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TONY FITZGERALD, PRESENTER: Hello I’m Tony
Fitzgerald. In my former life as a judge I had the
privilege of working with a number of exceptional
young law graduates. One became a journalist who’s
now famous in the United States for his brave
reporting from Middle East war zones. He was
kidnapped three times and routinely risked death. Now
he’s home, dealing with the aftermath and telling his
riveting story for the first time. His name is
Michael Ware.
VOICE #1: According
to Time correspondent Michael Ware, beyond Kabul it
is a virtual no-go zone.
VOICE #2: …spoke to Michael Ware, an Australian
journalist who's spent the past two months on the
Peshmerga's front lines.
VOICE #3: Michael Ware, it's now almost 24 hours
since this kidnapping claim was made…
VOICE #4: One of the very few Western journalists to
have made contact with al-Zarqawi's group is Michael
Ware. He's a Brisbane boy who's made his name by
taking risks few other journalists would even
consider.
MICHAEL WARE: What at the end of the day always has
driven me in these environments, conflict
environments, and what continues to drive me most is
the intrigue and this intellectual thirst. I have to
know the truth. In conflict everybody lies. Our
government lies, their government lies, other
governments lie. There is no one pure truth. And we
never get to the truth. And the most that we can
possibly hope for are but shards of the true story.
FMR STAFF SGT DAVID BELLAVIA, US ARMY INFANTRY:
Michael Ware has completed the equivalent of eight to
nine combat tours. There is no soldier in our
military that has done that. Michael Ware has done
that.
MICHAEL WARE: Here,
it's more or less pitched battles on the ground...
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: I think he's
controversial. He will do what other journalists
won’t do.
MICHAEL WARE: I don't
know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking
about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.
FMR STAFF SGT DAVID BELLAVIA, US ARMY INFANTRY: He
was so unflinchingly honest, so honest that it really
rankled the military.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He is a little bit of a
chameleon, he can blend in… not blend in but he can
hang out with anyone.
MICHAEL WARE: We're
not going to defeat this here in Iraq, this needs to
be defeated elsewhere.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: Michael has many facets, I don’t
know if anyone has seen them all, not even us.
MICHAEL WARE: From sitting down with West Timorese,
to spending endless hours with the Afghan Taliban, to
have sat with Al Qaeda after 9/11. I’ve always found
myself crossing into the unknown, to the darker
recesses.
No matter how many times I've told the story of me
being kidnapped by Al Qaeda, every time I've told
that story that just rolls off my tongue, I thought I
was talking about someone else. It felt-- I never
stopped to go back and contemplate how it felt. So
effectively what I'd done was I'd put that moment in
a cardboard box and sealed the box and gaffer taped
it up and I put that emotional box up in my attic and
left it there to be dealt with later. And it's only
now that I've come back home to Australia to attempt
to write of my experiences that I went back up into
the attic and found it filled with 300-odd
gaffer-taped boxes that have been waiting for another
day. And that day has arrived.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: Michael is two years older
than me. He used to do a lot of dressing up,
pretending to be in the army and I would always have
to be the bad guy or I would be tied to something or
dramatic things like that and him and the dog would
come and rescue me.
MICHAEL WARE: As a child I wanted to be a theoretical
astrophysicist. Then from a particular night at the
age of thirteen I wanted to be a criminal lawyer. I
spent many years at law school but came to realise
that it wasn’t going to be me. I received a call out
of the blue from one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers,
The Courier Mail here in Brisbane, asking if I’d ever
considered becoming a journalist.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: Once he decided to be a
journalist, that was it. Straight away he was into
the hard and heavy stuff.
MICHAEL WARE: I’d been working in Queensland for six
or seven years, and I was asked out of the blue by
the Courier Mail would I consider going to Timor to
fill a rotation. And I got off that transport plane
at Dili airport totally frightened, because I didn’t
have a clue what I was supposed to do.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: There was a group of us
correspondents up there who’d been there all through
‘99, and then this guy turns up and he’s like,
'where's the story, where's the story, where's the
story?' And the first thing he wanted to do was, of
course, you know, the most dangerous thing which was
to go to the militia camps. Basically our first
reaction was ‘oh my god, I’m so glad this guy wasn’t
here when it was really violent because he would have
got us all killed’ because he was so keen.
Immediately I saw that he was a guy who was going
places.
MICHAEL WARE: Once I had my first taste of reporting
a foreign story I knew there was nothing else I could
ever do again, I simply had to have more.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: Then he went to Time Magazine and
I was happy because that's what he wanted to do.
