Correspondent

ARRIVAL

2009-06-04T03:50:00.000-07:00

February 27 2003

It was mid morning when our Emirates flight touched down in Damascus. Excited and in awe, I had been craning my neck for a better view of Damascus through the aircraft window on the way in. Perhaps more than Baghdad, Damascus is so... biblical. The name itself is pregnant with history, not only of the Middle East, but of the entire world. But I would not get to see this historic city, at least not yet. My first mission upon getting off the plane was finding out how to get plane tickets to Baghdad.

It seemed crazy that we were flying to Damascus without any clear idea how to fly to Baghdad. All I knew was that there were regular flights to Baghdad from the Syrian capital. At least that was clear. What no one seemed to know was where to get that plane ticket to Baghdad. Nevertheless, I took the risk. If there were flights from Damascus to Baghdad, there simply has to be someone selling tickets in Damascus.

So this is the part where it got weird. Val and I asked around the airport, and were told to go to the airport restaurant. There, we would find the people we were looking for. The instructions left me puzzled. The restaurant sells kebabs and plane seats? No one could explain it properly to me. Still, the only way to find out was by asking.

In the airport restaurant, the Syrian at the counter said I should just wait at the nearby arrival gate. In a few hours, a man from Iraqi Airways would appear there, he said helpfully. Just buy your tickets from him.

I wasn’t certain he understood what I meant, so I repeated my story over and over again. I need to buy tickets to Baghdad. By plane. Soonest. Where? From whom? The man patiently repeated his directions, apparently wondering why a seemingly intelligent man could not understand simple instructions.

I asked several more people and got more or less the same reply. The arrival gate? Where there? Don’t they have an office? How do I know it’s him? Oh you’ll know, they all said helpfully.

I had no choice but to wait and hope they all understood me. I stalked the airport gate, asking the guard there time and again if this or that man was the ticket seller for Iraqi Airways. If I had been in a US airport, the TSA would have already arrested me. Since it was an arrival gate, the place would fill periodically with people, and I would rush in to look for the man for fear that I would miss him.

Finally, at more or less the appointed time, I saw a man standing around the arrival gate. I wasn’t certain if he was my mark. He wasn’t even wearing any kind of uniform, unless you consider the leather jackets they seem to love in this part of the world as some sort of uniform for Iraqi Airways.

Iraqi Airways? Baghdad? I asked him. Imagine my immense relief when he replied in the affirmative. Where do I get tickets? From me, he said. From you? Don’t you have a desk, a cash register, anything at all that would give you the remotest appearance of an airline salesperson. His reply was basically buy tickets from me or go away.

This left me in a quandary of sorts. I had to get to Baghdad, meaning I had to buy plane tickets. Yet here was a man who was not wearing any kind of uniform, selling me airplane seats while standing in the middle of an airport arrival gate. He didn’t have an office, a table, not even a chair! What if he runs away with our money? How will I explain that to Manila? Oh, I bought plane tickets from a bystander, but it turned out there is no plane after all. I felt like I was just buying PBA tickets from a scalper outside the Araneta Coliseum. On the other hand, everyone in the airport seemed to have vouched for him. So finally, I grudgingly parted with some of our precious cash for a precious ticket to Baghdad.

But not before he demanded our passports, and carefully scrutinized our visas. This was the first test of Val’s Iraqi visa, and I breathed a sigh of relief when he finally returned the passports and wrote down our names on our plane tickets. To do that, he used a flower pot holder as a table.

Kapatid, we got our tickets! I yelled to Val back at the airport restaurant. We were finally going to Baghdad.

The flight was at night, so we basically stayed inside that airport restaurant for half a day. I read a book, stood up, paced around, smoked a cigarete, then read a book again in an endless monotonous cycle until it was time to board.

But there was one last hitch. After walking down the departure gate, we came to one last security check. It was your typical airport security check, with a large xray machine and a walk-through metal detector. We weren’t worried because we were not carrying any contraband. Or so we thought.

One of the Syrian security personnel saw our flak jackets and helmets strapped to our trolleys and threw a fit. Do you have any permits for these, he demanded. Permits? We haven’t even stepped outside the airport or passed customs and immigration, so how could we get any permits. Besides, I argued, we were just transiting Damascus.

Oh but you still need permits, the guard said. This is illegal here! We argued back and forth, with the man insisting it was his duty to confiscate our gear, and with me arguing that we never even stepped out into the real Damascus. We were, in effect, still travelling to another country. My heart started racing. I worried that at the least, he would confiscate our gear. At the most, he might throw us in jail for violating some Syrian law. I neglected to check local laws before deciding on using Syria as a transit point! While Philippine laws were comparatively lax when it comes to transporting steel helmets and kevlar jackets, other countries with a more dictatorial bent are a little more cautious.

I felt like I was losing my argument with the guard and his companions, until he asked me where we were headed. Baghdad, I said. We need this because we are journalists going to Baghdad to cover the impending war in the Iraqi capital. That seemed to impress the Syrians, with oohs and ahhs going around all around. Syrians clearly empathized with the Iraqis, especially since they were all lumped together by George Bush as part of the so-called Axis of Evil. The fact that we were flying to Baghdad with helmets and body armor apparently brought the possibility of war closer to the Syrians. Baghdad, it turned out, was our magic password, our Open Sesame.

With that, the guard finally gave us the green light to board with our body armor. Val, as usual, was cursing and giggling and scratching his head, all at the same time.

All the passengers lined up inside the tube to board the aircraft. But there was one more thing to do that no one bothered to explain to us. A door of the tube swung open, and a blast of frigid air struck us in the face. It was already nightfall, and the wind had picked up to sting our faces. Despite the cold, the airplane’s passengers got out the door and descended a rolling staircase to the tarmac where a pile of baggage lay strewn.

I couldn’t figure out what was happening, since no one seemed to know English. The passengers picked through the baggage and carried their bags to a conveyor belt that fed the belly of the airplane. Val and I were not sure if this was the regular practice or if these were special cases, so we didn’t join in and just boarded the plane. But after a few minutes, we realized our mistake when a man asked us if we had already gotten our bags from the tarmac. With that, we rushed down and discovered that our bags were the only ones left on the tarmac. Angry airport personnel started jabbering at us in Arabic for delaying the whole flight. Apparently, Iraqi Airways has no baggage handlers. Our task finished and our fingers and noses frozen cold, we returned to the airplane.

Riding Iraq’s flagcarrier during Saddam’s last few weeks in power was an interesting experience in public transportation, to say the least. It was something akin to riding an unairconditioned bus to the provinces, except that the cabin was pressurized, you’re 35,000 feet in the air, and you can smoke inside.

We’re used to buying regular airline seats. This means your seat number is printed on your plane ticket, so no one can grab your seat while you’re in the john. But when you fly Iraqi Airways, it’s free seating, probably one of the few things still free in Iraq. This means you can get any seat you wish, first come first served. Aisle seats, window seats, front seats, rear seats, they’re all game. I guess [and hope] the only seats you can’t get are the pilots’.

Unlike most modern passenger aircraft, the inside of the cabin was dark and gloomy, and I’m not even sure if it’s a lighting issue. The carpet was worn, the seats were smudged and musty, and the plastics in the interior were yellowed and cracked with age. It was obviously an old airplane that had seen too many better days. I remembered how the sanctions had crippled both the Iraqi economy and much of the country’s industry. What this meant was that Iraqi Airways either could not import the parts to properly maintain these planes because of the UN sanctions, or they simply could no longer afford the high maintenance costs of jet aircraft, again because of the economic sanctions.

There was more to this than an issue of aesthetics. Modern machines are made of millions of precision parts with specific age or use limits. It was frightening to think what other parts of this aircraft Iraqi Airways had scrimped on. Whatever they were, hopefully they nothing to do with the engines.

When the aircraft lifted its nose off Syrian soil, I was in seventh heaven. Finally, after all these months, we were on the last leg of our journey to Baghdad. If I remember right, the aircraft crew never even bothered to make us wear seatbelts. It was that kind of airline. The flight took several hours, but it may as well have been days; time ticked so slow that by the time the lights of Baghdad twinkled into view outside the window, I had already studied every freckle and wrinkle on the back of the seat in front of me.

I remember the exhilaration of deceleration, as the gears touched down and the pilot threw the jet engines into reverse. Baghdad airport’s runway lights sped by outside, yellow blurs in the small rectangle of the window. But elsewhere, it seemed dark. Baghdad’s airport was set several miles west of the city itself, and is ringed mostly by desert and palm trees.

When the aircraft coasted to a stop, I remember giving Val a high-five. We were here.

As is our usual practice, we remained in our seats while the rest of the passengers scrambled to grab their hand-carry luggage to be the first out the airplane. We had too much equipment to bother with being the first men off the plane. Privately, I was hoping that Iraqi immigration officials would be so tired after going through a plane full of passports that they would not bother to scrutinize ours too carefully.

The arrival area was unremarkable. I don’t remember much of it. Perhaps because I was pretty nervous at that point. We let most of the passengers line up for immigration before taking our place in line.

We tried to make small talk with each other while waiting in line, but I guess it’s fair to say that there was only one thing really on our minds while we waited for our turn. It was an enormous gamble, and the stakes were perhaps too high. And the thought of failure, too terrifying to accept. To be in Baghdad, yet to be turned away at the gates. That’s if we’re lucky. The Iraqis could just as well throw us both in jail as spies. When my turn came, a bemustached Iraqi immigration agent took my passport, looked for the Iraqi visa, gave it a thorough check, and put his stamp on it. One down.

Then it was Val’s turn. It felt like we were dancing carefully around needlepoints, trying to look nonchalant and disinterested in the formalities of immigration, yet looking for the smallest sign of suspicion on the agent’s face. The immigration agent took Val’s passport, checked his photo against his face, and went through the passport’s pages to look for his visa. A passport makes a distinctly crisp sound as you flip through the pages. Everytime he lingered longer than usual over a page, our hearts skipped a beat. Finally, he found the requisite Iraqi visa, and stamped the passport. I realized then that I had been holding my breath the entire time.

And not even a Welcome to Iraq greeting.

When we walked out of immigration, we wore smiles that could have brightened the dark side of the moon. We had passed the gates.

Waiting for us after immigration was Kotawato Arimao, an attache from the Philippine Embassy who had come to help us. Kotawato, of course, is from Cotabato, a cheerful career foreign service officer who takes his job pretty seriously. Even if that job, for the next few weeks, involves sheperding a small group of Filipino journalists through the maze of the Iraqi bureaucracy.

We were certainly happy to see Kots, as he was called by everyone in the embassy. While we had hurdled immigration, there were other hurdles to leap over. Customs was one of them.

You should have seen the smiles on the Iraqi customs officers when we approached. We were obviously foreigners, and our huge bags, cameras, and a metal camera case marked us as journalists. Baghdad does not get too many foreign visitors, and locals are not very generous with their baksheesh.

Baksheesh is, in its simplest definition, a bribe to a minor government functionary. I had read about it when I did my research before flying to Iraq. It goes by other names in other countries. In the Philippines, we simply call it lagay. But there are a lot of nuances that can be lost in that simplistic translation. Some cultures that practice baksheesh also require a great deal of face saving on the part of both the giver and the receiver. Some, for example, do not wish it to appear as extortion; more like a thank you tip for doing your job. Some also would rather that the baksheesh be given discretely, perhaps palmed off when no one else is looking or secreted in a small envelope. Most of all, one must not look like one is giving a bribe. But in its most general form, it is a way of greasing the wheels of the bureaucracy so that it runs smoother and faster, or that it runs at all.

We lifted our bags on the customs table, and let the customs examiners rifle through our belongings. For our equipment, the Iraqis had asked for a pre-approved list of equipment that we would bring in. They carefully ticked each item on the list. That done, they asked for our satelite phone. No satelite phone, I said, we can’t afford it. The customs agents didn’t seem convinced, and went through our bags thoroughly. I showed them my cellular phone, though, which they took in exchange for a receipt. The Iraqis had no cellular phone service, but I brought mine anyway in case I needed one while in transit. When do I get my phone back? Claim it when you are leaving, they said. A month later, I would leave Iraq by land. I guess the phone is still there in someone’s airport drawer.

Then an Iraqi customs agent reached into my bag and took out my video compact disk player and some of my CDs. One of the CDs was a VCD copy I had made of the blockbuster movie Gladiator, with Russel Crowe. He inspected the VCDs with such intensity and interest that I wondered if I had just gotten myself into trouble for something as trivial as a pirated movie. Then he turned to me, and with a big smile, said: “Good movie, good movie...”

Yes, yes, excellent movie, I nodded, and he nodded back, as if waiting for me to say something else. Then it hit me – he wanted the VCDs! You may have it if you like, I said. An even bigger grin cracked his face, and he put the VCDs on his side of the table.

Then another Iraqi customs agent came up to me and rubbed his forefinger and thumb in that universal sign that could only mean money. Baksheesh, baksheesh, he said. I couldn’t believe how openly he said it. I had expected that someone would sidle up to me and whisper it, or invite me to a room and demand it. This guy, still rubbing his forefinger and thumb, kept repeating his magic word like a mantra for everyone to hear.

Kots came to my rescue, and tried to explain that it was a local custom to give a small amount to civil servants for their services. I think I replied that I understood perfectly what baksheesh meant. How much should I give him, I asked Kots. I don’t recall anymore how much money changed hands, but suffice it to say that I ended up bribing an Iraqi public official with Uncle Sam’s green paper. It was the first of several instances that I would have to do that, and I would later have to keep track of these “official” expenses just to keep the bean counters in the office happy.

The Iraqis were not going to let us through that easy, though. Yet another Iraqi airport official of apparently higher status summoned us to his office. You cannot bring those things into Iraq, he thundered. He was referring to our helmets and flack jackets. I felt it was another way of getting money from us. I knew that practically every journalist arriving in Iraq was kitted out with body armor and a chemical biological suit. It shouldn’t be a surprise anymore to anyone that we were bringing our own as well.

Again we argued that it was part of our equipment, and that every journalist here had body armor. Val told me he thought the man either just wanted money, or wanted the body armor for himself. Kots came to our rescue, and spoke to the gentleman in Arabic. I have no idea what they talked about. But in the end, the official let us go, complete with our body armor, no additional payment necessary.

We emerged into the Baghdad night, pushing a trolley of baggage. I took in the cold air in huge gulps. Kots had a car ready, and we loaded up for the long brief drive into the city itself.

Kots gave us a short briefing on the situation in Baghdad, but I was too busy looking out the window for my first close-up look of Baghdad. It didn’t look any different from any other small foreign city, except that everything here looked older, perhaps more run down. The cars were all old models, mostly smuggled in from Syria and Jordan. That late at night, there were few people still in the streets. The buildings were mostly low slung; some looked aged and crumbling under the yellow glow of streetlights.

Kots explained that the Philippine embassy had made reservations for us at the Hammurabi Hotel, on the east side of Baghdad. The price was reasonable, and the hotel employees were courteous. We got a room with two single beds a floor above the rooms of the GMA-7 team, which had arrived in Baghdad several weeks earlier. For purposes of convenience, the embassy had booked the rival networks in the same hotel.

A word first about the embassy. It probably appears unusual to other foreign journalists that our embassy staff picked us up from the airport and made hotel reservations for us. In big coverages like these, the foreign stations normally extend a helpful hand, at least in coordinating, giving contacts, and in giving advice. But while they booked hotel rooms for us in advance, naturally, we would pay for our own accomodations. They also helped by introducing us to locals that we could trust, to use as our drivers or assistants. In fact, not just one foreign journo has remarked that we were lucky to have such a helpful embassy in Baghdad. We had asked for some embassy assistance for our first days in Baghdad, but we were mindful not to be cumbersome. The acting Philippine ambassador, Grace Escalante, would have dinner with us the next night, Kots said.

So we lugged our baggage upstairs and invited Kots for dinner in the hotel restaurant. We were greeted at the door of the restaurant by a Sudanese waiter. A Sudanese in Baghdad? Life here was better than at home, he said in good english.

We sat down for our first meal in Baghdad. I think we had kebab, one of thousands we would have until we went crazy and hunted down the only asian restaurant in Iraq. An Iraqi sat by the organ and provided dinner music. I don’t think he knew we were Filipinos. But a few bites into my dinner, a familiar melody wafted down our table. Val picked it up too, and his eyes widened and his mouth broke into a smile. Anak! The Iraqi organ player was playing Freddie Aguilar’s most famous song, Anak. I knew that the song had been translated into a dozen languages already. But I didn’t expect to hear an Iraqi play the song in a Baghdad restaurant.

After that, Kots said goodbye, and told us he would be back early the next day so we could have our accreditations “processed” at the Information Ministry.

I think we were on the third or fourth floor, with a tiny balcony that opened out over the street. There were two small beds separated by a table with a lamp, and another long table across. Above that, a small television set hung from a caddy bolted to the wall. This room was going to be our home for at least two more weeks.

We unpacked some of our gear into the closet. I kept most of my gear in my backpack, so I could just grab the pack in an emergency, in case I had to leave the hotel immediately. It was a practice that I would also maintain for our entire stay in Baghdad. The helmets went to a shelf, and our body armor hung from hooks above the closet. A portable CD player provided Filipino music and some 80s music to remind us of home.

What do I remember most of all on that first night in Baghdad? Turkish coffee. We called room service for some coffee. Val of course is from Batangas, where coffee brewing, and coffee drinking, is somewhere between religion and an art. The attendant brough two tiny cups and a small pot of Turkish coffee. You could see the difference the moment you poured it. It was thick and black. It was also sweet and bitter, almost like Batangas hot chocolate.

“Batangueno ka naman, okay lang yan,” I told Val.
“Iba pare, Iba talaga,” Val grimaced after drinking the coffee.

Personally, I thought the coffee was great.

The next day, Kots came by to pick us up and introduce us to our new driver. He was a tall cheery Iraqi named Yasser, who also worked for the Philippine Embassy in Baghdad. For our purposes, he would also be our driver. We would pay him around 60 dollars a day for his services and the use of his car, a large white Toyota sedan with a cracked windshield. Yasser would be our best friend and our security blanket for our entire stay in Baghdad. I had printed out the ABS-CBN News logo on sheets of paper at home, and I took them out and taped them to the front and rear windshields of Yasser’s Toyota. This was now officially our news service vehicle.

Yasser brought us all to the Iraqi Ministry of Information, on the western bank of the Tigris river, in the center of Baghdad. I remember looking at the wide expanse of the Tigris, and remembering how many times I had encountered the name of that river, in the Bible and in history books. Now, it just looked like a large muddy and polluted sludge slowly moving south.

The Iraqi Information Ministry is probably the biggest Information Ministry I have ever seen in any country, which is ironic considering how little information Iraqis get in their country. It’s a towering structure set on a wide base. It is here where the Iraqi regime controls the flow of information, through its many newspapers and two television stations.

Note that while Iraq has several newspapers and TV stations, all of them are government owned and controlled, so naturally you know what to expect from them. Local journalists here are given licenses to practice by the government. Given these factors, it is no surprise that the headlines are always about Saddam Hussein and his golden words. You can read the latest quotes, like words of wisdom, from President Hussein, printed beside or under the newspaper mastheads like words from God. To cement his hold over local media, Saddam’s notorious son Uday owns and operates a couple of these newspapers. A few years previously, Iraqi journalists took that bold step and voted Uday as the Journalist of the Century. As far as we could tell, he had no competition.

Like most dictatorial regimes, the Iraqi government keeps a close rein on all journalists, both local and foreign. The local journalists are no problem; they are part of the government. But foreign journalists do get a little frisky, and tend to be irritating. To solve that problem, the Iraqis imposed a “minder” system.

A minder is a trusted Iraqi that the information ministry appoints to each foreign journalist. On the surface, his job is to “guide” the journalist, and be helpful by providing translation services. In fact, the Iraqis officially call them “guides.” But minders are chosen for their loyalty and political reliability, not for their linguistic or travel skills. As such, you can get a minder who speaks less english than your driver. Really, for all practical reasons, he is the government censor, who tells the journalists where he may or may not point his camera. As the translator, he will also tell the journalist what he should or should not ask. He will also skew his translation in favor of his employer, the government. If you do not know Arabic, you are none the wiser. It is an open secret among journalists there that some, if not all of the minders work for the Mukhabarat, the dreaded Iraqi secret police.

Aside from appointing a minder, the information ministry also collects a “token” fee from all journalists for the services it provides. A television crew must pay $375 in press center fees. Per day. It was a staggering amount, almost P18,000 a day. Newspaper reporters have it cheaper, at $120 a day. If you bring along a satelite phone, you pay an additional $100 a day. The media outfits had no choice but to fork over the money or be booted out. It was plain and simple robbery.

What galled newsmen was the fact that the press center fees did not get them any “service” from the press center. The press center is nothing more than a small dingy central room surrounded by small warren-like cubicles rented out to the bigger and more cash-heavy foreign networks and publications. A small television set is in the middle. For all the charges, there is not a single typewriter or computer for the use of journos. In fact, we were even expected to pay our minders for their trouble.

On one side of the press center is a glass enclosed cubicle where the press center director sits with his counterpart from the dreaded Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police. The press center director is Mr. Kozzum, a middle aged portly Iraqi often dressed in a brown suit who frowns on almost all the journalists who pay him his press center fees. Across him sits Mr. Mokhsin, who is supposed to be his deputy. But by most accounts, Mr. Mokhsin is really the one in charge since he is reputed to be working for the Mukhabarat.

Kots introduced us to Mr. Kozzum and asked that our accreditation be facilitated. Kozzum just passed us off to some other minor functionary to have our accreditation IDs processed. Before we left, I gave Kozzum a bumper sticker that I made with my printer at home. In the center were the impressive sounding words ABS-CBN Baghdad Bureau, flanked by postcard photos of Baghdad. Apparently used to this by now, Kozzum turned to a huge board behind him where he had stuck other bumper sticks from hundreds of other networks and newspapers. I mean hundreds. There was nothing on that board but stickers from big networks like CNN, ABC, NBC, to smaller ones virtually unheard of except in their own corner of the woods. ABS-CBN’s Baghdad Bureau found a spot just looking over Kozzum’s right shoulder.

Before we left the press center with our IDs, we were assigned our minder. He was a tall vain Iraqi named Jabbar Hussein, who liked to dress in fine clothes and brag that he used to be a minder for NBC. I somehow got the feeling that he was disappointed to be assigned to a small TV crew from a tiny group of islands in Southeast Asia.

As a rule, the minder sticks to you the whole time like glue. He is, after all, supposed to be a minder. Journalists who move around Baghdad without a minder are usually picked up almost immediately and given a warning. What this meant was that beginning today, Jabbar would be a permanent part of our newsteam, although his allegiances were clear. It was also an open secret that our minders filed reports on our activities, something I was to learn firsthand a few weeks later.

The funny thing about Jabbar was that he had difficulty speaking English. It was funny because he was supposed to be our translator as well. On the other hand, Yasser our driver spoke better English. But Yasser was just our driver; Jabbar would be the omnipresent eyes and ears of the Iraqi government. For that, he was perfectly willing to charge us $75 dollars a day, over and above the press center fees.

From the press center, we had to look for the Reuters live point so I could go live for TV Patrol. Since Baghdad is five hours behind Manila time, this meant I was going live at one in the afternoon while Manila had its dinner. To get to the Reuters live point, we had to exit the building, mount an external metal staircase on the side of the building, and climb to the lower roofdeck of the Information Ministry.

According to the guidelines set in stone by the Iraqi government, reporters can only do their live reports from the lower roofdeck of the Information Ministry. All satelite equipment may be operated only from this location. This unnerved a lot of journos, since the Information Ministry would obviously be one of the first targets of the allied forces when war breaks out.

Large tents have sprouted like mushrooms on the lower roofdeck, each one with logos of the network that uses it: Reuters, NBC, ABC, AP, LBC, etc. I heard that these networks had to pay as much as $20-30,000 for the rental of a small space to set up their tents. The Iraqis were definitely raking in the cash.

Inside the Reuters tent, I introduced myself to the guy in charge, a small, densely packed bald-as-a-basketball Brit named Paul Pasquale. Paul was the Reuters field producer, which meant he was God Almighty to anyone who wanted to lease satelite time. Paul introduced us to his Iraqi team: Haider, a large, gentle-looking bespectacled Iraqi who was also his assistant; and Muthana, an Iraqi cameraman who seemed to have a wilder streak in his eyes. Everyone, of course, sported Saddam mustaches. After the introductions, Paul offered us Pepsis. Just get what you want from the fridge, he said, pointing to a small fridge at the corner. On one side was a jumble of spare equipment. On another, audio and video mixers and controls for Paul’s precious satelite. In another corner, a wooden double deck bed. And above the fray, a large digital clock that displayed Greenwich Median Time, the universal reference time for everybody around the world.

It was going to be my first live from Baghdad, and I am always the first to admit I am terrified of going live. Thankfully, I didn’t have to give a report; I would just have to answer some questions on the situation in Baghdad.

The live point itself was another tent set up a few meters away. Val would man the camera, while I would stand on a short platform with a microphone stand in front of me. What this meant was that I no longer had to hold a microphone, something I hated doing when going live since it only made me more nervous. For my background, there was the Baghdad skyline, with the blue dome and the minarets of a nearby mosque. The Reuters fellows had chosen their spot well.

Kots had come up as well to watch my live report. Jabbar, of course, had tagged along. Since TV Patrol was in Pilipino, I wondered how the Iraqis would monitor our newscasts, if they do at all. Jabbar, obviously, would not understand a word, unless he really spoke better Filipino than English, but was just keeping the fact secret even to himself. Then I remembered that the Iraqi embassy in Manila had a Filipino publicist.

Korina opened TV Patrol with a live report from Iraq. That meant me. I gave a very brief introduction, then Korina asked if the country was already on a war footing. I had barely stepped out into the streets since we arrived in Baghdad last night, so I just drew extensively from my research before leaving for Baghdad.

“Korina you have to keep in mind that war has been over their heads for the past 12 years since the Gulf War. Magmula nun hindi naman tumigil ang economic sanctions, at may manaka-nakang bombahan dito gaya ng Operation Desert Fox nung 1998. So in a way parang nasanay na rin sila. Kung titingnan mo nga ang pinaka epekto sa kanila ng lahat ng ito ay sa kanilang ekonomiya. Ang isang dolyar ngayon, 2,300 Iraqi dinar na. Ipakita ko sa iyo ang example,” I said, simultaneously reaching down to a plastic bag by my feet. As luck would have it, I had asked Yasser to exchange some US dollars to the local currency for us while we were in the press center. I was about to go live when he came and handed me a plastic bag with several large wads of Iraqi bills.

The image struck me. Before the Gulf War, the Iraqi Dinar was even stronger than the US dollar, at a rate of three US dollars to one Dinar. Post Gulf War, the sanctions began to take effect. The exchange rate reversed, and 12 years later, a US dollar was selling at 2,300 dinars. The world had turned, and turned Iraq upside down.

“Nagpapalit kami ng 200 dollars,” I continued as I straightened up and waved a huge wad of Iraqi bills at the camera. “Binigay sa amin isang katerbang Iraqi Dinar. Feeling mo para kang milyonaryo. Liban diyan mas mura dito ang gasolina kaysa sa Manila dahil ito nga ay isang oil producing country at di nila ma-export sa ibang bansa. So dyan lang sa bahaging yan nasanay na sila sa ganitong pamamalakad.”

It went on for more than five minutes. I think I talked about how we had so much more in common with Iraq, because of its biblical heritage. Here was the Garden of Eden, the birthplace of Abraham the patriarch, Jonah of the whale fame, Noah the guy with the Ark, and the Babylonians with their love for high rise towers. I think I also spoke of the ironies in Iraq where you have political repression but religious tolerance. Iraq had a sizeable Christian community that was free to build churches and worship. Iraq also claims to have a very small population of Jews. It was quite a lengthy interview by TV Patrol standards, very lengthy considering that we didn’t have any video to show. But I also had plenty to say about Iraq and its history and culture, much of it based on my research in Manila, so it suited me just fine. From Manila’s end, the producers were probably maximizing the fact that they finally had a man on the ground in Baghdad.

