Baghdad 2007

Baghdad 2007

I ended hanging around Baghdad for about a month in 2007 October with my friend Eric. Most of the time I spent in a small room in a security contractors compound waiting for permits for us to shoot a film on Iraqi women. The permits never came through and after several problems which the person who had hired us had with various people (According to the contract I signed I am not allowed to talk about these issues) , I packed my bags and returned to India after almost a month in the red zone of Baghdad.

During my stay in Iraq I shot images, most often through the window of our armored car which was escorted by mercenaries who looked after us and prevented us ending up on youtube videos against our wills.

Baghdad is a stricken city and I felt it was eating itself from within, community against community, sect against sect, distrust and suspicion everywhere. The scars of this war will take a long time to heal.

detainee a Baghdad prison

Baghdad, Oct 2007

Ive waited a whole day and a half at Jordans airport, forbidden to leave the airport premises as being Indian, the Jordanians probably expect me to jump my visa and work on a construction site somewhere in the city.I am headed to Baghdad to shoot still images for a documentary film on Iraqi women.

To avoid being shot at by Iraqi insurgents, our plane at about 30,000 ft. until its more or less exactly over Baghdad airport. It then spirals downwards tracing the outline of a ice cream cone until it banks sharply near the end of its descent and lands. As we plummet earthwards, I out of the window and see sharply lit and yellow city with square compounds and houses. A pariah kite circles way below and I wonder if its the same species we get in Bangalore. American helicopters and warplanes are everywhere, parked in neat lines far below. How tiny we really are. Smoke from a distant fire heads up straight in a windless landscape, the plane banks sharply and I feel my innards rise up into my chest cavity and attempt an exit through my nose. A couple of gentlemen who looked like they for the WWF in a seat nearby and another shut his eyes tight. Everyone was silent.

Baghdad airport is eerie. After a long wait while our extensive paperwork is checked, we exit the airport into a desolate exterior. Concrete silent and gray. Andy, our close protection security contractor is there to see us with his crew, a group of Fijian and Iraqi mercenaries , politely referred to as security contractors, and we head off towards the red zone on an eight-mile drive into the city, along what's called by some journalists “the Highway of Death” - the road from Baghdad airport.

A gun truck in the front and one in the rear. We are given instructions in case of an attack.Clay the Kiwi guy tells us that we might get rammed from the back and to keep our heads down if that happens.

A bill board post explosion on the road from the airport

A convoy of petrol tankers pass by one of Saddams sculptures

It took the Americans almost two and a half years after George W. Bush triumphantly announced victory over Saddam on an aircraft carrier to maintain control over this eight mile road into the city and attacks still happened according to our security contractor. We headed out of the airport at high speed past shattered buildings, bombed vehicles and blown apart billboards towards a fortified compound in the red zone – or the zone not exactly in the control of anyone. We had thought we were staying in the green zone but this is not to be. A bit late.

Everything is deserted and there are very few people on the streets. The few I see walk fast and glance nervously at passing vehicles. Suicide bombers are a daily occurence and our contractors are on high alert. All our vehicles have signs that warn vehicles to stay at least a 100 meteres away.