By Nelson Wyatt, The Canadian Press, October 13, 2004.

Iraq: Eyewitness to War--A Photojournalist's Diary, By Robert J. Galbraith

In Iraq: Eyewitness to War, Robert Galbraith puts a human face on an inhuman situation.

For 35 days, the Montreal-based photojournalist tried to get a clear picture of the war in Iraq, which is often obscured to westerners through a fog of partisan rhetoric and the unrelenting chaos of the situation in the Middle East country.

His day-by-day diary, illustrated with about 600 photos taken during travels in Iraq, Kuwait and Jordan, is a compelling effort, as difficult to read at some points as it is to put down.

Galbraith, a freelance journalist who has contributed to a number of Canadian and international news organizations such as The Canadian Press and the New York Times, is no stranger to conflict. He managed to make it behind Mohawk lines as native warriors were surrounded by Canadian troops in the 1990 Oka land claims crisis, and he went to Kuwait to cover the first Gulf War in 1991.

He took no agenda with him into Iraq during his trip there between April 10 and May 14, 2003, except to bring back a personal, ground-level perspective of the conflict.

Amid all the politics and pro and con arguments about the war, Galbraith amply illustrates the human toll in words often as vivid as his pictures, whether it is the chilling account by a young marine of a fatal charge into American guns by teenage Iraqi soldiers or a father burying nine members of his family.

Galbraith arrived in Baghdad shortly after the city fell to U.S. troops and left as the insurgency that now plagues the country was beginning to swell. He does not paint U.S. troops or Iraqis as heroes or villains but juxtaposes the horrors and chaos of the war with the banality of everyday life and simple acts of friendship or kindness by all sides. His book manages to give a more rounded picture of what it's been like since Saddam Hussein fell than that often afforded in other reports from the country.

Indeed, some of his reports are ominously prescient. During one trip, he observed Iraqis carrying off truckloads of arms from unguarded Iraqi army armouries--weapons that presidential hopeful John Kerry and others have since said now fuel the insurgency in Iraq.

Most poignant in Galbraith's tale are his stories of the country's dispossessed children, either lying in hospitals with horrendous wounds or forced to fend for themselves on the streets. He tells of one 13-year-old girl shepherding a family of orphans, who he found living in an abandoned warehouse, her brood gathered around her like a bunch of baby chicks as he approached.

"Her country might be Iraq," he writes, "but her little world clings to her hands and shirtsleeves with a runny nose."

Iraq: Eyewitness to War is available in select bookstores and through www.eyewitnesstowar.com.