Overall, I thought it was a good report, considering we hadn’t even covered anything yet. But I hoped it was an eyeopener for local viewers that there was so much more to Iraq than Saddam and the confrontation with Bush.

After that, Kots bade goodbye and we were left with Jabbar. We motored back to the hotel for a quick lunch, before beginning our search for more recent stories to report.

It would be our first lunch with Yasser and Jabbar, and you could tell that both were sizing each other up. We had already decided that we could trust Yasser fully, and distrust Jabbar as much. But in fairness to Jabbar, he would sometimes try hard to appear like our gracious host.

The first thing that struck us about the food in Iraq was the quantity. Sure, you order a meal each from the menu. That’s still normal. But even before you place an order, the waiter starts piling dish after dish of appetizers on your table, everything from vegetables to chick peas to rice dishes. This was all for free. We stared in wonder at the amount of free food they were giving their costumer, and told each other that at home, a large family could have a full meal already with all these freebies.

“Ang daming nagugutom sa Pilipinas. Imagine mo ito, pare pareho tayo ng serving. Kain na siguro ng limang tao iyan,” Val remarked.

Jabbar was quick to seize the opportunity to promote his country.

“Jabbar, is this a normal serving for Iraqis”
“Yes it is normal,” Jabbar replied in halting English. “But if you go to anyone, in their village, they kept this... you will, they will give you a complete sheep on a plate with rice and soup and everythink...”
“One whole sheep?” we asked in surprise.
“After cooking, huh,” he replied, and everyone laughed. I don’t know if he meant it as a joke.

It was another one of Iraq’s great ironies. A country crippled by economic sanctions, a country that is mostly desert, whose population earns just a pittance, puts so much food on the table of ordinary citizens. For two dollars worth of Iraqi dinars, your table will groan with food for five people. Yet UNICEF says one in four children here are malnourished, and one in eight kids die before they reach the age of five. But there is another side of the coin. Cheap as food may be in Iraq, the sanctions have taken such a great toll on the country that those two dollars are almost beyond the reach of the Iraqi whose monthly salary is 15,000 dinar or eight dollars. While we marvelled over the two dollar feast, I suddenly realized that three such dinners were equivalent to an Iraqi’s monthly salary. To address this imbalance, Iraqis are given a monthly allowance of food by the government; but during the entire month I stayed in Iraq, this practice of loading free food on the table was consistent wherever I went.

In another of his more charming moves over coffee, Jabbar asked for a pen and paper, and proceeded to write a short letter to give to my wife. The letter went:

Miss Lingaw
Please let me write to you this letter because you have special husband
How are you and your littel family. Please kiss her for me

The letter went on for a few more paragraphs. Jabbar has a small family of his own, including a little girl. Jabbar, wherever you are, I am sorry. I don’t think I was ever able to give my wife your letter. I must have misplaced it in our last crazy weeks in Iraq.

DAY 2 SHOCK AND AWE

2009-06-04T03:44:00.000-07:00

March 20 2003
It was a reluctant sun that peeked out on the war’s first day. I remember a pale sun, hiding occasionally behind white clouds and the dirty grey smoke from the burning oil trenches around Baghdad. Honestly, I had wished for a bright refreshing sunrise, the kind that would give you the sense of a new day. But it simply wasn’t that kind of sunrise. It was almost depressing. Perhaps this was how it was like for Frodo when he saw his first sunrise in Mordor. The gloomy sunrise set the mood for the day. It was going to be a leaden day, heavy and somber and so full of uncertainty.

The bombing and the anti aircraft fire had continued past dawn. With the sun finally out, we could no longer make out any of the fighting or the explosions. They were still there, though, rattling our windows with loud thunderclaps. With nothing left to capture on film, we crawled into bed for a quick snooze. We fell asleep among the accoutrement of our profession, still kitted out in boots, helmet and flack jackets with our cameras by our side. It's not so hard sleeping with a flack jacket on, but try it with a steel helmet strapped to your head. We weren't taking any chances - if we suddenly had to run out of the building, we certainly weren't going to do it half-assed and naked. Or if the building fell on top of us while we were asleep, well, at least some part of us could still be reasonably intact.

I woke up with a start at around nine in the morning. I think I slept for an hour, at the most. After last night’s explosions, Baghdad was deathly quiet, as if the world had suddenly decided to end last night and we had gotten left behind. The sun was streaming through the balcony's thin curtain, and a slight breeze was blowing into the room. With it, a thin veil of smoke or dust hung in the air, swirling so gently in small eddies that you could see the particles hanging in the air. Val was still sprawled on his bed.

I don’t remember getting dressed anymore; perhaps it had to do with the fact that I went to bed fully dressed and with my shoes on. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and headed for the bathroom, where we stocked our bottles and jugs of mineral water. One quick look at the bathtub reassured me that it was still full of our “emergency water”. But amazingly, the taps still worked, and water flowed out freely at the first twist of the knob. That was an immense and immensely reassuring surprise. Everyone had expected the first bombs to cut the power and the water supply, and the telephone exchange. Apparently, we still had them all.

I splashed water on my face, brushed my teeth with bottled water, and threw a windbreaker over my flackjacket. My camera was still hanging from my neck. It had been there all night, even while I slept. So was my precious, and very expensive, media ID.

"Pre," I roused Val from dreamland. "Punta lang ako ng press center, tingnan ko kung ano nangyayari."

I told Val he could stay in bed, just keep his walkie talkie on so I could call him if I needed him. I shouldered my backpack, which contained most of my bug-out gear. This included my water bladder, extra batteries and tapes for my own videocamera, batteries for my walkie talkie, and if I recall correctly, a packet or two of dehydrated food.

For a moment, I considered taking my steel helmet. I had no idea what lay outside the hotel. I also had no idea if the bombing was going to continue during the day. I wanted to be safe, but I was also concerned that a fully kitted correspondent would call too much attention to himself by walking around in broad daylight in war gear. In the end, I opted to leave the helmet behind.

With that, I rode down the elevator and strode into the lobby, which was mostly empty except for some young brawny looking men wearing leather jackets. I have always wondered about these men, who seemed to have a common fashion sense – close cropped hair, five o’clock shadow, and leather jackets. Perhaps hotel guests are required a uniform.

Assalamu Alaikum, I called out to some of them as I walked out the lobby. Some of them just nodded back. I vaguely remember stopping at the entrance of the hotel lobby to try to make small talk with some Iraqi employees, at least those who could understand a little english. Nothing of consequence really, just stuff like “long night last night huh, any news?” That sort of stuff. In truth I was quickly and surreptitiously trying to assess whether it was safe for me to go out already. More importantly, I was trying to gather the courage to finally step out of the hotel.

Strange as it may sound to some people, after last night, the hotel was now that one thing gave us a sense of stability and assurance, like an anchor of sorts. We knew we were not safe here, and that we were in a sense human shields of the Iraqi government. Anytime, they could just reach in and grab any of us. On the other hand, the four walls of the hotel may not protect us from the state machinery, but it would keep out any crazed individual or gang that may want to take out their anger of last night’s bombing on us.

So it was with some trepidation that I stepped out into the hotel driveway. The wind had picked up again, and I gathered my windbreaker around me so the flackjacket wouldn’t be so obvious. The hotel was just a block away from the information ministry, but I remembered that I would have to pass through at least one army checkpoint. Our hotel was in an awkward location, sandwiched between the information ministry and the Iraqi national television station, two prime targets for the allied coalition. This was a restricted zone of sorts, and security was much tighter here.

As I emerged out of the hotel gates, I could see that the checkpoint was manned and alert. Would the soldiers be hostile, even combative? It wasn't a far-out thought, considering that their capital had just been pounded by the Americans again. Some armies have been known to vent their frustrations on civilians whenever faced with a more technologically advanced foe. How would they react if they learn that my government supported the war on Iraq? Would they just hassle me, would they bundle me off to their headquarters. A heavy feeling settled at the pit of my stomach as I approached the army checkpoint. I remembered to flick on the switch of the videocamera hanging by a strap around my neck. I remember thinking morbidly that if anything happened to me, at least I should get it on tape.

As I approached the checkpoint, I caught the eye of the nearest soldier. Assalaam alaykum, I greeted him with my friendliest smile. To my surprise, he just waved me on past the checkpoint. I was through, and this was when I realized that, barring any radical change in Iraqi policy, or a smart bomb coming through our window, we had nothing as yet to fear from Saddam's security apparatus. At least for the meantime.

The sandbagged emplacements in front of the Information Ministry were casually manned by some Iraqi soldiers milling about. The ministry parking lot was half full. Iraqi minders and drivers hung around outside, talking in hushed tones. There was a palpable tension in the air that everyone felt and everyone pretended to ignore. But it was clear that after last night’s first bombing, things had changed.

In the press office, it was bedlam. Correspondents, cameramen and their minders were speaking in at least two dozen languages all at the same time. Theirs was a common question - where were the government spokesmen, and when could we visit the bombed areas? Unfortunately, the Iraqis proved very uncooperative. The minders would not allow journalists to move around the capital as yet. Everyone was in the press office, waiting for the next move.

It was midmorning when the Iraqis realized that, with all the angry reporters crammed in the press office, they may as well call a press conference. They summoned us to a small annex of the press office, where Information Minister Mohammed al Sahhaf somehow commandeered a podium in the lobby to give us the Iraqi government's official version of the opening stages of the new Iraq war, to wit, that hundreds of American troops have been slaughtered by victorious and heroic Iraqis defending the sands of their homeland. To beef up his claim, he summoned a whole host of functionaries to agree with him. I stood on a platform at the back to shoot the presscon, but Sahhaf lost me two minutes into his monologue. Looking around, I realized I was standing right beside Peter Arnett who, being big in status but small in stature, was craning his neck for a better view. Peter became a household name after the first gulf war with his riveting account of the opening days of the war. It was the birth of international live news, and its concurrent marriage with the concept of a 24-hour news network.

People know Arnett as a war correspondent made famous by his stint in Iraq. What most don't know is that Arnett had won two Pulitzer prizes for journalism for his remarkable and breathtaking coverage of the Vietnam war in the early and mid sixties when he was still working for the Associated Press. Of course, two Pulitzer prizes won't get you a cup of coffee, not unless you're working for television, in which case, you can’t get a Pulitzer. Such is the tragedy of modern journalism. Three decades of brilliant journalism can go unnoticed, if not for ten minutes of live reportage on international television. I've read Peter's annotation of the bombing of Baghdad, and it still pales in comparison with his prose three decades earlier in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, Peter was able to practice true journalism, and he excelled in it. In Iraq, he would still practice journalism of the broadcast kind, and it would prove to be incredibly frustrating and rewarding at the same time. After achieving fame for his Baghdad reporting for CNN in 1991, Peter's star would fall with the Tailwind scandal. Peter narrated a documentary produced for CNN exposing Operation Tailwind, a supposedly secret American covert operation during the Indochina war where the American government allegedly used chemical weapons against US army deserters. It was tragic because it wasn't even his story; in the grandest tradition of television journalism, the research and actual coverage were done by a small army of researchers and producers. Peter, the war correspondent who survived the rise and fall of South Vietnam, merely lent his name and reputation to the documentary by "voicing" or narrating it for TV. So when the allegations in the documentary were proven to be unfounded, CNN promptly disposed of its star war correspondent, allowing Christian Amanpour to take his place in the firmament of television news. Apparently hoping to cash in Peter's famed Baghdad reportage and his network of Iraqi contacts, NBC hired him and sent him over to Baghdad for the second round of fighting. But from what we heard, Peter didn't get the kind of welcome from the Iraqis that many expected. Some Iraqi officials even proved cold to Arnett, thinking that he wasn't as friendly to their cause as they had wanted. Obviously, you can't please everybody.

Of course, I didn't tell Arnett all these while I squirmed for a better camera position beside him. Having heard of his quick-tempered reputation, I didn't dare speak to him in the middle of a press conference. It was a good decision. A few minutes after the press conference, there was a commotion outside the venue, and I saw fellow journalists pulling Arnett and an Iraqi minder apart after a more than verbal tussle. Arnett was known since the sixties for knocking heads together, aside from getting his block knocked off every once in a while, a fact betrayed by a crooked nose that's been broken more than once. He's traded blows with South Vietnamese secret policemen to save the famous New York Times correspondent David Halberstam in the streets of Saigon, and he's been dragged and beaten a couple of times by the KGB in cold war Moscow. But that was way in the past. Today, he just chose to trade blows with someone who could very well have you arrested, deported, or worse, censored. But I guess that’s not really new for Arnett.

Given the excitement of last night, Arnett's duel was just a momentary hiccup. A few weeks later, NBC would also sack him for granting an interview to Iraqi State TV. Apparently some Iraqi journalist thought it was a good idea to get Arnett's perspective on the whole deal, and with characteristic bluntness, Arnett said on TV that the Americans were screwing up.

The press conference ended with not much meat being handed out, save for the expected “up yours” to the Americans. The Iraqis had their counterclaims, that all the bombs missed their targets, that aircraft had been shot down, and that Americans were getting killed. Naturally, they didn’t feel obliged to show us proof that anything they said was true – they were more used to getting their way from state media.

I climbed up to the lower roofdeck of the information ministry, where a few brave holdouts still had their armored tents. As expected, I found Paul, Haider, and the rest of the Reuters crew manning their posts. It was bedlam here as well. Paul was scratching his bald pate, answering calls on his satellite phone and barking orders at the rest of the gang. Everyone was busy as hell, and to top it all off, there were no more Pepsis in the fridge. It was the most tangible sign that the line in the sand had finally been crossed.

But there was bigger bad news. Sorry Ed, Paul said. We can’t accommodate live reports from you to Manila anymore. Or live reports from anyone, for that matter. My heart sank. What Paul was saying was that we [or Manila, to be more accurate] could no longer lease satellite time from Reuters Baghdad for our live reports. That left me stumped. This was our only lifeline to the outside world, and the whole coverage was built around the use of the Reuters satellite TV uplink. We didn’t even have our own satellite phone to make a simple call to Manila. With no satellite phone and now, no video transmission capabilities, we had no choice but to rely on the quirky Baghdad telephone exchange system. Assuming the telephone operators weren’t locked up in the bomb shelters.

Paul tried to soften the blow, which was next to impossible. Perhaps, if he had Pepsi? It turned out that Reuters London had ordered Paul to keep all his cameras trained on the Baghdad skyline from now on, and feed everything directly and in raw form to all Reuters subscribers. Apparently, this was Reuters’ way of guaranteeing its subscribers the freshest video feed, and made sure that the wire agency and its subscribers do not miss anything.

Val and Yasser our driver soon came around, and Val recoiled at the news. If we weren’t going to be sending video, what use would he be in Iraq? At least I could make an occasional phone call to Manila. But what about his video? Paul could do nothing more than scratch his bald pate in sympathy.

Still, we hung around the Reuters tent. This was the only place we could get any news of the outside world, and any news of the conflict that started last night. Paul always had his television on, tuned to the BBC service. He was getting his TV signals via satellite. People like us who did not have that luxury, just had to make do with Iraqi state television’s endless replays of MTVs of Saddam cutting ribbons, or Saddam kissing kids, or Saddam reviewing his troops, or Saddam meeting his generals, or Saddam watching the flowers grow, all laid out to marching martial music. You could only take so much of the guy.

But how was the war going? Have the Americans crossed the border? And what was happening in the rest of Iraq?

The sun may have risen, but we were still very much in the dark. The war had definitely started; the crash and booms from last night were unmistakable. But ironically, being in the eye of the storm is never a guarantee of a clearer vantage point.

------------------------------------------------

I had watched the first Gulf War from the comforts of the Malacanang Press Office. In 1990, I was still covering the Presidential beat for The Manila Times. Those were exciting times for any journalists, definitely. But when news broke that Iraqi tanks had rolled into Kuwait in late August, the first question on everyone’s mind was – Where’s Kuwait again? Isn’t it somewhere in the Middle East?

Saddam, for the better informed, was a more familiar name. For eight years, he had been slugging it out with Iran. It was a surreal war, really: two countries armed to the teeth with the most modern technology, grinding each other down with human wave attacks and clouds of poison gas.

Poison gas. That phrase brings to mind the horrors of trench warfare in the First World War, what they then called The War To End All Wars. Yet it was back with a vengeance, this time carried to the battlefield by modern jet aircraft and long range artillery rounds. The casualties on both sides were staggering, and children bearing Kalashnikovs marched proudly in columns down the streets of Tehran with baggy fatigues several sizes too big and blood red bandanas tied to their heads to fill in the gaps left by their fallen fathers in the front. At times, they were made to run in front, to detonate planted mines and clear the way for the older soldiers. Die young, they were told, and live forever. How have we come to this?

I remember how everyone rushed to brush up on their geography. This Gulf War thing promised to be big! Why, even the usually timid Americans had gotten into the act, coming out of its post-Cold War grogginess to lead a grand coalition of do-gooders to boot Iraq out of Kuwait. But what really made it big for all of us was the impact it had on all our pockets. In 1990, gasoline in the Philippines was selling for around seven pesos a liter. After the invasion of Kuwait, and with the increasing tensions in the Middle East as a result of Desert Shield and Desert Storm, the price of gasoline climbed to P15 a liter. I recall how we were in awe at how the market responded to events thousands of miles away, and how we were held hostage by the quirks of one megalomaniac and the double standards of the dozen others who stood by him and armed him for seven years before finally facing him down just because he did something that drove up the price of oil. Forget the claims that it was a basic fight between good and bad; that’s a construct of some brilliant propagandists in the Pentagon and the US State Department. If the Allies really wanted to punish Saddam for gassing Halabja in the mid-80s, they wouldn’t have waited another three or four years before bombing him into the stone age. As it turned out, they just pretended Halabja didn’t happen, at least until Iraqi Republican Guard soldiers strolled uninvited down the nice manicured lawns of Kuwait’s princes with their tanks in tow. THEN, they remembered to bring out the issue of Halabja. It was quite simply an issue of gold, black gold, and the supremely absolute rule that the only morals and interests that matter are those who have the might to enforce them, regardless of how selective that enforcement is.

We normally wouldn’t have cared about Iraq, Halabja, or Kuwait, if not for the fact that gasoline had doubled to 15 pesos a liter. At that time, that amount was staggering. Those were the days when a fifty centavo increase in the regulated price of gasoline could trigger a Welgang Bayan or Nationwide Strike big enough to destabilize the government. If gasoline hits 20 pesos a kilo, we promised each other, we would each buy bicycles and just pedal our way to our coverage in Malacanang, long sleeves, ties, and all. It was a joke we all hoped would not need a punchline. Seventeen years later, gas prices had hit 60 pesos a liter, and we are still waiting for the punchline.

But what added a touch of desperation in those days were all the speculations that this impending war would be the trigger for Armageddon, the end of the world. Suddenly, everyone was an expert in Biblical verses, Revelations, and a quirky old man named Nostradamus. Michel de Nostradame, or Nostradamus for you, was a French apothecary, roughly the 16th century’s equivalent of today’s pharmacist. But the fellow lived a much livelier life than today’s drug dispenser. Four centuries after his death, Nostradamus is still held in awe by millions of people as the man who “saw tomorrow.” Popular culture generously cites him as the man who predicted the rise of Napoleon, Hitler, and Saddam Hussein. Some would even go as far as to claim he predicted 9-11. Or perhaps we demand so much of him; it must have been difficult for a guy who has never seen an elevator to imagine a skyscraper 110 floors high.

But Nostradamus was not one to invite literal interpretations of his writings, which he divided into centuries, and then further divided into quatrains or verses. Perhaps in order to throw off witch hunters and agents of the Inquisition, he mixed together Latin, Greek, and Provencal into a headily confusing language that he further complicated through cryptic references, symbolisms, and a basic refusal to provide dates for prophecies. As such, while he is held in high regard by some as a prophet of sorts, others say his writings were too vague and abstract that they could easily be applied to any event imaginable. A kind of adaptive prophecy, you may say.

Nonetheless, everyone was thrilled and terrified with Nostradamus’ writings. A man who predicted everything from airplanes to landing a man on the moon had prophesied that East and West would collide in a spectacular battle that would herald the end of the world. For believers, all the clues left behind by the writings of Nostradamus pointed to George Herbert Walker Bush as the man of the West, and Saddam al-Tikriti Hussein as the man of the East. Further imaginative readings of Nostradamus’ quatrains spoke of plague and fire falling from the sky, wiping away billions of souls. To the believers, this sounded suspiciously like nuclear war and biological warfare. George Orwell’s famous film “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” was screened so many times in TV channels that people had begun quoting from Nostradamus’ quatrains without really understanding them. After all, if they showed it on TV, then it must be true!

So 1990 ended with much of the world wondering if the world was about to end as well.

When the allied coalition finally launched their assault on Baghdad in February 1991, there was only a smattering of newsmen left in the Iraqi capital. Among them, a small team from the upstart Cable News Network, long labeled the Chicken News Network by its more established rivals.

I remember watching the Baghdad skyline aglow with millions of tracer bullets and anti aircraft fire through the night vision lenses of CNN’s cameras. Flashes in the horizon marked the places where so-called smart bombs fell. Then there were the smart missile videos, grainy black and white images of buildings growing larger as the missiles approached their targets. Then, static, as the video feed got cut. The technology was breathtaking. What I really found amazing was how anyone could throw perfectly good videocameras at these buildings. But that’s the cheapskate in me talking. The world was entranced by visions, not of the end of the world, but of the start of a new kind of news – the 24 hour kind. Twenty-four hour cable news? What a brilliant idea! No matter that most people would just leave the TV on without paying attention to it, such that the sounds and video just merged with the general noise of daily life. It’s just like tuning in to the Aquarium Channel.

The rest of course is history, turning the First Gulf War into the biggest blockbuster since John Rambo rescued America’s martial honor from the bottom of the barrel with a few unintelligible grunts and mumblings. What got lost in the flurry of press and parades was that one question that some people had been asking even before the war started – If Saddam was the evil monster portrayed by the Pentagon and the State Department, why did the Americans leave him in control in Baghdad. If he was such a megalomaniac, a mass murderer, why did the Allied Coalition stop the war as soon as they regained Kuwait? Aha! Maybe there was an answer there somewhere…

The truth is that the Allies needed Saddam there in Baghdad. He was the wild card that kept the Saudis, the Iranians, the Syrians, and the Libyans in check. He was the monster who could use an iron hand to control all the wild passions of the different sects and tribes that lived in Iraq. He was the bad boy who simply had to take the place of the first Evil Empire, the Soviet Union.

In the end, the coverage of the first Gulf War was unremarkable, except for the performance of Peter Arnett and his team in Baghdad. The rest of the western media was trapped in Kuwait by a recalcitrant US military that refused to have anything to do with them until the end of the war. The ghosts of Vietnam still haunted the US military, which blamed the media, rightly or wrongly, for its disastrous withdrawal from Saigon.

After the lopsided American victory, Iraq settled in the background as other concerns made headlines. But it would remain there, simmering and brewing, a virtual pressure cooker in the middle of the Middle East. Once in a while, the Coalition would strike at Iraq for alleged violations of the post-Gulf War UN sanctions. In the first major airstrike after the war, Bill Clinton ordered Operation Desert Fox, a bombing campaign to punish Saddam for his refusal to cooperate with UN arms inspectors.

Things would change dramatically after 9-11.

Four months after the World Trade Center disaster, George W. Bush, son and namesake of the “crusader” of the first Gulf War, lumped Iraq, Iran, and North Korea together in what he called the Axis of Evil. Bush went further and found all sorts of tenuous links between al Qaeda and Saddam. By the middle of 2002, it was already clear that the United States had pulled all the stops in an effort to justify a new war against Iraq, this time, with the aim of toppling Saddam Hussein. The tragedy of 9-11 provided the best excuse to start another tragedy. America was again going to war against Saddam, but this time, the stakes were loftier, but the reasons were shallower.

The prospect of another Gulf War was interesting and intriguing to a lot of Filipino journalists, although few would have considered the idea of being in the middle of it. It also still sounded too remote at the time. Still, Iraq is such a fascinating subject, Saddam or no Saddam.

In mid-2002, Jim mentioned that he had a friend named Danny who was also acting as the publicist of the Iraqi embassy in Manila. We considered the possiblities. With the West browbeating Iraq, the Iraqis may want to tell their side of the story before the bombs started falling. We met up with Danny and discussed the prospects of visiting Iraq. Such a visit would have been well timed, since Saddam, in a bid to convince the world, if not himself, that he still had the popular mandate, had decided to call a national plebiscite. Or was it an election? It was really hard to tell. Voters simply had to indicate if they still wanted Saddam in charge. There were no other names on the ballot. Obviously, that didn’t really prove convincing, to the West, or even to the Iraqis. Saddam’s government would announce later that Saddam got 100 percent of the vote [some would joke that he got even more], a major achievement even for other tin-pot dictators. Normally, dictators leave a small measure of “doubt”, just enough to indicate that there is still some sort of legitimate opposition allowed by the regime. But no, Saddam had to go the whole nine yards.

While our inquiries would lead nowhere in the end, we had crossed a Rubicon of sorts – in the intervening months after Afghanistan, we had played with other ideas like travelling to Somalia and such. But it was mostly half-hearted, and did not amount to much. Now, we were seriously considering deploying to another war zone, possibly at a time of war. With Afghanistan just two years under our belts, it was the best proof that there are lessons that some people never learn.

For our meeting with Danny, I brushed up on Iraqi history and culture. And after some initial reading, I was already ready to call myself stupid. For a decade, we read with great interest the prophecies of Nostradamus, the adventures of Peter Arnett and the CNN team, and the astounding technology that gave us the smart bomb and cameras inside missiles and night vision goggles and cable television and just about everything we thought we needed to know about the Gulf War. But we had never really learned about Iraq.

Abubakar

2009-05-10T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Manila Times

1999

The pumpboat was chugging peacefully up the Moro Gulf when the Huey gunship swooped in low and from behind. The pilot kept his chopper steady on our left side, some thirty feet over the water, while his crew gave us the once over. We tried to act nonchalant while the helicopter gunner leaned far over the side of the chopper, his hands gripping his .30 caliber M60 machine gun, his eyes searching our boat.

Not to worry, I told myself, we’re not carrying any contraband. Then it hit me – WE were the contraband.

We were breaking a military blockade of the main MILF camp of Abubakar Assidique, in the mountains of Maguindanao. The military had blocked off all the main roads leading to the rebel camp, particularly the Narciso Ramos Highway. No supplies or reinforcements could get in. No media either.

So I called up Sylvia Calderon, my old friend from my days as the deskman of the defunct Sarimanok News Network. In those days, Sylvia was ABS-CBN’s one man team in Central Mindanao, and while she had an incredible grasp of the politics and culture in the region, she sometimes needed a little help in the editorial and production side. I had helped her along several times, especially in dealing with the almighty, omniscient gods [AKA producers] in Manila.

So when I revisited Mindanao in 1999 for the Manila Times, she was the first person I called up.

Oh, did I mention I had left TV to return to print? We’ll go back to that later.

So there I was with Sylvia, chugging slowly up the Gulf in a pumpboat provided by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front while a helicopter gunner stood out on the chopper’s skids and held his machine gun with his finger on the trigger. I tried to keep my head down, thinking that I would look unusual and suspicious in this part of Mindanao. In trying to look nonchalant, we must have looked all the more suspicious. A noisy helicopter was flying over our heads, and the door gunner was peering into our boat. Yet, we tried to look unperturbed, as if we were yachting in Boracay.

After what seemed like forever, the thwack of the chopper’s rotor blades changed as the pilot increased pitch and leaned on his cyclic. The chopper nosed down and sped forward. Then it banked to the left and flew off in search of other boats to inspect.

I breathed out a sigh of relief as the distinct sound of the Huey receded. Sylvia said it was a good thing I was now working for print. If I was with a full TV crew, the gunner could have easily mistaken our tripod for an RPG, and blown us out of the water. After a few years working for TV, I honestly felt naked – at least you can point a videocamera at an offending helicopter and hope it goes away. All I had was a cheap still camera and a notebook and pen. Unless you’re James Bond, there’s not much a ballpen can do by way of self-defense.

