This was my eighth visit to Baghdad—in many ways, Baghdad feels like a second home, which I’m not sure is a healthy sentiment—my first being as the war wound down in 2003. I cringed a little when told the documentary would be called“Month of Mayhem.” It proved to be a more than apt title.The previous seven “tours” had allowed me to witness a steady deterioration in the level of security and services—despite my hopes, it was always, always worse. AndI knew this trip would likely be no different. It really becomes a matter of how bad it’s going to be. Before leaving the airport—before leaving home, for that matter—I know there will be bodies, and there will be bombs—it is only a question of who and how many.
A bloody time for Baghdad
As it turned out, this visit would see one of the bloodiest periods since the war began.
Within 10 minutes of reaching the bureau, I was live on air reporting on the battle for Haifa Street, as US andIraqi forces fought Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda elements not more than a mile or so from our office. All day, the air was rent by the sounds of small arms fire, heavy caliber machine gun fire, and missiles fired from the Apache helicopters that swooped low over our heads.
CNN’s Arwa Damon being in town ended up being a boon for me. She was embedded with a Stryker Unit and this allowed me to largely escape the routine of “live shots” from the bureau and embed with the military for much longer than usually possible on a five-week assignment. Embedding with the military has become the safest way of reporting, not just on the war, but on Iraqi civilians. It’s about the only way we can safely meet with ordinary residents, talk to them on and off camera and get first hand accounts of the awful tribulations they endure.
This was a month of massive bombs at universities and market places, of more and more bodies dumped in the streets, hands bound and shot after being tortured in almost inconceivable ways, including the use of electric drills. It was a month when what the US called its “troop surge” began, when the “Baghdad Security Plan” got underway, when the first Joint Security Stations were being set up.
The severity of the security situation is well illustrated by the embed in Adhamiya, an area about six miles from our bureau, but considered by our security advisors too dangerous to drive. Roadside bombs and ambushes are common.
Each time I return, there seems to be a new “worry” among the troops. This time it was the increased sniper activityand the growing threat of EFPs, or explosively formedprojectiles. These are savage weapons—“shaped” charges thatfire out a ball of molten copper, or similar metal. RegularIEDs were described to me by one soldier as “like a shotgunblast.”
“EFPs are like an armor piercing bullet aimed at your head,”he said.
A month of laughter and tears
I met another soldier who’d been “blown up” as he put it, four times, by IEDs, and wounded three. It was his first day back after his latest medical leave, and he was the driver in my humvee. Another soldier told me about an EFP that hit a humvee he was driving. It went through the right rear window of the vehicle, decapitated the soldier sitting there, took the legs off the gunner in the middle, took the head off the soldier in the left rear seat and continued out the window.
And this happened to an “up-armored” humvee.
During that month, we laughed in our bureau—you have to laugh—we had a party or two with our competitors inside ourcompound, we flew in helicopters, drove in Strykers and humvees and Bradleys. And we saw incredible suffering and loss. I left feeling that some positive things were being put into effect. And a stronger feeling that most of those things were about two or three years too late.
I’ll go back, later this year. Because I need to. BecauseI feel honored in many ways to, as a journalist, have the opportunity to cover this story up close. Because, like most of us who come—many for much longer periods than I do—I care.
MICHAEL HOLMES is a co-anchor for CNN International’s rolling newscast ‘Your World Today’