MICHAEL WARE: After 9/11, as the American invasion
was apparent, I just kept badgering, ‘I want to go to
Afghanistan, I want to go to Afghanistan’.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: And then in one week
quite a few journalists got killed and then what
happened after that was the Time Magazine list of
journalists who wanted to go, got small, and Mick was
suddenly up near the top, so he went.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: When he first went to Afghanistan,
didn’t know a soul, had to find somewhere to live,
drivers, interpreters.
MICHAEL WARE: I was sent on a three week assignment,
and I didn’t leave for a year, most of which I spent
living in the city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the
Taliban.
What you'll find a
short distance down this way is the Kandahar opium
market.
They came to this country to capture, shut down, or
kill al Qaeda, and they have not succeeded in that.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: His accommodation was a bombed-out
hotel with no doors, no windows, no running water, no
electricity. He lost 20 kilos in Afghanistan and he
was very drawn and haggard, that’s when this portrait
was painted.
MICHAEL WARE: I arrived as a bumbling Aussie journo
but to get to the answers I was seeking I became an
Afghan. My Afghan language is that of the Taliban.
Because I simply had to immerse myself in the place
to even hope to begin to understand it. We would go
into these Taliban controlled areas and stop for a
bite to eat and the Taliban would be absolutely
unaware that a foreigner had just been among them,
and if they had known I would have been executed
instantly as would my team.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: A farmer and his family moved into
the area and there was a landmine in the paddock and
it was detonated. It was Michael that scooped up the
older brother who was the worst injured of the two
and picked him up and carried him to the hospital,
but the hospital had absolutely no medication.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: All he could do for this
boy was give him two panadol and walk away and he did
walk away. And the boy died.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: Michael said when he left that
hospital that night he could still hear the wailing
in his head and actually he can still hear it today.
MICHAEL WARE: When these things of war cast their
shadow upon you, there is no cure.
When I went to live in Kandahar I was in a
relationship with Shannon, a Brisbane girl whom I met
because she went to school with my sister. We’d been
together eight years at that time, blissfully
so. KIMBERLEY HAMMOND,
SISTER: There was talk of Shannon moving somewhere in
between so it wasn’t so far so that the visits could
become more regular.
MICHAEL WARE: We had been trying for some time to
have children and it was over a scratchy satellite
phone that I learned I was to be a dad, in Kandahar.
I think half of the Taliban knew that I was about to
become a father, because I couldn't hide it. I then
didn’t return till it was time for Jack's birth and I
was in the theatre when he was born.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: I just presumed he would
give it all up when he had a child.
VOICE ON TELEVISION:
…as well as the Palestinian prime minister.
MICHAEL WARE: He's very interested in the Middle
East, has been for days.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He really did think he
wouldn’t do a good job as a father, already then he
felt like he had changed as a person and that he
really wouldn’t be able to do a good job. Michael and
Shannon broke up. Michael returned back to
Afghanistan and Shannon had to start life then as a
single mum and it just happened all so quickly and it
was so horrible. He would ring me and I could hear an
obvious battle going on in the background and he was
feeling such remorse and devastation and you know
just utter… it was awful, and he used to say to me
‘all I would have to do is stand up and I would die’,
that was really scary.
MICHAEL WARE: Hey,
Jack. Today is Wednesday, the 28th of January, 2004,
and I'm in Kabul, and look outside my window. It's
snowing, Jack.
MICHAEL WARE: For better or worse, Jack’s the son of
Michael Ware. And I guess I am what I am. Something
called and I had to step in and once I was in these
conflicts there was a sense of belonging, despite
what it was costing me or others back home. There was
a job that had to be done and for inexplicable
reasons it seemed that I was the only one who was
there to do it. Not in an arrogant sense, but for
example in the war in Iraq I could not fathom why it
was that particularly the American media, yet anyone,
was unable or unwilling or simply wasn’t telling the
story of the other side.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: He basically just started
filming things with a little 300 dollar handi-cam.
But it was the kind of footage that you just don’t
get.
MAN: [speaking in
native language]
MICHAEL WARE: He believes that they're expecting to
be attack, so they are preparing ambushes.
MICHAEL WARE: Time Magazine assigned me to remain
un-imbedded, roaming free in Northern Iraq. It was
there unfortunately that I witnessed my first ever
suicide bomb attack, and my second one. I heard an
explosion and I spun around and there behind me I saw
the blast and very quickly rushed over. It was like a
scene from Dante’s inferno, some image of hell. An
Australian cameraman working for the ABC was killed
and an Australian TV correspondent for the ABC was
wounded. It took me some days, but eventually I was
able to get the cameraman’s body out and the survivor
with him and they both came home.
