Baghdad life, bad to worse
(The Age, AU)
Thursday, June 08, 2006
The Iraqi insurgency has made the country
perilous, learns Paul Kalina.
BAGHDAD-based war correspondent Michael Ware politely
deflects a question about his personal life and
whether he has a partner or family.
"For matters of security I don't talk about my
personal life. Given the global reach of these guys,
I just don't advertise (anything)," says the
Queensland-born journalist during a brief visit home.
It's a chilling reminder of the extraordinary risks
the world-renowned Ware takes on behalf of his
profession.
"It's different, I'll give you that," he remarks with
a dry Aussie laugh.
Until recently, Ware was Time magazine's Baghdad
bureau chief, and the Seven Network's man on the
ground in the troubled war zone.
When he returns to Baghdad in a few weeks it will be
as a CNN correspondent. The boy from Brisbane can't
quite explain how he became a war correspondent. As
he told Andrew Denton on Enough Rope two years ago,
"I'm sort of asking myself that same question every
night before I go to sleep."
He trained as a lawyer but after working for one year
as an associate to Queensland Justice Tony Fitzgerald
decided "it wasn't the right fit, neither for me nor
for the law".
He became a general reporter at Brisbane's
Courier-Mail and had his first taste of foreign
reporting during the East Timor crisis of late 1999.
That led to a job with Time Australia but, after
September 11, 2001, he was called on by Time in the
US to help cover the Afghan War. Three weeks in
Afghanistan stretched into 13, and with the invasion
of Iraq coming, he crossed Kurdistan and northern
Iraq to cover that event. Since the fall of Baghdad
he has mostly lived in Iraq, where he expects to be
staying for a while, despite promises politicians may
make of a speedy end to the conflict.
As Ware makes patently clear - both talking to Green
Guide and in the PBS documentary The Insurgency, in
which he is one of several interviewees to deliver
sobering assessments of the troubles - there "is no
quick solution whatsoever".
"The Americans have crossed a threshold from which
they cannot easily return. Whether you're for or
against the war or its execution no longer matters.
There is a situation that's been created there that
to walk away from would have consequences too dire to
bear.
"Any withdrawal would lead to chaos in Iraq or, best
case, semi-partition and some kind of stability, but
through stakes that would be all but hostile to the
West. Terrorism in that environment can only but
flourish."
Reporting from Baghdad, says Ware, is fraught with
extreme difficulty.
"The dangers are multiple and ever-present. Moving
around is a major operation. You can't just jump in a
taxi and dash off to a press conference or meet an
official and do an interview. You need to have
security with you at all times, you need to live in
fortified compounds, you can make forays through the
city but they must be well planned and orchestrated
and very quick. You have to be lean and mean and
ready to move when you're outside your compound.
"There is a very small number of journalists that
live in the green zone (a heavily guarded area where
US occupation authorities live and work) but by and
large the bulk of the press corps lives in what the
military calls the red zone, essentially out among
the Iraqi population.
"In 2003 it was a totally different war. We could
drive the length and breadth of the country at
night-time, there was no problem, we could day-trip
to cities that have now become famous, like Fallujah
and Ramadi. However, by the beginning of 2004 the
highways were lost to us as journalists and civilians
as the US military rapidly lost control of those
arteries. By the autumn of 2004 we'd lost Baghdad as
large tracts fell under insurgent control or became
so destabilised it was impossible to operate there
for fear of kidnap or assassination. Increasingly,
our freedom of movement has become restricted. Even
now you're not safe in your own home."
To Ware, the controversy over journalists "embedding"
with the military is misunderstood.
"I'm able to embed with American units. Just before I
left, I was in the city of Ramadi with a company of
marines. These boys are literally in blood-and-guts
combat every day of the week. At this particular
outpost there are attacks on average five times a
day.
"I lived and breathed with these soldiers for over
one week and during that time five were wounded and
three were ambushed. So they do allow you access to
the harsh realities.
"It does involve a lot of manoeuvring and developing
of relationships, and the military doesn't allow
anyone to go anywhere. So you do need to develop a
certain rapport with the military where they might
not like or agree with everything you write and say,
but at least they accept that you play it straight
and tell it honestly and frankly."
Living in Iraq makes it difficult for Ware to
accurately assess the Australian media's coverage of
the war.
"From what I see it's a narrow snapshot. There really
isn't a sense of the depth or the complex layers of
the conflict. It comes across to me as not much more
than one-dimensional.
"Public interest in the Iraq war waxes and wanes and
you see peaks and troughs of interest, but it's the
single most enduring story on the global stage and
unfortunately it will remain so for quite some time
to come.
"The reverberations of this war, its legacy, is going
to ripple across the Middle East and beyond for far
too many years to come. This is history unfolding."