding a sovereign nation at the mercy of an occupying force, it was amazing to find the Iraqi drivers and other occupants of the vehicles lined up on both sides of the road waiting patiently, chatting and joking. The jokes were obviously directed at the American soldiers and the laughter that followed was invariably full-throated. It was so frustrating not to be able to understand their dialogue in Arabic and even those who spoke English politely declined to translate the jokes with a smile and the words "not to be heard by a lady."

Whether it was in Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala or Kufa, the story was the same. Naturally, one kept asking the Iraqis how they could be so patient and so casual about their plight. Did their blood not boil at being treated like criminals and thieves in their own country by the occupiers? Most of all, how could they laugh and joke at the kind of miserable lives they seemed to be leading? No jobs, no medicines for their sick, power cuts, and above all, oil shortage in the country with the world's second largest oil reserves and yet they could laugh? Without exception, the answer was the same.

"We give the Americans (it was always "Americans" even though in Karbala the coalition troops were Polish and in Najaf they were Spanish) one year's time. If they don't leave by then, we throw them out," they said with a flourish of the arm and a conviction. And most of the time, this came from Shiahs, who did not exactly love Saddam Hussein. Then of course this appeared like rhetoric, but exactly one year down the line, the words sound ominous. It's exactly a year since the Saddam regime fell and the bloody and violent battle going on in Iraq brings back to mind those words with an ominous ring. As the Americans are getting back home more body bags after the cessation of hostilities, than during the actual war, Iraq is turning into a virtual inferno.

Ironically, while every coalition forces casualty is counted, reported and mourned, nobody has a clue how many Iraqi civilians are dying in the bloody conflict. What is worrying the Americans much more is that while earlier they could dismiss the violence in Sunni-dominated areas as "acts of desperation from foreign jihadi groups, criminals, Saddam supporters", and that in the Shia belt as "in-fighting amongst rival Shia groups", they suddenly realise that the attack against the coalition forces and western citizens is much more broad based, pointing the needle of suspicion at the Shia and Sunni groups even sharing intelligence about their targets. The number of times Baghdad's Sheraton and Palestine Hotels have been attacked is a clear indicator that the Iraqi militants are targeting all the westerners who stay at these upmarket hotels. With the Japanese citizens being held hostage and the Iraqi groups making it clear that the citizens and interests of no country that supports the coalition's occupation of Iraq by sending its troops, will be spared, it now appears that western journalists are no longer safe in Iraq.

On Sunday morning, The New York Times' John Burns described on the CNN how he and some others were lured to the Grand Mosque in Kufa, where the firebrand Shia leader Moqtada al Sadr is suspected to be hiding - an arrest warrant has been issued in his name "under the guise of a press conference, and then captured, blindfolded and driven around a desert area for sometime, before being suddenly released and without any explanation too. There is no doubt that reporting out of Iraq" not from the rooftop of the Sheraton but the streets of a Mosul or Karbala" is going to become increasingly difficult in the coming days, particularly for western journalists.

Most American and British media organisations have armed guards accompanying journalists but obviously, going by the account of the journalist interviewed, this is not going to help much in the coming days. So should the journalists themselves carry a weapon, asked the CNN anchor to Rodney Pinder from the International News Safety Institute. Certainly not, responded the man. "Already the militants are picking up journalists and accusing them of being spies. In such circumstances, if they find him carrying a weapon, he is dead." When anybody asked a visitor to Iraq six months ago how conditions were in Iraq he/she would get a uniform reply. "It's a mess and is bound to get worse." Well, as US President George Bush's ratings are coming down, as reconfirmed by the latest Newsweek poll, things are getting impossible in Iraq.

At the moment, getting any semblance of order in Iraq seems to be Mission Impossible. When the heat gets impossible to bear, the occupiers might beat a tactical retreat, leaving behind a greater mess, more misery and more violence than that witnessed during Saddam's oppressive regime.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in