Read an Excerpt
1
Collateral
Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen makes his way through the al-Amin neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad looking for a story. In the mid-morning summer heat, raw sewerage leaks from broken pipes. Tangled electricity wires provide a few hours of power a day to Iraqi families behind their cracked mud-brick walls and metal gates.
It’s 12 July 2007, the height of the Iraq War. Namir is a combat photographer for Reuters, the international news agency, and a veteran of the conflict at 22. He’s checking out reports of a US air strike at dawn on a building in al-Amin’s urban sprawl. With him is driver Saeed Chmagh, a 40-year-old father of four who knows the area well.
At 10.10 am, Namir gets in an abandoned car off an alleyway to photograph two women wearing traditional black garments and headscarfs walking towards a bullet hole in the windscreen. Who fired the shot is unknown. One woman, her arms outstretched, appears to be pleading with Namir. Her face is heavy with weariness. Below her palms, taking up the bottom half of the photo, is the bullet hole and cracked glass. The other woman’s face is obscured. The woman with her arms extended looks like she is in mourning. In Iraq, every woman has lost someone to the war: a son, a daughter, a husband, a relative.
Namir and Saeed can’t see or hear the two American AH-64 Apache helicopters prowling above the sand-coloured maze of al-Amin. A US infantry battalion searching for militias called them in after reports of sniper fire, gunmen on rooftops and rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks on some of its soldiers. One of the Apaches has the call-sign Crazy Horse 1–8.
I’m in the Reuters office, a twenty-minute drive away. It’s been more than four years since President George W. Bush ousted Saddam Hussein and then, with wilful neglect, left the people of Iraq open to unimaginable horror. The previous weekend I wrote stories about suicide bombers and sectarian death squads who killed 250 people across Iraq. As bureau chief of the largest foreign news organisation in Baghdad, I fear for the safety of my staff more than anything. The Cradle of Civilisation is the most dangerous country on earth, ancient Baghdad the epicentre of this hellscape. Suicide bombers on foot, in cars and trucks, detonate themselves and their vehicles on the streets and in marketplaces every day. Some attacks rattle our office windows. Dozens of bodies are found each morning by roadsides, in ditches or in the Tigris River that winds through the city.
Reuters covers the war from a two-storey house the company has rented since Saddam’s downfall. We employ nearly 100 Iraqi journalists and support staff across the country. Seven or eight foreigners and fifteen Iraqis sleep in three nearby houses, the windows padded with sandbags. The Iraqis have moved in over the years because their lives have been threatened or their neighbourhoods are too dangerous. Some have sent their families across the border to Syria or Jordan. Concrete blast walls 3.5 metres high surround each house. Iraqi guards with AK-47 assault rifles are posted at metal gates built into each wall and checkpoints at either end of the street. The New York Times, the BBC and the Associated Press news agency rent houses near us and are similarly protected. Our defacto media compound is located on the eastern side of the Tigris, which splits Baghdad roughly in half. We are in the so-called Red Zone, the name for the city outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, an enclave for Iraq’s fractured leadership, the American embassy and the headquarters of the US military.
I can see most of the office from where I sit on the ground floor. I’m unaware of Namir’s whereabouts, which is routine. I trust my senior TV and pictures staff. If they had to get my approval for every movement, we’d never report anything. A diesel-fuelled generator the size of a small truck rumbles from the yard outside, an incessant reminder that electricity is precious in Baghdad. It can hit 50 degrees Celsius in summer: crushing, life-sapping heat. A low hum of noise rises from the city, one of the largest in the Arab world, home to 6–7 million people. Outside my window, minarets pierce the skyline. Satellite dishes, banned under Saddam, dot the flat roofs of houses and buildings. Leaves from an occasional date palm add a dash of colour to an otherwise yellow dullness.
At 10.19 am Namir and Saeed join a dozen men along a street where a flat-bed trailer and other vehicles are parked in an open square filled with rubbish. The Apache helicopters spot the group using powerful optics technology. An onboard camera records every step the men on the ground take. A few are carrying AK-47s and what looks like an RPG launcher, all pointed down. The men walk casually. Namir and Saeed are not wearing flak jackets with PRESS markings or protective helmets because al-Qaeda and other militant groups deliberately kidnap and kill journalists.