Half an hour later, we landed in a pier in Malabang, Lanao del Sur. A locally assembled "hummer" clone, said to be the personal vehicle of MILF vice chairman Al Haj Murad, was waiting to bring us up a rough road into the MILF’s main camp. Sylvia’s contacts had paid off again.

----------------------------
It was 1999, and the military and the MILF had again crossed swords in Central Mindanao. It was one of those many skirmishes that would be the run-up to the all-out war against the MILF a year later.

But this February appeared different. The two sides have been posturing for so long that a major clash seemed inevitable.

I arrived alone in Cotabato, with a Times presscard in my pocket, a cheap still camera in my backpack. I was back in print, having been invited by my former colleague Malou Mangahas to join as chief of reporters. It was my second time with the Times, but I felt like I was in very good company. Malou was Editor in Chief, and the editors were all familiar faces from the Malacanang brat pack and our earlier days in print: Chit, Booma, Manny, and Glenda.

I had just paid a visit to the ABS-CBN bureau in Cotabato, when word filtered down that suspected MILF rebels had taken several hostages in Midsayap, North Cotabato. Naturally, I hitched a ride with the TV guys.

Midsayap was in a state of panic when we arrived. Even the carabaos seemed in a hurry, pulling carts laden with belongings. The rebels had reportedly seized a schoolhouse in the outskirts of Midsayap, and everyone seemed in a rush to get as far away from the area as possible.

After a drive down a lonely stretch of highway, we came upon a crowd of civilians and soldiers. The civilians were distraught, some of them being relatives or parents of the hostages.

The soldiers and militiamen milled about, unsure of what to do. The schoolhouse containing the rebels and hostages were several hundred meters down the road.

After several cursory interviews, I was desperate to get closer to where things were really developing. A line of soldiers started walking down the road, and I slipped away and followed behind. At this point, I knew that I had no idea what I was doing.

A few meters down, a shot rang out, and we dropped to our knees. I looked back and noticed that the local ABS-CBN cameraman had followed me. The soldiers disappeared into the bush. I was uncertain what to do next, when I noticed the Simbas.

In the early nineties, the Philippine government entered into a $41 million dollar contract with the British company GKN for a new family of armored personnel carriers for the Armed Forces of the Philippines. The result was the Simba, a 4-wheeled APC designed by the British but assembled in the old American Subic Naval Base. We purchased 150 Simbas, and made it the backbone of the ground counterinsurgency effort. It was a controversial contract in that the Philippines was the only country in the world to buy the Simba; not even the British would use it.

With a load roar from their Perkins 210T turbocharged engines, two Simbas were maneuvering around a hundred meters down the road. The rear hatch of one Simba opened, and soldiers poured out and deployed into a banana grove on the right side of the road. Aside from having a crew of three, a Simba can carry up to ten fully armed soldiers. I remember one soldier struggling with his pack in panic after its strap got caught in the Simba’s hatch. Realizing that the schoolhouse must be close, I picked up my pace.

Just then, the two Simbas started firing. It was my first time to hear shots fired in anger in a conflict, so I dropped to one knee and hunkered down, unsure of what to do next. One Simba swiveled its turret, pointed its long-barreled M2 browning machine gun to the right, and poured out a continuous stream of .50 caliber bullets. I couldn’t see what he was shooting at, but a .50 caliber bullet is a pretty hefty piece of metal. I mean, it’s heavy enough that I can send you to the hospital just by throwing one at you, how much more by sending it your way at almost 3,000 feet per second. The half-inch thick slug can pulverize a concrete wall or easily slice a hardwood tree in half. I took out my cheap camera and started taking some stills.

I crossed the road and hurried to where the soldiers had deployed. Just then, a spark flew off the side of a Simba, and a red flare rose into the sky. Simbas have sloping armor around 8mm thick, enough to deflect most rifle and machine gun fire, although a fifty-caliber bullet would pass through like it was melted cheese. Unsure if the spark and flare were a sign of return fire, I plunged into the banana grove hoping to link up with the soldiers.

I almost stepped on one of them. The soldiers were spread out, lying on their bellies, their rifles pointed to the right. I dropped down beside them and took stock of my situation. It was almost nightfall, I was in the middle of nowhere, and I had no idea who was shooting at whom, and from where. Fortunately, the soldiers seemed as friendly and confused as I was. The lieutenant in charge asked me what in the world I was doing there, and I told him I had just gotten off the plane from Manila. If it weren’t so muddy, you probably would have heard his jaw hit the ground. Manila, you say? Don’t you have better things to do?

Not really, I countered. I needed the exercise, or something like that. Having warmed up somewhat, we started bantering, with the Simba’s gunfire providing counterpoint.

The lieutenant asked if I worked for TV. Then, I noticed that the ABS-CBN cameraman had followed me into the grove. Nah I work for the Manila Times. The Times? He asked. The newspaper along Pioneer Street?

Now that got my attention. This guy knew my paper, and even knew where it was located. The Times doesn’t have its own building. Instead, it was banished to a hole in the basement of Robinson’s Hypermart, a grungy warehouse-like affair next to a major highway. You mean you read my paper? I asked hopefully. Nah. I just know someone who lives near there. What a letdown.

Still, it was nice to suddenly realize that people know your newspaper exists.
Then it started to rain. Hard. I tried to struggle into a raincoat, which was virtually impossible with my backpack still strapped to my back. It didn’t help that I was lying flat on the ground, and trying to stay lower. Since I had just arrived in Manila and had not expected to end up in a warzone immediately, I was wearing a white shirt. With the Simba still pouring out gunfire, I had no intention of rising to my knees and risk getting shot.

I rolled over on top of my backpack and tried to put on the raincoat. The rain spattered on my face, and you could almost see the steam rise from the ground. I rolled around trying to get the raincoat on. Eventually, I ended up with the muddy raincoat over me AND my backpack, giving me the appearance of a beached whale.

To my side, I noticed the ABS-CBN cameraman was busy taking footage of the soldiers in their fighting positions. I noticed how he centered on a soldier with an M60 light machine gun. The soldier was lying in the mud, like everyone else, gripping his M60. The difference was, that he was pretending he was firing at an unseen enemy - for the benefit of the camera. He was jiggling his machine gun, to make it look like it was firing. At the same time, he was making silly puttering sounds, just like a kid would when "firing" his machine gun during a game of cops and robbers. The cameraman was carefully filming the scene. Days later, I would see the footage, and how it was carefully crafted to look like a real firefight. The shot was cropped so that you could see the look of intensity on the soldiers face, as his machine gun "recoiled" against his shoulder with every "burst" of fire. Cropped out of the frame was the muzzle end of the machine gun. After all, the lack of any muzzle blast would destroy the action-packed scene. This was before Erap’s all out war in Mindanao, when combat footage would become a common thing.

After a few minutes, the rain stopped, and so did the firing. It was beginning to get dark, so the cameraman and I agreed it was time to move back and file a story. We said our goodbyes to the soldiers and started walking towards the car.

Back in Cotabato, I rushed to the nearest photography shop to have my film developed. After that unusual experience, I guess I was expecting to see photos that conveyed action, terror, uncertainty, and maybe fright. Maybe even a muzzle blast or two from the Simbas. So you can imagine my disappointment when I got the prints. All you could see was a road framed by banana trees. There, at the end of the road, small as gnats, were the Simbas.

Since I carried a cheap point-and-shoot camera with a don’t-worry-even-if-you’re-stupid wide-angle lens, the Simbas appeared so far away that you could barely make them out. The photo shop clerk didn’t help when he asked which banana tree I was trying to photograph. So much for combat photography.

Terribly disappointed, I phoned in a few details to the news desk in Manila. At least I made it to the city edition. I also went through several internet cafes, looking for one with a scanner with which to send my photos. I finally found one that had a hand scanner, and we gingerly scanned each photo and emailed them to Manila. The hostage crisis ended that night, with the rebels freeing their hostages and disappearing into the jungle.

The next day, I linked up with Sylvia, who was still part of the ABS-CBN Cotabato bureau, but preferred to operate on her own. Sylvia is a class on her own. A Tausug born in Jolo, she moved over to Cotabato at an early age and grew her roots there. And what roots. She knew everyone you had to know in Central Mindanao, and even people you shouldn’t know.

Probably more than any journalist, she was also trusted by the top leadership of the MILF. Once in a while, she gets invited to personal gatherings by the late MILF chairman Salamat Hashim. On a more regular basis, she chats and drinks coffee with Murad.

Normally, access to the MILF main camp of Abubakar was easy. You just dialed a Cotabato-registered number, and Al Haj Murad, the MILF chief, would lift his phone and answer. That is, if he’s not busy surfing the internet. Unless you catch him on a particularly bad day, it’s almost impossible not to get permission to visit Abubakar.

At first, Sylvia and I tried the regular route to Abubakar, through the main highway from Cotabato passing through Parang town and up to Camp Pendatun. But as a result of the hostage taking, the military had sealed off Abubakar, and blocked the highway leading to the camp. Then, clashes started erupting between the forward units of the military and the rebel units guarding the entrance of Abubakar in Matanog town. Civilians were leaving Matanog in droves, and there were reports of heavy shelling near the town hall. Everyone was on a war-footing. We were in a convoy of ARMM governor Zacaria Candao with Libyan Ambassador Abdul Aziz Azzarouk. Still, we were stopped by a military checkpoint several kilometers from Matanog and shooed back to Cotabato.

Not to be deterred, Sylvia decided to take the more difficult route. She called up Murad, and told him plainly that we wanted to cover his side of the story, and maybe share a few cups of coffee as well. Unfortunately, the military had closed the only land route in. No problem, Murad said. I’ll have you picked up.

So the next day, following Murad’s instructions, Sylvia and I met up with a contact in the outskirts of Cotabato, boarded a pumpboat and headed north. That was when the chopper buzzed us.

I didn’t know where we were going, and it was only when we disembarked at a pier when someone told me we were in north in Malabang, Lanao del Sur. A group of men met us there, and led us to a small eatery, where we ate some food for the trip ahead. I didn’t know where Malabang was on a map, but the men said that we had already skipped through the military roadblocks.

Pinoys seem to have that knack of making ripoffs, whether they are storylines from movies or designs for cars. Years ago, a small automobile outfit made a local version of the Mitsubishi Pajero, then the "classiest" car around. They labeled their creation the "Parejo," meaning "the same."

We were in rebel territory. But this was still part of the Philippines, no matter what they said. So in keeping with territorial traditions, they made us ride on another ripoff. It was a green "Hammer."

Now that sounds familiar, you might say. In 1985, the United States Army replaced the General Purpose [GP] 4X4 quarter ton truck [otherwise known as the Jeep – GP, G-P, Jeep… get the phonetic evolution?] with the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle or HMMWV. If you think that’s a mouthful, remember that this is the military, which makes a living creating acronyms to test the limits of the English language. And in keeping with military tradition, the grunts shortened it all to the Humvee. It’s basically that wide-bodied squat monster that you normally see in those old gulf war footage. It also costs five million pesos a pop.

So pinoys who had had enough of ripping off the Wrangler Jeep now began ripping off the civilian version of the Humvee, the Hummer. Factor in ethnic and tribal accents, and local manufacturers started painting the label "Hammer" on the rear of these ripoffs.

We boarded Murad’s Hammer for the long bumpy ride into Abubakar. Even though the rebels insisted that we ride in front [as guests of honor], I insisted on riding on the truck bed at the back. I didn’t say it then, because I don’t think they would have appreciated the thought. But if we are stopped by an ambush, you have less chances of getting away if you are stuck inside a cramped vehicle. Night fell as we travelled up the lonely highway, with nothing but the occasional bug hitting you in the face.

It was already dark when we entered Abubakar and pulled up in front of Murad’s house in the sub-camp of Camp Sarmiento. Murad himself welcomed us inside, and told us to get some rest in a large room adjoining his house. We would have a busy day tomorrow.

Sylvia and I laid out our gear in the room, which had large, shutterless windows. Our light came from a gas lamp. Murad’s men served us some dinner, which was fish, rice, and some monggo beans. After that, they left us alone, with a reminder that everyone here gets up very early in the morning.

The fact that they let Sylvia and I share the room spoke volumes of how much they trusted Sylvia. This was Abubakar, their version of the Holy Land, where a more conservative form of Islam was being practiced. The more traditional would have balked at the idea of Sylvia and I sharing the same room.

They gave us sleeping mats and thin blankets. Luckily, I had brought a space blanket, a thin, foil-like sheet that folds into the size of a deck of cards. The space blanket keeps you warm by reflecting body heat back at the person. It came in very handy as the night got deeper, and the cool wind turned into a blisteringly cold wind. It was also very noisy, and crackled like popcorn with every movement.

The next morning brought breakfast and a quick chat with Murad, who appeared quite busy. The vice chair asked what specifically we wanted to see, and we replied, quite naively, that we wanted to visit his front lines. A wide, knowing grin creased his face. If that’s what you want, that’s what the look seemed to say. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

He introduced us to Jon Abubakar, who appeared to be his right hand man, or the camp commandant, or both. I don’t recall anymore. Whatever, Jon was to be our guide. It was a good thing Sylvia and I packed light, because we brought everything we had on our backs as we alternately road and walked to the frontline.

Years later, Sylvia would tell me that our little road trip was not part of the MILF plan. Jon would later tell Sylvia that he was merely testing the two of us to see how far we were willing to go. We could have just been given the regular tour of the inside of the camp. But seeing that we were willing to go to the front, he decided to take us along.

The first signs of war appeared in the form of craters left by 105 millimeter howitzers from the army. They were probably courtesy of the army guys in camp pendatun, whom we had visited just a day earlier. The colonel in charge of the artillery battalion had been friendly enough, especially when he found out that Sylvia worked for ABS-CBN. I told him I worked for the Manila Times, and you could see from his reaction that he didn’t know if the Times was a newspaper, a tabloid, or a brand of timepieces. Still, he was kind enough to offer us some souvenir ashtrays made from the brass casings of spent artillery shells. Sylvia liked hers, but I had to say no because I knew I would have trouble with airport security.

A 105 millimeter artillery shell makes small shallow holes when they explode on hard, dry, compacted earth. Explosions on softer, moist earth produce more spectacular visual results, with a neat shower of flying earth. While the results on hard earth may seem unimpressive, consider what this means – little explosive force is absorbed by the hard earth, and most of it is this directed upward and outward, along with the shrapnel. We came across a hut that had been shredded by an artillery shell that exploded nearby. The wood and bamboo were torn and broken, as hot strips of metal sliced through porous, soft wood. Even the trees had been shredded.

Be careful, and just follow me, Jon said. We’re here already at the firing line. And keep you head down.

The sun had begun to bear down on us mercilessly. It was already close to midday. But this was not the place to complain about the heat.

After a while, we came upon a network of trenches dug in the earth. Some parts of the trench were reinforced with wood saplings. Assalamu Alaikum, we greeted the rebels we encountered. Some of them appeared quite young, not even in their twenties. Many did not look old enough to vote. But they all seemed to have that hard edge that comes with living in the front.

Finally, we came to the frontmost trench. Sylvia and I hunkered down and swapped stories with the rebels in the trench, while some of their colleagues lay against the side, ready with their rifles and RPGs. I made the mistake of rising a little, and was promptly chastised by Jon. Don’t stand up, if you want to keep your head. The "enemy" trench is just a few meters up front.
The enemy, as Jon referred to them, were elements of Charlie company, Philippine Army. They were dug in several yards in front of us, and were waiting for some unfortunately forgetful soul to raise his head carelessly. On my side of the battlefield, rebel soldiers were also waiting for something to shoot at. Still, I rose a little, raised my camera, and snapped a photo of rebel soldiers, weapons pointed outwards, waiting for movement from their enemies.

The soldiers and the rebels had been firing at each other all morning, Jon recounted. We were lucky that both sides had appeared to take a break. Otherwise, they may lob another couple of artillery shells in our direction.

More than gunfire, the thought of artillery frightened me. Unless you’re incredibly unlucky, you’re basically safe from gunfire so long as you’re hunkered down in a trench. But artillery. That can dig you out of any hole. A direct hit can tear you into pieces so small that your rescuers won’t find enough to fill a condom. And the noise and concussion. Veterans have been driven mad by artillery.

LIFE IN THE GUERILLA FOXHOLES
Ed Lingao
The Manila Times, February 1, 1999

FROM a rebel trench, Matanog – Raise your head a bit above the trench and you could see the positions of Charlie company, 27th Infantry Battalion. Raise your head a little too high, and you could lose your head completely.

"Baba ka lang, baka may sniper," warns Jon Abubakar, a cadre of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. "Nandito na tayo sa firing line."

For the past week, MILF rebels and government troopers waged war from the trenches that now scar Matanog, trading everything from small-arms fire to 60mm mortars to 105mm howitzer shells.

Just the day before, the Army tried to dig out the rebels from this trench with howitzers. Just meters from the trench were small craters made by the exploding [shells] The trench is actually a network of trenches dug into Matanog’s soft brown earth, that zigzags for several meters. At one part, there is a small bunker, almost a tunnel really, where you can crawl into during the shelling, its roof made of logs covered with dirt. During heavy shelling, you just crawl in, draw your legs to your chest, and pray the next shell falls somewhere else.

After taking my stills, I remembered that Sylvia may need some help. Sylvia was a one man team. She had an old sharp camcorder in her backpack, and she does her own shots and interviews. I guess that’s also why we work well together; I usually offer to film for her.

I took the camera and gave her a working script for a standup, or a piece-to-camera. In all her years working for TV, this was the part that Sylvia had very little experience with, primarily because it’s extremely difficult to shoot your own standup. A standup is basically those one or two lines that the reporter delivers to the camera, mouthing words that sound marvelously vague but seemingly authoritative.

It took Sylvia a few minutes and a couple of takes to get it right. A few interviews later, we were all done. Jon was on the radio with someone. After a while, we started to leave.

Jon was ecstatic, even more than we were. You are the first mediamen to come to our firing line, he said. We are happy that someone has come to the front to tell our story.

And Jon had more news. Apparently, both sides were now trying to iron out a truce. Then Senator Teofisto Guingona was been allowed through the blockade to talk to Murad and Salamat in Abubakar. It seemed that the truce was going to hold.

But more importantly, Guingona had finished his meeting with the two MILF officials, and was going to head down the mountain road in a convoy. If we wanted to get back to Cotabato City ASAP, he was our best bet.

Now that left me stumped. What were we going to do? Flag down the Senator’s convoy with a few dozen armed rebels? Jon muttered some more words in the radio, and brought us to a part of the highway that was still within rebel territory. Don’t worry, he said, Guingona’s convoy is coming down this way.

True enough, the convoy appeared, and slowed down when it saw us. We waved and flagged him down. Guingona rolled down his window and gaped at me in surprise. Apparently, I didn’t look part of the scenery, and had MANILA BOY written all over me. I grasped his hand and shook it, and introduced myself. Manila Times, I said. Ohhh what are you doing here? He asked. Same thing you are. Are you headed down to Cotabato? Oh yes, hop on if you like. That solved it.

We thanked Jon and his men profusely, and asked him to convey our thanks to Murad.

The senator was riding a pickup, so again, Sylvia and I jumped into the truck bed, where Guingona’s security detail were riding. We sped off with such violence that I barely had the chance to wave to our old friends. The road down from Abubakar weaves and turns like a snake, and is bordered by bluffs and hills that afford the rebels plenty of opportunity to ambush military units. Several times, we spotted rebels positioned high up above the highway, guarding against intrusions.

I sat on the lip of the truckbed, with my left elbow on the roof of the cab. It started to rain again. There’s something about Cotabato’s weather that makes it rain so much in the afternoon after a dry baking morning. The rain came in sheets that drenched us thoroughly. I didn’t mind. I was just happy to have had so many turns of good luck.

The terrain flattened out, and we slowed down as the abandoned Matanog muncipal hall appeared to our left. We stopped at the first military checkpoint. There were several mediamen assembled there, waiting for the first chance to get in, as well as waiting for word from Guingona. Imagine their surprise when they saw me on top of the senator’s pickup bed. An ABS-CBN cameraman asked me where I came from. I told him I came from inside Abubakar. How did I get in? Long story.

While the reporters converged around Guingona for a quick ambush interview, I hopped off the pickup and walked over to the side of the municipal hall. There lay the debris and rubble of several houses that had been flattened by the fighting. I snapped several photos before being called over. We were leaving.

Guingona asked me how far I planned to go with him. I told him I was going to Cotabato, and maybe fly back to Manila the next day. He smiled and said he was flying to Manila on a borrowed jet this same afternoon, and I could ride with him if I wanted. I couldn’t believe my luck. I had gotten a free ride in and out of the rebel camp, and now I was getting a free ride to Manila.
So there. One morning, I was hunkered down in a rebel foxhole, waiting for artillery to fall on my head, and before nightfall, I was in Manila, hailing a cab to the office and wondering which pizza delivery to call.

I made next day’s front page. With photos, to boot.

Landslide in Catanduanes

2009-05-10T21:15:00.000-07:00

The Manila Times

1999

Captain Henry loves sunsets. That’s why he invited me to sit with him in the cockpit of his Philippine Air Force C-130 Hercules. Sunsets are glorious occasions, he said. Especially in the greenhouse-like cockpit of a Herky Bird.

After being burned and toasted a nice dark brown color in storm-ravaged Catanduanes, I would have jumped at the chance to ride the good captain’s Hercules even if it were past midnight. After all, he was flying back to Manila, and I was getting used to the idea of free rides home.

But the sunset really was glorious. A Herky Bird is a wondrous piece of machinery. First built in 1954 by Lockheed, a C-130 is a four engined turboprop cargo plane with a rear ramp that can carry two fully armed platoons, a V-150 armored personnel carrier and a Jeep, or a presidential limousine. For a lot of soldiers, it’s an angel of mercy.

But few people have ever been in a Herky’s cockpit. It’s like a greenhouse, with plexiglass panels all around, even at the pilot’s feet. There we were, flying just above the clouds, when the sun began to set.

The clouds turned crimson all around, and the whole cockpit was bathed in a beautiful red glow that had us gasping in wonder. It was so surreal, you could imagine someone singing the Hallelujah chorus at the back. There was silence all around, as the red ball creeped lower beyond the mountains. Since we were flying westwards, it was almost like we were chasing the sun as it began to hide behind the horizon. This had the effect of lengthening the sunset.

Captain Henry nudged me. Take a picture, take a picture. Do something. I muttered an apology for having run out of film, and silently cursed myself for not bringing more. God must love pilots.

I had arrived in Catanduanes a week ago in the tail end of typhoon Reming. I had been stuck in the Manila Times desk for months. Although I held the title Chief of Reporters, I was generally acting as the city editor. This meant I took charge of deploying reporters and guiding their coverages. In the late afternoons, I would brief the editors on the biggest stories of the day during the story conferences.

Typhoon Loleng roared into the country one late October, but not before pounding Catanduanes first. Catanduanes is the easternmost island of the Philippines, and while the rest of Luzon is protected from typhoons by the spine of the Sierra Madre Mountain Range, Catanduanes sits alone in the Pacific. People often refer to the island-province as the doormat of every typhoon that slices into the Philippines.

A wire report came in that Loleng had caused a landslide in Catanduanes that had buried and killed at least thirty people. This was the least of Catanduanes’ problems – power was out, and most public transport to and from the province had also been suspended. I jumped at the first chance to leave the office for the field.

I no longer remember how I got to Catanduanes. The coast guard had suspended all ferry boats to the island, and commercial flights were also on hold. I think I hopped aboard a military flight bringing Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado and the Defense Press Corps to Catanduanes to survey the devastation. So there I was in the capital Virac, with my trusty backpack that Esther had named Grungy, for reasons I will not go into. I had gotten in, but I hadn’t yet thought of how to get out.

Virac was so badly hit that it was hard to imagine how authorities could restore power in the next few months. Aside from the usual sight of houses blown down by the typhoon, electric poles were also lying in the middle of the road, their high tension wires dangling waist-high. This made it all the more difficult for cars to travel to the badly ravaged interior. Instead of sitting on their haunches and complaining, residents found another use for that now-useless high tension wire in the middle of the road, and started hanging their laundry on them.

At first I hitched along with Secretary Mercado. After all, he had the mobility and the resources to get around. We did a spin around the capital and the suburbs, enough for me to gather enough material to send an initial story.

Beside a riverbank, I saw an old lady doing her laundry. It was an incongruous sight. All around her were the ruins of her house and the trunks of trees rendered bald by Loleng’s winds. Yet she was so busy washing her laundry, as if it were the most important chore in the world. I took out my trusty cheap still camera, and snapped a photo. The next day, it was the banner photo of the Manila Times.

LOLENG’S FURY TURNS
BICOL INTO A WAR ZONE
By Ed Lingao
The Manila Times, Oct. 25, 1998

“It’s like a war zone. It’s as if a bomb has been dropped.”
This was how Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado described wide areas in Catanduanes island a day after typhoon Loleng carved a path of death and destruction through the Bicol region.

Most of the houses, according to Mercado, were without roofs. In fact, along many streets in Virac, the capital town, no houses were left standing.

Entire homes were blown or swept away, and coconut and hardwood trees were uprooted. From the air, roofless house and houseless roofs littered the ground like dirty laundry.

I also started writing out a shorter sidebar story for the Times. I hadn’t found a way to transmit my copy from Virac yet, but I knew I could send it back through Lyn Rillon, our Times photographer who rode with us in, and would ride back to Manila with Secretary Mercado. After all, the good secretary had no intention of spending the night here.

We were given some free time to explore the area before the team headed home, so I found a piece of driftwood on a shoreline littered with broken branches and tree trunks, and sat down with a pen and paper and started scribbling my copy.

CATANDUANES NOW A HOWLING WILDERNESS
Ed Lingao
The Manila Times, Oct. 25, 1998

VIRAC, Catanduanes – From the shade of a massive hardwood tree uprooted by Loleng, Ferdinand Garcia contemplated his future and searched for the remains of his past.

Garcia and his three children were rendered homeless by Loleng which swept to sea all traces of his shanty and his belongings in Barangay Guinobaatan, Catanduanes.

Garcia is jobless, making ends meet by occasionally harvesting abaca and copra from the mountains.

What makes matters more difficult is that Garcia has cancer. The apple-sized growth protruding from his stomach is a constant reminder that when things are down, it doesn’t always mean that there’s no other way but up.

With that finished, I handed my paper to Lyn, and hoped that the editors back in Manila could decipher my handwriting. I rode with Lyn, the other reporters, and Secretary Mercado back to the Virac airport, and watched their aircraft take off. There’s something about staying behind and watching your colleagues depart that leaves a heavy feeling of uncertainty in the pit of your stomach. It was a feeling I would feel with alarming regularity.

After the airplane left, I noticed a couple of Hueys warming up for takeoff. I strode over and found out that they were leaving for a mercy flight to San Miguel town, several miles inland. San Miguel was the scene of the landslide that killed more than thirty people. This was the place I had really come to see.

The pilot of one Huey agreed to take me with him. In the troop compartment were several other people, residents of San Miguel who had sought the military’s help in bringing assistance to their town. I slid in beside them and strapped in.

Just then, a television news team arrived. You know when a TV team arrives in the same way you know that a typhoon is here – there’s a lot of noise, some loud voices, and sane people keep their head down low and the foolhardy poke their noses out. It was a TV team from GMA, with Karen Davila and a cameraman. With her was a big hulking guy with grey curly hair. I didn’t know him personally yet, but it was Abner Mercado. A year later, we would all be working together for the same TV network.

