The Circuit (15 page)

That particular morning we were making a very short run, from the well-guarded Sheraton/Palestine hotel complex in Baghdad to the Green Zone – an even more heavily fortified area. The journey from point A to point B was approximately two miles, but they were dangerous miles. The Sheraton/ Palestine was where most of the world’s media had based themselves along with scores of American contractors working on Iraqi reconstruction projects. It was, in my view, the second biggest target in all of Baghdad. The only bigger draw for insurgents was our destination that morning: the Green Zone, headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, or CPA, and the seat of American power in Iraq.
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CNN had a large presence in Baghdad and I was one of a handful of advisers assigned to look after the various correspondents and crews. The task of running CNN staffers from their bureau at the Palestine to ‘pressers’ in the Green Zone was carried out several times a week. Perhaps that explained the attitudes of the two young producers. The more someone makes a journey without incident, the more likely they are to become lax about security. My clients probably thought I was being overly cautious, but I didn’t care what they thought of me. I wasn’t there to be their buddy. I was there to keep them safe.

We turned out of the secured parking area of the Sheraton/ Palestine with a local driver at the wheel, me in the passenger seat and my clients in the back. As a passenger, I lost the ability to immediately control the vehicle but I gained a wider window to spot potential trouble and avoid it; an advantage given that we were travelling in a soft-skinned 4x4. The situation at the time was such that people were getting their arses in gear to get proper armoured vehicles but there was a backlog of demand. I took comfort in the fact that I was armed with my preferred weapons: a 9 mm concealed in a pouch buckled around my waist (there was no point in tucking it into the front flap of my body armour when I was wearing it covertly underneath my clothing) and an AK47 short for the vehicle. Both weapons were handed to me by AKE as soon as I’d crossed the border into Iraq.

From the hotel we headed north-west along Abu Nuwas, a street which parallels the river Tigris. The road was lined with small shacks housing cafes. The cloud cover was dense and people were dressed in heavy coats to shield themselves from the damp morning mist. As we drove, I noticed dozens of vehicles parked on the sides of the road; many were old. By that point, anyone advertising their wealth and status by driving a flash car around Baghdad was asking to be car-jacked or abducted.

But the Iraqis still took pride in their beat-up cars and trucks. I spotted three men pushing an old Toyota to a washing point which was no more than a long hose coming from a cafe. At the same time, from the corner of my eye, I noticed a vehicle driving the wrong way up a one-way street.

Your mind is always racing when you’re travelling from A to B in a hostile environment. Things that seem completely innocent under normal circumstances can suddenly appear menacing; a group of men gathered round a vehicle could be insurgents conducting surveillance. A car driving the wrong way could be a suicide bomber closing in on a target.

I looked at the grey skies stretching over the city. The weather conditions would make a suicide bombing or IED attack that much more lethal. Detonating an explosive in overcast conditions is like placing a bomb in a biscuit tin; the pressure becomes trapped below the clouds, magnifying the force of the blast. As my eyes scanned the road ahead, my ears filled with the sound of the two producers chatting away in the backseat.

‘Keep a lookout for anything that appears suspicious or unusual,’ I told my clients. ‘I need your eyes and ears.’

They seemed to ignore me and kept on talking.

We crossed under an overpass where Abu Nuwas Street turns into Rashid Street; a very downtrodden road lined with old, traditional brick buildings that are primarily used for storage. My eyes skipped between the windows and alleys, searching for signs of movement. It was a great place for snipers to lay up and for insurgents to initiate IEDs. From Rashid Street we turned right and drove to a roundabout circling Tahrir Square; the pre-war heart of Baghdad and home to the Monument of Liberty, one of the capital’s most famous landmarks. Measuring twenty feet by fifty feet, the concrete sculpture commemorates the 1958 overthrow of Iraq’s British-backed monarchy. As we swept past, it reminded me of something out of the Soviet Union with its heroic silhouettes symbolically reaching towards a glorious future.