Namir walks ahead with an unarmed man towards a walled compound on a street corner. The man gestures, like he wants to show Namir something.
Apaches resemble war machines from the Terminator movies. Just rotors and weapons. An M230 chain gun loaded with 30mm armour-piercing rounds swivels between the main landing gear. An Apache has a two-man crew, a pilot and gunner.
‘Hotel 2–6, Crazy Horse 1–8. Have five to six individuals with AK-47s. Request permission to engage,’ says the Crazy Horse 1–8 gunner in a matter-of-fact voice, using the call-sign of the infantry battalion below.
‘Roger that. Uh. We have no personnel east of our position. So, uh, you are free to engage, over,’ comes the reply.
Engage means attack, kill.
Houses block Crazy Horse 1–8’s line of sight. It will have to do a loop. About twenty seconds later, Namir peers around the street corner with his long-lens camera raised. Crouched down, he takes four photographs of US Humvees from the battalion crossing the road, about 100 metres away.
‘He’s got an RPG,’ the Crazy Horse 1–8 gunner says, agitated now.
Namir rejoins the men as they walk back in the direction they came. Saeed is a little further ahead, talking on his phone. Crazy Horse 1–8 needs another 40 seconds to get in position.
‘Light ’em all up!’ says the pilot.
The chain gun explodes into life at 10.21 am. While it can Line in the Sand_1st pages-NEW.indd 6 13/3/2023 12:06 pm 7 Line in the Sand shoot 300 rounds a minute, the gunner fires several short bursts. The rounds are the size of a small soft-drink bottle, the length of a man’s hand, and fragment on impact. Most of the men fall to the ground in clouds of dust. Namir reacts more quickly than the others, fleeing to his left. The gunner tracks Namir as he runs, bent over, across a large pile of garbage. He drops into the waste, probably hit. He looks up in the direction of the fusillade. Maybe he sees the helicopter in those last seconds before his body shudders off the ground from more shells and disappears in dirt and rubbish.
Saeed also gets away initially and is moving fast along a walled compound, trying to use it for cover. Crazy Horse 1–8 spots Saeed and opens fire. He too is shrouded in dust.
The Apache shoots again at the main group of bodies.
‘Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards,’ says the gunner.
‘Nice,’ replies the pilot.
All the men are dead, except Saeed, lying near a kerb. For three minutes he tries to get up and crawl, but his left leg is badly wounded. The crew want to finish him off.
‘Come on, buddy,’ says the pilot.
‘All you gotta do is pick up a weapon,’ adds the gunner.
A faded turquoise minivan stops next to Saeed at 10.26 am. Driver Saleh Matasher Tomal, 43, is unarmed. Inside are his son Sayad, ten, and daughter Doaha, five. Tomal is taking them to school.
The crew tells the ground unit the van is ‘possibly’ picking up bodies and weapons and requests permission to attack again. Tomal gets out and opens the side cargo door. Two other men arrive and grab Saeed. They appear to be unarmed bystanders.
‘Come on, let us shoot!’ says the gunner.
The two bystanders put Saeed in the van.
Permission to attack is granted at 10.27 am.
Crazy Horse 1–8 fires several bursts, 120 rounds in total.
‘Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Haha!’ says the gunner.
It’s 10.29 am. Saeed and Tomal are dead, and probably the other men as well.
Troops from the infantry battalion arrive several minutes later.
At 10.35 am, one soldier says: ‘I’ve got, uh, eleven Iraqi KIAs [killed in action]. One small child wounded. Over.’
‘Roger, we need, we need, uh, to evac [evacuate] this child. Ah, she’s got a, uh, she’s got a wound to the belly,’ says another.
‘Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle,’ says the Crazy Horse 1–8 gunner.
‘That’s right,’ replies the pilot.
Both of Tomal’s children are wounded but survive.
I’m sitting at the bureau ‘slot’ desk. It’s a fixed position in all big Reuters reporting operations, someone monitoring the news, on alert. My job is to write the lead story of the day, work with our Iraqi reporters, and coordinate coverage with television and pictures staff. A phone with a direct line to editors in London sits on the desk.