But on this hot afternoon, Karen was trying to bargain a ride with the Huey pilot. The pilot could accommodate one more passenger, but of course, Karen insisted on coming with her cameraman. For an irrational moment, I felt that the pilot wanted to bump me off in favor of the TV crew. After all, he probably never heard of The Manila Times. Newspaper reporters are sometimes relegated to the bottom of the trough. The pilot kept looking at me as Karen threw all her convincing powers at him. We’re TV, I have to be with my cameraman, she said. Happily, Abner didn’t insist on riding as well. I just looked away, or tried to look busy. In the end, the pilot said, the hell with it, get in, and we’ll make it to San Miguel with the extra passenger. I don’t know who was more relieved, me or Karen,

I sat on the rightmost edge of the troop bench, and after making space for Karen and her cameraman, I strapped in again. We had bumped into each other a couple of times in the past, and were generally in nodding and smiling terms.

Nothing for me is as exciting and exhilarating as riding a Huey on take-off. You look down at the skids and wonder how all that power and noise can translate into lift. A Huey vibrates like crazy. One moment, its vibrating on the tarmac. The vibration changes frequency, and the next moment, it’s as if the aircraft had vibrated itself into the air. A moment later, the skid under your feet is in the air, and houses and trees are flashing by.

San Miguel is around fifteen kilometers northeast of Virac, so the whole flight didn’t last half an hour. However, we ran into a squall, and since I was sitting at the end of the bench, the rain lashed at my face with large, stinging raindrops. There must have been a crosswind as well, because I noticed that the chopper was flying forward with its nose offset to the left. Since I was strapped into the right side of the bench, and since Philippine Hueys have had their cargo doors removed, I felt like I was flying headway into the wind and rain. I have to admit I wondered if the pilot was flying me into the rain on purpose, or if there really was a crosswind. Then, I remembered that the gunner behind me was also getting wet as well.

Our destination was a barangay called Kilikilihan, which sat beside the Bato river in San Miguel town. The chopper landed, and we all hopped off. Karen and his cameraman started shooting, and I did my interviews. It turned out that an extended family had sought refuge inside a large house at the height of Loleng’s fury. But the hard rain had loosened the soil, and the hill behind the house collapsed and buried everyone in mud.

Villagers converged on the chopper to ask for help, since no vehicles could get through to Kilikilihan. A wounded man needed to be brought to the hospital in Virac. With that, I decided to skip the return flight of the chopper, and simply stay behind. Besides, we hadn’t been half an hour in the village before the pilot said it was time to go.

I told Karen I was staying behind, and she gave me the look that said ARE YOU SERIOUS? I told myself that Virac was just around ten to fifteen kilometers down the road, and there wasn’t any other road I could get lost in anyway.

With that, everyone, including the injured man, jumped in and the fully loaded chopper rose in a storm of grit and rain. Again, that feeling of getting left behind.

THE LONG ROAD TO SAN MIGUEL
By Ed Lingao
Nov. 1 1998

The Huey left in a storm of dust, and the village was again just one more place at the end of the world.

In the wake of typhoon Loleng, Barangay Kilikilihan was cut off from the rest of Catanduanes. The only way in to this village which sustained the most number of casualties from the storm was by helicopter. Dozens of landslides blocked the road to the poblacion, and not even motorcycles could make it over places where the road had altogether disappeared. The other alternative was to walk the 15-odd kilometers to the poblacion.

“Nagpaiwan ka?” an incredulous resident asked as the Huey disappeared down a bend in the swollen river. There always seemed to be something wrong with dropping into a disaster area for a few minutes, and then leaving to pretend that one already knew all about their sufferings and fears, their joys and their hopes. Besides, I thought, there could be another flight out later in the day. Or if things didn’t pan out, I could leg it out.

The village had all but disappeared from the map. Shattered posts marked the remains of houses. Roofs had disappeared. Mud was everywhere, baking slowly under the sun. A few hogs that survived were rooting in the mud. Their owner was lucky; he would have something to eat in the months to come.

The tragedy of Kilikilihan is not the tragedy of the landslides alone. While the village suffered the most casualties because of the landslides, it will suffer more in the next few months, as villagers try to find something to eat.

-------------------------------

TYPHOON-HIT VILLAGE
REGRETS DEFORESTATION
By Ed Lingao
The Manila Times Oct. 28 1998

A hard rain fell Sunday afternoon on the village of Kilikilihan in San Miguel, Catanduanes.

It was a heavy rain on a windless day, the kind that gave an unsettled feeling. You could see and feel the mud steaming up after a hot morning.

In this land which God seemed to have forgotten, even nature has gone awry. This small village at the banks of the Bato river sustained the highest number of casualties at the height of typhoon Loleng. Thirty-six people, mostly children, died here in one landslide that buried a house; 34 bodies were recovered, the other two were left inside to rot.

Kilikilihan was a village born to suffering. In World War II, Japanese soldiers would gather suspected guerillas at the banks of the Bato river and torture them by beating them in the armpits [kili-kili]. Thus the name Kilikilihan.

Over the years, the community grew prosperous, and villagers started cutting down trees to grow abaca, Catanduanes’ number one product. Soon, the hills around Kilikilihan were covered by abaca and coconut trees. Life was simple and sweet – “paradise”, as one villager described it.

But the hills would turn against them. Kilikilihan is bounded by steep hills on one side, and the Bato river on the other. On the day typhoon Loleng came, the river swelled, and the hills tumbled down.

--------------------------------------------------

“Ewan ho kung paano na ito,” said Cenon Dayawon. “Puro ubod ng niyog na lang ang kakainin namin.”

Food would have to be brought in by helicopter, or carried on someone’s back from the poblacion.

“Pasensya ka na sa handa namin,” says Jason Quirino as his mother prepares a meager lunch for us. The meal consisted of canned sardines we were able to buy from a store.

It was especially difficult for the women, the children, the elderly, and the injured. The strong could walk the 15 kilometers to the poblacion to get relief goods. The injured could barely walk.

Renato Tionela lost a toe when a wooden timber fell on his foot during the landslides. His foot is now swollen and infected. Jose Paune’s leg had swollen like a basketball after being hit by debris during the storm. By now it was clear that the next chopper should have these as passengers, and not me. After leaving instructions with barangay officials on how to talk to the pilot, I started down the long road to San Miguel.

“Mahirap talaga ngayon, walang madaanan,” said Bernie, a pastor of the Iglesia ni Cristo I met along the road. In Barangay Mabato, where Bernie is based, we came across a couple digging through the remains of their house.

“Ka Erning, nagsamba na ba kayo?” The couple, sweating, dirty, and knee deep in mud, was taken by surprise. “Samba tayo ng alas tres.”

A smile of remembrance cracked through the thin layer of mud that covered their faces. It was a Sunday.

The storm has passed, and life must go on.

They say the sun is at its hottest just after the fury of a typhoon. Some say it’s really psychological; people who were shivering in the rain just a day before suddenly have to adjust to the humid heat.

When I finally did decide to leg it back to Virac, the sun was already up and the steam was rising from the ground. I had someone point me in the right direction for Virac. I didn’t want to walk for fifteen kilometers, and then be told that Virac was the OTHER WAY up the road. Properly briefed on directions, I put on a floppy hat, dug out my sunglasses, shouldered Grungy, and started my long lonely hike. Along the road, I came across other fellow travelers, including Pastor Bennie, whom I mentioned in the story earlier. After a few hours walking down the rough rocky road, I could feel the sun roasting through the crown of my hat. Occasionally, I would come across a bamboo tube channeling water from a spring, and dip my hat in the cold water or simply put my head under the bamboo for a refreshing semi-shower.

I remember, on the last leg of my hike, bumping into a bunch of people riding a pickup truck. We were just a few kilometers from the capital, and the roads were already open. On their invitation, I hopped gratefully on board the pickup bed and rode the rest of the way to Virac.

I was still able to find a telegraph station that was still working, and filed my story before searching for a hotel of some sort in which to spend the night. The one I did find, like much of Virac, did not have any electricity. So a candle had to suffice in the hot lonely and dark room.

I stayed a few more days in Virac before deciding that I could come home to Manila. The seas were still too rough, and there were no commercial flights to Manila. Thankfully, I found Captain Henry Bulos’ C-130 sitting on the Virac runway with a plane-full of relief supplies and a long line of refugees begging to ride out of Virac. I buttonholed Bulos, who was amused to find a reporter in the middle of nowhere. First thing he asked was if I had a camera. Next thing he asked was if I liked sunsets.

I answered yes to both, and got a ride home. Although I forgot to tell him earlier that I didn’t have any more film.

*******

Just a short postscript. Five years later, checking in at the Manila International Airport for a flight to Iraq, I bumped into Capt. Henry again. He had resigned his commission in the Air Force, and was flying to Angola to work for TransAfrik, the “mercenary” air outfit that has been hiring PAF pilots. I hope Capt. Henry is still okay. And I hope they have good sunsets in Angola.

2009-05-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

Sarobi, Afghanistan

November 2001

The man was waiting for us at the turn of the mountain road.
From a more clinical point of view, it was the perfect ambush position. The road was rocky and had never seen a drop of asphalt. To compound things, the turn and the incline had also forced us to slow down.
He was dressed in the ubiquitous shalwar chemise, the loose knee-length blouse and baggy trousers common in Afghanistan and Pakistan. An earth-colored turban wrapped around his head completed the image. All in all, he would have looked pretty harmless, if not for the full sized AK-47 in his hand - and the fact that he was flagging us down.
We weren't particularly worried at that point. It wasn't the first time that an armed Afghan flagged us down. On the road to Jalalabad, a group of armed Afghans also flagged us down and charged us a small toll fee. To make things official, they even gave us a handwritten receipt. Of course we couldn't read the Pashto [or was it Arabic?] on the scrap of paper they gave us. For all we knew, they just gave us grandmother's favorite recipe for boiled goat's hooves. But it worked with the pencil pushing auditors back home, so it suited us just fine.
There was something different about this man, though. He flagged us down, and over the protests of Dennis, Iltaf our Pakistani driver slowed. Don’t stop, Dennis said, don’t stop. But it was too late, and the van lost momentum and coasted to a stop. We glanced at each other nervously.
As an outgrowth of the former British Empire in India, Pakistan naturally follows that strange British propensity for driving on the "wrong" side of the road. After the Romans, the British may have built much of the world’s roads, transportation being a major factor in the reach of any empire. But in the course of just one century, Britain had lost much of its empire, and consequently, much of its clout in dictating which side of the road the world drives.
Iltaf, being Pakistani, and this being a Pakistani registered van, was driving from the right side of the vehicle, which meant that he was right in front of me. The gunman leaned in and quickly scanned the insides of the van. For a brief moment, our eyes met, and I was not sure what I saw. He did not look extraordinarily cruel or malicious, nor did he have the glazed look of someone swimming in a haze of opium, or the crazed look of bloodlust. In fact he just looked like any ordinary Afghan, except he had a gun. He then spoke rapidly to Iltaf in pashto. I couldn't follow their exchange, and even if Iltaf wanted to tell us what was being said, he probably couldn't as he spoke no English. Inside the van, we were exchanging worried looks. Then the man drew back and motioned Iltaf to drive the van up a side road, a path really, that led further up a rocky hill. Iltaf hesitated.
Just then, a smaller man ran down the hill waving his AK-47 and barking commands. Behind him was another armed Afghan. And beyond him, still another. The guns were now pointed at us. Putang ina, someone said.
I think there was a brief discussion on whether we should make a run for it. Some obviously wanted to just gun the engine and speed off. But it wouldn’t have been easy. It would take great effort for the van to gain momentum since we were in an incline on a rocky road. And it really is difficult to outrun automatic rifle fire, especially if the man wielding the rifle is just beside you, separated only by a thin sheet of aluminum and glass. I no longer remember the discussion clearly. But in hindsight, even assuming that we agreed quickly on what course of action to take, it would not matter. Iltaf, the man who controlled the wheel, the man who would decide our fate, also could not understand English.
At this point, Iltaf had no more choice. He put the van in gear, turned the steering wheel right, and gingerly proceeded up the side road while the armed men surrounded us. It was disconcerting, to say the least - we were out in the middle of nowhere, on a mountain road, accosted by armed and excitable men, and now they were making us take a detour. How remote can you get. Ten meters off the main road, the smaller man, apparently the guy in charge, banged on the van's side and made it stop. He strode up to my window, put his hand in, and peered inside at us and our stuff. He looked young, and his face was not seamed or wrinkled by the Afghan sun. It is difficult to tell age with Afghans. They either look very young or very old. If the first gunman had that neutral look, bossman seemed agitated and very aggressive. I took the chance and grasped his hand and spoke the customary Islamic greeting "assalamu alaykum," peace be with you. Traditionally, the other person is obliged to respond with the greeting alaikum assalam, and with you, peace. Sometimes, this disarms muslims and breaks the ice. On more than one occassion, it surprised the other person that a foreigner had bothered to learn the islamic greeting. But this guy apparently was in no mood for niceties. He just let go of my hand and barked more orders in pashto. At that point, we knew we were really in trouble.
One of the men grasped the handle of the van's door and pulled the sliding door open. Until that moment, we were still fooling ourselves with the false sense of security provided by the van. We were still cocooned, separated from the rest of Afghanistan by a thin shell of metal, rubber and plastic. When the gunman opened the huge sliding door, we felt very naked and exposed. Then he motioned us to step out. Naturally, we all hesitated. Then the small big boss started shouting, and we heard the snick of charging bolts being pulled back and rounds being chambered into the rifles. Small big boss was on my side, so I could see everything he was doing. I was pretty miffed that he snubbed my greeting, but I was ready to forgive him as soon as he lifted his AK-47 with his left hand, yelled, and cocked his gun with his right. The AK carries the bigger 7.62mm bullet, and makes a distinctively chilling sound when you cock it, and the rifle cartridge snaps into place inside the chamber.
I had a small videocamera on the seat beside me. Thinking and hoping they were just out to rob us, i got my thick black jacket and used it to cover the camera. With that, we all got down from the van, except for Iltaf.
At this point, Val had the presence of mind to press the record button of his huge camera. It was much later that we learned that Val had been recording. The images he captured were spooky in their own way. The first images were ghost-white as the camera iris struggled to adjust to the harsh afghan sunlight. Then, figures of men walking up a barren rocky hill. The uncertainty was thick in the air, you could almost feel it while watching the video, see it in the way the men walked with leaden legs towards what could be a very long day, or a very short life. In the video, Dennis is ahead in the distance with the boss. Patrick follows, with Jim ambling very slowly behind with his head down and his hands behind him, as if deep in thought. I enter the frame, walking ahead to Dennis and the boss.
The human eye sees a particular color because that is the only one reflected by the object. For example, an apple looks red because when light strikes the apple, the fruit absorbs all the other colors of the rainbow except red, which it reflects into your eyes. In Afghanistan, there’s a lot of khaki going around. The word khaki comes from the Persian and Urdu word "khak", or dust. It was developed by the British during its Indian and Afghan campaigns, as a suitable replacement for the screaming red colors its armies favored in other less brutal parts of the world where men have fooled each other into thinking that warfare was a gentlemanly sport like foxhunting. South and Central Asians, who had little use for such trappings, soon taught the British the need for a more practical sense of battlefield fashion.
It is always easy to look back at more dangerous times and see how we could have done things differently. Sometimes, after sufficient time and introspection, after running the incident over and over again in our minds like a looped reel, we may convince ourselves of feelings and thoughts, often heroic, that we may not really have had. Having said that, it is difficult to describe with all certainty everything that really went through our minds at that time. There was terror, certainly. And there was a numbing sense of helplessness. The rest, I attempt to recall with all honesty after many years, so please bear with me.
I remember looking around a dun-colored landscape, thinking there was not a single tree or shrub to hide behind, no place to escape. Not even a respectably sized boulder. Just the endless khaki-color of rocks and sand and sun. In the video, everything seems washed out, because Val didn’t have the time or chance to flick on the white balance. But even in our memories, the images already seemed washed out. There was nothing, no other color to reflect the harsh sunlight, just a monochrome of rocks and sand and dust whose starkness was just highlighted by the shadows of noon. And while the sun beat down on us from its apex, I seem to remember feeling a chill, the kind no amount of sunlight can drive away because it comes from within.
We were being led up a small rocky trail that turned left, away from Iltaf and the van, and out of sight of the road. I do remember thinking we had just been kidnapped, and wondered if this was what it was like for all the kidnapping victims of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan that we have covered. But what really made it terrifying was the knowledge that we could not communicate with our kidnappers. The Abu Sayyaf, for all their arrogance, cruelty, and intransigence, could at least speak Filipino. But how do you beg for your life if you cannot even speak the language?
And I remember, after feeling that chill, worrying how brutally cold the afghan nights were, and how the midday sun could sear unprotected flesh, and for that I cursed myself for leaving my jacket to hide the camera. And lastly, and this I remember clearest of all – I worried that we were about to simply disappear from the face of the earth.
In hindsight, this may have been the most frightening moment in our professional lives, frightening not just because of the uncertainty it left us, but because of the uncertainty it would leave our families. This was Afghanistan. It would take several days before Manila would start wondering why we never showed up in Kabul. After that, I can’t imagine where Manila will look first. Anyone who tries to track us down would only find a paper trail until the Pakistani border, after which we would have virtually disappeared into the Afghan dust. The whole country was a wasteland of angry warlords, hungry refugees, and passive-aggressive bandits; it’s hard to imagine how anyone would be concerned with the fate of a group of third world journalists. I remember hoping that if the unimaginable happens, someone, anyone would be left to tell our story. It was a terribly morbid thought, but for centuries, people in this land tended to disappear without a trace, their bones bleaching and mixing with the rock.
I also remember thinking that if this was trouble, I didn't want to be passive about the whole thing. Dennis was ahead of the column with an armed bandit, followed by the boss, followed by Patrick and Jim. I came behind followed by Val. Up ahead I could see that Dennis and the bandit had stopped on a plateau and dropped to one knee. I strode ahead of Patrick and Jim to try to plead with the boss. That was when I noticed one bandit rifling through Dennis' camera bag, which was on the ground. He rummaged through it, found a nice shiny camera flash, turned it this way and that, and stuffed it in his pocket without a word. It was kinda funny in a twisted sense - the man pocketed the flash, but he didn’t bother taking the expensive camera hanging from Dennis' neck. Later, we would joke about how the bandits would try to make the flash work in the middle of the desert without a camera. Much later, the thought bordered on the hilarious - around the campfire, the bandits would try to figure out what the flash does. Someone presses the wrong button, and the flash goes off with a brilliant, well, flash. In a panic, everyone whips out his AK-47 and starts blasting away at the offending device.
Back on the hill, the boss was standing over Dennis and the other bandit. Dennis, for some strange reason, took out a soda from his pocket and graciously offered it to the boss. "Pepsi?" Dennis eagerly offered, before tossing in a surprise line that only he could pull off: "The choice of the new generation!"
I remember that because it was so hilariously ridiculous that I didn’t know if I should laugh or get worried that Dennis was losing it. Then I remembered that Dennis tended to get funnier the more nervous he got.
"Filipini, filipini... Journalist, journalist!" I pleaded with small boss. The man looked up at me as if I were a talking goldfish, barked a few words, and then started patting my pockets. We were being robbed at gunpoint! I pretended not to know what he was trying to do, and he patted my pocket more insistently and held his palm out. When I hesitated some more, he just reached into my right hip pocket while clutching his AK with his right hand. Getting the message, I turned out my hip pockets and gave him all the pesos and Pakistani rupees I had inside. After emptying my hip pockets, he demanded I empty my cargo pockets as well, and started patting them down. Resigned to the robbery, I gave him some trinkets from my cargo pockets. He gave me another pat down to make sure I was well fleeced.
While he got a handful of money and trinkets, small boss failed to get the biggest prize – my wallet with around six or seven hundred dollars inside. I usually keep my wallet in my back pocket like most Filipinos.
Then it occured to me - the shalwar chemise, the long flowing top and the incredibly baggy trousers which everyone here wore, only had hip pockets and no back pockets. People who have lived their entire lives without a back pocket would probably think other people would have no need for one. So while he gave me a final pat down, I kept my arms down at my side, with my hands bent back and fingers loosely shielding my back pocket. I was hoping that if it did occur to him to pat my ass as well, my hands would get in the way of a thorough search. When his hands patted me down one last time, I held my breath as his fingers searched around my hips and brushed against my hands. His hands were just inches away from my wallet when he gave up. It actually worked, and all he got from me were a few dollars, several hundred pesos, and a bunch of Pakistani rupees.
After fleecing me, he moved on to Patrick, and zeroed in on his vest pocket where he kept his wallet and passport. Again, the guy just reached in, fished out Patrick's wallet, and unburdened him of his cash. It wouldn't have been so bad if he also didn't insist on taking Patrick's passport as well. We all protested. In a place like this, a passport could be the next best protection for a foreigner, aside from a gun. The whole time, Val was recording the scene. Finally, the boss gave back Patrick's passport. All this time, the other bandits were robbing the rest of the group. I noticed that while the other bandits robbed us, at least one of them stood a distance away with his rifle at the ready. If we made any sudden move, or were foolish enough to grab a gun or make a run for it, we would still have to contend with at least one armed bandit who knew the weapon and the terrain.
Then, it was Val's turn. The boss fished out Val's palmtop, which was thick and tempting, though not as shiny as Dennis' flash. Val protested the loudest, saying the palmtop contained all his contacts, even his contacts in the Abu Sayyaf. Again we protested, but the boss ignored us. When we protested some more, he babbled back; when we protested louder, he started shouting. Then he raised his rifle, pulled back the bolt again, and let it snap forward. The warning was pretty clear to everyone. But Val wasn't about to be put off by a rifle. Somehow, and until now I still cannot figure out how this happened because the camera shut off at this point, Val was able to reach out and fish his palmtop out of the hands of the boss without him shooting us. The man was looking at Val's palmtop, probably trying to figure out what it does, when Val just took it back. The boss just seemed to shrug and leave the matter at that. Also, the bandits didn't take Val's huge camera. Later we decided that the camera was too big for the Afghans to lug around without a car, and even harder to operate. What would they do? Open a video production outfit to shoot afghan weddings? Still, it was amazing that Val came away from the experience with his camera and palmtop intact. I still can't figure out how Val did it. That man lives a charmed life.
Val pocketed his precious palmtop, mumbling something about stupid bandits and stupid drivers. With the boss and his men finished with their looting, we waited in suspense for what was coming next. A million thoughts played through our minds: Would they also rob us of our clothes and shoes, and leave us to alternately freeze and bake in the middle of nowhere? Or would they drag us off someplace and ask for ransom? Somehow, thoughts of that huge jar of petroleum jelly in the car came to mind. Or would they simply shoot us. Finally, the boss waved his fingers at us, as if trying to make us disappear. Uncertain what he meant, we stood rooted on the spot for a few moments, until someone finally started walking down to the van. If the walk up the hill seemed like eternity, the walk down seemed even longer. We kept looking back at them to gauge their intentions. We were so worried that they would start shooting us as soon as our backs were turned, that it was difficult to stop oneself from running down the hill. We tried to act nonchalant, even as curses flew all around.
In the driver’s seat, Iltaf could see us walking back. Perhaps in his excitement to get out of there, he started backing away even before we got to the van. For a moment, I remember worrying that after finally being freed by these bandits, we would still shrivel to death in the desert because our driver panicked and sped away even before we could get into the van. Thankfully, Iltaf realized his mistake immediately, and stopped to take us in. Or perhaps it was because we hadn’t paid him yet.
I remember distinctly, as we neared the red van, seeing a small sedan speed down the road where we had been stopped earlier. The car was also captured on Val's video. I'm not certain, but i think they were the Japanese journalists we met on the road earlier this morning. Fortunately for them, they got away unmolested because the bandit group was busy with us. Down at the van, Iltaf was still in the driver's seat, quaking, while an armed bandit stood to one side, guarding him. We climbed into the van, and Dennis started cursing the poor driver, who started jabbering back in Pashto. Naturally, we couldn’t understand a word he said, neither could he understand us. But since we were shouting at him, it was pretty clear what we were saying. For his part, he kept putting his hands to his chest and spreading them out, as if to say, what could I do. Poor fellow, it was hard to blame him. That time, we unanimously decided that we should have just ignored the armed bandit and sped up the road. Of course we had the wonderful benefit of hindsight. For all we knew, it was just another guy asking for toll fees, like what happened on the road to Jalalabad the day before. And if we tried to speed past him, what was to stop him from opening fire on our van with his automatic rifle? And how sure were we that he didn't have his armed friends waiting further down to road to take us out if we ran over their front man? If we had ignored the armed checkpoint in Jalalabad, they would probably have blown so many holes in the van that we would whistle at minimum speed. And that time, they only asked for a few pesos worth of toll fee, and even gave us a receipt. It is hard to make intelligent decisions when you don't have much information to work on. But on that day, at that time, we heaped all our fears, anger and frustration at the one guy in the van who couldn't understand us. Poor Iltaf probably worried that we were about to beat him up. Of course we weren't - he was the only one who knew the road to Kabul.
In the van, we took stock of our situation - most of our cash had been taken, but our important papers were intact. Our cash situation had changed from frightening to terrifying - i had five or six hundred dollars stashed away in my wallet, and it turned out that I had the biggest amount of money left in the ABSCBN group. If anyone else had any bigger amount, he certainly didn’t volunteer the information. How we were going to last in this place with that amount was anyone's guess. Also, we noticed that they took one of our small videocameras. The older videocamera that I hid under my jacket was still there. One of the bandits also took my pakul.
Once we got going again, we took turns cursing poor Iltaf. But after a while, we all lapsed into silence as the mountain road rode up steep canyons. On one side, a sheer drop plummeted to a raging river. On the other side, rocks and cliff faces. On either shoulder of the road, shattered hulks of cars, trucks, and tanks were left to rust; the accroutments of modern civilization left abandoned to join the ancient dust of afghanistan. As the twisted skeletons of past wars sped by the window, it occured to us that for all the terror we had just gone through, we were still so very lucky to be alive.

