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Engel: ‘I’ve seen so many ugly things’
This war has been tough on the troops, dangerous for western journalists. But try being an Iraqi.
It has been incredibly difficult on our local staff.
If we didn’t have the locals going out with their cameras to places where we can’t go, we would be completely blind. They want people to see what is going on in their country. But they are doing it at an incredible risk to themselves.
Since the start of the war there are two people I’ve worked most closely with Ali and Zohair. We’ve formed this little team. It’s almost like a family.
Ali was my driver during the war.
ALI: “I expected that life was going to change back then, I expected security, I expected everything, our dreams to become a reality.”
He’s supporting his family working for us. He’s very quiet. And he has the kind of personality where he can go into a dangerous neighborhood and then just disappear before anyone even notices he was there.
Ali has to operate in secret. He has a small camera. He hides it in his car. He has his press credentials that he hides in a tissue box. He never tells anyone what he does, where he goes. He’s living a—a double life.
Zohair is an operator. He’s the ultimate fixer. If you need anything any time of the day whether it’s a gun or a bottle of whiskey or a contact with the prime minister
He was originally a soldier—in Saddam’s army and then was once sentenced to death for going absent without leave, but he managed to bribe his way out. He’d actually been tied to the stake about to be shot and then was released in the very last minute.
ZOHAIR: “when I meet people in the streets, I try to be as vague about what I do. I don’t trust anyone.
I feel very torn and guilty that I’m asking them to go to places where I can’t go myself, where it’s too dangerous for me to go. And I worry about them every time they leave this building. We’ve created a protective bubble for ourselves, but can’t provide that security where they’re out reporting.
Ali’s father, a Shiite was kidnapped and is still missing. And Ali used to go everyday to what i think must be the worst place in the world, Baghdad’s Tubadali morgue. It’s where they bring all of the unidentified bodies and just dump them. Most of them are tortured and have their hands bound.
And everyday this morgue fills up. That is the reality of what is going on in Baghdad every single day.
ALI: It hurts to look at all those bodies. I thought to myself, my father could be one of them and I may not even recognize him because the bodies are so mutilated.”
Then, while covering demonstrations in Sadr city, Ali himself was kidnapped
Ali: “They accused me of being collaborator with the Americans they took me to a dark room and tortured me. They put tissue in my mouth, then hung me upside down on a hook and beat me with a bat for eight hours. I told them, I have just one request please tell my family where to find my body.”
Ali was eventually released. A militia leader vouched for him. It’s affecting Ali emotionally and physically. He’s starting to lose his hair. He literally expects that he could die at any moment.
The violence was having an impact even on Zohair. He started drinking more and bought a ladder he put by the window in his house in case he needed to escape in the middle of the night.
He also bought a gun, but it wasn’t to defend himself.
ZOHAIR: “if I was about to get kidnapped, I would turn it on my head and not let them take me”
Zohair’s wife now has a way to keep herself sane. She pretends that she goes out. Everyday she dresses three or four times a day putting on her jewelry, putting on her makeup and plays make believe that she’s going to the movies that night, that she’s going out to dinner. But she never goes.
It’s true that most of the stories that we’ve reported from Iraq have been negative. But i don’t think it’s a fact that we’re looking for the bad news stories.
Iraq is not a thriving, pro-western democracy that is the model for the rest of the region. Instead of exporting democracy to the rest of the region, it’s exporting terrorism.
And it is a situation where, instead of the regional powers afraid of the Iraqi democratic model, they are sending in money and militiamen to fight a proxy war in this country.
Over time, it does just start to blend together, and (sirens) you get what’s called ‘compassion fatigue.’ And the difference between ten Iraqis killed in a car bombing or 30 killed in a double car bombing, all starts to sound the same.
In the office we have this dry erase board we cynically call the ‘board of death.’ And one of our local staff, rose, comes, and after talking to Iraqi police, will come and put all of the assassinations and car bombings, and it—it fills fast.
ENGEL: Do you need a bigger board?
ROSE: Yah, I need one, or at lest two, two boards. Sometimes I fill all the board and I can’t have more space to fill more events and more accidents.
But you have to focus on smaller stories. And I remember one time we went to an orphanage and we met these three young girls, three sisters. their parents had both been killed in sectarian fighting.
All the girls in this orphanage were so frightened. They had stopped serving drinks at night because all the girls were wetting their beds.
It’s clear that these girls are really starved for affection. They’ve been coming up all day and taking our hands. One little girl called our cameraman Daddy. The director of this organization said what they missed most was tenderness, their mother’ touch.
So many viewers wrote in saying that they wanted to help. They wanted to adopt the girls. But, in the end, it wasn’t possible. It’s not legal, under Iraqi law
I think about this place a lot. I wonder, have they benefited at all from this war? I don’t think so.
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