Al-Qaeda suicide bombers tend to strike early, when markets are crowded, or young men are lined up at police and army recruiting centres. It’s been quiet across Iraq this morning. I don’t think I’ve written a single word, unlike most days since I arrived from Jerusalem six months earlier.
February 12: Bombs ravage Baghdad markets, killing 88
March 29: Suicide bombers kill 130 in Iraq
March 31: Tal Afar bomb killed 152, deadliest of war
April 18: Suspected al-Qaeda bombs kill nearly 200 near Baghdad
June 19: Bomb kills 78 in Baghdad, US in big offensive
Staff are working on feature articles. Catching up on admin. Chatting among themselves. I’ve been trying to kill flies around my desk with a plastic swatter. They drive everyone mad.
Suddenly, loud wailing breaks out at the back of the office, near a small room where the drivers relax and drink coffee. I stand up, heart pounding, senses primed. Something terrible has happened; the pitch of the anguish is not of this earth. A young Iraqi cameraman bursts through the door. I’ll never forget the horror and pain on his face, his hands clutching his head. He speaks rapidly in Arabic. A senior Iraqi journalist sitting next to me has also gotten up.
‘Namir and Saeed have been killed,’ he translates. ‘Possible US helicopter attack.’
I walk towards them, trying to ignore the tightness in my chest. Staff are pouring into the newsroom, shouting in Arabic. I can’t show emotion, I need to show leadership.
‘Let’s get all the information we can,’ I say.
Colleagues try Namir’s phone but it keeps ringing out. Saeed’s appears to be switched off or isn’t working. Several photographers and cameramen get in cars and rush to al-Amin. I take a few deep breaths and call Michael Lawrence, the global news editor in London, somehow keeping my voice under control: ‘I’ve got terrible news. It looks like two Iraqi staff have been killed.’
A photographer finds Namir’s body in a hospital morgue with no electricity. He and Namir were close friends, lived in the same house in the compound. At night they lay on their beds and talked about photography and what they would do after the war. The photographer packs Namir’s body with ice. I can’t remember who found Saeed.
People in al-Amin tell my staff a US helicopter attacked a group of men that included Namir and Saeed. US soldiers took Namir’s cameras, they said, which means we can’t review what he’d been photographing. I email the US military spokesman for Iraq, a one-star general in the Green Zone. I want everything in writing, and I figure he can get me answers fast. I’ve met him a few times and like him. He’s smart and friendly. He replies to my email quickly, saying he will check.
The bureau is in full-scale crisis now. Many staff are wailing. Because my partner Mary Binks follows events in Iraq from our home in Australia, I text her: ‘Think two of my staff have just been killed.’ It’s evening at the house we rent in rural bushland north of Sydney. Mary will always remember what she was doing because it was so discordant with the tragedy unfolding in Baghdad: she and our three young children – Patrick, Belle and Harry – were dancing to a Justin Timberlake song in the kitchen. Mary, a former journalist, has also lost colleagues to war.
I study the footage and photographs my staff bring back from the scene. They show bewildered residents standing next to a dusty turquoise minivan, its front torn off. There is a pool of blood near a kerb but no bodies. The road, pavement and walls are pockmarked by heavy calibre ammunition.
Residents say the van was near Namir and Saeed at the time and that other people were killed inside the vehicle. Two Irish security contractors who work for Reuters, both former members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, watch the footage and say the van wa probably hit by a missile. Iraqi police call the attack ‘random American bombardment’ and put the death toll at twelve. Nothing makes sense.
I get an email from a colleague at another foreign media organisation expressing sadness about Namir and Saeed but also wanting to confirm their deaths. Of course, this is news. More emails arrive asking the same question. All my foreign colleagues wait until I write a five-paragraph story before reporting the event. This makes it real, not a nightmare. Doing something I’ve done thousands of times for Reuters across Asia and the Middle East for fifteen years.
BAGHDAD, July 12, (Reuters) – An Iraqi photographer and driver working for Reuters in Iraq were killed in Baghdad on Thursday in what police said was American military action and which witnesses described as a helicopter attack.
