The As It Happens Files

by Mary Lou Finlay

  For a while, though, the war went quite smoothly. The Americans and their allies made steady progress toward Baghdad, encountering little in the way of serious resistance, and our own well-planned campaign to cover the war went just as smoothly. All regular programming had been suspended for the time being, so the whole staff was available to pitch in. My shift settled into a comfortable mid-afternoon to about ten o’clock or midnight, with every once in a while a pee break or a few minutes to eat something. Apart from the fact that it was a war, we were having a pretty good time at work. I loved the fact that we were live all the time and I loved having a big story to cover every night.

  By the start of the second week, we were easing back into our regular schedule, although it didn’t get wholly regular for quite a long time. At As It Happens, for example, we never went home before ten while there was still a chance of a major development to cover, and that would be the case for weeks to come. Baghdad was taken and Saddam’s statue toppled, Iraqis danced in the streets and George Bush dropped onto an aircraft carrier in the Gulf to declare the war over. I recorded it in my own journal.

  We were both a little premature.

  Those were days, however, when it was still possible to hope for a good outcome. People who had opposed the war might even have been feeling a bit sheepish; after all, a tyrant had been ousted and a country liberated and it had all been pretty much a walk in the park.

  Five years later, Iraq smells more and more like Vietnam, more like a swamp than a park, a victory only for the enemies of peace and the enemies of the United States. Everyone blames the U.S.

  But for one young Iraqi in Baghdad, the truth is more complex.

  We first talked to Salam Pax (a pseudonym) in September 2003, barely six months after the invasion. He had flown to London to attend to the publication of his book, The Baghdad Blog, which was based on excerpts of a web diary he’d started when it first became apparent that the U.S. was going to invade Iraq. Salam was an architect by training, an engaging writer, a witty and keen observer of his environment—and he spoke excellent English. Above all, he had no known agenda, so he made an excellent witness, and we were hungry for witnesses. I began by asking him how his blog had got started.

  SP: Really, it was just something personal, small—just corresponding with my friend who left to Amman, Jordan, to finish his Master’s degree in architecture. I just thought, Instead of sending him emails, I’ll put it online. I didn’t expect more than six people to look at this, and then suddenly, I’d have 20 people going in there, asking me questions, sending me emails: “So how is it in Baghdad?”—stuff like that. So it got more and more and more totally out of hand. I had no control.

  ML: You were as contemptuous, if I may use the word, of the Americans’ plans as you were of Saddam and the Iraqi regime. How did you manage to get it out? I mean, what’s the process? How come they didn’t track you down or censor you—or kill you?

  SP: I was lucky, wasn’t I?

  No, it’s—you see, Internet was very new to Iraq. Someone came and set a firewall up and left, and we had Iraqis who were controlling the service provider, who were very new to this, and we were very new to this—and it was a cat-and-mouse game. Sometimes you’d find ways to go around the firewall undetected and you’d use it and they’d block it, and you’d find another way—and, basically, they had no idea about blogs.… There were so many anti-Saddam, pro-war blogs that were writing all sorts of things about what’s happening in Iraq, supposedly, but they blocked none of them, because they had no idea what this was. Between their not being aware of blogging and their being actually pretty stupid in the ways they were controlling the Internet—I just got between this and was able to update my site.

  ML: You say there were a number of people blogging from inside Iraq?

  SP: No, not from inside Iraq, because before the war, everybody was writing about whether they were pro or anti, how it was supposed to be in Iraq in the future, and there was this one single me writing out of Iraq, and I’d get so much hate mail.… You know, if I’m writing, “The coming war is not very good,” I’d get hate mail. If I’m writing, “Oh, let the Americans come in,” I’d get hate mail. So it’s a bit of a funny situation.

  ML: Because it was never all that clearcut for you.

  SP: No! I mean, it’s never black or white, is it? I cannot say, “Yes, let’s have war.” It’s my country! They’re going to drop bombs on my country!

