Lindsey's last diary
Updated on 17 April 2003
Lindsey Hilsum's last Baghdad Diary, a personal account of the crucial week when the Iraqi government faded away and the Americans swept into town, plus a postscript.
Monday 7 April
I have grown used to sleeping in my clothes in case I am taken away in the night by men with guns.
Bombs and missile attacks no longer wake me unless they're so close they shake the hotel. For the past four days the electricity has been cut, and water has been intermittent. The atmosphere is heavy with dust and the smoke of oil fires.
Each morning we go down to the lobby of the Palestine Hotel and mill about with the 300 other journalists, waiting to see if the Ministry of Information functionaries will herd us into buses and take us on a tour of bombsites or hospitals.
If we stray, we may be expelled or worse - five of our colleagues spent a week in Abu Ghraib prison for having the wrong kind of visa.
But today we are beyond bus tours and arguments with the goons in the lobby. The war has come to us. From our balcony we can see across the River Tigris to the presidential palace. Men are running along the riverbank.
We can hear tank fire. An ammunition dump has been hit and is exploding into sparks and spirals of black smoke. Suddenly, through the long lens of the camera, four cockroaches crawl into view - Bradley fighting vehicles. The Americans are taking over the palace compound.
Iraq's Minister of Information Mohammed Sahaf, neat in his pressed uniform, his customary pistol at his side, has become something of a television star. Today he excelled himself, striding onto the roof of the Palestine and declaring that Iraq was winning the war.
"They put few of their armoured carriers and some tanks with their soldiers. We besieged them and we killed them. And I think we will finish them soon. Those invaders - their tombs will be here in Iraq," he said to an incredulous throng of reporters, most of whom had spent the past three hours watching and filming the palace take-over from the same hotel.
Tuesday 8 April
Another day when the story unfolds before our eyes as we stumble out of bed at dawn. A tank battle is taking place to the Northwest and we can film it all from the balcony. The action is near our old stamping ground around the Ministry of Information.
I think about the lightly armed Iraqi soldiers in their foxholes in the adjacent park. Last time I saw them, they were brewing tea on small stoves out in the open. Most must have been conscripts. What chance do they have in face of this relentless tank fire?
An A10, the slow flying "tank buster" aircraft, sweeps past and rakes the planning ministry with shining sparks of fire. I'm told it can put a round in every square foot of an American football pitch in 3.5 seconds. For a moment, I understand people who are impressed by the technology and the power - truly, "shock and awe".
But later in the morning, we go to Al Kindi hospital and I'm pulled back to what war really means. Ambulances, taxis and police cars race up with bleeding casualties - soldiers, civilians, at this point it makes no difference. "They are all war wounded," says the doctor.
Back to the hotel, and the war has come even closer. The Reuters office on the 15th floor has been hit by a tank round. At first we are incredulous. Why are they targeting us? Two journalists are dead and our friend Samia, the Reuters Bureau Chief, has a head injury.
The US military says sniper fire was coming from the Palestine. We have seen and heard nothing like that. I check with Tim, who knows about weaponry - the rifles the Iraqis have can't shoot accurately beyond 600 metres, and their rocket propelled grenades have a flat trajectory range of only 350 metres - a thousand if they aim in the air and the round curves down.
The American tank which fired the shot which killed our colleagues was nearly two kilometres away. So, even if they did see a camera raised and mistook it for a weapon, it still couldn't have been a threat.
Paul, our translator/producer, spends the night in the hospital with Samia, who needs surgery. There is no chance of a medical evacuation. We are trapped. We cannot leave Baghdad, and even our hotel isn't safe.
Wednesday 9 April
Paul returns with good news - Samia's operation went well. After three wars, Iraq's surgeons are amongst the most skilled combat doctors in the world. We venture onto the streets, looking for Americans. We find instead a battered car with two young Iraqi fighters sitting in the boot, dangling their legs out of the back, one carrying an AK 47 the other a rocket propelled grenade.
