Opinion-Galbraith's war

Iraq: Eyewitness to War A photojournalist's diary By Robert J. Galbraith

By Jim Duff

The cover of photojournalist Robert J. Galbraith's latest book is a photo of five-year-old Ali Mustapha Ghaleb in the arms of his mother, Muna Hassan. The little boy was playing with a bomblet from an American cluster bomb when it exploded.

"She was my La Pieta," says Galbraith, referring to the Michaelangelo painting of Mary holding the body of her dying son Jesus. "If you can't get past the cover, don't bother trying to read the book."

Material for Iraq/Eyewitness to War: a photojournalist's diary was gathered from April 10 to May 14, 2003 as Galbraith travelled from Jordan to Baghdad, where he stayed with a bunch of reporters and cameramen living at the Fanar Hotel. Galbraith shot pictures for the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Associated Press, USA Today and Newsday, so the work he did for them is part of this book. But most of the photos are Galbraith's own assignments, a mix of birds, kids, scenery and death in the streets amid coalition troops reacting to looting, demonstrations, and an exploding black market in everything from stolen gas to guns.

Galbraith also writes about the propaganda war. Antiwar groups like Voices in the Wilderness wanted Galbraith's work. So did the Kuwaiti government, during what was supposed to be a timeout for Galbraith and his fellow journalists in Kuwait. His photos make no political statement; he shot everything, and if authorities objected, he backed off.

"Most of the coverage is centered in the capital city of Baghdad, where looting and anarchy ruled right up to the time I left," Galbraith writes. "To get a pulse on how the whole nation was surviving the effects of war, I travelled from Kurdistan in the north, to Basra in the south. This gave me an understanding of the Iraqi people, as the situation in Baghdad was unlike that in Kurdistan or the southern regions."

For someone aching to get into war-zone photojournalism, this is the crash course.

"Photojournalism is all about street smarts, adaptability, courage, wit, control of body and mind, humour, honour, a pinch of bullshit and a talent for finding news," Galbraith writes in his journal after having talked himself and a Japanese reporter into the Kirkuk oilfields. Every day is a new adventure for this camera gypsy. My favourite photo is of him in a Basra restaurant, surrounded by Iraqi ex-prisoners still in their blue jumpsuits.

Staying healthy is a constant battle, he writes. He drops from 165 pounds to 132, but eats only cooked food and drinks bottled water, three or four litres a day. When he comes back to Canada, he puts on just enough weight to survive a hunger strike to bring Premier Jean Charest to view the pollution on his beloved Mississquoi Bay, where he birdwatches from his Perch.

This isn't Galbraith's first war. In 1990, he was briefly embedded with the Mohawk Warriors barricaded in a detox centre in Kahnasatake's pine forests, surrounded by Canadian troops. In 1991, he went to Kuwait and Iraq to shoot the first Gulf war. "I'm glad I worked with the Saidye Bronfman Centre and the Centaur," he told me last week. "It's a useful skill." This time around, those with the technology controlled the message. We learn about a satellite transmitter called a B-gan that would enable Galbraith to send his photos directly to his clients without having to get onto the web.

Because a B-gan can pay for itself in no time, Galbraith scrounged $2,000 and took to Kuwait to buy one. He found no B-gans for sale, possibly because the Kuwaiti government likes to screen all e-mail traffic. Galbraith had less trouble e-mailing his photos from Baghdad than Kuwait City and there's a great rant in the book about how, "in this age of globalization and computers, press freedom is even more restricted and controlled...American-style intelligence-gathering is open to abuse in nations without the necessary laws to protect journalists," he writes. "Kuwait and Jordan don't have a counterbalance."

Before he left Montreal for Iraq last spring, Galbraith sent me this e-mail:

"This is a holy crusade from the Muslim perspective, but we westerners blame it on one or two men. This is why we are so far away from knowing what's going on in Iraq, besides being misinformed by our mainstream North American media outlets. Are you ready for the real war in Iraq? The civil war must take its course, because no one can save Iraq but itself. It's up to the last man standing between the Shiite and Sunni to direct the destiny of Iraq. After the blood has flowed it will be time to rebuild the country."

In his preface to A photojournalist's diary, Galbraith writes: "Baghdad has evolved into a boiling pot of insurgency and renewed horrors. Suicide car bombings have become the new means of terror, keeping the fragile nation off guard and vulnerable. Soldiers have been killed and maimed by roadside bombs and helicopters shot down by shoulder-fired grenade launchers. To combat this, American President George W. Bush introduced 'Operation Hammer;' a renewed assault on known enemy hotspots and hideouts in Iraq. With each new successful attack, the instigators gained momentum, support and confidence. As the insurgency spread to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north, so did 'Operation Hammer.' Like last week's pessimistic report from the Central Intelligence Agency, Galbraith believes civil war is inevitable.

"The Americans are...being painted as an occupying force by the Iraqis. There are more American soldiers being killed in post-war attacks, than there were during the war. President Bush, seeing the rise in anti-American feelings and the attacks, has set a deadline of June 1st, 2004 for handing over control of the country to an Iraqi coalition government."

Through his lens, Galbraith shows us what he saw in that month after Saddam Hussein's Baath Party was broken by overwhelming force. He takes us to places no Western camera has gone and shows us enough grief to last a lifetime. The only thing that gets to Rob are the street kids. Eight-year-olds sniffing glue with their younger brothers. Little girls, shaving their heads to look like boys, sleeping out under sheets of cardboard under his hotel window. He watches and rages, powerless, as one of them is raped. At the Baghdad hospital where he shot the cover photo of Ali Mustapha Galeib, Galbraith asks both parents whose fault it is their little son is crippled for life.

"It's all the fault of Saddam Hussein," they respond in unison. Rob has trouble believing they're serious, but he tells the story, bound by the journalist's code of neutrality.

This is a side of the Iraq war you didn't see. To read it is to understand how our media works.

2004-09-21 15:35:17