For The Sake of Argument

Got this article from The Times (UK) and it definitely put me at the scene - like I was actually there. Good journalism indeed. See if you like it as much.

A Kalashnikov in my face, a knife in my ear, a masked thug screaming 'You're finished'
By Stephen Farrell


THE “hailstones” bounced off the roof and windscreen around noon, 20 miles from Baghdad. Fallujah hail — bullets.

Even before the lorry slewed across our path, I was spinning the steering wheel, veering away from the dozen masked gunmen hanging over the sides, some firing Kalashnikovs while others pointed rocket-propelled grenades at our zig-zagging car.

On to the hard shoulder, a loop as wide and fast as a three-ton armoured Mercedes can handle safely and we were hurtling in the other direction towards safety. Unless they hit a tyre. Hiss. Rattle. Tyre. Shit. So, six days after pictures of burning and dismembered Americans filled television screens worldwide, a British and an American journalist sit stranded in the semi-desert on the outermost fringes of Fallujah, looking through the windscreen at two RPGs aimed directly at our heads.

We were eight hours into Iraq, on the Amman-Baghdad highway, in the bandit country where no US Marines will come charging to our rescue because the coalition military is too busy quelling the insurrections that have erupted all around Iraq.

In front lies Fallujah, where Americans are laying siege to the hottest of Iraq’s many flashpoints. Behind us is the equally volatile town of Ramadi, where 12 Marines were killed on Tuesday. The Iraqis watching us from a weigh station, a tea hut and other buildings quickly melt away as the Ali Baba (bandits) seize us.

Over the next eight hours, we would gain an extraordinary insight into the men behind the shifting, complex matrix of thieves, idealists, patriots, Baathists, gunmen and Islamists whom the West lumps together under the label “terrorists”. But now our only concern is to save our lives.

If the Ali Baba look hard enough at our laptops and documentation they will find out that we have worked in Jerusalem and have just arrived from the capital of the hated “Israeliens”.

Time to start talking. Very, very quickly. I throw open the door and arms reach in, hungrily. Papers, money, identity cards and telephones are grabbed, knives go to throats and shrieks of “Britanni, Britanni, Amreeeeeki”.

My companion, Orly Halperin, an American freelance, is bundled into an orange and white taxi, screaming “No, no”. I push to be with her, not wanting to be separated. I jump into the car, straight into the barrel of a Kalashnikov thrust in my face. In my right ear a jagged Bowie knife. On my left a masked thug — the most deranged of the mob — headbutting me as he tries to attach a blindfold, and screaming incessantly. My pidgin Arabic cannot pick it up, but Orly recognises the words as “You are woman. We won’t kill you. But he’s finished.”

For the next ten minutes we repeat, like a mantra, “sahafi, sahafi, sahafi” (journalist) in stereo as the frenzied thieves rifle through wallets finding evidence of our “occupier” status.

As we drive through villages, the evidence of bandit country is for all to see. A vast no-go area for Iraqi police, where no US soldier would approach without heavy armour and back-up. Every village is guarded by masked youths with RPGs. Not much help there. Within minutes the car arrives at a house, and we are bundled at knifepoint to the gate. Then a black car pulls up and a young Iraqi leans out the window, talking abruptly and waving a walkie-talkie. The “Mujahidin” (resistance fighters) have arrived, and are taking charge. This lot are calmer, and more disciplined — a good thing. The bandits are clearly afraid of them — a bad thing.

They bring us to a second house, the home of the mukhtar, a village elder who settles disputes. This is a Sunni home. The bandits were Shia, they say. But despite the calm and the assurances, guns are still on display, the windows barred and we are perturbed to see the original kidnappers still lurking in the background.

Little is said or done until the leader, a tall, black-garbed figure who introduces himself as Abu Mujahid, arrives. Surrounded by aides, he strides across the room and I stretch out my hand. He produces a stump from inside his right sleeve, saying: “The Americans did this. Last year.” Not a good start.

“Why are you here? Who are you? What are you doing here?” he demands to know.

“We are journalists. We have come to report on what is happening in Iraq. If we are not here, the world will not know the truth,” we repeat. Over and over again, to different questioners, for the next eight hours.

Distributing business cards in Arabic and English, I realise there is no choice but to admit our recent arrival from Israel — any attempt at concealment will backfire, perhaps fatally. “I work in Israel,” I assert, dry-mouthed. They know already, might as well be open about it. “I work in Gaza. Egypt. Israel. Jenin. Quds (Jerusalem). Nablus. Jenin. Israel. Jordan. Palestine. Baghdad. Lebanon. Basra. Tikrit. Israel.”

Long pause. He looks again at the accreditation, my shaven head, considers the fact that we were alone, in the badlands, in an armoured car.

Weighing. Soldiers or journalists. Dead or alive.

“I need for you to tell the news,” he says, finally. Safe, maybe. “I need for you to ask Bush. Amreeka, what do you need here from Iraq? I need to know why the American Army is killing the people of Iraq,” he asks.

“The petrol,” he said, answering himself. “Democracy is killing people? This is the lie of America.”

Insisting there was no difference between Iraqi communities in the face of the foreign occupation, he insists: “No Sunni, no Shia, all Muslim. No fitna (civil war). No difference.”

President Saddam Hussein — the honorific title the surest telltale sign of a Baathist — was good for Fallujah, he insists.

“Why the killing? Why shoot the big rockets. Why the air force? Why the B25s (sic)? Now no find weapons of mass destruction. All the people now sit on the streets, they find no work. I have launched two or three rocket attacks on the Americans that day. Another I am shooting now may be ten rockets.”

And then he departs, the mood eases and dinner is produced. Roast chicken, pitta bread, tomatoes, cucumber and potatoes which we ate with our hands from one plate. To the echo of explosions outside — some American, some aimed at Americans — differences between the group emerge. Some are Baathists, others clearly less favour Saddam.

“The first car that took you was Ali Baba. The second car was Mujahidin,” a clean-shaven man explains, apologetically. “The Ali Baba want to take your money. They think you are soldiers. The mukhtar has told them you are sahafi. He is trying to get your things back.

“I am Arab. You are in our home. If Ali Baba come we will hit them. Now we are going to the other tribe to get back your stuff even if it means that we will be hurt in doing so because you are our guests.”

Another mutters: “The people of Iraq are very tired of the occupation and especially of the American soldiers and the Mujahidin.”

Others try to silence him, but he persists. “They sit in our homes and tell us to stay inside while they attack.”

But we are not out of the woods yet. Clearly practised interrogators, they return again and again to the same themes. You are soldier, you have short hair, you are CIA, you are American spy.

“I am civilian, I am journalist, I have just lost my hair,” I protest.

“You saw what happened to the Americans in the car,” one says menacingly. “Those four people they were CIA. If the Mujahidin catches any soldier of America or Spain or England army we will burn them and put a rope around their necks.”

Then, a miracle. Our bags start to appear. And in the first pile is a seven-year-old scuba diving card showing my former locks in all their glory.

“See, not soldier. Just bald.” Laughter, the ice breaks.

As we leave, the car and most of the possessions are returned, minus $15,000 in cash, flak jackets and other assorted desirables.

A young man insists on driving us to Baghdad.

“Most people found the old regime very difficult. America freed Iraq and got rid of Saddam Hussein. But now the Americans are becoming the problem.”

As he blindfolds us for first stretch of the journey, he apologises profusely. There are many robbers on the roads since the Americans arrived, he tells us helpfully.

“"We must take you. It is too dangerous.”

posted by ShopTastic @ 6:08 pm |