2009-05-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

As always, our long and twisting journey through Central Asia began with the long and twisted journey of a typical office memo.
The Americans had just launched their offensive in Afghanistan. For years, that country fascinated and intrigued me. As early as 1998, when I was chief of reporters of the Manila Times, I had a short talk with Ghazali Jaafar, vice chairman of the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front. For years during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Filipino muslims traveled to Central Asia to join the mujahideen. Filipinos who learned to fight in the jungles of Mindanao traveled thousands of miles to fight and die in the desert wastelands of Central Asia. The numbers vary, from several hundreds to more than a thousand. Upon returning to the Philippines, the veterans of Afghanistan would form the core officers corps of the MILF.
Invariably, our discussion led to MILF veterans from Afghanistan, and to the subject of Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden had just been the target of US cruise missile strikes for his role in the bombings of the US Cole and the US embassies in Africa. It seemed ironic that after helping the mujahideen fight off Soviet gunships and missiles, US missiles were now raining on Bin Laden's camps in Afghanistan.
Jaafar began talking about their experiences with the various mujahideen factions in Afghanistan during the war against the soviets, and I asked him if it was possible to set an interview with Osama Bin Laden through his contacts. I didn’t really think it feasible to go to Afghanistan for an interview with the man; a phone interview would have sufficed. But Jaafar laughed and asked if I was willing to travel to Afghanistan. The question lifted me off my seat. Was it possible, I asked? The border with Pakistan was a sieve. How else do all the foreign mujahideen get in? Do you think they just take the train? I was hooked. I asked our acting editor in chief Chit Estella if the company would be willing to fund a trip to Afghanistan, and she seemed intrigued by the idea. The idea would die a natural death when the Bin Laden story was overshadowed by more local concerns of the newspaper. But that early, I was already playing with the idea of walking across the Hindu Kush, or Indian Killer, as the mountain ranges dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan were called. Of course, there was a reason why they called the mountain range Indian Killer, and it didn't have anything to do with cowboys.
Three years later, the world would change with 9-11. Afghanistan was again in the headlines.
Afghanistan has often been described as the crossroads between Asia and Europe, and for that reason, it has been the persistent battleground of races, religions, and ambitions. Relics and bones of centuries of near-conquests litter the landscape for any historian or archeologist brave enough to explore, at the risk of adding his own bones to the landscape as well.
The country’s terrible history owes to its favored position, in the middle of great powers and their many proxies. Alexander the Great and his armies swept in from the west in his drive towards the riches of India in the East. The Mongol hordes came down from the north to lay waste to, well, the waste. Barbarians are not overly picky. During the so-called Great Game between Imperial Russia and Imperial Britain during the 19th century, the two great powers and their allies clashed on Afghan plains, whole armies swallowed up by the desert.
That proxy war would be repeated again in more contemporary times, when the Soviet Union swept down like the Mongols from the north and tried, and failed, to subdue the Afghans for a decade. The West waged its proxy war through Pakistan and the mujahideen, as we will see later. But even after the departure of the Great Powers with the end of the cold war, the proxy wars continued, this time with the minor leaguers like Pakistan, China, India, and Iraq.
The world turned the corner with 9-11. It was amazing really. Suddenly, everyone was immensely interested in a country that wasn’t even one, that didn’t even have a gross national product [how do you measure opium] or an economy to speak of. Networks and media outlets rushed to dust off their list of contacts in South and Central Asia, and dragged into the studio any analyst or expert that had the remotest connection with Afghanistan. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be an expert in Afghanistan.
I remembered the tantalizing half-offer years ago, and quietly wondered to myself if this was it. I went back to my MILF contacts in Cotabato, and interviewed rebels who claimed to have fought there during the jihad against the Soviets. Each one had vivid memories to tell. Most were telling their stories for the first time in public. All these years, no one had really cared for what they had gone through, at least until a character named Osama came along and put Afghanistan back on the political map.
It was very difficult, one would recall. You would either freeze to death, or fry under the sun. There was almost no middle ground. And that’s only talking about the weather. Fighting the Soviets was another thing altogether. There was nowhere to hide, just endless miles of sand and rock. No trees, no bushes with which to take cover in, no lakes and streams brimming with fish and wildlife to feed a guerilla army. No water to slake your thirst. It was hard to imagine why anyone was even fighting over a place like this.
There were no hiding places so we would bury ourselves in the sand beside a road, recalled another, and leap out and ambush a passing Soviet convoy. It was a good thing the common weapon in the region was the sturdy and reliable AK-47. You could bury it in sand, submerge it in mud, and still come out firing. Bury yourself with the temperamental M-16 in the sand, and you may as well bring a lapida or tombstone with you.
There are no figures. But some Filipino volunteers never made it back. Others came back with a completely different view of the world they lived in, and the country they came from.
When the US started bombing Afghanistan in October 2001, everyone was glued to the TV sets. The most advanced nation on earth was raining high-tech smart bombs on the most backward country in the world. The country was mostly rubble from two decades of bitter fighting that the US probably dropped more bombs on Afghanistan than there were buildings left to bomb.
At this point, I was torn. I desperately wanted to go. On the other hand, the network had a terrible record for sending news teams on assignments like this abroad. I had flown to West Timor, East Timor, and Cambodia with nary a cent of support from ABS-CBN. The network was more willing to spend money to cover celebrity scandals abroad.
As the war against terror heated up, I bumped into an organizer of overseas workers, who told me he had some Filipino friends in Pakistan who may be able to help me get into neighboring Afghanistan. It was an intirguing thought. Even before I could propose an official trip to Afghanistan, I had to make sure that it was actually possible to get in. But when i called his so-called friend, I got a pretty chilly reception. Apparently, they were not really friends after all. But I had gained momentum, and I quietly started calling Philippine diplomats in Pakistan inquiring about the possibilities of sliding into Afghanistan. Mostly, they proved discouraging, although our network of Filipino contacts in Pakistan grew. Finally, I gathered the courage to broach the idea of deploying a team to Afghanistan for The Correspondents through a memo. It took the bosses a long time to warm up to the idea. The network had never sent a news team on that kind of a coverage since the Vietnam war. The general thinking among the bosses was that we could just rely on CNN and the other foreign news services to feed us information and video. I tried to sell them the idea of doing the Afghan story from a Filipino perspective. This was a land that bred the new generation of Moro fighters. This was the land that allegedly bred the masterminds of the attack on the World Trade Center. The potential for stories outside the mainstream western media was astounding. We were lucky in that we got the support of our old friend, DJ Sta. Ana, who was also head of news operations of ABS-CBN. Since we offered to do the coverage for both news and public affairs, we hoped to get the news department to fund the whole affair. For this, we needed DJ’s backing to get the proposal past the initial cynicism of the big bosses. Now, DJ is really a reporter who unfortunately got snagged into the wilder and more violent world of news management. We belong to the same generation of reporters; in fact we have been good friends since college. To say that DJ was interested in the idea is an understatement. This was a guy who, while heading the news desk of GMA-7 the year before, snuck off to Mindanao for a weekend to cover the all-out war against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In fact, I’m almost certain that DJ, at least for a fleeting moment, considered bumping us off the trip and taking our place.
The bosses at first expressed doubts that we could get into Afghanistan at all. After all, they had already sent their news reporter, Erwin Tulfo, to Pakistan to report on developments there. Then, they worried about our safety. This was of course Afghanistan, a country way way off the beaten track.
But we all knew that the biggest consideration of all was probably the expense. Sending a news team abroad always entails a great deal of huffing and puffing on the part of the bean counters in Finance. As icing on the cake, I cut corners and started weeding out all extraneous expenses from the budget. In fact I cut corners so much that the paper the budget was printed on would probably have looked more circular than rectangular. In the end, I proposed a minimalist budget of roughly 6,000 dollars for the entire trip, inclusive of airfare.
Six thousand dollars. While the figure may seem astronomical to some Filipinos, it is really laughably and idiotically small for big networks deploying their teams abroad, much less to wartorn areas. A small western news team can spend that much money in just one day. That amount alone would not be enough to buy protective gear and hire security consultants for typical western news teams, as we would later see in Afghanistan. In fact, half of our money was immediately spent on our plane tickets. We were left with roughly two to three thousand dollars, and we hadn’t even left Manila yet. It would be one of my first suicide budgets. It would not be my last.
To my surprise and delight, in mid october 2001, the green light came down. The team also grew. Aside from me and Val, there was also Patrick Paez and Jim Libiran. The bosses balked at sending such a "large contingent", but we argued that this was Afghanistan, and there was much safety in numbers. Besides, they didn't increase the budget anyway, so what were they complaining about?
The first problem, as in any trip, was getting the money. Having uneasily resolved that issue, the next problem was how to get there. The most logical route was through Pakistan, which hosted the mujahideen through the long Soviet occupation. Most journalists who penetrated Afghanistan during the long Soviet occupation did so through Pakistan, through the sieve they called a border along Pakistan's northwestern frontier. But with the war against the Taliban in full swing, another channel had opened up. The Northern Alliance had started using bases in Tajikistan ever since the Pakistan-sponsored Taliban took charge of their country. Masoud was also a Tajik. So most of the major news agencies flew into the capital Dushanbe to wangle a way into Afghanistan from the north. While this was now the preferred route to link up with the Alliance, this route was horribly expensive. You fly from the Philippines to Europe and then to Russia. There, you try to get a visa and a ticket to Tajikistan. Once you land in Dushanbe [assuming you get the proper paperwork done in a matter of weeks], there was still no guarantee that you could get into Afghanistan. There were horror stories of journalists getting stranded in Dushanbe for weeks with no story, and no way into Afghanistan. The only route was over the mountains in one of the few Northern Alliance helicopters. It was fine for the big networks, because they could afford to station newsteams for weeks at a time in a backwater city to diddle their thumbs. They could also afford to bribe officials to give them a helicopter ride over the border, as many did. Almost all the journalists who made it into Kabul in time for the fall of the Taliban had taken that northern route and ridden into the capital with the Northern Alliance.
Having resolved that, we landed in Islamabad Pakistan on the tail end of October, and were promptly picked up and assisted by the Philippine charges d'affaires Jose Pepe Cabrera. Pepe was more than helpful; his driver would take us around, he would treat us to lunch and dinner, and to cut down our expenses, he offered to adopt us in his apartment. We stayed several days on mattresses on the floor of his unit. But more than that, he linked us up with Filipinos in Islamabad and Peshawar who could help us cross the border with Afghanistan. Thank you, Pepe, for your kindness and generosity, and our apologies for our forgetfulness.
Islamabad is a low-slung, sprawling government city cut cleanly into nice symmetrical lines, with streets that have numbers and letters like a map grid instead of names. The pace is so laid back that there's hardly anyone outdoors at midmorning; most of the shops and offices seem to open just before lunch, and sometimes not even that. There were days when we wandered the streets looking for food to eat and finding all the shops still closed. Most of the people who live here are government functionaries and diplomats. Ordinary people crowd it out in the suburbs or nearby cities like Rawalpindi, which looks more like Divisoria on a bad day.
Islamabad is a relatively new city, created after the August 1947 partition of India and Pakistan along religious lines. Prior to the partition, this part of the world was simply known as India "and the wild frontier." When the British let go of India in 1947, they also agreed to carve out a new nation for muslims in the northwestern part of the subcontinent. The new nation's capital was established at bustling and chaotic Karachi to the east, and all muslim records were hauled there at the start of the partition.
That partition proved pretty bloody, as seven million muslims migrated to Pakistan, and close to ten million Hindus went east to India. Generations of pent up anger and frustration exploded throughout the region as mobs from both sides attacked trains loaded with migrants in one of the earlier flashes of religious extremism in the Indian subcontinent. Trains pulled into their stations with rivulets of blood spilling onto the tracks, and most conservative accounts put the number of dead from religious fighting at more than half a million. Mind you, these were not soldiers who were killing each other, these were ordinary people. Not even the great Mohandas Gandhi could stop the slaughter. India and Pakistan would go to war three times in the next five decades, but ironically, it would never be as bloody as this. The shadow of the past still hovers over these two countries; New Delhi and Islamabad continue to rattle their sabres at each other, but this time the swords are nuclear tipped. Pakistanis have a love affair with their nukes. Almost everywhere in Islamabad, you would see monuments to their nuclear missiles - long grey phallic symbols with fins at the base. Pakistanis beam with pride at being a nuclear power, and many analysts predict the next flashpoint for the next world war to be the Indian subcontinent. The Indian-Pakistani conflict would also spill over to Afghanistan.
Pakistan of course is an islamic country, with Islam as the state religion. The word Pakistan means "land of the pure" in Urdu and Persian. It is here in the madrasas of Islamabad, Quetta, and Peshawar, where a more radical and intolerant brand of Islam took root while their Afghan neighbor battled it out with the soviets across the border. When the soviets invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve of 1979, the Americans adopted a policy of containment of the soviet bear. The Americans poured vast amounts of aid to Pakistan, and used it as a proxy in the Afghan war against the Russians. American money was used by Pakistan to buy Chinese arms and ammunition, to be funneled to the Afghan mujahideen through the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service. This way, the Americans could have plausible deniability in a proxy war against the Soviets. It was a laughable charade, because everyone knew that the Americans were funding the Muj, although the Americans took great pains not to get caught with their hand in the Afghan jar. While the Soviets muddled through the quagmire of the Afghan conflict, the Reagan administration crowed that the Russians have finally found their own Vietnam. The ISI established guerilla training camps in Pakistani soil just across the rugged border with Afghanistan, and recruited thousands of Afghans from refugee camps in Pakistan. Muslims from all over the world heard the call for a new jihad against the godless communists, and crossed the porous border through Pakistan. Peshawar, the Pakistani border town, became the new wild west, harboring all sorts of spies from the ISI, the KGB, the CIA, and the occassional journalist and adventurer. The various Afghan guerilla factions also set up shop in Peshawar, each one guarded by heavily armed Afghans. Obviously, the idea of a gun ban was alien in this town. These guerilla headquarters were shadowed by KGB agents trying to figure out the guerillas' next moves; by ISI agents trying to decide which factions would best serve Pakistan's interests; and by CIA agents trying to find out where the American funding was going. Occassionally, the guerillas would blast it out with Russian or Afghan intel agents, or have it with each other.
But if handing the funding to the Pakistanis carte blanche shielded the Americans from a direct confrontation with the Soviets, it resulted in an even bigger problem. The Pakistanis chose which guerilla factions to support, and they invariably chose mujahideen groups that hated the Americans as much as they hated the Soviets. In the meantime, the faction of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the famed tiger of the Panjshir, did most of the heavy fighting with the Soviets, yet he hardly got any money. Massoud was the friendliest with the west; two days before 9-11, Al Qaeda would assassinate Massoud with a suicide bomber to remove the last thorn on the side of the extremists. On the other hand, the factions identified with the more extremist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar got the bulk of the money. Several reasons have been put forth to explain the actions of the ISI. Much of the Pakistani military and the ISI sympathized with the more extremist faction. Pakistan, after all, is a staunchly conservative Islamic country. On a more strategic perspective, the Pakistanis had more to gain by waving the extremist card at the Americans. By showing they held the extremists by the collar, the Pakistanis could squeeze more aid from the US.
But part of the blame appears to rest on history and the vagaries of American foreign policy. For decades, Pakistan had relied on the US for its war materiel and defense needs as part of the Central Asian Treaty Organization and the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. India was, after all, cozying up to the Soviet Union. But during the second Indo-Pakistani war in 1965, sparked again by a crisis in Kashmir, the United States imposed an embargo on all ammunition and replacement deliveries to both Pakistan and India. At that time, Pakistan was heavily reliant on US military supplies and training. But the Americans were apparently more worried that the weapons and bullets they were providing to kill communists were instead being used to kill Indians and Pakistanis. In the end, neither country came out of the conflict with any noticeable gains, although both had significant losses. But it was the Pakistanis who felt the sting of America’s ficklemindedness the most.
After five weeks of fighting, Pakistan had already used up 80 percent of its US supplied ammunition. The US-made M60 medium tanks were being lost at an alarming rate. The Pakistani high command was having nightmares as the two nations ground down each other. Both sides eventually sued for peace. The Pakistanis were not to forget this moment that the US chose to abandon them at their greatest hour of need.
Pakistan fared far worse in 1971 during the third Indo-Pakistan war that ended up with the breakup of part of Pakistan into Bangladesh. This time, the Pakistanis were decisively routed. This time, the US sent aid, but to no avail. Close to a hundred thousand Pakistani troops were captured by the Indians, the biggest number of POWs since the second world war. Pakistan even issued a commemorative stamp at that time to drum up world support for the release of its POWs.
Pakistani army officers were to carry the resentment borne out of the 2nd Indo-Pakistani war with them for decades to come. After all, they had trained under the belief that the US would back and support them all the way.
In 1977, Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto appointed a little known general and a devout muslim, Zia Ul-Haq, as the army chief of staff, bypassing five other senior generals. Bhutto apparently thought of promoting a general who seemed "more interested only in offering prayers and playing golf" than in overthrowing him. A few months later, Zia overthrew Bhutto and declared martial law. Two years later, Zia had Bhutto hanged.
Zia was a character on his own. Archival photos of him show a broad-faced man with the deepest penetrating eyes and the stiff upper lip stance of someone who could only have been trained by the British Army. But underneath that secular exterior was a very conservative islamist.
Several factors come into play here that would later involve Afghanistan. During the disastrous 1965 Indo-Pakistani war, Zia was assistant quartermaster of the 101st division. Undoubtedly, he remembers very well the betrayal by his American patrons, who, just a year earlier, sponsored his studies at the Command and General Staff College.
More importantly, Zia’s strict religious convictions would shape the destiny of two nations. Whereas post partition Pakistan inherited a legal system that was patterned after the English Anglo-Saxon legal system, Zia imposed a strict pro military interpretation of Islamic Law. Secular policies were replaced with the introduction of sharia law. Most historians say this resulted in increasing religious influences on both the Pakistani civil service and the military.
The undercurrent of anti-US resentment and the growing Islamic identity would reveal itself even before the decade ended. In 1979, just as the US struggled with its Iran hostage crisis, Pakistani mobs burned the US embassy in Islamabad and killed one US marine. It turned out that someone had started the rumor that the Americans were behind a plot to raid Islam’s holiest shrine in Mecca. US officials were surprised by the ferocity of the assault, and the absolute, and some say, deliberate failure of Pakistani authorities to respond with any form of help. The embassy was, after all, in Islamabad, not on some far off mountain. Still, the embassy burned for a whole day, and it was only after nightfall that Pakistan sent troops and police to, well, replace the mobs. US diplomats had locked themselves in a windowless vault, wondering why no one seemed to know what was happening to them while rioters pounded on the doors and walls and swarmed all over the roof. Witnesses say that the whole time, Pakistani police were standing around outside, watching the riot unfold. After that incident, the Americans turned their Islamabad embassy into a virtual fortress.

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We landed in Islamabad in 2001 with no illusions that crossing the border into Afghanistan would be easy. In fact, it turned out to be virtually impossible. In our first morning in Islamabad, we marched up to the Taliban embassy hoping for a quick visa. There was a huge crowd of journalists lined up at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad, each one begging to be let in. The Taliban would just keep everyone at bay, collecting passports and visa fees, but granting no visas. By the time we filed our visa applications, there were already 800 other applications by fellow journalists ahead of us. We went back two or three times, each time hoping that the Taliban would finally grant visas. Each time, the growing crowd of journalists would swap optimistic stories of the Taliban organizing a press tour of sorts for those waiting in line. Of course it was all wishful thinking. The Taliban had always been wary, even hostile of media, given the fundamental differences between the two groups. The Taliban forbade photographs, believing it was akin to making graven images, something akin to idolatry. Moving pictures, or video, was a step closer to heresy. The Taliban leadership frowned on photography and videography so much that there are pitifully few recorded images of the Taliban. In fact, the only known photograph of Taliban leader Mullah Omar is a grainy shot taken surreptitiously by a western journalist who was undercover. Once in a while, the more moderate faction within the Taliban would get the upper hand, and call the rare press conference. But even these Taliban "liberals" would look extremely uncomfortable in front of the camera. Still, we hung around the embassy, hoping for a break in. At this time, the war in Afghanistan was already in full swing, and the Northern Alliance had knocked out Mazari Shariff in the north and begun laying siege to Kabul. Those journalists who did manage to hang out with the Northern Alliance entered Afghanistan from the north, through Tajikistan, a long, tortuous, and very expensive detour where major networks would throw money around to hire Soviet era helicopters to bump them up from Tajikistan to alliance bases in northern Afghanistan.
But while the situation seemed impossible to us, Manila saw things differently. We fed stories over the videophone almost everyday about rising tensions in the closed border as the Taliban government tottered on the brink. That was the most we could do. First of all, the Filipino community in Pakistan was tiny. Secondly, Val and Erwin Tulfo had made a trip to Pakistan just a month before [with roughly the same budget that the four of us were sharing now, the same budget we would use to jump into Afghanistan], and he had just about exhausted all the human interests stories that could be wrung out of the Philippine community here.
Yet Manila would occassionaly shoot rockets over our heads for sending them "useless" stories when the major story was Afghanistan, and not Pakistan. The office was apparently getting impatient that we were still stuck in Pakistan, which was quite unfair. These rockets resulted in some pretty colorful language from our side of the satelite phone, especially since the bosses, in a fit of CYA syndrome (CYA = cover your ass) before we left Manila, made us promise them that we would stay in safe sunny Pakistan and not do anything as dangerous as entering wild and wooly Afghanistan. If I recall, the approved budget was really for a trip to Pakistan, which was why they gave us the same budget as the one they gave Erwin. Of course, the unwritten expectation was that we would try to skip over the border, but these are things you don’t want to put on paper.
So after being sternly advised to stay in Pakistan, we bristled at the idea of Manila rushing us to get into Afghanistan ahead of the rest of the pack. Meanwhile, Western journalists who have been waiting for a chance to get through the border for months, simply cooled their heels at the Marriott poolside sipping government-licensed cocktails (locals are banned from drinking alcohol in Pakistan, and foreigners must fill-out a government form everytime they want to buy a drink in the government-licensed bars) while dipping into their expense accounts. Ahhh, the travails of a 3rd world journalist.
To be fair, we did a fair amount of "acclimatization" with the help of Pepe Cabrera and his trusty driver, Munawar, a Christian Pakistani. Munawar has been around Filipinos so long that he could turn to us in his cab and ask, "saan tayo?", To which we would reply without hesitation, "Kabul!" Munawar would just shake his head at the crazy Filipinos and roll his eyes. We learned what Pakistanis wear (the cool, billowing shalwar chemis), what they eat (kabab, kabab, kabab, and more kabab. Oh yeah, and some of that marvelous chicken tikka.) and more importantly, what they think of Bush’s war on terror. Clearly, there was a lot of resentment on the streets against the United States, and a lot of support for the Pakistan’s godchild, the Taliban. In thousands of mosques and madrasas from Lahore to Karachi, Imams thundered against the war of terror and exhorted Pakistanis to cross the border to help their brethren. There were reports of ten thousand Pakistanis who heeded that call and rushed to the Taliban’s side. Many of them would die in the hands of angry Afghans.
While we were in Islamabad, we also met up with Angie Ramos, a fellow Filipino working with the international wire agency Reuters. As expected, our conversations revolved around the biggest question on everyone’s mind – how does one get into Afghanistan? Angie suggested that we try a well known Pakistani journalist.
Hamid Mir is no ordinary scribe. He’s also known as the official biographer of Osama Bin Laden. Whether he was really authorized by Bin Laden to write his biography is unclear. What seems clear is that Mir has met and interviewed Bin Laden in Afghanistan several times, and appears to have Bin Laden’s confidence.
So we went through Islamabad’s gridwork of streets and finally located Mir’s house, a simple bungalow off one of the city’s major arteries. There was no doorbell, in fact there was no gate. So, we went halfway inside the garage, where a white sedan was parked, and called out to Mir. What followed was quite strange, even by our standards.
A stocky man peered outside the door, and gave us a once over.
"Where are you from?"
Oh, we said quite confidently, we are journalists, we are from the Philippines.
With that, Mir shot back:
"You are dangerous people. You have connections with Bin Laden."
Now, we didn’t exactly know how to react to the first. But the second sentence stumped us. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one with the clearest and direct connection with Bin Laden? If we say, yes we have connections with Bin Laden, would he embrace us like long lost comrades, or blow us away?
Noting our hesitation, he continued:
"You are Abu Sayyaf. You are terrorists. I do not like to meet you!"
Now that really had us rocking on our heels. At least this guy knows about the Philippines.
No, no, no, we pleaded, we are not Abu Sayyaf, we are journalists.
But he slammed the screen door in our faces.
We were stunned by the exchange, and, walking out of the garage, we wondered aloud if he was serious or joking. It was really hard to tell.
We had a short conference near our parked car, before we decided that we had nothing to lose by going back to Mir and asking him a second time. This time, he was more receptive, and he told us to come back later in the day since he was still quite busy. We did come back and had a brief chance to get Mir on tape. But we didn’t get our real objective, which was to get Mir to endorse us to the Taliban, or perhaps give us ideas on how to skip across the border into Afghanistan. On that aspect, he refused to help.
We tried several other avenues. One time, we visited an international relief group’s office, hoping to hitch a ride into Kabul. It was there where we met a man who offered us an alternative, and in hindsight, crazier way into Afghanistan.
I do not recall his name; all I remember is his New York accent. He was an Afghan who had somehow found his way to New York, where he worked as, what else, a cab driver. His many years in New York had given him an accent that was half Pashto half New York cab driver, which is to say that he ended every sentence with a "Ya know?" After 9-11, he was trying to get back into Afghanistan through Pakistan. And he said he was leaving the next day, and could bring us with him if we wanted.
His was a tempting, although frightening offer. We had never met the man before, yet were we to trust an Afghan who talks like a New Yorker?
His proposed route was also unusual. He planned to enter Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, which is controlled by Pakistan’s unruly tribes, travel further north, and enter Afghanistan’s Badakshan province on foot. We had no idea what he was talking about, although we were entranced by the idea of sneaking into Afghanistan on foot while everyone else was trapped in the border. Fortunately, we later dropped him as a potential looney. It later turned out that the border area he was talking about was fraught with bandits and kidnappers, and the mountain passes he intended to cross were high and covered with snow. Badakshan province is a fingerlike projection of Afghanistan that punches into Pakistan’s northwest region. It’s climate, terrain, and tribes were not well known for their hospitality.

In the meantime, we also spent a little time getting more of the local culture. For that, we visited the nearby city of Rawalpindi, which is far more urbanized, congested, and chaotic than Islamabad. Think of Islamabad as the Malacanang complex, and Rawalpindi as Divisoria.
On Pepe Cabrera’s advice, we set out to buy some Pakistani clothes. The idea was that if you can’t speak the right language, at least wear appropriate clothes. We stood out in a crowd because of our western outfits. By buying the shalwar chemise, we hoped to, well, blend in a little more. Of course, we were still beardless, but that couldn’t be helped.
Now, it takes a great deal of courage for the unfamiliar to wear the shalwar chemise. It is basically a very loose affair, with a top that billows and reaches down to the knees, and an extremely baggy and loose pair of pants. And I mean baggy. Patrick took out the pants from the plastic and was surprised to see that the waistline was at least a meter across. The only reason the trousers stay up is the cotton cord that acts as a general purpose belt. Truly, this garment was one-size-fits-all.
It was also one-garment-worn-by-all. Everyone used it, from the wealthy businessman in his Benz, to the construction worker sweating it out with a load of bricks on his back. Needless to say, the garment could be really hot and constricting. Imagine Filipino construction workers wearing it while working under the heat of the sun. Yet culture dictated that it be worn at all times.

We were to get another lesson in culture, courtesy of a fellow Filipina we met in Pakistan. Aminah is married to a Pakistani, and bore a stunningly beautiful daughter.
We noted that there were a lot of Pakistanis who were wearing the burqa. Most people thought that the burqa was an Afghan, specifically, a Taliban icon. Yet the burqa was as common in Pakistan as the shalwar chemise.
Aminah told us that the burqa is really part of tradition, and not religion. Pakistan and the Taliban’s shared interest in the burqa may be the result of their shared Pashtun legacy.
"Women who had to follow the tradition of their forefathers, feel they are bound to follow that [practice], the wearing of the burqa," Aminah said.
While Amalia was thankfully not covered by a burqa, she was more comfortable with the idea of a burqa or the less traditional purdah or head veil, than going out in public without a head covering.
"The people, the men especially..." Amalia giggled, "you have to do purdah, or they stare at you... like you are some..." and then she broke out again in a fit of embarassed giggles.

