By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published November 18, 2003
BASRA, Iraq - There's nothing quite like standing in the middle of the desert realizing that someone who may or may not be a thief has just driven off with everything you own, including several thousand dollars in cash, computers and photographic equipment.
Yes, it seemed we would have the embarrassing distinction of being the first journalists robbed before we even got to Iraq.
While Saddam Hussein was in power, traveling to Baghdad took a long time. Now, it still takes a long time, but with the added thrill of being dangerous.
How dangerous? Neither of the country's two main airports, in Baghdad and Basra, has reopened to commercial traffic because there's too great a risk of planes being downed by shoulder-fired missiles. And here's what the U.S. Commerce Department, in a guide called "Doing Business in Iraq" says about the main highway from Jordan:
"Travel time is about 10 hours from Amman to Baghdad. It is extremely dangerous along this route."
You can also enter from Turkey, but that too takes several hours and involves driving through the heart of the notorious "Sunni Triangle," the region north and west of Baghdad. So the easiest and safest option seemed via Kuwait, less than two hours by car from Basra, Iraq's second-largest city.
But even as photographer Kinfay Moroti and I were packing our gear in Florida, there were hints that security in southern Iraq isn't quite as good as the U.S. officials publicly profess. Earlier this month, bandits fired in broad daylight on Swedish aid workers near the Kuwait-Iraq border. (More about that later.) And last Friday, a Portuguese journalist was kidnapped after crossing into Iraq. (Rattled but unhurt, he was later dumped near Basra.)
So not knowing exactly what to expect, we left Kuwait City on Monday morning in a Kuwaiti taxi. An Iraqi translator was going to meet us at noon at the border and take us on into Iraq.
It seemed simple enough until we got to the border.
"Where are your immigration papers?" a Kuwaiti officer demanded.
Huh? This was the first we had heard about immigration papers. We had only Kuwaiti visas, which the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, D.C., had assured us were all we needed to cross.
It turned out we were at the border post used by civilians, specifically Libyans, Palestinians, Syrians and others considered potential security risks. The policeman redirected us to a nearby American trailer, where we could get a permission slip to travel on Tampa MSR, the main military supply route into Iraq.
"Do you have security?" a young U.S. officer asked.
Huh? This was the first we had heard about security. But we quickly discovered that southern Iraq is now considered dangerous enough that U.S. troops won't let anyone cross the border on Tampa MSR without armed guards.
Did Ala, the translator who was supposed to meet us, bring any guards with him from Baghdad? Did he have a gun himself? We hadn't a clue, and worse, we didn't have any way to contact him.
Warning that we wouldn't be allowed into Iraq without adequate protection, the officer gave us the permission slip anyway. Once we got to the other crossing we could at least talk to Ala and decide if it would be safe to go with him.
But when we arrived at the second border post, the Kuwaiti police wouldn't let our driver proceed. And it was a good mile or more to the Iraqi side - too far to drag all our stuff.
Suddenly, a savior appeared. A smiling young man motioned for us to get into his SUV, which had a revolving blue light on the dash. "He's a policeman," our driver said. "He'll take you to the other side."
We piled all our things - laptop computers, cameras, suitcases, bottled water, canned foods - into the back and hopped in. A mile later, we hopped back out to ask a soldier if Ala had arrived yet.
When we turned around, the friendly policeman was gone. Vanished. And with him, almost everything but our cellular phones and the clothes on our backs.
Frantically, we called our taxi driver. Did he see the policeman? No, he was nowhere in sight.
At such moments, 30 years of a journalism career flash before one's eyes. How - 7,000 miles from home - do you tell the office that a stranger has disappeared with everything you need to take pictures, write stories and transmit them back to St. Pete?
If we had been burned, we wouldn't be the first. In the past few weeks, security in southern Iraq has deteriorated as bandits have figured out that humanitarian workers, journalists and others carrying lots of money and/or equipment are easy targets.
A week ago, soldiers were startled to see an SUV hurtling toward them at nearly 100 mph. They feared it was a suicide bomber until the vehicle skidded to a stop. The terrified driver jumped out and promptly threw up.
He had been carrying Swedish aid workers from Basra back to Kuwait when one blue Caprice pulled up alongside and another cut in front. The bandits opened fire, bullets whizzing so close that - as the bullet holes later showed - the occupants came within an inch of being killed.
Then there was the American - also unescorted - who stopped near the border to change a flat tire. Robbers swarmed the vehicle and threatened to kidnap him until his Iraqi translator offered to go in his place.
The men eventually were allowed to continue on, but not before the Iraqis had some perverse fun with the American. "You know how in the Old West they used to shoot at a guy's feet and make him dance?" asked Sgt. Chris Dunbar of Zephyrhills. "Well, they shot at his feet and actually made him jump."
By now, nearly two hours had elapsed since the policeman - or the man who was supposed to be a policeman - had disappeared with our gear. The only good news was that Ala, our Iraqi translator, had arrived. The bad news was that he was unarmed and was driving an old Caprice Classic that, as he put it nonchalantly, had a "mechanical problem."
Pressed to explain, he said the stick shift had broken on the way down from Baghdad but that he had fixed it and everything was okay. The soldiers looked skeptical; it was clear they weren't about to let us go with Ala unescorted.
With the sun sinking fast on the horizon, we decided to return to Kuwait City, hire professional guards and try again Tuesday. But then fate took a serendipitous turn.
The policeman had been located. He really was a policeman, but he had gone off duty and was eating lunch when someone finally tracked him down over at the civilian border crossing.
Within 10 minutes he pulled up, all our stuff still in the back of his SUV. Then an American officer, apparently taking pity on us, said Ala could fall in line with a military convoy that was going toward Basra.
So we went on our way. Ala's stick shift held, no bandits were encountered and we pulled into Basra, three hours late but safe and sound.
As one soldier put it, "Here, we're all in Allah's hands."