MAN: Oh behalf of
your bad boys, we present this as a birthday present
for you.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: He built up a really
really good team of people, people he could really
trust, people who were highly intelligent, people who
could read the situation with this sense of purpose
that they were actually producing good journalism and
they were telling the truth.
MAN: Hi Jack, Hi Abu
Jack. Happy birthday to you!
SALAH DAWOOD, INTERPRETER: Mick there, the nickname
is Abu Jack, this means the father of Jack, and he
was very, very proud.
MICHAEL WARE: G'day,
mate.
SALAH DAWOOD: G'day, mate.
MICHAEL WARE: That's not bad.
SALAH DAWOOD: That's not bad.
MICHAEL WARE: The Iraqis staff weren’t a second
family, they were just family. Things would happen in
the course of those years where I came to see the
mettle of these men, and never once did any one of
them take a backward step. I chose good men,
honourable men.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: What Mick gained was a
real insight into actually what was going on in Iraqi
society at that time.
MICHAEL WARE: There was just not the one war in Iraq.
You had the American war versus the insurgency, who
are nationalists fighting to free their country and
were purely politically motivated. Then there's the
American war with al Qaida in Iraq. Then there's the
Sunni and Shia war amongst the Iraqis themselves.
There was the Arab versus Kurdish on-again off-again
little conflict. And then there was the Iranian war
versus most of those named above. And for better or
for ill, everyone spoke to me. And it took a lot of
earning but everyone trusted me and I tried to live
up to those trusts. I went out and I found the Iraqis
who were on the other side of everything. And first
it was for the purpose of stories but they became my
friends. Once someone invited you to their house,
it's incumbent upon them, at the dire risk of losing
their good family name and all public standing,
losing face, they must with that invitation of
hospitality give you protection. Even if his brother
shows up wanting to kill you he must defend you
against all threats.
SALAH DAWOOD, INTERPRETER: His network and his
relationships were really, really wide and expanded
day after day.
MICHAEL WARE: And then I personally witnessed the
birth of the insurgency through my friends. I watched
first as occasionally they'd just pick up a weapon
and take the odd angry shot at a passing American
convoy for no particular reason, and from that start
to organise as a little group. I was with Iraqi
insurgents as they went and attacked the Americans. I
was going to their first training camps in the dead
of night, having been blindfolded or shoved in trunks
of cars.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: It’s central, really, to
what is the role of journalism in war time, are we
supposed to be cheerleaders for our side or are we
supposed to actually report the truth?
MICHAEL WARE: What
about objective line, how's that look?
SOLDIER: Objective line, right now it looks like the
enemy are more in-depth.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: He was able to report
both sides, he was able to report what actually Iraqi
people were thinking and saying and what the
Americans were thinking and saying.
VOICE #1: Michael
Ware is the only Western journalist in regular
contact with insurgents.
VOICE #2: Time magazine's Michael Ware received the
footage.
MICHAEL WARE: I just received two more videos this
morning from Iraqi groups.
You see this car, this suicide car?
What we didn't know is they had a production unit
accompanying the bombers.
VOICE #3: Ware denies he's being used by the terror
groups.
MICHAEL WARE: I was openly named as a terrorist, as a
traitor, as not being a patriot.
BRENT SADLER: Do you
worry that you are getting too close to this, that
one day they might shoot the messenger?
MICHAEL WARE: I worry about that every waking moment
and every sleeping dream.
MICHAEL WARE: I quickly came to realise not just that
our people and the West and public didn't know who we
were fighting. Much to my disbelief I actually
learned that the American war machine honestly and
genuinely didn't know who they were fighting. And
they're the ones conducting the war. I quickly
realised it was, like, honest, they could not
understand why these people were shooting at them.
And yet I was with these people well before they took
their first shot and all through the shots that
followed and I knew exactly who they were fighting
against and why they were fighting.
JOHN MARTINKUS, JOURNALIST: His assessment of the
situation, it was basically about four years ahead of
the US military. As the insurgency was growing, those
that were working with foreigners were becoming
targets themselves.
MICHAEL WARE: One of our senior translators was
gunned down just a couple of blocks from our house as
he was on his way to work.
OMAR: Merry
Christmas, Abu Jack.