KABUL RUN

2009-05-07T07:26:00.001-07:00

A few days later, we jumped into Munawar’s car and sped west down the old Grand Trunk road for the frontier city of Peshawar, the biggest Pakistani city just before the border with Afghanistan.
If Islamabad was low slung, sprawling, and relaxed, Peshawar was eye level, sprawling, and in a state of constant riot. The first thing you would notice upon entering the Peshawar city limits is the color of the dust. It’s reddish orange. It’s also the color of most everything else in the city, since the dust covers everything else like a thin sheet. Then, on the hilltops, you will see the old frontier forts, built in the time of Imperial Britain when this was still part of British India. These were the forts that were supposed to tame the wild Pashto frontiersmen; but really they were more like prisons for the soldiers who preferred to stay alive.
Peshawar was the gateway into Afghanistan, and it’s been so for centuries. Here, armed mujahideen mixed freely with the Taliban, and an army of spies from a dozen countries. This is the wild west of Pakistan, sitting at the edge of what the country calls the Northwestern Frontier or NWF, a semi autonomous region of Pakistan governed by Tribal Law. The national government is virtually powerless here; in fact, government troops have taken a beating several times from Taliban and pro-taliban militia in the NWF. There’s a saying in the NWF – Pakistani law applies to you as long as you stay on the highway (truth is, not even that is guaranteed); but step onto the shoulder to take a leak and tribal law applies to you. What this essentially means is that no law applies to you, except the law of the first armed man you bump into.
There’s even a town here where guns are sold in an open air market, everything from American M16s to Russian and chinese AK47s and an assortment of pistols and grenades. For a fee, you could step behind the counter to an empty lot and test fire a few rounds, or let loose a rocket propelled grenade. With that ban on alcohol, these guys have to find a way to unwind. We desperately wanted to visit that town, but it would require a lot of money and permits.
But I’m getting ahead of the story. We checked out the first good looking hotel we could find, not because we intended to check in (we couldn’t afford that), but because we wanted to eat something, err, familiar. It turned out that the Pearl Continental Hotel was the hangout of most of the journos who were stuck in Pakistan waiting for a way to cross the border. Still desperate for a way to skip over the border, we tried to befriend some of the 1st world journos, who were scheming and dreaming up all sorts of plots to sneak in. One time we heard that a group of Western journalists was able to make some sort of mysterious arrangement that would finally let them into Afghanistan. We watched in envy as they loaded up two 6x6 trucks with enough equipment to fly to the moon (this was a TV group after all). Finally, we mustered the courage to approach a balding producer-type and asked about the chances of our small group jumping on board their truck bed and disappearing under their equipment. His a reply was a smirk and a more diplomatic way of saying NO WAY BUDDY GO LOOK FOR YOUR OWN WAY IN. Thoroughly rejected and dejected, Jim and Patrick headed for the hotel shops to look for Pashmeenas to take home. In the end we had the last laugh – Baldie’s mission turned into mission impossible, and his huge, quite indiscreet convoy was turned back from the border. Doubtless, someone made money out of him.
Stymied again, we turned to the Filipino connection. Note how I earlier said the Filipino community here was so small? Well, it’s small but very well connected. A lot of Pinoys here worked for the UN, or for International NGOS that have links or offices in Afghanistan. One such Pinay was Susan dela Cruz-Bratley.
Now Susan wasn’t going to be able to get us into Afghanistan; she couldn’t go back there herself, even though she lived there for several years with her husband, a Norweigan relief worker, before the Taliban made it a little too inhospitable for them.
Still, Susan was a treasure trove of information about Afghanistan. She was obviously in love with the country and its people, although not with its leaders. We asked her to tell us about Afghanistan, and her response was unexpected.
"Pag nagumpisa ako magsalita, maiiyak nanaman ako. Talagang mababait sila," she said. [If I start talking about it, I might cry again. They are so kind.]
"Sa dami ng pinagdaanan nila, halos lahat ng tao, walang trabaho. Pag nakakuha sila ng trabaho, tinuturing ka nilang hari o reyna. Kulang na lang, isuot ang sapatos sa paa mo," she added. [With all the things they have been through, almost everyone has no job there. If you give them a job, they treat you like a king or queen. If they could, they would even put the shoes on your feet for you.]
Susan brought more than memories with her from Afghanistan. Her main helper was a wizened old Afghan who served us endless cups of chai while we setup our satellite videophone outside their gate to report the latest from the border area. Jim and Patrick thought of buying those famous Afghan carpets, and the old man gladly obliged by producing a couple. These were clearly priceless heirloom pieces. Unlike your regular commercial carpet which has to be in perfect condition when you buy it, the value of Afghan carpets goes up with age and wear. "Wear" is measured by how many knots and rips and stains the carpet has, proof of its age. In a country where everything, including lives, are so fleeting, carpets are probably one of the most important things handed down from generation to generation. There is even an old Afghan trick in Jalalabad, where wily merchants spread their carpets on the road so that passing trucks and donkeys add to the apparent wear, thus driving the prices up for the unsuspecting tourist. While Patrick and Jim wanted dearly to take home the Afghan rugs, they had to drop the idea – the rugs were too large and bulky, and we already had excess baggage on the way in from Manila.
Then there was Shaira and Zoomie. Shaira is very much Pinay, with all the hospitality and kababayanness that comes with that label. Despite his name, Zoomie isn’t a fighter pilot or a comic book character, although he is the biggest action star this side of Pashtunland. He’s also married to Shaira, which essentially meant that for that moment we were in Peshawar, he was also virtually married to us.
Zoomie isn’t unfamiliar with Pinoys to begin with. When he was sixteen, Zoomie, or Azeem Sadjad, spent two years in Cubao while studying in a Manila university. So it wasn’t very difficult for him to take us into his home in suburban Peshawar, or to drive us around, or to generally act like a slave to five overbearing journalists. We don’t think we’ve thanked you enough, Zoomie.
His palatial home was plastered all around with movie posters of Zoomie, with his 80s Menudo haircut. His adopting us meant one thing – that we could save money that would have instead gone to hotel accommodations. Naturally he fed us as well, and tried to serve us hand and foot. Pakistanis would gape in wonder whenever Zoomie drove us around in his car to show us the sights of Peshawar. It’s probably like having Robin Padilla serving you in public and calling you Po and Opo, and meaning it too.
But more than anything, it was Zoomie’s contacts that helped us the most. A few days into our stay in Peshawar, we saw on BBC how Kabul had fallen, and how BBC world affairs editor John Simpson declared, quite controversially, that the BBC had just walked ahead of the Northern Alliance lines and captured the capital for the west. Our hearts fell that night – until we realized that with the Taliban out of Kabul, we no longer needed to get Taliban visas!
But the biggest hurdle turned out to be the Pakistanis, who insisted on keeping the army of journalists on a leash. Pakistan required a permit from the Home Secretary for a journalist to cross the border into Afghanistan. And again, that permit was not coming out anytime soon.
Here was where Zoomie came in. Zoomie drove us to the home secretary’s office, took our documents, and disappeared inside. Later, he would emerge triumphant from a swarming gaggle of Pakistanis. Later, we learned how the crowds parted for Zoomie at the Home Secretary’s office, much like the red sea trying to keep up with a fast-walking Moses. It turned out that the Home Secretary wasn’t an ordinary fan of Zoomie – he was an ardent devout fan. Think Mother Theresa getting a visit from the Pope. Needless to say, Zoomie got us our border permits ahead of the rest of the journos, Baldie included.
Zoomie tried to be nonchalant about it, which was virtually impossible. It’s like asking Robin Padilla to be low key too. He kept giving us vague hints until we got into our cars and drove off to a gas station. There, he congratulated us and gave us our travel permits. It took some time to sink in, and for a moment, we were too stunned to react. When we finally read the signed and stamped forms, we whooped with joy and gave hi-fives all around.
That afternoon, we made some last minute purchases. I have this thing for being ready for all contingencies, and I knew what I needed to get from the market. Since we were going into the desert, I thought we could never have enough of water. And since we were taking a vehicle and a small generator, we would also need to bring fuel. I figured that with those two, we could outlast an emergency for a few days, at least before some sort of help arrives. So we went to a market to buy several five gallon plastic jugs, which we proceeded to fill up with gasoline and water.
I also made several minor purchases, including canned goods, packets of instant chinese soup (these would come incredibly handy on a freezing Kabul rooftop) candles, batteries, butane for my little stove, and matches. In a pharmacy, someone joked morbidly that we may need petroleum jelly – the pre-Taliban era checkpoints in Afghanistan were notorious for raping young men, especially those who were not as hirsute as the Pashtuns, Persians, and Arabs. On a good day, I could only count on a smattering of light whiskers on my upper lip and chin to establish my, er, masculinity. So with that joke in mind, we selected a sturdy and generous jar of petroleum jelly. Naturally, the jar raised quite a few eyebrows. It’s so it won’t hurt as much in case we run into trouble , Dennis quipped.
Oh I forgot to introduce you to Dennis. Dennis Sabangan preceded us to Pakistan by several weeks. On regular days, he was an excellent photographer for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. For this trip however, he was working for a New York based photo agency. Dennis is a survivor, which also means he had a weird sense of humor that got him around and kept him relatively sane and everyone else bouncing off the walls. Imagine buzzing around Pakistan alone for several weeks, and even travelling to Quetta near the southern border with Afghanistan. Dennis always seemed to be making jokes that would leave us in stitches, until we realized that Dennis was funniest when he was nervous as hell. It appeared to be his way of coping with stress. So when Dennis starts cracking jokes, it was time to get worried.
We linked up with Dennis in Islamabad, and agreed to stay together and try to get into Afghanistan. For him, there was safety and efficiency in numbers; for us, Dennis was the journo who had been here longer than we had.
And so here was Dennis making jokes about the fate of our posteriors, all while everyone viewed the jar of petroleum jelly with much suspicion. In the end, someone volunteered that we needed the petroleum jelly anyway to deal with chapped lips and skin because winter was about to start in Afghanistan. Later, we misplaced that jar of petroleum jelly in Afghanistan, and there would be much ribbing as to who used it.
November 17 was D-day, the day we were to cross the border. Zoomie introduced us to Iltaf, a shy fellow of undeterminable age who was to drive us to Kabul on his old, right-hand drive, red Toyota town-ace. His services were quite cheap, which was what we needed for that long trip. Naturally, for that price, he also did not speak a word of English. Our conversations were limited to hand gestures in a generally western direction, followed by the words "Kabul, go, Kabul" or "stop". Apparently, Iltaf was a frequent traveler to Kabul. In hindsight, it was an incredibly huge risk to be accompanied by someone who didn’t speak a word of English. Two years later, I would take the same risk all over again. But given our budgetary constraints, we decided to just look for a translator as soon as we get to Kabul.
Iltaf’s van was his virtual home, which meant that it was gaudily decorated with compact disks, tassels, and pictures of his family and friends pasted on the ceiling. To top it all off, he had a stack of pakistani music cassettes that would leave a wailing sound in our ears after more than half a day of bumping down the roads of Afghanistan. Funny how he decorated his van with compact disks, when his music came from cassette tapes. We loaded our satellite antenna, videophone, and other essentials under the seats. Water and gasoline went up on the roofrack, and our rucksacks went into what passed for a trunk.
We drove back to the Home Office in Peshawar to pick up our "escort", a requirement when driving through the tribal lands. Our escort turned out to be a lanky bereted fellow who vaguely looked like Mark Harmon, wearing a military version of the shalwar chemise and lugging a folding stock AK-47, plus a few extra magazines strapped to his chest. In keeping with our fortunes, he also didn’t speak a word of English. He was friendly enough though; later in the trip, after everyone was already bored stiff, he gamely passed around his AK-47 so everyone could have their souvenir picture taken.
With all the gear and personnel on board, we said our goodbyes to Zoomie. Jim gave him a bear hug, which seemed to take him by surprise, given the no-touchy culture here. We bade our goodbyes, and Zoomie wished us luck with a "I hope I see you back alive." Somehow, that innocent farewell sounded a little frightening.
The road from Peshawar to the border was incredibly long and tiring, much longer than we all thought. We were under the impression that Peshawar was the last stop before Afghanistan; after all, the border seemed so close when viewed from a map. It turned out that it was only the gateway to a different world. First, we passed a huge sign in Pashto and English that read: NORTHWEST FRONTIER, FOREIGNERS ARE PROHIBITED. We were entering the wild west. Immediately, we came to a checkpoint, where soldiers inspected our passports and papers from the Home Office. This was the crucial test of Zoomie’s influence. In a moment, they waved us through. That was when we really knew that we were on our way to Afghanistan.
From that checkpoint, the terrain changed dramatically. The mountain roads weaved between barren hilltops from which old forbidding stone fortresses looked down on us. There was nary a blade of grass, only magnificent rock formations and differing shades of sand. This was the territory of the legendary Khyber riflemen, the rugged frontiersmen who opened the Khyber Pass through the Hindu Kush in order to let the British march to a lonely dessicated death. I remember looking at a photo of the Pass that was shown to me three years ago by a former Philippine Ambassador to Pakistan. It was a photo taken from the Pakistani side of the border, overlooking the mountains of Afghanistan. At that time, the Pass held great mystique. Beyond it looking westward, was a land of indescribable beauty and terrifying madness and cruelty. I had looked at that photo with much wonder and earnest, as if trying to make out a mujahideen behind every rock formation. The photo, though, was just a haze of browns and greys. But on this day, I felt every uneven rock on the road as the Toyota bounced and rattled all over the Pass.
We passed the last town of Torkham on the Pakistani side, with villagers peering suspiciously through our untinted windows as five beardless asians trundled past. Finally, the Toyota stopped in front of an immigration outpost. Our escort got down, waved, and walked away. For a moment, we wondered where he was going. And then it struck us – he was only escorting us through the "badlands" part of Pakistan. Our escort was definitely not escorting us into the badlands of Afghanistan.
With that, we piled out of the vehicle and entered the Pakistani Immigration office, where a lonely and bored sergeant pored through our papers again and again, as if looking for a reason to boot us back to Peshawar. He kept clucking, and shaking his head, as if to say you guys really don’t know what you are getting into. By this time, another group of foreign journos had caught up with us and got in line. But for the newly opened border with Afghanistan, it seemed that Pinoys were going to be the first through.
With a flourish, the sergeant finally gave his stamp. It wasn’t an entry stamp into Afghanistan. It was an exit stamp out of Pakistan. It was around this time that Val confided that he had a "small" problem. Pakistan had given him a visa good for two entries into Pakistan, just like we got. This made sense because we planned to come out of Afghanistan through Pakistan again. But Val had already used up one of his entry permits in an earlier uneventful trip to Islamabad with Erwin Tulfo a month before. This meant that as soon as he landed in Islamabad with us, he was out of entry permits. We were going inside Afghanistan through Pakistan; it was unclear if Val could come out the same way.
But at that point, Val was more than willing to throw caution to the wind. Three days ago, he celebrated his birthday in Zoomie’s house. We even got him a surprise cake, with number-candles that said "36". The truth is, we didn’t know how old he was, but 3 and 6 were the only numbers available in the bakery. After a rowdy Happy Birthday song, Val stated his birthday wish – that he be allowed, finally, to get into Afghanistan.
It was with a mixture of intense excitement and uncertainty as we boarded the Toyota again. Iltaf aimed the vehicle in the direction of a set of huge gates manned by sentries. Beyond that gate was our prize – Afghanistan.
We were all severely tempted to raise our cameras [we had one professional camera and two handycams] and film our entry into Afghanistan. After all, this was history of sorts, and we had beaten all the odds, most of all the odds thrown our way by our own office. But we had been given a very stern admonition that there was no filming allowed in the border area. At this point, so close to our goal, we had no intention of messing up.
We crossed the gates at around two in the afternoon Philippine time; the sun was bright, our smiles much brighter. After years of dreaming about this land, we had finally made it. This job is so full of irony. While millions of Afghans would sell their favorite rifle for a chance to leave the country, we were willing to give our left nut to get in. I struggled with the handycam, trying to roll tape without being noticed. On tape, I would hear Jim warn me "Ed teka, may baril pa yung nasa labas" [Ed wait, there’s still an armed man outside].
Past that, I did a spiel oncam. "Alas kwatro ng hapon… Alas dos ng hapon sa Pilipinas. Nakapasok na kami ng…" And everyone chimed in, as if on cue, "Afghanistan!"
[Four in the afternoon... two p.m. in the Philippines. We have just entered... Afghanistan!]
"Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!" Dennis interjected. [Long live the Philippines!]
"Tayo ang unang grupo ng Filipino journalists na nakapasok dito sa Afghanistan," I continued into the camera. [We are the first group of Filipino journalists to enter Afghanistan.]
There was a crowd of Afghans just outside the border gates. On both sides of the highway, as we gained speed, were row after endless row of container vans whose mouths have been turned into shops or homes. These container vans were the legacy of decades of international aid that poured by the billions into this barren land, without much noticeable impact. Partly, this was because a lot of the aid was stolen through corruption or plain banditry, official or otherwise. In the end, it seemed, the west’s lasting contribution to this land were the boxes that the presents came in, and not the presents themselves.
I know that the terrain could not have possibly changed dramatically just because we had crossed a man-made border. In the 19th century, there was no such border to begin with. Yet, the images now seemed so much crisper and the details more distinct. It was a trick of the mind, as we whooped with delight and high fived for the first half hour after crossing the border. The air seemed clearer, and the mountains rippled off to the right like undulating waves frozen for a moment in time. Even Iltaf was smiling, even though he had made this trip on his own countless times. Perhaps he was expecting a bonus.
A few miles into Afghanistan, we were stopped at our first checkpoint. Armed men had set up a rickety barrier on the road, and we were diligent enough to stop. We could have rammed through the barrier if we wanted, but it was clear that the barrier was not what would stop us – it would be the AK-47s and the light machine gun mounted beside the road.
A burly kalashnikov-wielding turbaned gunman approached the driver’s side and engaged Iltaf in Pashto. Obviously, we understood nary a word, which was quite worrisome. Then Iltaf turned to us and, with his thumb and forefinger, gestured that he needed money. We gave him a wad of bills, from which he peeled off a few Pakistani rupees. The gunman took the money and brought it to a table set up by his comrades beside the road. Moments later, he was back, handing Iltaf a piece of paper that Iltaf promptly returned to us.
It took a few moments of turning the scrap of paper this way and that, before we realized what it was.
"Shit," Val gasped in wonder. "resibo yata ito. Ano to? Toll fee!" [It’s a receipt! What was that, a toll fee?]
It was incredible. Just days after the fall of the dreaded Taliban, some local warlord had already begun levying a toll fee on motorists coming from Pakistan. Talk about efficient organizational skills. And they even had printed receipts – in Pashto.
The highway improved as we drove deeper into Afghanistan. Sometimes, we would be bordered by endless oceans of sand and rock; other times, the land would break out into green orchards. On occasion, we would spy a fortress-like compound, with thick high walls and parapets looking down. At first we thought they were really fortresses, until someone told us this was simply the way Afghans build their houses. Much later, we would realize that the truth was really somewhere in between; after centuries of bitter conflict, those who could afford to, banded together into small communities and built fortress-compounds to keep the women in, and invaders out.
And so we rattled on, at times giddy, at times half awake. Looking at the oft-studied map, we knew that the first major city we should strike would be Jelalabad, which marks the middle point on the road to Kabul.

KABUL RUN

2009-05-07T07:20:00.000-07:00

Russians, who preceded us by 22 years, were not the first imperialists to take the lonely road to Afghanistan to tame the wild Afghans – the British had much experience in the hills of Afghanistan, none of them pleasant. The first Anglo Afghan war started in 1839, as part of that so-called great game between Russia and Britain. A quick glance at the map would tell most students of history the clearest reasons why men keep fighting over this seeming dustbowl. Afghanistan, it is oft repeated, sits at the crossroads of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Alexander the Great stormed through these great plains from Persia on the way to India; Genghis Khan would ride his Mongol hordes through the Afghan Plains. There is so much history buried in the dust here, so many stories that will never be told by those whose bones have crumbled into dust. To the East of Afghanistan is India, and to the Northeast sits China; to the North lies Europe, where the Russian bear lies brooding; and to the West is Persia, now modern-day Iran, followed by the rest of the Middle East. Any conqueror worth his salt has no choice but to take on the Afghans if he insisted on declaring himself ruler of the world.
And so in 1838, the powerful and influential British East India Company feared an increase in Russian influence in the region after Dhost Mohammad Khan, the Afghan ruler, renewed relations with the Russians. Ironically, Dhost Mohammad had earlier rejected overtures from Russia, but was apparently irked when Lord Auckland, governor general of India, got a little too pushy in trying to force Afghanistan into the British sphere of influence. And so the Brtish launched their attack westward from Jelalabad, then the frontier outpost of what was still part of British India. British and Indian troops captured Kabul in 1839 with so much ease that they thought well enough to drag the whole household along with them. Of the 16,500 members of the British army in Kabul, only 4,500 were really soldiers – the rest, around 12,000, were what they would call the "camp followers." These weren’t groupies of any sort – they were part of that long logistics tail that travels with any modern army. The british army was quite well known for its creature comforts. The camp followers consisted of everything from cooks, barbers and grooms, as well as more essential personnel like armorers. Of course there were also members of the soldier’s family, as well as servants and beggars. It is said that each British soldier was allowed to have up to four servants. Officers could bring twelve. Britain was, after all, still an imperial power, and its troops had to keep up with appearances.
After the British took over Kabul, Dhost Mohammed fled to the hills to organize his guerilla war under his son, Akbar Khan.
As luck would have it, in 1841, the British commander in Kabul was a Major General William Elphinstone, a politically well-connected army officer who made a name for himself with impressive displays of military incompetence. Britain could not have made a worse choice.
Akbar Khan declared a general revolt in November 1841, and Afghans murdered a senior political diplomat and raided the British armory in Kabul. In another incident, Kabul’s governor, William Hay Macnaghten, was invited by Akbar Khan for tea and was promptly murdered as soon as he got down from his horse. His body was dragged through the streets of Kabul. Elphinstone, for some reason, did nothing. In fact, Elphinstone took it a step further. To the horror of his officers, Elphinstone decided to call it a day, signed a treaty of capitulation, and, under guarantee of safe passage from Akbar Khan, decided to call it quits and go home to India.
Now it wasn’t all that simple for the British. The agreement Elphinstone signed had several conditions, including the surrender of the best British guns, the reserve gunpowder, and the cannons. Having been promised a safe passage to the British garrison in Jalalabad 90 miles away, Elphinstone was apparently the most trusting soul that side of Central Asia.
It was January 6, 1842. And so began the biggest tragedy of British military history.
As soon as the 16,500-strong British column started marching from Kabul, they were attacked again and again by Afghans on horseback, and by guerilla riflemen perched on the mountaintops.
January is far from the most hospitable month in the Afghan calendar. Then again, there are no hospitable months in the Afghan calendar. The sun is either so hot that it will sear exposed skin off your back, or its too cold that your breath feels like it’s forming icicles in your lungs. In addition, Kabul sits 5,900 feet above sea level, on a plateau, surrounded on all sides by towering mountains or gaping gorges. Thousands of British and Indian troops marched through snow two feet deep, into mountain passes that even Afghans would have been afraid to use. Men, women, and children froze to death by the hundreds, or were trampled by Afghan horsemen, or were sliced to ribbons with long swords. By the third day of the march, 3,000 people or roughly a fifth, lay scattered and broken on snowy drifts. Some were shot, some froze to death, many chose to commit suicide. By most accounts, Elphinstone was far from a good leader; he merely sat quietly on his horse as it trudged its way to Jalalabad while thousands died around him.
To cap it all off, on January 11, the fifth day of the march, Elphinstone accepted an offer by Akbar Khan to surrender himself as a hostage. Many British military historians look back to this with much embarrassment; here was the commander of 16,500 British and Indian troops, surrendering himself to stay alive, but abandoning all of his men to their fate. Elphinstone did survive while his men did not, although he reportedly died in Afghan captivity in April of that year.
The Afghans continued to decimate the British column, eating at it from the fringes and the edges, leaving behind carcasses for the vultures and jackals. It was hard to imagine how the unorganized Afghans could rout the disciplined and well trained British and Indian troops. Most Afghans were armed with just the Jezail, an ancient and enormous muzzle loading flintlock that must have been the butt of British jokes before the massacre. It’s basically a musket that you load with powder and ball through the shooting end of the barrel, and fired through the use of a flint. Think American revolution-type rifles, not the wild west kind.
The Afghan jezail is different in that it is usually a family heirloom, cared for and adored by generations of Afghan men. It is usually beautifully decorated, with its more complex parts cannibalized from older european flintlocks that have somehow found their way to central asia. Unlike modern rifles, it was usually fired by Afghans by tucking the butt under the arm, with the rifle held tight against the body.
Things came to a head on a hillock in Gandamak, a town just ten to fifteen kilometers from the British garrison in Jalalabad. There, on January 13, as the popular version of the story goes, some forty British soldiers, all that were left of 16,500 people, made a last stand. As the story goes, the Afghans again gave an offer of surrender, to which a British sergeant somewhat dramatically responds, "not bloody likely." A massacre ensued on the hilltop, the last of a seven day massacre.
Again, as the popular story goes, one man turned up at the gates of the British garrison in Jalalabad, part of his skull sheared off by a sword, his horse practically dying of exhaustion. The man’s name was William Brydon, an assistant surgeon of Elphinstone’s column. He was asked by the sentry where the rest of the army was, to which he replied: "I am the army." Of 16,000 souls who left Kabul, Brydon was the only one to make it to Jalalabad.
Brydon would later write his memoirs of the death march. Britain and India were in shock over the massacre. Lord Auckland suffered a stroke after hearing of the massacre. And Akbar Khan died before the year ended, possibly poisoned by his own father, who had grown frightened of the son’s ambitions.
That same year, Britain would send what it called "an army of retribution" back to Kabul to exact vengeance. Naturally, the British had to march the same route their massacred army took months earlier. It must have been difficult for members of the army of retribution, marching off to avenge their fellow soldiers, at the same time stepping over the withered remains and ghastly skeletons of their compatriots as they were uncovered by the melting snow.
Rudyard Kipling was not one to mince words. The journalist-writer, in one of his oft-quoted verses, wrote one of the most famous, yet largely ignored, pieces of advice:
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your Gawd like a soldier.
A century and a half later, it would occur to me that we came in through the same route that the ill-fated British column took trying to get out. And as friends would keep reminding us, we were lucky, very lucky indeed.