  But then again, it’s very clear that we were not going to get rid of that regime, that Saddam would be staying there unless we had some sort of foreign intervention. It’s never black and white. It’s so complex.

  ML: What was the most frightening aspect of the war for you personally—and your family? When were you most in danger?

  SP: The first time the bombs started falling on Baghdad, I just couldn’t realize—I mean, I never thought that I’d be actually that scared. You think about it and you know that there’s no palaces near your house, you have no ministries, no government compound, but still—hearing these sounds, the bombs falling, it’s just so incredibly, absolutely frightening, you cannot imagine it.

  But the worst thing, actually, was after the war. For some reason, we had 15 rounds of shells from a tank being shot at our neighbourhood. Three houses were destroyed, a couple of houses were burned. Luckily, no one died; a couple of girls were injured. We had no idea what was happening. Suddenly, suddenly, our house was being attacked! It was very, very scary. You cannot imagine. For a week after that, you just cannot sit in a room if you’re not sure that you have at least four walls between you and the outdoors. That was the scariest part.

  ML: You wrote at one point that the general attitude seemed to be, “To hell with Saddam—and may he be quickly joined by Bush.” What is the attitude now?

  SP: You know, it’s difficult. They came in promising that everything will be okay in ten weeks or something. It’s never like this. They came in with really unrealistic promises, but because daily life has become a little bit more difficult these days, people forget that something absolutely amazing and important has happened: an era has ended.

  Something new is coming; you just need patience. You need to keep reminding yourself and the people around you that this is just a process. It’s a birth, it’s painful and something absolutely wonderful is going to happen in—I don’t know—five years ? three years?

  ML: Well, would you say there is widespread, general discontent at the moment, then?

  SP: You know, people need to feel there is progress, and because what has to be done is so huge, this progress is never going to be fast. Now they don’t see anything happening, and they just see it’s getting actually worse. You have these bombings now; it’s very unsafe on the street.… You should make people understand that it is on the right track—it will take time but it is on the right track; just have patience.

  ML: Are you back at work? Are you going to become a full-time reporter?

  SP: No, no, never a journalist. Of course, I’m an architect. Everybody hopes that the reconstruction phase will begin. There is so much to do, we want to be part of it—building Iraq.

  Our next encounter with Salam Pax came in February 2004, 11 months after the Americans had shown up. He was back home in Baghdad, and it was becoming clear that things weren’t going very well for the invader/liberators—and not at all well for many Iraqis. For Salam, too, the bloom was off the rose, but he remained hopeful that it would all work out in the end. The main thing was that Saddam was gone and the Iraqi people were free to write their own future. I asked him what had changed in the months since we’d last spoken.

  SP: Quite a lot. You know, it’s kind of—Whenever something really bad happens, like the last bombing near the Green Zone, you go through a week where you’re really down. You think it’s never going to get better. But usually, you kind of get over that, and it’s great to see people just getting on with their lives and trying to do something. Business is going great. You go t
hrough the streets of Baghdad and they’re full of merchandise, and people are buying and selling like crazy. And they’re seeing so much prosperity and money coming in, it’s unbelievable.

  So, it’s good and bad. Like today, with the bombing—that was really bad. But you know, you deal with it—and it’s great to see people going on with their lives.

  ML: Do you think the bombing will ever stop, though?

  SP: It has to at a point. I mean, look: what happened today, for example. It’s clearly to scare people off from joining the new police force, the new Iraqi army.…

  It’s so important for us to see the Iraqi police on the street. They are really, for most Iraqis, heroes at the moment, and you know, there are hundreds of people there at the moment, trying to get into the new police force. When these terrorists see that what they are doing is really not stopping people from trying to rebuild their country … it just has to stop. I mean, okay, they might be not the most rational people, these terrorists, but at one point, you kind of see how futile what you’re doing is.

  ML: Are you back at work?