MICHAEL WARE: Merry Christmas, Omar. Abu Kitab.
OMAR: Abu Kitab.
MICHAEL WARE: Omar’s brutal killing really was a
shock to the system of our body of brothers. I would
literally have to build a private army, a small
private army.
SALAH DAWOOD, INTERPRETER: He recruit many, many
security guards and established a new system for
travelling here and there.
MICHAEL WARE: Sami!
SAMI: [speaking native language]
MICHAEL WARE: Everyone is okay.
SALAH DAWOOD, INTERPRETER: But still the threat is
going on.
MICHAEL WARE: This is
my room.
SALAH DAWOOD, INTERPRETER: The office attacked twice
by car bomb.
MICHAEL WARE: My
windows blast in. But this is why three months ago I
got plastic windows.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: To be on guard the whole
time and every noise and to be listening out for how
close are those bombings. Should I be doing
something, should I be moving, no it’s okay I’ll just
stay where I am. And then coming back to normal life
and stepping into it.
MICHAEL WARE: I only came home once or twice a year.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: He would say to me, ‘it
gets harder every time to come back and step back
into normal life’.
MICHAEL WARE: As young and as small as he was,
despite the long absence and the absent sense of what
a father is, the minute Jack and I laid eyes on each
other, we were giggling and laughing and playing and
rolling, yeah.
GALE WARE, MOTHER: You’d hear there was more deaths
in Baghdad and there were more car bombs going off.
Dead bodies left in the street of a morning that had
been tortured and they just throw them in the street
and I used to email him and say come home, come home,
you know, it’s getting worse.
VOICE #1: From
Pakistanis to Turks, any outsider appears to be a
target.
VOICE #2: These hostages will be beheaded as an
example to others.
VOICE #3: The insurgents holding Mr. Bigley say he
will die.
TONY JONES: Michael, thanks for joining us again. Is
there anything at all the British Government can do,
do you believe, to save Kenneth Bigley?
MICHAEL WARE: The short answer, Tony, is no.
Absolutely not.
MICHAEL WARE: The end of 2004 was a furious time in
the war in Iraq. The bloodletting was at an horrific
rate.
VOICE #4: US and
Iraqi forces fought gun battles as they moved against
insurgents near Haifa Street, now notorious as a
hotbed of resistance in Baghdad.
MICHAEL WARE: There was a day in September when there
was a particularly furious battle on Haifa Street,
when the Americans went in. After that battle, the
Iraqi guerrilla commander who controlled Haifa Street
sent one of his mid-ranking commanders to my house,
and he said Al Qaeda has taken over Haifa Street.
That meant Al Qaeda had taken over a central part of
the capital of Iraq. So he said the boss said to come
and bring you in and show you. Whilst we were driving
I filmed the flags of Al Qaeda. I clearly saw the
multitude of Al Qaeda fighters. You see a member of
Al Qaeda stepping out from the median strip pulling
the pin on a grenade, now that’s the only film I have
of my kidnapping. There was an Al Qaeda banner and I
was put underneath that banner and I was being
readied for my execution. So they were going to film
my death with my own camera. As the group had paused
to get the camera ready, the nationalist mid-ranking
commander who took me in there chose that moment to
pipe up and the local commander said ‘Well you know
he’s my guest, he’s under my protection so if you
kill him, you dishonour me’. Through gritted teeth
they literally shoved me back.
(Preview of next week’s program)MICHAEL WARE: Suddenly at
our main checkpoint a massive car bomb went off and
we all stood there ready and waiting for those first
masked fighters to come spilling around the corner.
The bullets were literally coming through the walls.
The fighting was hand to hand.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: When he’s in the thick of
awfulness over there, we will talk endlessly about
his love life.
MICHAEL WARE: You find love in the strangest of
places, in the midst of a battle, literally.
KIMBERLEY HAMMOND, SISTER: Really over-the-top
romantic stuff.
MICHAEL WARE: Oh, the mad things I’ve done in love’s
name. I’ve almost been killed more than once in the
name of love.
FMR STAFF SGT DAVID BELLAVIA, US ARMY INFANTRY: I
think Michael’s addicted to danger and he’ll go where
the fighting is. It’s almost like a sickness to him.
He has to be where bullets are flying.
MICHAEL WARE: I’m here facing the demons from the war
and the demons that have plagued me out of war. Now
I’ve turned to all sorts of things to try to survive,
or to get by. It just sucks not to feel anything.
Anything to keep the demons at bay.
(End of preview)