Carpet Bomb

A few minutes of indecision, and we were out in the streets. The first American soldier I met was Tim MacGlochlin from New Hampshire. He was inside his tank. Was he tired or scared, I asked. "I was nervous at first, but not now. The worst is over," Tim said.

Really, getting into Baghdad was simple as that, nothing in comparison to the resistance they encountered along the way. And then began the looting and statue-smashing spree, right through the day. The ease with which Baghdad was taken over shouldn’t make us forget what the city endured through the 21 days of war.

I can’t forget those scenes of grief and pain; stretchers and stretchers of people with horrific injuries. I saw children and their mothers blown up, families wiped out. Iraqi doctors at the hospitals couldn’t believe what they had never seen, what injuries powerful bombs can inflict on tender bodies. The defining image of the war ought to be the 12-year-old Ali Ismail Abbas, whose both arms were blown off by a missile that ripped through his home, stumps at the shoulder swathed in bandages—and he howling like a wounded animal.

These appalling hospital scenes have replaced the glory of Baghdad. The city wears a brutish post-war look with the rubble of bombed buildings, widespread looting and a sense of the social order crumbling. Baghdad in popular imagination is synonymous with learning and refinement. Now it appears devastated, in contrast to what I had read about the city as a child. I knew it as the city of Harun Al-Rashid, under whom Baghdad enjoyed fabled glory and wealth, becoming one of the richest cities in the world, its wharves lined with ships bringing porcelain from China, spices from India, ivory, gold and Nubian slaves from Africa and pearls and weapons from Arabia. To see the city brutalised and bombed is deeply painful.

With looting going on around me, I’m being asked for ridiculous amounts of money for minor errands. I had wanted to send a letter to Amman where some money and a satellite phone were waiting for me. The Iraqi I spoke to demanded $100 to do it. As it was, every foreign journalist in Baghdad had to get an accreditation from the ministry of information. It meant shelling out $3,500 for a press pass that lasted only 10 days. The payment had to be made in advance. Every time you renewed it, another $10 had to be handed over. If you were late—which, given the round-the-clock bombing and constant rumble of fighter jets, was quite likely—you were fined. Even in war, bureaucracies, like cockroaches, just keep rumbling on. Since the ministry has been bombed out of existence, that’s at least one expense less. And it’s wonderful to also get rid of the minders from the ministry who’d dog us everywhere.

Journalists were allowed to stay in only one of the three government-run hotels—Al Mansour, Al Rasheed or Palestine. Al Rasheed is everyone’s favourite. It was verboten because it was on the Americans’ hit list. Its crime: a portrait of George Bush Sr on the floor at the entrance. The portrait was drawn by a young female artist during the first Gulf War. This kind of stuff maddens the Americans. Mind you, the Iraqis made a concession of sorts, covering it with an elegant carpet. Oddly enough, Al Rasheed was spared. One theory is that General Tommy Franks wants to use it as his headquarters in post-war Iraq.

(The author was the only Indian correspondent in Baghdad during the war.)