Seeing Baghdad with fresh eyes
Posted: Monday, September 15, 2008 11:30 AM
Filed Under:
Baghdad, Iraq
By Cheryll Simpson, NBC News Foreign Editor
BAGHDAD – Disembarking from the plane at Baghdad International Airport I was hit by a wall of heat and humidity, a complete contrast from the wet and cold fall day I had left behind in London less than 24 hours before.
This being my first Iraq assignment, I usually work as a foreign news editor in our NBC News London bureau, my eyes and ears where cued up the minute I arrived to take in the full Baghdad scene.
The airport was full of Western contractors and security types all looking a little battle weary. The absence of many Iraqi’s, and any other women, was glaring.
After passing through immigration, I was met by our local Iraqi office manager and encountered my first taste of daily Baghdad life – the power went out and we stood there hopelessly in the dark waiting for the baggage belt to spring to life. No light, no luggage.
Baggage finally in hand, my first reality check came when we started driving down the notorious "airport road." Once one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the world, earlier in the war, it was a killing ground where insurgents and suicide bombers made easy targets of anyone travelling to or from the airport. The road is now safer, partly as a result of the U.S. surge, and the numbers of attacks are down significantly.
As we were driving down the road, I was actually surprised by just how bleak and colorless Baghdad looks. Ailing infrastructure and crumbling shrapnel ridden buildings are everywhere, razor wire and 12 foot reinforced blast proof cement walls dominate the landscape.
After our carefully controlled trip from the airport, we reached the bureau and it was good to see the familiar faces of my colleagues in such an unfamiliar place. I was glad I had packed marmite, mango chutney and the latest issue of Vogue magazine – a few of the small requests my comfort starved colleagues had asked me to bring along from London.
A couple of hours later I was on my way to get my media pass at the Combined Press Information Center in the International Zone. Our route took us past the "Hands of Victory" monument, an iconic symbol erected by Saddam to celebrate his "victory" over Iran after the Iran-Iraq War that was fought from 1980-1988.
That was my first fleeting moment of feeling like a tourist in a war zone. Entering the International Zone we passed through what seemed like dozens of heavily guarded identification checkpoints, vehicle searches and numerous body pat downs. I was astonished to learn that security had been even tighter in the past. It seemed to me to take such a long time to get anywhere.
I filled out the vital statistics and personal information questions requested by the U.S soldiers at the press center and biometric scans were taken of my eyes, face and finger prints.
I asked the soldier processing me why so much information was needed and was it a matter of security?
He replied, "Yes. And also if we find parts of you somewhere that need to be indentified Ma’am."
"That’s reassuring," I laughed.
On the way back to base we had to change from our planned course due to an "incident" on a road ahead of us. Of course, there were also many other incidents that day – from bomb blasts to shootings to a cholera outbreak in the south of Baghdad due to a lack of clean drinking water.
I also experienced my first sounds of automatic weapons fire and the echo of exploding bomb in the distance and during my first night a major dust storm settled in. It’s good to be here and I’m looking forward to covering the Iraq story for the next month.
I’m also looking forward to tonight’s dinner, chicken curry, complimented by lovely mango chutney from London.