From where I was sat, it was difficult to imagine that kind of optimism having existed in Iraq. On the north side of Tahrir Square is the Thieves Market; a huge open-air bazaar where you can buy all sorts; from cheap trinkets to rare antiques. I saw vendors getting ready for the day, laying out bits and pieces to sell or barter. Since the invasion, the Thieves Market had become a very dangerous place to do business. Fatal shootings were common. But that didn’t put people off from going there. For many Baghdad residents, selling possessions had become their only means of support. Before the March 2003 invasion, Iraqis enjoyed near universal employment thanks to a large military and bloated Baath party bureaucracy. One of the first things the CPA did when it took over was disband Iraq’s military and blacklist former Baath party members from working in government. Practically overnight, millions of Iraqis were thrown out of work with no prospects for the future. For insurgents, it was a bonanza. Every unemployed youth in Iraq was a potential recruit.

We followed the roundabout from Tahrir Square onto the Jumhuriya Bridge, one of nearly a dozen linking the city’s halves. It was still early and there wasn’t much traffic, pedestrian or otherwise; precisely the kind of conditions to inspire a false sense of security. As we drove, I looked to either side, mentally mapping the locations of violent incidents that had happened since the US-led invasion. To my left, I could see as far as the Karada District where Baghdad University is located. The University had become a prime spot for kidnappings and abductions since the fall of Saddam’s regime. To my right, I could make out three bridges. On the eastern bank of the farthest bridge was the Iraqi National Museum. If I thought they’d be interested, I would have offered my clients a lesson in recent history. Five months earlier, in July 2003, a twenty-four-year-old British freelance journalist from the Scottish Borders was shot dead outside the museum. He wasn’t wearing body armour nor was he accompanied by a trained security adviser. Iraq was the first and last war he ever covered.

The view from the Jumhuriya Bridge with its catalogue of brutality focused my mind for what lay ahead: Yafa Street, the final and most treacherous leg of our short journey. Yafa Street dead-ends into the Green Zone, but like many features in Baghdad, it wasn’t designed that way. Before the war, it ran east from the Tigris into a heart-shaped series of overpasses that pumped traffic into the four corners of the capital. But the American-led CPA, in its infinite wisdom, located the Green Zone smack in the middle of this critical artery. Rather than move in all directions, traffic travelling east on Yafa Street was forced to divert north-west along the perimeter of the Green Zone.

The results were as dangerous as they were inconvenient. The re-route around the roughly ten-square-kilometre Green Zone triggered bumper-to-bumper traffic jams at all hours, including early morning. One of the worst things you can do in a hostile environment is remain stationary in a vehicle or get caught up in dense traffic where it’s nearly impossible to manoeuvre away from an incident. Driving on any stretch of Yafa Street was hazardous. But the riskiest portion was where the Green Zone cut through it; a traffic choke point which I couldn’t avoid. It was the drop-off point for my clients.

As we headed onto Yafa Street, I felt like we were driving into the jaws of a crocodile. So far, CNN had got away with their runs to and from the Green Zone. But the more times they did it, the greater the chances of something happening. It’s the law of averages.

As traffic inevitably slowed to a crawl, I searched for potential exits; places where we could jump the kerb and turn around on the pavement in the event of an IED or vehicle-borne bombing. I kept a close watch as we passed the primary vehicle checkpoint for the Green Zone: Assassin’s Gate. The name was appropriate. Insurgents had attacked it numerous times.

A few hundred yards further east was my clients’ final destination: the checkpoint for the Iraqi Convention Centre where the CPA held its pressers. Unlike Assassin’s Gate, the Convention Centre checkpoint sat a couple of hundred yards off the road and could only be approached on foot. I could see from the vehicle that a queue had already formed. It wouldn’t take much for an insurgent to wade into the line and open up with an automatic rifle or detonate a suicide vest. Obviously, hanging around there longer than necessary was not a good idea. So you can imagine how stunned I was to see other members of the media standing near the side of the road outside the checkpoint. It was unclear whether they were waiting for colleagues or killing time ahead of the presser. Either way, they were endangering themselves unnecessarily.

