August 31, 2004 - When the phone rang and Julia said, "Micah has been kidnapped," there was little surprise—just an instant Iraq mode reaction: How does one reach the relevant people? Iraq is a village of twenty five million, and with tenacity, there is always a route.

Iraq has become a graveyard for journalists, with 39 killed since last year’s invasion. If it is not killing, kidnapping is rife.

And in Najaf, Iraqi police rounded up journalists on Wednesday "for their own protection," finally releasing them just after two rockets landed behind the police headquarters.

Media victims of the US invasion include an Al Jazeera journalist, killed when the network’s headquarters was bombed by US forces (despite the US military’s having been given a grid reference of the building), a Reuters cameraman and a Spanish Telecinco cameraman, killed when a tank shot up the Palestine hotel (journalists headquarters in Baghdad), and the award-winning cameraman Mazen Dana, who was filming outside the Abu Ghraib prison, with US permission and visible credentials, and was shot by a US soldier.

Independent journalists seem especially vulnerable—some through inexperience, others for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time in one of the most complex—and now dangerous—places on earth.

Julia Guest from Bristol, UK and Micah Garen (36) from New York, US—both experienced, independent filmmakers—have spent much of the last 17 months in Iraq, recording chaos, tragedy, and humanity, and for Micah, documenting the pillaging—and some recovery—of Iraq’s unique archeological heritage. His meticulous work brought him also into close contact with the US and Italian militaries, and some of the New York Police Department officers—also working in Iraq on missing antiquities.

In June 2003, in an impassioned article on the "fevered pitch" of looting in "the birthplace of the written word, etched out in clay bullae and on cuneiform tablets more than 5000 years ago," Garen wrote that US Army Colonel John Malay, Commander of southern Diwaniya, said that he recognized the problem, but archaeological sites were not a priority. Garen quoted a marine as saying, "We are not trained for this. Marines are good for kicking in doors and killing people." In balance, he also quoted one awed Marine, shocked at "how much deeper the history is."

The then Italian Ambassador Pietro Cordone—inexplicably newly appointed Iraqi Cultural Minister—"did not wish to speak about the looting."

Garen filmed cultural horrors, a child standing in a damaged home, a Quran damaged in a US raid; he filmed the trucks being loaded by people from all denominations with sustenance for those in besieged Fallujah, the shooting up of the external doors of the Baghdad office of young cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, severed limbs ...

He traveled on Christmas Eve with the US military seeking a former Iraqi Minister, Ibrahim Izzet Al Douri, with rock music blaring—resonant of Vietnam. And he documented item after item of Iraq’s looted treasures—Mesopotamia’s heritage, unbearable beauty, figures from the mists of time, enchanting statuettes, frescos, clay tablets, and vases that are "not a priority" for the occupying forces.

Garen’s communications to his company, Four Corners Media, ceased on August 13, after he had e-mailed US-based Human Rights groups—e-mails later copied to AFP—that he had been banned from the Italian base; then he disappeared. His fiancée, Marie-Helen Carlton, made an emotional appeal via Reporters Without Borders for his release, after he had been shown with kidnappers threatening to kill him unless the US assault on Najaf ended.

However, it transpired Garen had been staying in the southern Italian Military base near Nasiriyah and left after accusing the Italians of shooting up an ambulance, killing four people, including a pregnant woman, during a clash with Shi’ite militia. The film was sent to Italian state television RAI 2. According to news sources, he left the Italian base, checked in to a Nasiriyah hotel and, whilst filming in a local market, was kidnapped. Italian military officials distanced themselves from Garen’s film. Captain Ensore Sarli, spokesman for the Italian contingency in Iraq, said he "did not deem the journalist’s work credible," according to The Age (August 17, 2004). He also denied that Garen had been expelled from the base: "The journalist was not kicked out of Camp Mittica ... The journalist stayed with us until August 11 when he handed back the badge that allowed him access to the base saying he was headed to Baghdad."

It took remarkably little time to forge a route to Moqtada Al-Sadr, who—whilst distancing himself from the newly named Martyrs Brigade, which claimed responsibility for the abduction—requested the release of Garen, and after some hours, which seemed like weeks, announced the kidnappers’ readiness to free the journalist after Friday prayers.