Tim shouts, "There's someone injured!" It's a young Iraqi man with a bullet wound in the leg, lying at the side of the road. We haul out the stretcher we carry in the vehicle, load him into the car and take him to hospital. He had been shot by the gunmen at random.
By the afternoon, the whole landscape has changed. No less than eight Abrams tanks have drawn up about half a mile from the hotel. We watch the Americans and the Iraqis nervously eyeing each other. The Iraqis tentatively step forward waving white handkerchiefs or plastic bags. Gradually they gain confidence. Someone takes a piece of broken glass and stabs a canvas portrait of Saddam Hussein. The crowd cheers.
Our driver, Yussuf, is grinning ear to ear. "Welcome, welcome Americans," he says as he waves our white flag - my scarf tied onto a broomstick. Mohammed, our former government minder, now our translator and friend, is more circumspect, but delighted to see the end of Saddam Hussein.
Later the marines move their massive armoured vehicles to the hotel and we watch as they pull down the statue. It's a stunt for the cameras of course, but it does have iconic power - he's gone. No-one need fear him anymore.
The Americans park three enormous amphibious assault vehicles in the hotel forecourt - we are safe, I don't have to sleep in my jeans any more. A great wave of relief washes over me.
Thursday 10 April
This should be a happy day - Baghdad is liberated. But it turns into one of the worst days of my life. We hang around at the Adhamiya Palace, just occupied by the Marines. They tell us 38 of their number were injured in the gunfight to seize the area a few hours ago. A battle line is ranged on the roof above us and every few minutes they shoot. They have no tape to cordon off the road and no megaphone, but if cars come along the road and don't obey the instruction to stop shouted in English, they shoot nonetheless.
They shoot a blue Passat and we hear the sound of screaming. Mohammed insists on going to investigate. A few minutes later he runs back across the road. It's an image I will never forget - he is carrying in his arms the limp body of a little girl with dark curly hair. She is bleeding from the head - she was in the back of the car the Marines shot.
Two more people are injured, says Mohammed. Worse - a man who came out onto his balcony to see what was happening has been shot dead. His relatives are weeping and yelling to God to save them.
The Marines begin to patch up the little girl, whose name is Zahra. She is six years old. Her aunt, with a huge flesh wound in the buttock, out of modesty refuses to let the male paramedic examine her, until I persuade her she has no choice. The Marines have no interpreter - Paul and Mohammed translate for them.
Less than half an hour later it happens again. A rocket propelled grenade impacts near the palace and the Marines fire wildly in its direction. A white van is riddled with bullets. The driver slumps over the wheel and the vehicle careers into a wall. Again, Mohammed rushes out to fetch the wounded - a man and a woman. As the Marines prepare to airlift little Zahra and the others to hospital, they try to stop us filming - we point out that it was they who shot the people, and if it hadn't been for Mohammed, they wouldn't have any chance to save them.
We walk back to the car, where Yussuf has been waiting. He starts to talk very fast in Arabic to Mohammed and Paul. In the time we were with the Marines in the palace, he saw them shoot dead three men walking along the road. He doesn't feel so positive about the American presence now. And I don't feel very good about liberation either.
Friday 11 April
All across town, people are lugging computers onto donkey carts and stuffing kitchen sinks into their car boots. Iraqis rush up to us to express their horror and fear. "We need government!" shouts a well dressed young woman, watching someone load an air-conditioning unit onto a car roof.
The Americans do nothing. "My priority is force protection," says an Army colonel. With a Marine killed last night in a suicide attack, I understand why - but their indifference has created anarchy. Even the hospitals are being stripped.
We go to the Military Intelligence headquarters where people are desperately searching for news of relatives who disappeared during the long years of torture and oppression under Saddam Hussein. That was a long drawn out, grinding terror, a fear that gripped people every moment of their lives. But now they are experiencing a new terror, as the streets are given over to armed gangs of looters, and nervous American Marines shoot a six year old girl because her uncle didn't hear an instruction to stop.
