(Note: The PBS episode of
The Insurgency
is airing this week in
Australia.
Much
of this article is compiled of quotes from elsewhere
but there is a bit that is new.)
An Australian reporter in Iraq reveals a complex
battleground, writes Jacqui Taffel.
During the three years he has lived in Iraq,
Australian journalist Michael Ware has become
familiar with death. Friends and colleagues have been
killed - most recently two members of a CBS news
crew.
US soldiers whom he has followed on the front line
have died and his own life has been threatened.
"There have been three occasions that I know of
through my translators where I've been sitting in a
room and my execution has been discussed around me,"
he says.
As Time magazine's Baghdad bureau chief, Ware took
this kind of risk to cover all sides of the war. He
accompanied US forces into the battles of Tal Afar
and Fallujah and met former Iraqi army commanders who
formed the initial resistance to the US-led invasion.
And he has tracked the influence of external
anti-American forces, in particular al-Qaeda and
Iran.
In The Insurgency, a timely documentary made by US
public network PBS, Ware helps explain who is doing
what to whom. The Americans and their allies are
fighting three wars, he says. "One is against
al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups among the Iraqis;
then there's the war against the self-identifying
nationalists, Saddam's old military apparatus; then
there's this covert engagement with Iran and its
proxies and allies in Iraq."
It's a war that, as one American commander puts it,
"I can't lose militarily, but I can't win." Even more
disturbing is the Iraqi army commander who predicts
carnage if coalition forces leave and insurgency
groups turn on each other. Horrific civil war seems
unavoidable. All parties in Iraq recognise this, Ware
says. "America has crossed a threshold from which it
now cannot return. Whether people were for or against
the war, it's now too late for America to withdraw."
Ware's closest brush with death illustrates the
tension between the two main insurgency groups: the
nationalists, who want their country back, and the
Islamic militants, until recently led by Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, who are using Iraq as their base in a
global holy war. Investigating reports that Zarqawi's
men had taken over one of Baghdad's main streets,
Ware was pulled from his car and prepared for
execution. Death seemed certain but the nationalists
with him argued with his captors, who released him.
Since the documentary was made, the situation has
remained fluid between these two groups, Ware says.
"The pendulum that swings between al-Qaeda domination
of the insurgency and local domination, that's
constantly moving backwards and forwards."
The killing of Zarqawi last week means it may swing
back towards the nationalist insurgents. Ware
believes the al-Qaeda leader was betrayed partly
because of his extreme combat methods, including
using suicide bombers to kill Iraqi civilians. His
legacy, Ware says, will be demonstrated by the
pattern of future suicide bombings - "whether they
continue at the same rate and what kind of targets
they hit''.
Whether al-Qaeda's attacks turn from civilian to
military targets, the war in Iraq will continue, and
the militant group will continue to hold one great
advantage. In The Insurgency, Iraqi photo-journalist
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad describes a Yemeni fighter who
missed his wife and children but rejected his own
tears as the work of the devil, tempting him away
from jihad. "One of the most powerful weapons on a
battlefield is a man prepared to die," Ware says.
"For them, death is not a means. Death is an end.
It's what they want."
Ware is taking time out in his hometown, Brisbane,
but will soon be back in Iraq in a new role as CNN's
Baghdad correspondent. What compels him to return?
"I've had good Iraqi friends, members of my staff,
journalists, kidnapped, one of whom was tortured -
for me. We've been bombed. We've been shot at. It's
very hard to walk away from brothers like that. What
do you say: 'Well, thank you. Good luck. I'm off now
and if any of you survive this drop me a line'?
That's very hard."
And the story needs to be told, Ware says, because
the Iraq war represents a historic turning point. He
likens it to the beginnings of a new cold war. "It's
as though we have a front-row ticket to history," he
says. "The implications of this war are going to
reverberate for years and years to
come."