  SP: Actually, yes. The great thing that happened just a week ago is that the firm I used to work with is now back to building the hospital they were building before the war, and they asked me to come and get my job back, which is great! Yes, excellent.

  ML: You’re very happy about that.

  SP: Oh yes, absolutely.

  ML: You’ll have a salary, for one thing.

  SP: [He laughs] Yes.

  ML: How are your family, then? Are they all trying to resume their normal lives as well?

  SP: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, my mom, at one point after the war, decided she’s never going to leave the house. Now, though, she goes out, shops with her sister and goes around the city and everything.

  My brother is back to his work. You have to be involved, you have to do things, and part of it is participating in your daily lives, your daily duties, and that’s the way everybody brings normal life back to the city. It’s been—it’s been a year now!

  ML: Mm. So are you talking at all about the Iraqi caucuses, about the possibility of a total handover to Iraqis? About elections?

  SP: Oh yeah, absolutely. This is the big discussion now, you know: how to do it, when to do it. Does Ali Sistani agree with what people are proposing? Are we ready for elections? This is really the next thing, because we realize that maybe we’re not totally ready to do things on our own, but this is the first step. We will have some sort of election to choose representatives who will actually govern the country—because the governing council at the moment can’t do much at all. I mean, everybody goes and says, “Why is the governing council not doing anything?” Because they don’t have the authority to do anything. We need actually a governing body which has authority. So yeah, absolutely—very excited about this, and everybody’s waiting for this to happen.

  ML: Why do you say the country maybe isn’t ready to completely govern itself?

  SP: You know, we’ve been like this closed room with no windows for 30 years. Now the doors are open and you’re blinded with the light; you cannot really find your way. It takes time to realize what sort of representation we need, who to choose for this very important role—leading the country through this very difficult time.

  And people in this stage, in this chaos, are so easily influenced by certain figures or people who are very—you know, politicians. I worry about the influence certain parties, political parties, will have on people—whether we will actually have honest elections. Fraud is a huge issue, because how are we going to control all of this? We don’t have the personnel to actually deal with this. I don’t think we’re ready for a one-vote-per-citizen thing; I think it’s still too early. We need to go through the process of electing neighbourhood councils who will elect representatives from them—this way everybody gets to learn something.

  ML: Your lives have all changed radically, have been changed, for better or worse, by the Americans and the British, notably, and there’s a lot of talk in London and Washington now about whether Tony Blair and George Bush were lying or were misled about the weapons of mass destruction. What are your thoughts about that?

  SP: Look, this whole discussion about the weapons of mass destruction and whether Saddam actually had them or not—it is so unimportant for Iraqis! I mean, we’re very glad that things have changed. We got rid of Saddam and we have hopes for a much better future. Now, the weapons of mass destruction—that’s really the problem of the governments of the U.S. and the U.K. I mean, if these people lied, then they have responsibility toward their people. For us Iraqis, we were never sure whether he actually had them or not, and to tell you the truth, most Iraqis would say, “If he had them, he would have used them.” Saddam was crazy enough to do it. So when the U.S. and U.K. troops came in and there were none, Iraqis went, “Okay, he doesn’t have them—and we’re very glad that he’s gone.”

  While the Iraqis were trying to sort out their future, Western reporters on the ground in Iraq were telling us about infighting among Iraqis, about problems with foreign agitators, with security. And coalition leaders were saying that progress was being made and the day was just around the corner when they’d be able to hand over the reins to the Iraqis and go home, although no one should be in too much of a hurry; the main thing was to do it properly.

  On the first anniversary of the invasion, we went in search of other Iraqi civilians to talk to, to see how things looked from their point of view. Hopefully, this would give us a clearer picture of what was happening than we were getting from either the military spokesmen or the reporters, who were mostly confined to the Green Zone in Baghdad. Finding these “ordinary Iraqis” wasn’t going to be easy—for one thing, the phones still weren’t working very well—so we gave the job to Gord Westmacott.