In the afternoon, Tim learns that another journalist has followed up and discovered that Zahra may have died overnight. He breaks the news gently - it's not confirmed, it may not be true. Paul and I are silent, and then suddenly we are crying. Our leaders said this war was to liberate the Iraqi people, but we have seen too much grief and death.
POSTSCRIPT
Friday 18 April
When we reached Amman, the hotel reception said we must urgently call C4N in London. I couldn't believe my ears - the American military had finally responded to our calls about Zahra. Far from being dead, she had been taken to a field hospital in Kuwait where she was recovering. The wound in her head had been closed up, and she could walk and smile. Her father was with her - he had, as we knew, been flown out by helicopter with her. Our new team in Baghdad had gone to see Zahra's mother with a portable satellite phone, so she had been able to talk to her husband and her daughter - the first news she had since the terrible day Zahra was shot.
For Paul, Tim and me it was the best news we could possibly receive. As a journalist, it's important not to allow individual stories to distort your judgement, but we couldn't help but care about Zahra.
The image of her limp little body as Mohammed ran across the road with her will stay with me forever. But after watching the CNN footage of her at the hospital, we have another image to add - a little girl with a bandage on her head tentatively walking, cuddling a teddy bear and smiling. It doesn't make everything all right in Iraq. But at least Zahra and her family have hope and life.
In the week which followed the shooting at the Adhamiya Palace, we saw much more which makes us uneasy. The ransacking of hospitals has in many ways been the most horrifying, but vandalism and theft at the museum was equally shocking in its own way.
Two of the most significant artefacts in the world have been stolen - the sacred vase of Warka which dates back to the Sumarian period around 3200 BC, and the bronze statue of Basidky from the Arcadian period, 2400 BC. I am told these are the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Mona Lisa.
They are too well known to surface on the international antiquities market, but could slide into private collections, so depriving the Iraqi people and the world of a critical part of human history. When we spoke to the Director of the Iraq Museum, Dony George, he wept - words could not express the depth of his pain and anger. He had asked for the Americans to protect the museum, but they didn't arrive until Thursday.
Iraqis, on the whole, seemed thrilled to see the back of Saddam Hussein. Those who lost relatives in his torture cells and gallows are the most passionate in their enthusiasm for his passing. But we hear a lot of anger about the fact that the Americans have failed to stop the looting - in fact, many Iraqis believe the Marines and American soldiers encouraged it. That is unproven, but "We need government!" is a constant cry.
Some fear that it's not just random looting, but Ba'athists with nothing to lose who have organised a systematic campaign of pillage to make life as difficult as possible for the Americans and those who work with them.
Hundreds of aid agencies are keen to come here. But Iraq doesn't need foreign doctors - it has plenty of its own extremely well qualified surgeons and other specialists. They're desperate to work, but can't because the hospitals have been vandalised and it's too insecure to venture out from home. When they can get back to work, they will need medical equipment, because the sanctions regime made it hard to import the most appropriate technology and so much has been looted. They need the electricity to start working again, and water to return to the taps.
Few people are hungry yet, but they do need the economy to move. People with jobs haven't been paid for weeks now, and the commercial sector has ground to a halt, so people will soon start to suffer because they cannot afford to buy anything.
This period of anarchy has done untold damage to Iraq, on top of the years of repression under Saddam Hussein. Who knows how long it will take the country to recover? But Iraqis I've met want to be independent again, not to be under a colonial administration, dependent on foreigners for government and favour.
This is a sophisticated society, but government records and archives dating back decades have been burnt in the last ten days. Imagine - no passport information, no way of tracing tax returns, no record of car registrations or births and deaths, no way of paying the civil service or even finding out who is employed.
So they have to start from scratch. Year Zero. It was the aim of the Khmer Rouge to reduce Cambodia to that level, surely not what America envisaged for Iraq.