Our driver pulled up at the base of the traffic choke point to let us out. I asked him to keep the engine running and turn the vehicle around while I escorted the clients through the checkpoint and to the Convention Centre inside the Green Zone. Both my clients got out of the vehicle without their body armour and helmets.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Going inside,’ said the male producer.

‘Not without your body armour and helmets,’ I said.

He looked at me as if I’d just said something completely preposterous. ‘We don’t need body armour in the Green Zone,’ he said.

I reminded him that the Green Zone had suffered numerous rocket attacks, some of them fatal. I also pointed out that there was no guarantee that our vehicle would be the one to collect them after the presser.

‘Better to have all your kit with you than be stranded without it,’ I said.

The female producer listened to me and grabbed her body armour. The male producer walked away from the vehicle empty-handed.

The Convention Centre checkpoint resembled much of the Green Zone’s perimeter: a collection of razor wire, blast walls, sandbags and heavily armed soldiers. Head on, it gave the sense of being a highly secured area, which was misleading to say the least. The checkpoint was flanked on one side by a car park and on the other by some disused buildings. Insurgents could lie up in either area for hours or even days waiting to strike.

The Americans guarding the checkpoint didn’t seem switched on to that or other possible attack scenarios. I got the sense they were very blasé about security, perhaps because they hadn’t experienced an incident in a while. I kept our vehicle in line of sight as I walked my clients through the queue. If something did happen, the first thing the Yanks would do was shut the gates, leaving everyone outside to fend for themselves. I didn’t want to be searching for our vehicle in the middle of a panicked mob. After a few cursory searches and flashes of their media credentials, my clients cleared the checkpoint and headed on to the Convention Centre. The morning was looking up. I had delivered the producers safely to their destination. Now all I had to do was get myself and the driver back to the hotel in one piece.

As I walked the few hundred yards to our vehicle, I noticed how well it blended with the rest of the traffic. It was very low profile for Baghdad, which meant insurgents would be less likely to single it out. That’s the key to operating successfully as a security adviser in Iraq or practically any other hostile environment; remain as inconspicuous as possible. Driving an unremarkable vehicle, concealing weapons, wearing body armour underneath clothing – all these things help. But external trappings are only part of it. Maintaining a low profile also extends to conduct. It’s imperative to behave respectfully towards the local population; try not to offend people, observe local customs whenever possible and always remember to act like a guest and not a conqueror.

The driver had pulled up on the pavement about twenty yards east of the base of the traffic choke point. The short distance from myself to the vehicle stretched out before me like an ocean of chaos. Horns were beeping from all directions as frustrated drivers inched their cars and trucks through the log jam.

Suddenly, the normal traffic sounds were drowned out by revving engines and screeching tyres. I looked to my right and saw a convoy of four white 4x4s thundering out of the Green Zone. It was a commercial security detail. Men were hanging out the windows, brandishing weapons and screaming at the top of their lungs, ‘Get the fuck out of the way!’

Terrified pedestrians ran for cover while drivers tried in vain to manoeuvre themselves out of the path of the convoy. From the way they were acting, waving weapons, screaming aggressively, ramming vehicles aside, the men in the 4x4s appeared as if they were escaping an enemy attack. I had been switched on to potential hazards from the moment I’d left the Palestine and I couldn’t see anything in the vicinity that would warrant that kind of stance.

I would learn soon enough that the security detail didn’t need a reason for their actions. Without warning, one of the men in the convoy swung round and aimed his rifle directly at me.

CHAPTER 15

I looked at the security adviser pointing his weapon at me and shook my head in disgust. I thought my biggest worry on this assignment would be insurgents. It turned out the first people to target me in Iraq were members of my own profession.

Two Iraqis standing next to me had witnessed the entire episode. They glanced over as if to say, ‘We’re all in this together.’ Good thing they didn’t realize what I did for a living. The look of hatred on their faces was unmistakable.

I was embarrassed that those ‘advisers’ in the convoy had the same job title as me. The worst part was I knew there were more like them in Iraq.