Friday, August 19th, came and went. Saturday was then the set date. Nothing. But word is bond.

Yet, hope waxed and waned, and nerves frayed, until Sunday, when Garen appeared in the office of Al-Sadr’s Nasiriyah representative Sheikh Aws Al-Khafaji, looking remarkably relaxed, his interpreter Amir Doushi also released and safe. He thanked Al-Sadr for his efforts in his release, efforts Al-Sadr exerted whilst in the thick of fighting.

Micah said that his experience did not deter him from staying in Iraq—something he wished to do. The calls for his release, made through southern mosques at Al-Sadr’s behest, were heeded by his captors, who had previously thought he was working for US military intelligence.

Reports state that Garen was then handed to Italian troops, who passed him to the US military. Appearing briefly at a US-held press conference, US spokesman Bob Callahan said, " [Garen] remains in Iraq but I cannot tell you where."

Ironically, unconfirmed reports indicate that Marie-Helene Carlton, Micah’s fiancée, was being advised on the kidnapping by New York’s Police Department. In December 2002, Garen had made a searing film on NYPD’s zero-tolerance practices at the World Economic Forum, through the eyes of a 76-year-old naval veteran and protestor. Brutality alleged and filmed was such that New York-based civil rights lawyers Ronald Kuby and Daniel Perez took up the case of the protestor, Dick Krause. NYPD’s best are some of those investigating the looted antiquities in Iraq. Anomalies abound.

Communication from several thousand miles with a Shi’ite cleric under siege by two Middle England women, who had no such dealings before, was relatively a little problem. On August 19, the US State Department spokesman Adam Ereli spoke of their "objective to bring about the safe release of this innocent victim of terror." Many (though not the US military) were involved in doing just that; then ironically, Micah was almost hijacked by the US military. When he was eventually released, Julia commented, "There will be a party in Baghdad tonight."

If there was, it quickly became a mourning.

Their colleague Enzo Baldoni (56) of Italy’s Diario was killed within hours of Micah’s reappearance, in the same area of southern Iraq where Micah had been held. His kidnappers had threatened to kill him if Italy did not withdraw its troops. Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, safely thousands of miles away in Rome, refused to "give in to terrorists."

With a love for Iraq and its people, Baldoni, Julia, and a small group of journalists had braved April’s bloody US siege and slaughter of Fallujah, determined to record the truth of the horrors of a massacre comparable to another US atrocity, Vietnam’s never-to-be forgotten My Lai. The small group, also joined with activists, unhesitatingly traveled in ambulances and cars containing the sick and injured, at further risk, in the hope that their presence would deter soldiers from firing at them. Baldoni risked his life for the Iraqi people—a further poignancy to the tragedy is that he lost his life in Iraq, where people will give their life for a friend. But his blood is not on the hands of his killers alone; it will never be washed from those of Prime Minister Berlusconi.

A tribute to Enzo called him "a witness of the world ... careful and irreplaceable ... a witness of history and a seeker of the truth."

Still missing in Iraq are Christian Chesnot of Radio France Internationale and Georges Malbrunot of Le Figaro newspaper.

This illegal invasion has meant that everyone in Iraq is now a potential "victim of terror," residents and invaders alike. But the invaders have an option: they can leave (and take their puppet government with their foreign passports with them.) Only then will normality and stability gradually return, and shattered lives, homes, shrines, cities be rebuilt. And maybe in time, foreigners too will again be able to walk the streets of what remains of Iraq’s wondrous heritage till late in the night and hear, as before, only, "Welcome, welcome, welcome ..."

President Bush has called this disaster a "miscalculation." A Member of Iraq’s Olympic football team put it better. Talking of the carnage, the bloodshed, and the heartbreak, he said of the President, "How will he meet his God having slaughtered so many?" Indeed.

May all the invasion’s victims forever rest in peace. May those who brought it about never do the same.

Deepest gratitude is expressed to Sheikh Aws Al-Khafaji and all those involved in bringing about the release of Micah Garen and Amir Doushi. They cannot be named for obvious reasons.

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited Iraq on numerous occasions since the 1991Gulf War. She has written and broadcast widely on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also Senior Researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq

http://www.islamonline.org/english/In_Depth/Iraq_Aftermath/2
004/08/article_05.shtml