A few miles from Jelalabad, we passed a large, walled compound. We would have just passed it by, had it not been for a large gaggle of armed Afghans who were entering its gate on board a couple of Toyota 4x4s. We had no idea who they were, or if they would greet us or shoot us. Still, we told Iltaf to stop the van. Cameras rolling, we got down and approached. I went to the nearest armed Afghan and extended my hand. He took it. Assalamu Alaykum, I said, touching my fingers to my breast. Alaykum Assalam, he replied. No one seemed hostile, which was encouraging. I approached another armed Afghan who was perched on the bed of a Toyota that had stopped by the gate and gave the same greeting. This was when I heaved a sigh of relief: the Afghan was wearing a jacket in the lizard camouflage pattern of the Northern Alliance. These were not Taliban.
In a matter of minutes, we were all happily shaking hands, and exchanging Salaams and smiles, and little else. We followed them past a long building, and a large concrete apron, and came across two soviet-made armored personnel carriers that appeared to have been damaged in the fighting. The Afghans gathered around, pointing excitedly like victorious troops at the Soviet equipment. Giddy with delight at having come across "friendly" troops, we took photos and posed for souvenir shots with the Afghans. A little while later, another armed Afghan called our attention and tried to make us go with him. Unsure of what his intentions were, we tried to ignore him. After a while, though, he got a little insistent. Even after we got in our van, he was still pulling at us, motioning to some distant place beyond the conrete apron. We weren’t sure if he was just being overly friendly, but at that point we decided it best not to get on the bad side of our new friends. After some hand gestures, he surprised us all by jumping into our van with us. This raised a howl of protest from everyone, and I think we even tried to push him out. We didn’t know this guy from Adam, and already he was hitching a ride. Unfortunately, he was also well armed. Our new passenger pointed Iltaf in the direction of the concrete apron. So we sped off again into parts unknown.
The concrete apron, it turned out, was actually a concrete taxiway. The building, it also turned out, was an airport. And the whole compound, we found out, was the Jalalabad airport. This was a complete surprise for us. We didn’t even think Jalalabad would have an airport.
But it did, for good reason. For years, Bin Laden lived in the Jalalabad area, and directed Al Qaeda operations from a secret headquarters near this city. When Bin Laden was evicted by Sudan for constantly insulting the Saudi Royal family, he flew back into Afghanistan and landed his private jet here in Jalalabad airport. It was here, not Kabul or Kandahar, where Bin Laden directed his private personal war against the non-Muslim world. And it was a homecoming of sorts for the Bin Laden, a heir to the billion dollar Bin Laden construction empire who gave up his comforts to fight for his vision of an Islamic world from inside backwards Afghanistan.
We bounced down the runway, marveling at the enormous craters left by American bombs on the runway. Obviously, this runway was disabled early in the fight. Then, our newfound friend pointed to one corner of the runway. This was what he had wanted to show us.
The wreckage appeared to have been that of a helicopter gunship, that had taken a direct hit from a missile. From what was left of it, the chopper had been, until recently, a Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunship, the heavily armed and armored helicopter that had earned the nickname "the flying tank" in Afghanistan. For more than a decade, these monsters ruled the skies over Afghanistan, delivering terrifying payloads like rockets, chemical weapons, or Spetsnatz soviet special forces troops on top of Afghan fighters and civilians. On this day, this Hind was not going anywhere. It was nothing more than twisted and burned metal. The lack of a bomb crater implied that the aircraft had been hit by a missile. We picked our way through the wreckage in awe. For years, we had been held in a trance by those spectacular missile-videos released by the Pentagon – the image of a building or a parked helicopter growing larger as the missile approached. Then, a flash, and static. For the detached viewer, it all looked like a videogame. Now, in front of us, lay the effects of those videos. The five bladed rotor head still sat on part of the charred engine block. The tail lay on one side, virtually untouched. One of the mujahideen grabbed what looked like the nose-mounted machine gun of the helicopter, and, like a child, played with it by making buzzing sounds with his lips.
We were all agog at the sight. This was the first and clearest face of the war. Val immediately started shooting. We had a hurried conference, and seeing that night was falling, decided to setup a live point beside the wreckage and broadcast the very first Filipino news advisory from within Afghanistan.
It was here that all our preparations paid off. We hauled out the videophone as well as the extra gasoline and a small generator. The mujahideen crowded around, wondering why this bunch of hairless asians were making such a big fuss out of a blasted helicopter. The consensus was for me to do the first live report, an honor in itself considering everything we had gone through to get here.
Setting up a satellite videophone in the early part of the new millenium was a pretty complicated affair by today’s standards. Two yellow suitcases held the satellite antennae, which you have to unfold and point at the satellite orbiting some 22,300 miles above the earth on a geostationary orbit. Thankfully, the whizkids who make these gadgets have tried their best to make setup simple enough for an educated gorilla to handle.
Earlier that year, the tech guys in ABS-CBN had announced they were holding a seminar for reporters and cameramen who were willing to learn how to use the videophone. That time, only two people signed up – Val and myself. It was pretty confusing for me, especially since I was still trapped somewhere between the middle ages and Windows 95. But I tried to digest the concepts and the new technology, while most other reporters were just happy to have their cutaways taken by their cameramen. It was just an afternoon seminar. A few months after the training, I offered to bring the whole satellite videophone setup with me on a coverage in Basilan. I even designed a new backpack for myself that would fit the hardened videophone case. The backpack was enormous by most standards, and it was a backbreaker when fully loaded. For the Basilan trip, I loaded up the videophone while my cameracrew scratched their heads in wonder. I just wanted to test the technology, and familiarize myself with its workings. At nights in Basilan, I would haul out the equipment and tinker with it, and call Manila if they have been receiving our signals. It didn’t occur to me that a few months later, that obsessiveness would pay off.
Videophone. The word is really misleading, because it sounds like any simple phone you can pick up. The videophones in 2001 were complex systems that took an army of goons to carry and a platoon of Einsteins to setup. The heart of the unit is a hardened laptop, encased in a thick, waterproof Pelican suitcase. Aside from the main unit, the videophone comes with the satellite antenna. Subscribers have the option of getting two antennae, which means faster transmission rates. Each satellite antenna comes in a nice yellow plastic suitcase. Unlike the typical dish antenna, this antenna is rectangular, and unfolds into a bigger rectangle that you point at the satellite. The antennae are then cabled to a separate modem that is connected to the laptop. So far, I’ve described the easy part. At this point, you connect.
The early videophones, aside from weighing in at a backbreaking fifty pounds, would only give you the quality of a badly lit webcam. The jitters and pixels were so bad that Max Headroom would win a breakdancing contest hands down. That’s why we were advised to avoid any movement when reporting live using the webcam. We were also advised to avoid feeding video that had any movement at all, as this resulted in plenty of pixels.
Val and I setup the videophone on the runway. Patrick took out the handycam and started shooting while Val tinkered with the equipment. Jim did an impromptu spiel to camera, saying that after the raggedy bunch of Afghans crowded around us had driven away their more organized enemy, they had virtually turned into children again, gaping in wonder at the new technology spread out around them.
With that on tape, Patrick panned to the left, where I was in an attempted conversation with a mujahideen. I had somehow liberated his AK-47 from his hands, and was inspecting it like a little kid. Ooohh AK-47 huh? 30 round magazine, 7.62 caliber…
Jim broke in, "tanong mo kung ilang taon na siya, ed." [Ask him how old he is.]
"You, what age, you?" I asked the muj in overly simplified English. "Me, 33, you, what age, you?"
For a moment, the muj appeared to have understood me, nodding as he was with apparent comprehension. At least, until he responded to my question by stretching out his hand and pointing… to some place to his right. This was one conversation that was not going to go anywhere.
"Oh. You over there? Somewhere over there? Okay." With that, I gave up translations for the day.
The conservative western media had long tended to portray the mujahideen as selfless, religious, disciplined fighters who moved mountains to boot out the Soviets. But there were obviously a number of clowns in their ranks, the unfunny kind. While some mujahideen dutifully got down on their knees for evening prayers, one of them mimicked pushing his rusty AK47 up the ass of an unknowing colleague who was prostate in prayer.
While we were setting up the videophone, Jim and Patrick went exploring with our new friends. They gave the two the grand tour, although there was a point when the mujahideen warned them to stay on the beaten track because of the danger of landmines. The Afghans didn’t know English – they just mimed by putting their fingers together, and then spreading them forcefully outwards and upwards. The message was pretty clear: watch where you pee, or you may end up having to carry more than the family jewels in your pocket.
It was already dark when we finally broke into some entertainment program in Manila to declare, with much pride, that we had just crossed the border into Afghanistan, and were now somewhere in Jalalabad, halfway to Kabul. In hindsight, it probably wouldn’t have raised a hiccup from any of the Filipino viewers in Manila. We were breaking into primetime entertainment programming, and there were other, uhm, more pressing stories in Manila such as the murder of actress Nida Blanca. But we were proud and happy to be in this unhappy place.
I don’t remember much of that live report, except for the fact that I was bathed in light in the middle of a dark mine-strewn airfield with no other light for miles around. It would have been a tempting target for anyone with a mortar. I looked in the direction of the camera [you almost never see the camera when you do spiels at night, because the bright camera light is in your eyes] and spoke of the great difficulty we had in crossing the border, and of our newfound friends, and the great battle that apparently preceded us in this airport. Then I turned sideways to let viewers get a peek at the wreckage of the helicopter behind me. It was over quickly. All our efforts, all our risks, boiled down to this brief accomplishment set in the middle of someone’s gameshow or soap opera. Such is TV.
It was dark when we finished, making it more difficult to pack up.
From the airport, we rattled on westward down the desert. It wasn’t totally dark, and we could make out the mountains to the south. The sky was a deep dark blue. What struck us most was the moon. It was a golden crescent shining against a dark indigo sea, the edges so unbelievably sharp and razor crisp because of the dry unpolluted Afghan sky. Because of the absence of humidity, skies and heavenly bodies are so much clearer, sharper, and distinct. It was the kind of sharpness that reminded you of paper cuts. It was a desert moon, one of many thousands probably seen by Afghans and Arabs over the generations. It wasn’t hard to imagine why the Arab Muslims chose the crescent as the symbol of their religion; night after night, it was this startling sight that sliced into their imaginations, embedding itself into their minds like the clear quiet voice of God.
Soon, we edged into Jalalabad town. There were no signs; homes just started sprouting up beside the roadway, and we soon came across two-story buildings as well. In sign language, we told Iltaf that we wanted to sleep. He drove up a driveway between two long buildings – this was the Jalalabad version of the Hilton.
We piled out, and Iltaf sought out the owner. Fortunately, the owner could manage to croak out some English; unfortunately, he also knew the value of his knowledge. At first, he quoted a reasonable price of 500 Pakistani rupees. As the night deepened, and more journalists arrived to check in, he tried to raise the rent a hundred percent.
The room wasn’t particularly comfortable. In fact, it was just that- a room. Now, after some thought, the room reminds me of a small classroom, with the part farthest from the door elevated by half a foot, like a platform. Perhaps in another era, this had been a school. There was a ragged carpet on the floor, and what passed for a couch and a table. There wasn’t even a bed. It must have measured three or four meters wide and long. Into this room went five journalists and the driver. Naturally, our first question was where to sleep. But being to grateful to have gotten this far, we decided to just haul out sleeping bags and sleep on the floor. Which was just as well, since Iltaf had cornered the only couch and was snoring on it long before we had gotten our equipment down from the van.
Hungry for both information and food, we stepped outside for a little exploring. Despite the language difficulties, we managed to buy some grilled meat of uncertain origin from a roadside stall, and some na’an bread, the unleavened staple of most afghan and arab diets. We dug into the toasty hot meat, despite being unsure of its origin or quality. The meat wonderfully tasty, and it was probably our best meal in days.
Dennis made light of our language difficulties. Someone turned on a handycam, and, like a TV reporter, Dennis spoke of how difficult it was to converse in English with the Afghans. So, he said, he’s had to resort to Bisaya. With that, he turned to the hotel owner/manager, and spoke to him in rapid Filipino that he wanted his eggs scrambled and nicely cooked. Whether the manager understood him or not is unclear. Still, the manager nodded enthusiastically, and gave him the thumbs up. At this point, Dennis raised his fist and shouted, Mabuhay ang New People’s Army, and the manager agreeably raised his fist as well.
In another shot, Dennis was with the manager, squatting over a stove. The manager took out a plastic spoon, and tried to get a gob of frozen cooking oil from a smelly can. The plastic spoon broke with a snap, and Dennis guffawed with laughter so loud that the manager laughed as well, raised his broken spoon, and said "one hundred dollars." The man was actually trying to charge us a hundred dollars for a plastic spoon! Dennis replied, "I will give you one hundred Philippine dollars." Not knowing the exchange rate, the old man agreed. Still a ripoff, if you ask me.
We tried to get a good night’s sleep in our first night in Afghanistan. It would have helped if Iltaf didn’t snore so loud. But we decided to be more understanding, since he got us into Afghanistan. We must have gotten two hours sleep that night, on the moldy carpet.
The next morning, we discovered that dozens of journalists had checked in while we were sleeping. We also discovered that a bunch of armed men had taken residence in the floor above us with an army of acronyms - RPG, AKs, and RPDs. The floor above us was a virtual arsenal. It was scary, because no one knew who was who. Were these Northern Alliance fighters, or some warlord’s goons? Or were they one and the same? As soon as we could pack up our bags, we loaded up and sped off for our next stop – Kabul.

KABUL RUN

2009-05-07T07:16:00.000-07:00

Nothing takes your breath away like Afghanistan in the soft early morning. The colors are vivid, the sky is blindingly blue, and the mountains seem friendly and distant. In Afghanistan, that’s normally how you’d like the mountains to be. They roll and curve beautifully like waves in the sea, but you would never want to climb them or live in them. Several times, we simply had to stop to take some video or photos. When a herd of innocent looking sheep and evil looking goats crossed the road, we jumped off the van and posed in the middle of the herd.
If the journey from the border to Jalalabad was long, the journey from Jalalabad to Kabul was agonizingly longer. When we first entered Afghanistan, we were still in awe with the sights. But by the next day, much of the novelty had already worn off. Kabul was supposed to be only 90 miles away, but the bad roads and the treacherous mountains made sure that it would take us some eight hours.
By this time, we had become confident enough to stop every time we felt like it and shoot video. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even bother to stop anymore, and just hang the camera out the window and roll. But I remember one village we passed very vividly. We rattled along the dusty road, and one man glared at us. As we passed, I remember seeing him wag his finger at us, like a warning. Just after that incident, a sedan sidled up beside us. Inside were a pair of Japanese journalists, driven by a Pakistani who knew the King’s English.
The Pakistani leaned out his window and bellowed at us to stop shooting video all around, and to not stop for anyone along the way. This is a dangerous place, and these people are crazy, he said. With that, he sped off.
We became a little more cautious, but the monotony of the trip soon had us dropping our guard. Hours into the journey, we came upon a magnificent lake, and what looked like a small hydroelectric dam. We didn’t stop there to take footage, even though it was very tempting. Part of the reason was the large number of armed men we saw in the adjacent town. For some reason that was hard to explain, the town looked... dangerous.
Later, I would learn that this was the town of Sarobi, and the lake was, of course, Sarobi lake. Unknown to us at that time, this was a hideout of one of the most notorious warlords and bandits in this part of Afghanistan. From 1987 to 1995, this was a stronghold of the Hezc-I-Islami, or the Islamic Party, a mujahideen faction allied with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Three years after we would pass this town, a former Sarobi warlord Faryadi Sarwar Zardad, would be tried for kidnapping and torture before a London court. Prosecutors told the court that Zardad was particularly imaginative in devising new ways of torturing or killing people passing through Sarobi. One time, the court was told, Zardad even kept a "human dog" in a hole, and set him free to bite and attack passersby on certain occasions.
Curiously, the BBC reported that Zardad had moved to Britain in 1998 and was operating a pizza restaurant in South London when he was arrested for the crimes he allegedly committed while being the local deity in Sarobi.
Of course we knew none of Sarobi’s history, not even the town’s name, as we passed this place. Once we were past the town, we skirted around the lake, edging up a mountain road. At the top of a rise, tensions eased somewhat, and we stopped for some footage. By this time, Dennis had mastered the art of the TV spiel, and cracked more jokes for the camera: "Limang oras ng pagiging pulburon, espasol na kami. Ang bilis pa ng driver namin. Speedy bagal ang tawag namin sa kanya."
After that, we got back into the van, and sped on up the mountain road. It was after a left turn on that mountain road when a lone gunman stepped onto the road and waved us to a stop. The rest is history. Welcome to sunny Sarobi. Hope you come back again.
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After the incident in Sarobi, we approached each bend of the road with dread. We knew we were incredibly unlucky, yet lucky to still be alive, in a country where dying comes easy, and disappearing, even more so. After Sarobi, the terrain changed dramatically. We crept up steep roads and edged through mountain gorges. The Kabul river thundered underneath, a virtual deluge in a place where people pray for every drop of water. On the roadsides, especially near quick turns of the mountain road, were scattered the burned hulks of soviet-made armored vehicles and tanks. These roads were a guerilla’s wet dream; once an ambush was launched, there is virtually no place for a victim to run, except perhaps to jump into the gorge and pray for the kindness of a raging river. The twisted wreckage were the rusted legacies of a decade of Soviet influence in Afghanistan, no different from the bleaching bones encountered by the so-called British army of retribution a century before.
It was the longest drive for all of us, especially with all the twists and turns of the road after that robbery. In our minds, we were reliving every moment on that mountain, wondering if things would have been different if we hadn’t stopped; or if we offered any resistance; or if someone had simply coughed at the wrong time. This is the punishment of all survivors – to be condemned to relive a nightmare over and over again.
Once past the gorge, we entered a flat plain ringed by mountain ranges all around. We had the inkling that this was the plateau on which Kabul was built. It was late afternoon, and hopefully, we were finally on the home stretch.
A few kilometers into the plain, we were stopped by another group of armed men. For a fleeting moment, the terror returned. But we were comforted by the fact that this appeared to be a real army or police checkpoint, manned by professional soldiers or professional rebels. They were even wearing uniforms. A brief look into our van, and the men manning the checkpoint let us through.
After a few more kilometers, we came across a walled compound that appeared to have been flattened by bombs. Overcoming our fear, we leapt off the van and started shooting inside. The compound was empty of people, but destroyed buildings and warehouses were all around. It looked as if there was nothing left standing inside this compound except for the walls. It appeared to be an old military or government camp, now abandoned by the Taliban.
Outside, I spotted a russian-style helmet on the ground. I was tempted to pick it up as a souvenir, until I noticed that there was something reddish, sticky, and lumpy inside the helmet. I couldn’t tell what it was, and part of me didn’t really want to know. Also, this was the kind of place one has to be mindful of mines and booby traps. So the helmet stayed where I saw it.
Further on, we saw a gaggle of tanks and armored personnel carriers parked by the roadway. These were the old T-54s and T-55s, a russian tank built in the 1950s and 60s, but still widely used in the third world. Their barrels were muzzled with canvas covers, but they were obviously still operational, and bristling with machine guns mounted on the commanders’ cupolas. The tanks were probably used by the northern alliance in capturing Kabul, although no one stopped or approached us as we took photos and footage of the armor display. It was a weird feeling, standing on top of a tank, and no one appeared to care if I crawled all over it or tried to drive one away.
When we finally entered Kabul proper in the late afternoon we were already emotionally drained. The Afghan capital was abuzz, still giddy four days after the fall of the Taliban. People had a sense of newfound freedoms, that they were slowly exploring. The capital was also beginning to crawl with vehicles from Pakistan and Iran. With no interpreter, we were unsure where to go or who to talk to. The logical thing was to stop at the first person of apparent authority, and ask for directions. The first guy we saw was dressed, quite unusually, in the dark gloomy rain camouflage of the old East German Army. I couldn’t help stare at his uniform while we tried to ask for directions. Here was a soldier wearing the camouflage meant for the dark rainy weather of Eastern Europe in a country where rain was a virtual miracle. Of course there was another reason for my stare – I collect camouflage patterns as a hobby.
Unfortunately, despite his impressive uniform, the soldier spoke no English either. Somehow, we found ourselves on a hilltop, in front of the Kabul Intercontinental, where most foreign journalists were billeted.
Names can be very misleading. At the time, Kabul Intercon was not connected with the Intercon international chain of hotels; if it did have any connection, that must have been ages ago, long before the time of the Soviets, the shifty mujahideen alliances, and the Taliban. Now, it sits on an imposing hilltop, a large block of dark concrete that reminds people how unimaginative some architects can be when they feel like it. As if that were not bad enough, over the decades, the Intercon had fallen into disrepair. During the Soviet era, the only people who would use the Intercon were Eastern European contractors brought in by the Soviets. By the time the Taliban swept into power, the Intercon was already an anachronism. The Taliban basically wanted to bring back the way of life of the 6th century, when the Prophet and his disciples were leading lives much simpler and pure; virtually anything else was considered frivolous, and therefore banned. One can just imagine the Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Omar, staring at the Intercon, and saying tut-tut-tut, it’s the devil’s lair. No wonder Mullah Omar preferred staying in Kandahar than in the more cosmopolitan environment of Kabul. [Cosmopolitan? Well, everything is relative.]
So the Intercon stayed the course by being the shining beacon of fine living and fine dining [see remark on everything being relative] all throughout three austere regimes. And now, Iltaf shut down his engine, and we looked up and stared in awe and incredulity at the signage and wondered how the hell could they have an Intercon in Kabul. Perhaps they also have a sauna?
Again, we piled out of Iltaf’s little red van, hoping to heavens that it would be the last time for the day. The lobby of the Intercon was abuzz with foreign journalists hanging around, sleeping on the fake leather couches, or bugging the front desk. When we finally got our turn, we were told up front that there were no more rooms available, and if we insisted on waiting for one, get in line. So that’s why there were so many foreign journos camped out in the lobby of the Intercon.
Stymied at finding five star lodgings, we decided to go, well, native. Iltaf seemed to understand our predicament, because we didn’t have to explain too hard for him to get the idea that we still didn’t have a place for the night. We bounced around the capital, looking for an apartment or a cheap hotel that could take us in. Thankfully, some Afghans seemed to know a lot more English than our driver. We found one such hotel in a major Kabul intersection, standing over a teeming market. The room they offered us was cheap, dirt cheap. And it looked the price. That the room was in the fifth floor of the elevator-less hotel was of little concern to people who are in severe cost-cutting mode. I was ready to jump in, but the rest of the gang was a little more concerned that we were too vulnerable here. Imagine, five asians without a word of Pashto among them, camped out in a fleabitten hotel in downtown Kabul at a time when the Taliban and every angry armed goon is looking for payback. Thoroughly vetoed, we decided to head back to the Intercon to see if we could charm our way in.
Which was just as well. As soon as we got back into the van, a crowd of curious Afghans had gathered around our vehicle, and were peering inside. So this is what it’s like to be the only goldfish in a cat convention. It was all fine for a while, until someone started pounding on the doors and windows. We couldn’t understand a word, but we didn’t have to. For some reason, they were getting upset. Soon, the van was shaking. Iltaf started the vehicle, and gingerly put it in gear. I hoped that Iltaf would be extra careful in dealing with this. If he runs over anyone at this point, the crowd would tear us apart. Iltaf leaned on his horn and stepped gingerly on the gas, and the Afghans eventually let us go.
Thankfully, we found ourselves back in the Intercon in one piece. This time, we decided we couldn’t afford to take no for an answer. We sought out the hotel manager and pleaded for a room, any room. In the end, he offered his own – his basement office. For $100 a day, he was willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice by letting us sleep on the floor of his small office. It wouldn’t have been so bad if we hadn’t found out later that the going rate for the regular hotel room, when one was available, was $60 a night.
Having survived the day, we were not about to argue. We voted on the room, and started hauling out the manager’s table and chairs. This left only the ratty carpet to sleep on.
With sleeping arrangements set, we all went back outside to Iltaf’s van. The sun had set while we were hauling our stuff to the basement office, and the wind had picked up. For the first time we got a real taste of Afghanistan’s weather. It was biting cold, even under layers of cloth and nylon. The wind was picking up, and any exposed skin was soon numb with cold. At times we had to turn away from the wind because the cold dry wind would make the eyes water so much.
We decided to set-up our live broadcast equipment, and tell Manila what had happened to us. We certainly didn’t want our loved ones to learn of the robbery incident from someone else. Not that there was any real danger of that. When we arrived at the hotel, everything seemed normal, and no one had any inkling what had happened. And, we thought wrongly, no one would care.
Because of problems with line-of-sight, we had to scout the parking lot for the right place to setup our satellite dishes. We found the perfect spot in an elevated parking lot off to the side of the Intercon. From the spot, there were no obstructions between the satellite and the antennae. Unfortunately, this also meant there were no obstructions between the wind and us. The night was so cold that we stood on that hilltop with teeth clenched to keep them from chattering.
While Val setup the videophone, I took out a can of tuna. We were all hungry, having skipped meals most of the day. I also took out a bar of hexamine heating fuel. Years ago I had come across several bars of ration heaters in Dau town, near the former US Air Force Base in Clark, Pampanga. These were really solid alcohol bars, that you simply put under a can of food to light. The alcohol smelled terrible, and made your eyes water when the wind blew the wrong way. But it was certainly a fast and surefire way of heating food and frozen fingers. Whenever I brought a can of food on coverages, I would always bring a couple of bars of hexamine for good measure. Now, i thought, this day had been bad enough, and I had no plans of eating a cold can of tuna, at least not if I could help it.
I took out a Swiss knife, dug a small hole in the earth, and put a piece of hexamine in the middle. Then I got a few rocks, piled them around, and set the opened can of tuna on top. A few minutes after lighting the hexamine, the tuna was bubbling in its own spicy sauce, and everyone crowded around for a quick bite.
When Val was ready with the satellite phone, we took our turn calling our loved ones first to tell them we were okay. Again, memory fades here, but I do recall that the first thing I told my wife was that she should not worry and that we were fine and in Kabul, but we had run into a little problem along the way. That, we decided, was the best way to break the news to our families. Start off on the wrong foot, and you get panic on one side of the line, and lengthy explanations from the other. If you immediately say "we were robbed at gunpoint", the questions will come faster than the answers. By stressing that we were okay first, then explaining what happened, we downplayed the event and helped calm the nervousness at home.
I think we all tried to downplay the incident while talking to our families, although that was understandably a little difficult. We were detained by a bunch of armed men on a mountain, and they cocked their guns and shouted at us and ripped us off, but don’t worry, it’s all bright and sunny here with no cloud in sight for the next fifty years. Plus, we’re booked in the glitzy ritzy Kabul Intercon. Beat that.
After the satellite phone had done the rounds, that was the only time we called the office for our update. Again, there was a difference in points of view here. From our end, Kabul was the prize that was almost unreachable just days ago. It was like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But for the guy at the other end of the line, it was simply a destination. Something like: "Oh you’re in Kabul? Okay..."
I remember telling them about our money situation, and we told them that we probably had enough money for food, and that was it. But don't worry guys, it’s Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, so we won’t get to eat anyway. What would give us nightmares was the problem of how to get home.
I remember I still had six or seven hundred dollars with me, and among the rest of the guys, there was probably an equal amount. That may sound like a tidy sum in Manila, but not in the middle of Afghanistan, where you don’t have any banks or ATMs.
Still, the office was gracious enough to ask us for a live update from Kabul. We decided that the story was the dangerous road to Kabul, and the terrifying moments on that mountain road after Sarobi. For this story, we decided that Patrick would do the live reportage, while every one of us stood with him in the frame. It was our way of showing our families that, yes, we were robbed, but we are still alright.
It was one of the rare occasions where you have all four correspondents appearing live in a single screen. While Patrick gave the report on the bandit incident and our entry into Kabul, we stood around him. I guess it was our way of assuring everyone in Manila that we still had all fingers and toes intact.
I would see that live shot weeks later, back in Manila. We all stood facing the camera, bathed in light, the lights of Kabul twinkling behind us. Most of us were wrapped heavily in the earth-colored blankets called partou by Afghans. Everyone wore a hat or a pakul because of the cold. And at our feet – a can of tuna perched precariously on a pile of rocks.
"Sari saring armadong grupo ang nagkalat ngayon," Patrick reported on air. "Katunayan, Tinigil kami ng mga kalalakihan na armado ng AK-47. Kinasahan kami ng baril, kinuhanan kami ng pera."
[All sorts of armed groups are scattered now. In fact, we were stopped by a group of men armed with AK-47s. They cocked their rifles at us, and robbed us of our money.]
After the live report, we continued unloading our stuff in the hotel. While we were doing that, there were ugly rumors going around that the newly installed Afghan authorities were picking up Pakistani citizens and placing them under arrest.
Relations between Afghans and Pakistanis have been strained ever since Pakistan threw its support behind the brutal Taliban. It is also said that the more brutal Taliban troops were not really the Afghans, but the Pakistani and Arab volunteers who traveled to this country to export their own brand of Islam. In places where the Northern Alliance overran the Taliban, the victorious rebels just let the Afghan Taliban go back home. It was a different story for their Pakistani and Arab supporters though. The lucky ones were immediately executed. Others, it was discovered later, were crowded into the ubiquitous container vans and locked inside with no ventilation. It was a brutal and cruel way to die.
I had come back up to the hotel entrance to pick up another load of equipment and baggage when I was confronted by a noisy gaggle of young men. One of them, a lanky guy in a leather jacket, pointedly asked me if we were the ones who were oppressing this poor guy Iltaf. I was taken aback at the accusation; we had been a little nasty to the guy after the bandit incident, but other than that, I would think we had been quite nice. But the young man wouldn’t have any of it, and proceeded to berate me in halting English. First thing I thought was, hey this guy speaks relatively good English! Nevertheless, his accusations got my goat, and I started arguing back heatedly that we had not done anything wrong to Iltaf. Nothing makes for a more colorful argument than a language barrier. Soon, there was a crowd around us.
I think at this point, we dragged Iltaf in. We may not have been able to understand the guy, but we didn’t really think he was the type that would sell us out, or lie about us. What Iltaf told the young man appeared to settle him , because to his credit, the man suddenly apologized, and said that he had misunderstood the story going around. It turned out that a group of Afghan plainclothes policemen had noticed Iltaf’s Pakistani license plates, and had been harassing him. I thanked the man for his honesty, and left it at that. Little did we know that in the coming days, we would place our lives in the hands of this same man.
A few minutes later, while we were in the lobby, a severe and officious looking Afghan with a five o’clock shadow and wearing a leather jacket approached us. Behind him were Iltaf and several other Afghans, some of them dressed in Northern Alliance uniforms. Do you know this man, the Afghan official asked. Yes, he’s our driver, we replied. The man then asked for our passports, which we handed over grudgingly. After going through the documents and giving us a once over, he seemed determined to give us a hard time. You have no Afghan visa, he said. Afghan visa, we stuttered? What Afghan visa? There is no more Taliban government to give anyone a visa. Then you have no Northern Alliance visa, he replied. But there are no Northern Alliance embassies to give out that visa, we countered. Still, he argued. To get inside our country, you must have a visa. That left us stumped. The conversation went along that vein for several minutes, with the man insisting that we entered his country illegally. The conversation bordered on the ridiculous. It seemed to us, after getting robbed at gunpoint, that visa-less journalists were the least of his country’s problems. Besides, with the Taliban’s seats still warm from their last occupants, the new government hadn’t even been formed yet. Then the man issued a chilling warning. Get your papers in order immediately, he said. Or face arrest.
Having given us due warning, he asked if we knew that our driver Iltaf was Pakistani. Of course, we said, we came from Pakistan, and we got him there. He has no permit to enter our country. But there is no one to give such a permit in Pakistan, we said. That is no excuse. We were going around and around, and it was clear that these policemen were looking for an excuse to make an arrest, and Iltaf was the one they had in their sights.
To be honest about it, we were probably relieved that they had chosen to pick on Iltaf than on us. At the very least they could understand each other. They hauled off Iltaf, who was already jabbering in fright. Poor Iltaf looked as frightened as a mouse. His eyes darted left and right, his shoulders slumped and he seemed to shrink in front of the overbearing new symbols of authority. We decided we weren’t going to let them take Iltaf without a fight. Much as we were angry at Iltaf for getting us into trouble in the road from Jalalabad, we felt responsible for him. In this very foreign land, he was one of ours.
Surprisingly, they weren’t hauling him out of the hotel. Instead, they brought him downstairs to the hotel basement, and deeper into a corridor. Iltaf was not the only captive; there were other Pakistani drivers hauled off with him. But after being browbeaten and threatened by Mr. Charming, the foreign journalists who hired these drivers had simply washed their hands of the whole deal and left them to fend for themselves. We were the only journalists who trailed the group down the stairs, arguing with Mr. Charming the whole time and pleading Iltaf’s case.
The policeman would have none of it. In fact he seemed irritated and baffled that these foreigners would still hang on to their Pakistani driver with such persistence.
But you cannot take him, I argued, he has not done anything wrong. He comes to Kabul often. He is not armed. He is just a driver. We just hired him. He did not violate any law. There is no law! At least, not yet. Finally, as his men dragged Iltaf down a dark hallway in the basement, Mr. Charming, with his five-o’clock stubble and leather jacket giving him a much more conspiratorial air in the dark tunnel, turned to me, and says, menacingly, This is his problem. I advise you, as foreigners in my country, not to make it yours too.
With that warning ringing in our ears, we simply had to let go. But that incident weighed heavily in our minds, especially because we felt that we had let Iltaf down. We really tried, as much as we could, to protect him. But it turned out that even our presence was iffy. We thought all along that the Northern Alliance would welcome journalists with open arms, since they appeared to have the sympathy of much of the western world. Tonight’s incident was a reality check for us The people friendliest to you are usually the underdogs. Once they get the upper hand, things, and friendships, can change in an instant.
Someone said Iltaf would just be held for questioning. But the circumstances behind his arrest, the veiled threat, and the act of dragging him down to the dungeon-like basement left such a bad taste in the mouth that colored our view of the New and Improved Afghanistan.
We rushed back upstairs to the parking lot, and found Iltaf’s van still parked, screaming with its emptiness. On the ground, near the tires, we found one of the photos Iltaf had pasted on the ceiling of his van. It was a photo of a smiling Iltaf and a friend. Whoever had arrested Iltaf had also searched the van, torn the photo from the van’s ceiling, and ripped it to pieces. It takes a special kind of hatred to do something like that. It was, sadly, a time of retribution.