  Gord had come to As It Happens about the time that Chechen terrorists were storming a theatre in Moscow, taking hundreds of men, women and children hostage. The drama ended when a Russian SWAT team rushed in and gassed everybody, killing all the hostage takers and also a significant number of the people they were supposed to be rescuing. There were difficulties inherent in calling Russia and talking to people who only spoke Russian (Gord didn’t, but our technical producer Sinisa Jolic did, so that helped), and then, if you found someone, trying to persuade them to persuade someone in authority to come to the phone and talk to a Canadian about this big mess, in English. But in spite of all this, Gord got his man, and we scored the first interview with someone who was willing to identify the gas they’d used in the assault.

  Now we figured that Gord was the man to land us an assortment of Iraqis (phones or no phones), and he did. In early March 2004, we talked to a female French professor, a medical resident at Al-Mansoor Hospital, an electrical engineer and a senior high school student—all in Baghdad. We also interviewed a plastic surgeon in Basra and a telecommunications engineer in Erbil. The interesting thing is that the thrust of what they were saying—most of them—wasn’t so very different from what Salam Pax had told us: life was difficult but getting better, and they were really very glad to be rid of Saddam.

  Dr. Ali Fadhl Ali Nadawi, for instance, the medical resident, said that on the whole, conditions in his hospital were much better than before the war—better than they had been for a long time. I asked him about the resistance fighters, and he said, “I don’t call them resistance fighters; I call them terrorists. I am Sunni and I did not benefit under Saddam.” He added that people did not want the U.S. to leave at that moment.

  Dr. Nadawi shared Salam Pax’s reservations about a rush to democracy.

  “We don’t have proper parties,” he told us, “or political organizations.”

  He was afraid that too much haste would only produce a weak democracy, like Turkey’s.

  Zuhair Dhuwaib, the electrical engineer, informed us that the power grid was delivering power to Baghdad residents for about three hours at a time—three hours on, three hours off. The problems
, he said, were mainly inherited from “the old Iraq,” the result of poor maintenance and the damage done during the 1991 invasion and the fact that they’d built no new generators for the past 10 to 15 years. But there was sabotage as well; people were taking down the transmission towers in order to get their hands on the conducting metals, which they were selling on the black market. I asked him if people were angry about not having power. Some were, some weren’t, he said; it depended on your politics.

  “What about elections?” I asked Zuhair.

  “Impossible,” he said. They had no electoral system, no voters’ lists, no knowledge about the workings of democracy. It would be very dangerous, he thought, to have elections too soon. It would also be dangerous if the coalition forces left too early; if they left, there would be massacres. But he was optimistic about the long run.

  “I’m sure Iraq will be the greatest country in the Middle East. It’s just a matter of time. We have the people, the resources, the culture—everything except luck.”

  North of Baghdad, in Erbil, our Kurdish telecommunications engineer also felt it would take time to rebuild Iraq as a proper country. Iraq was a complicated place, with many religions and many ethnicities. What had happened in the past 35 years would not be undone overnight, he thought. He wasn’t plumping for Kurdish independence, because he believed Iraq’s neighbours would find this intolerable, but he did want a good deal of autonomy for Kurds within an Iraqi state. The plastic surgeon in Basra told us it was pretty quiet there at the time. He said they were grateful for British help in getting rid of Saddam, but now they should leave. He hoped the new Iraq would be a more tolerant place; he was Presbyterian himself.

  The most pessimistic readings of the situation came from two women. Quitaf Ahmed, our graduating high school student, told us her life was horrible. She dared not go out in the street for fear of being kidnapped. She said she was tired of war, tired of being scared and not at all grateful to the coalition forces for freeing them of Saddam. She wanted the Americans to leave within six months, just as soon as they had fixed everything they’d damaged. Nor did she think things would be better five years down the road. Quitaf said she was hoping to study dentistry at Baghdad University and had no plans to leave the city, but oddly, if she did leave, the place she wanted to go to was the United States!