2009-04-27T23:41:00.000-07:00

Bombs over Baghdad

Ed's note: here are a few pages from one chapter on our Iraq coverage during the Gulf War for my book Correspondent. Please feel free to comment. Thanks!

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Fast forward. Baghdad, 2003.

Ever heard an air raid siren go off? It's a sound you never forget.
I was on the phone with my wife, assuring her we were safe and fine and well protected and that we knew exactly what we were doing when the frigging air raid sirens went off and I remember hoping to God she couldn’t hear the wailing sound over the scratchy phone line because I would never hear the end of it.

I've never heard sirens like these before; they wailed like banshees down Baghdad’s empty streets, sending echoes through the canyons of high-rise buildings and apartments that characterized the western bank of the Tigris where we were. There were three or four sirens throughout the city, wailing up and down an asynchronous otherworldy scale that made your hair stand on end. The distances between the sirens made it all the more eerie; one would hit a high note while a more distant siren was hitting a low. It’s how you’d imagine air raid sirens to be like in the movies, or in those old movietone newsreel clips of the Blitz over London. But the wailing and the message they brought were unmistakable.

War had started. And we were still in Baghdad.

I cupped my hand over the phone’s receiver, trying to block out the noise. Esther was still talking when I finally decided to interrupt.

"Uhm bubba, I have to go. Now. Something's happening," I remember telling her as calmly as I could.

The rest comes more clearly, since I had remembered to switch on the videocamera hanging by a strap from my neck. The video is dark and grainy, and jittery, like a badly directed movie. I nervously banged the phone down so hard that the ringer sounded off, and then I ran for the balcony, where Val had already set up his camera.

"Pare yan na," Val said from under his steel helmet.
He had his camera out on the ledge, shooting the twinkling lights of Baghdad on the first minute of the second gulf war. I was rolling with my own camera too, the jerky video capturing the nervous run from the room to the balcony. The autofocus struggled with the low light, and the video had the surreal image of the blurred lights of the Baghdad skyline slowly coming into sharper focus while sirens wailed in the background. It was like waking up to a nightmare.

Val turned to me and said, "Pare patay mo ang ilaw."

The lights inside the hotel room were still on, which meant we were silhouetted against the bright room while we stood filming out in the dark balcony. It may seem insignificant, but it was an important detail. Five stories up, we could be clearly seen from the street.

It was dangerous because we weren’t even supposed to be shooting any video without the presence of our minder to tell us where we may or may not poke our nosey lenses. Not that we planned to obey to the letter, but you don’t violate their rules and rub it in their face at the same time. More importantly, we simply did not want to call attention to ourselves from the streets. The Iraqi government was already pretty paranoid, even before the bombing. From the streets, in the dark, with our helmets, flak jackets and equipment, we could be mistaken by soldiers or policemen for spies or saboteurs. These are details that help keep you alive.

I ran inside and turned off all the lights. The only light left in the room came from a small stubby candle Val had lit beside a bible given him by the nuns of Lipa.
With the lights off, I switched on my camera's night vision sensor and headed back to the balcony.

The sirens continued wailing while Val and I jockeyed for position in the balcony. Baghdad was still brightly lit, and every streetlight looked like an inviting bullseye. We had half expected city officials to plunge Baghdad into a blackout at the first sign of an air raid. But no, Baghdad was on fire, and no bombs had been dropped yet.

The first sign came from fireflies to the south. Lights flickered in the sky over southern Baghdad, followed seconds later by the sound of airbursts. The anti aircraft defenses have opened up. The shells burst with sharp pops, much like a string of baby rockets let loose on New Year's. Somewhere up there in the inky blackness, coalition planes were prowling the skies of southern Baghdad, and Baghdad’s air defenses were reaching out for them. In a few minutes, more anti aircraft fire lit up the skies of Baghdad, punctuated by the glowing tailpipe of an occasional surface to air missile.

Then the bombs came.

From our perspective, they didn’t come as massive explosions that would shake our foundations. Not yet. Instead, we saw weak flashes of light in the horizon, like distant lightning during a brewing thunderstorm. Then, the low rumble that you heard vaguely, but felt more with the soles of your feet. The bombs were falling to the south of the city, perhaps in the Al-Doura district, where the main power plant and the oil refineries were located. I remembered Farida, a Filipina married to an Iraqi who lived in the Al Doura district. We had dinner a few nights ago at their home, while her teenage son played Filipino songs on their karaoke.

Val and I were caught in a trance; the blinking lights were hypnotic, like a million fireflies from childhood, zipping harmlessly past to disappear in the inky blackness. The low rumble of bombs could be felt in the gut, like the humming of a poorly tuned car. But at this point, it all seemed so distant, so far away. We were easily nothing more than spectators watching a distant play unfolding. At this point it was still easy to forget those bombs and missiles were falling on the heads of other people. I hoped Farida was safe.

Then it occurred to us - the battle for Baghdad had been raging for several minutes, yet the office had not bothered to call us for a live phone report. We had no satellite phone to make the call, part of the cost cutting measures I had to institute just to get Manila to agree to our trip. Any communication between Manila and my team was done through the unreliable and severely compromised Baghdad telephone exchange.

And, as part of our cost cutting measures, we avoided making outgoing calls to Manila. Especially for phoned-in live reports. It was simply too expensive, and I had to stretch my budget. Besides, the studio would keep you stewing on the line for ages while you wait for your turn to deliver your report. It was simply financially unfeasible. Sometimes, they would keep you on hold for half an hour or more while a producer in his nice airconditioned studio figures out what to do with you.

It was already morning in Manila. The network had earlier started a special countdown to war program throughout the last nights of the ulitmatum. As the night deepened and the bombing continued without a ring from Manila, we wondered if Manila had fallen asleep on the job.

I was severely tempted to call Manila. After a while of waiting, I asked Val if I should just get it over with, damn the budget, and call Manila. The first night of the war was going to pass us by, and we may as well have stayed asleep. Eventually, Val concurred. I picked up the hotel phone and dialed the operator to ask him to connect me to Manila. To my horror, the operator refused to pick up. I called several times just in case the guy was just taking a leak, but there really was no answer. Now I was really worried.

Standing up, I told Val I was going down to the front desk to find out what was wrong. Still heavily clad in a flak jacket and helmet, I violated a cardinal rule and strode into the elevator for the six-floor ride down to the lobby. In hindsight, I should have just taken the stairs; they say you never take the elevator when the building is on fire, so it presumably follows that you also don’t take the elevator when the city is being bombed.

The lobby was deserted except for a few of the staff running around. I cornered one and asked him why no one was answering the phone. The guy looked at me in disbelief. The phone? Of course no one is answering the phone. Everybody is in the hotel bomb shelter, where sane men go whenever there are bombs falling. And that includes the telephone operator.

Of course that made sense. But whoever said this job had to be sensible all the time? In the bomb shelter? I slapped my forehead. We were finally witnessing the bombing of Baghdad, yet we couldn't report it because no one was answering the phone. For a moment I considered manning the operator's booth, then I remembered I didn’t speak Arabic.

I need the operator at his post, I pleaded with the man, Manila was calling. Okay okay I will call him, he said. To be sure he wasn't pulling my leg, I watched him rush off to the bomb shelter.
That settled, I went up to the room again. Via the elevator, of course.

Up in the room, I told Val the problem. Fuck, he said. Paano yan? I crossed my fingers and hoped the telephone operator would pull his head out of the bomb shelter. Miraculously, after a few minutes, the telephone finally rang - it was Manila on the other line!

I no longer remember much of what I reported, since they called us so many times over the course of that early morning that it all merges into a blur. I spoke of fireflies from childhood, of popping firecrackers, the distant thunder underfoot, and of the burning lights of Baghdad. Most of all, I talked of history, ancient and recent. I realized that at this point, everyone was talking about the bombs falling down and the anti aircraft fire going up, but most viewers didn't have the foggiest idea of Mesopotamia, Uruk, the Garden of Eden, the Hammurabi code, and a couple of thousand years of Iraqi history going up in smoke. People wanted to hear about the bombs, but they didn't hear enough of the people whose heads the bombs were falling on. And I remember speaking of tyrants, pro and anti American, and how the world can be so selective in the way it defines who stands on the other side of the line between good and evil.

The night passed as a blur of successive programs and inquisitive anchors who passed me on from one hour to the next. Over and over, again and again, I told them what I was witnessing, which at this point was not really much. I called it a virtual lightshow, and a weak one at that, with sparks twinkling over the city to the counterpoint of detonating anti aircraft artillery. I told them of the virtually empty streets, not unusual given the fact that it was past four in the morning here. And I told them too of the occasional taxi and bus crossing the bridges over the river Tigris, as if nothing was happening tonight in Baghdad. If this was shock and awe, it certainly wasn’t shocking or awesome – yet.

Later we would learn that the first strikes in the new Gulf war were directed at Saddam himself. It was supposed to be a decapitation strike, an assassination attempt if you will, directed at the Iraqi leadership in hopes that a quick kill of Saddam would end the war on the first night.

Acting on a tip from a supposedly reliable Iraqi spy, President Bush authorized the airstrike several hours earlier than his own deadline. The spy told the Americans that Saddam was, at that very moment, in one of his smaller Presidential Palaces on the south western bank of the Tigris. Bush thought it best to risk an early strike that could mean an early end to the war. With that, F-117 stealth fighters loaded with smart bombs took off from a Middle East airbase and released their payload in the inky blackness several thousand feet over Baghdad. The Americans would later realize that they missed their target, and it would be nine months before they would finally get Saddam.

Over and over again, the anchors at home would ask why, with the whole of western civilization seemingly bearing down on their country, the Iraqis didn't simply overthrow Saddam since he's such a bad guy. Since he's caused so much misery in his own country, and made billions for himself, why don't they just boot him out. And over and over again I told them that in this region, Saddam didn't belong to the lonely-hearts club of tyrants and dictators; there were plenty of them to go around in this region. He did belong to a subcategory that includes Muammar Khaddafy where the members were tyrants like most other leaders around here, except that they were also anti-US. But if you're looking for ruthless dictators intolerant of other beliefs, the anti-US club doesn't hold the monopoly there. If Saddam would throw you in jail for carrying anti Saddam publications and for criticizing him, Saudi Arabia would do the same thing if it catches you so much as carrying a bible or praying to a Christian god. In fact they would also give you a couple of lashes of the cane as a bonus.

Of course the US wouldn't dare invade Saudi Arabia, so instead they give them billions in military training and aid, sell them the most sophisticated weapons and aircraft that oil money could buy, pat them on their back, and call them buddies in the war against terror. This, even though most of the 9-11 hijackers were Saudis, Osama Bin Laden was a Saudi before he was booted out, and most of Al Qaeda's core group were Saudi; there were no Iraqis involved. Most anchors would just give intelligent-sounding grunts to that reply, and move on carefully to other topics. I understand that it is difficult for studio monkeys to comprehend something that goes against the accepted tone of the western news agencies, but there you go. Of course it was a roundabout way of answering their question, but I was avoiding making simplistic comments on such a complex region. Simply said, Saddam was a dictator, but he was not the only dictator in a region where the west props up plenty of other dictators. He simply was a dictator that, after the debacle of the first gulf war, Americans would simply love to hate. He deserved to be bombed in the same way that all other dictators, both of the pro or anti US varieties, deserve to be bombed.

Every once in a while, the anchors would pop a gem. Where was Saddam right now? Have we seen him? Another priceless question: the Americans have crossed the border of Iraq and Kuwait some 600 kilometers down south - do we have a situationer? Manila had been hearing of reports of Iraqi soldiers surrendering by the thousands in the south. Do we have anything on that? Sometimes you get the impression that some people never even bothered to glance at a map. Or perhaps it was a misperception of scale. Perhaps since Iraq is just one large landmass and not seven thousand islands, people sometimes think of the map of Iraq in the same scale as the map of Metro Manila. So, I would try not to sound too stunned and croak out a safely vague answer about distances and censorship and the basic natural law that says you can't be in two places at once – even at the best of times.

A lot of the questions also revolved around Val and myself. How did we feel? Were we scared shitless? Do we have insurance? Some were really expressions of concern; others just seemed to be designed to drum up the fact that we were the only Filipino newsteam left in Iraq, and that we were in extreme danger, "in the service of the Filipino," as the station blurb went. It was embarrassing at times, but the air war over Baghdad was off to a slow start, and there was little else I could tell anchors at home except for the thunder of antiaircraft fire, the twinkling lights in the sky, and the slow rumble of distant bombs. You can only repeat that so often. In the end, the studio anchor would drift back to the question “how are you holding up?”

It helped that I had done quite a good deal of research before leaving Manila. Like what I did during my first on-camera live from Baghdad, I took this chance to talk a lot about the Iraq that few people knew about, or cared to know. Every chance I got, I backtracked thousands of years to talk about the history and culture of this land, and how it tied in with the present. Then, there was also a lot of contemporary history to talk about, from the rise of Saddam to the unwavering US support of his regime during the Iran-Iraq war, to his fall from grace with the invasion of Kuwait. Post-Gulf War, there were 12 years of UN sanctions that crippled this proud country. There were so many other issues to talk about, and the lightshow over Baghdad now was just a colorful sidebar that you could unfortunately not ignore.

The air raids came in several waves. After a few hours, dawn broke over the city, to the continuous popping of anti aircraft artillery. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, rays treaming out through the morning condensation, making the sunrise look positively, well, religious, like God was cluck clucking down from his perch while the red and the black ants went to war again.

Thus ended the first night of the bombing; nothing spectacular or visually sensational like CNN's "fireworks" video from the first Gulf War. But it didn't matter to Val and I; despite all the odds, we had made it to Baghdad, stayed in Iraq way past the dates our permits and our money would allow, and we had made it through the first night of the second gulf war.

2009-04-27T23:30:00.000-07:00

Ed's note: this is the continuation of the previous post; excerpt from a book I'm writing titled Correspondent. Please feel free to comment. thanks!

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Things got kinda slower and darker, figuratively, when the sun went down. After the early evening newscasts, the police reporters would disappear into their hideaways, be it the local sauna bath or strip joint for a night of drinking and carousing. That left those few banished to the night beat to fight over the torn sofas and heavily gouged benches in the press office. I would find a corner chair to sit on, crack open a book, and kill the time doing the rounds of homicide, general assignments section, or theft and robbery. I bought a small transistor radio, and wired a headset so I could monitor the AM radio stations constantly with the radio clipped to my belt. I remember the smells of the homicide section most of all. I would lean over the homicide desk, greet the cop and duty, and with the requisite drawl of someone whose balls are too heavy, politely but firmly ask to see the thick police blotter where the recent homicides and murders were first listed. I must have looked at that police blotter a hundred times every night. The section also had a small jail cell that was always crowded, and you would run smack into a wall of humidity and stench the minute you got closer than three feet. The homicide section was our favorite, because stories here had the best chances of seeing print. General Assignments Section, or GAS, came a close second, since this is where complaints of rape and assorted nasties are lodged. Theft and Robbery ran third, because theft was not unusual anymore, and robbery in this country is all relative. The night duty cops would sleep on benches or plastic chairs lined together. The small offices of the section chiefs would almost always be covered with peeling mirror tint.

The practice at the time was for the night shift reporters to cover the whole of Metro Manila. So when the sun went down, my beat expanded from Manila to the whole metropolis. This meant I was responsible for an area that covers more than a dozen cities and municipalities. How my office expected me to cover all of this alone was way beyond my comprehension.

Print coverage that time was worlds away from TV coverage. We print reporters had no vehicles, or living allowances, so we didn't do the rounds of all ten police precincts in Manila. We simply couldn’t afford it. The TV guys, naturally, went around with their service vans and porta-lights, thrilling cops and criminals with the idea of instant fame and celebrity. Lowlife like print reporters had to hope that cops appreciate the written word enough to buy a publication, even a tabloid. Many times I would find that a policeman had no idea what a Chronicle was, or that it was a newspaper, or that it was a publication that was adjudged Number One in Readership Quality. Still, every thirty minutes or every hour, I would lift the ancient phone in the press office and call each of Manila’s ten police stations, and every police district headquarters, introduce myself and my newspaper, and ask if there was anything interesting developing. On the other hand, the TV reporters, with their cameramen, drivers, and news vehicles, could afford to bounce around the city while looking as fresh as a daisy. Simply put, it was a pretty lonely job. The only connection you had to your office was a small press card and an occasional paycheck. That’s why most print guys generally stayed at the press office of the western police district headquarters in UN Avenue. It was tedious and boring work, looking for a story that could force a remat in a political-business paper.

It sounds so much like “press office” coverage, where reporters stay at the press office and occasionally make calls to contacts to ask for news. Today, I would tell reporters to avoid that practice and go out and search for enterprise stories. But today, we are all wired to each other and to contacts with cellular phones. Two decades ago, the cellphone did not exist, the beeper was still years away, and the working public telephone was an occasional blessing. Really, finding a working payphone then was already reason for celebration. If you have to cover the whole Metropolis alone at night with no telephone or vehicles at a time of bombings, assassinations, and coup attempts, you are always afraid of stepping away from the pack, even for a while, and missing the biggest story of the year. I remember, at the end of each night’s coverage, feeling very exposed and uncertain because I had been out of the loop for even just an hour or two. I would only feel relieved once I am back in the press office and able to check on all the police districts in Metro Manila.

One time, in the middle of the night, a bunch of reporters announced they were off to the massage parlor for a free massage, among "other" things. Not that they had any freebies really coming to them. There are reporters who simply assume that they can walk into a beerhouse or massage parlor and get everything on the house because of their connections with the local station commander or the vice squad. It was a pretty sleazy arrangement for many police reporters, but bear in mind that this happens in a much larger and grander scale among, for example, clean-looking and famous and famously hard-hitting newscast anchors and program hosts, or big network bosses, the only difference being that they probably go to places where the toilets smelled a lot cleaner and actually had toilet seats.

They even invited me along, which probably meant I had been in the night shift too long. I declined, saying it was dangerous, since the Manila police had been busy lately raiding sauna baths that were fronts for prostitution. For that, I got laughed at. There are some perks that come with living in Manila’s dark underbelly.
Seeing my hesitance, one reporter bragged that he once made a reluctant masseuse strip and attend to his earthly needs simply by mentioning to her that he was tight with the vice cops.

I remember the Christmas party of the press corps. It was held someplace in San Marcelino Malate, with WPD chief Alfredo Lim as the special guest of honor. Naturally, the organizers of the press corps party also arranged for a bunch of girls to strip for the press corps as part of wishing everyone a very merry Christmas. But this was the time when the Manila police was cracking down on girlie joints, and raids were being conducted by General Lim's men left and right. The party was supposed to start in the early evening, but the time passed and people, including the good general, were getting restless - the girls had not yet arrived. Finally, someone broke the news: the girls were frightened by the presence of the Manila police chief, and had refused to come. Duly apprised of the situation, General Lim rose to the occasion and ordered his men to make sure the reporters were properly entertained. After an hour, the police van arrived, and onto the stage marched... the Discovery girls! Hauled from a popular girlie bar along Magsaysay Boulevard, the girls promptly gyrated and stripped to the hearty hooting and clapping of the reporters and their guests, including the chief of the Manila police. Such are the ironies of life.

On occassion, a "big" story would come up, and we would all rush to the latest tragedy of some poor father, wife, or son. Since I had no vehicle, and no money to get a cab, and since many of these crimes took place in the nooks and crannies of Manila, I would just jump into the vehicle of any friendly reporter. Getting to the crime scene was no problem. Getting back sometimes was.
One time, we rode with another reporter to a crime scene in some remote part of Paranaque. Unfortunately, I lost track of time, and got left behind by the rest of the reporters. It was past midnight, and I remember worrying where in the world I was in Paranaque, and how I could get back to Manila.

It was also interesting watching how police reporters work. In a way, we were part of the metro’s underworld, living off the stagnation and decay that the comfortable would rather ignore. After all, no one wants to have anything to do with a policeman unless a crime is committed and you are the victim. Policemen, in their dirty, grimy, humid precincts, are for those people who live in dirty, grimy, humid shanties. The rich and powerful are isolated in their gated and fenced communities, with their own blue guards with gasoline for their mobile patrols and radios that really worked. It was a rare treat when we see one of the rich and well-off in the precincts, their clean and moisturized skin glistening and uncomfortable and irritated by the stale air that we breathed into our lungs every night. There were times when I felt like telling these visitors, perhaps rather unfairly, “Welcome to our world. Did you even know we exist?”

Police reporting has its own subculture. It was a “masculine” world, although there were a good number of female police reporters. I don’t use the word masculine in a sexist sense. It was simply a world skewed heavily against the female gender. Female police reporters were sexually harassed with such regularity that the older ones had refined the put-down to an art form. Sometimes, police officers and lowly bureaucrats hit on them with the subtlety of a bull in heat. I know of one female reporter whose feminine charms so overwhelmed one local official that he chased her around his office table. Naturally, no complaint was ever filed. You can hardly complain about your sources, when a big part of your job actually demands that you court them, woo them, and make them think of you every time they have a story to tell, and even when they don’t.

So it was part of the risks of the craft that a good number of female police reporters became romantically involved with this police officer, or that local official. Perhaps romantic is too generous a word; often, it was more like two people realizing they both had something the other needed.

Again, the TV people had a clear advantage here over their print brethren. The TV girls, naturally, looked like goddesses to the bottom feeders in print. It was a rare day when a female TV reporter would waft into the press office; on days like those, time would slow to a crawl and the birds would start chirping outside the press office window and the window blinds seemed to open up a little more to let the sunlight in. At least, until the TV reporter opens her mouth. But while the TV girls were obviously more attractive magnets for the maniacs in uniform, their TV persona also offered them some sort of invisible protection. It’s like the beauty queen syndrome; everyone drools after them, but few would actually try to court one. There’s that unsaid and unmentionable feeling that only the big bosses get these types of girls. On the other hand, everyone tries to hit on the girl next door.

TV people also have that “power” that print people don’t have. People know them by their first name, smile at them in the mall, recognize their faces in the crowd. People actually want to be interviewed by them, no matter how silly their questions can sometimes be. What this means is that many sources really want to be meet these journalists. On the other hand, the print guys have to scrape and beg for a short interview. You can see it even now. Shine a bright light, point a camera, and poke a microphone at a minor official, and he starts jabbering giddily, spouting all sorts of quotables to the most inane questions, often in tortured english. Sometimes, you don’t even have to ask a question. Many times, it’s even hard to get them to stop talking. But replace the lights and camera with a reporter with a notepad or a tape recorder, and, unless the source is politically savvy, you’d be lucky if the source even bothers to acknowledge him. What this means is that the female police print reporter sometimes has to put herself at a clear disadvantage, because she has to go the extra mile to be extra nice and friendly and charming. It’s something that is easily misconstrued.

Also, the TV girls naturally move around with an entire TV crew, complete with camera, lights, microphone, and makeup kit. Given this fact of life, the source is seldom alone with the TV reporter. Even if he was, the thought that the camera crew is just waiting outside the door is enough to dampen the libido of many wannabee lotharios. A TV team and its equipment are intimidating to a lot of sources. In contrast, a demure female print reporter will be all alone when she finally bags an appointment with this or that official. She is armed only with a notepad and a pen; no threatening cameras and crew. In all likelihood, she is also a rookie.

Having said all that, there are some female reporters who have managed to walk that thin line and come out on top. These are the reporters who have learned to parry the advances without offending the advancer, who have learned to be just a little flirtatious and charming without appearing inviting. It really is a thin line, and the sharp edge can cut both ways.

There’s that stereotype of the police reporter that we all tried to resist, but eventually fell into as the months went by. The most obvious was that drawl that many of us affected when we spoke on the phone, especially to policemen or other reporters. It was a drawl that sounds halfway between drunk and bored, a tambay’s drawl perhaps, as if to show that I’m cool and unconcerned even if the world ends tonight, but lemme check what’s happening on your side of the world anyway. We’d draw out the word “Sir” into “Seeerrrr….” The tone was set on a deadpan monotone. And of course, there was the cussing and the bragging and the loud voices, and the gambling and the whoring and the petty corruption all around you that you have to treat with a blasé attitude. I stepped on someone’s brains yesterday. Oh really? Was it warm? Or, I was whoring the whole night last night. Today’s another day.

But it was the least obvious that was the more alarming. The experience ate away a little bit of our humanity, each one of us, in different degrees, and few of us would ever admit to it. Anyone who immerses himself deeply into this side of the city absorbs a part of it, and leaves a part of himself as well. The irony is that in losing a bit of our humanity, some of us, I hope, came away a little more human, a little more conscious of our frailties and faults. It was a frightening gamble, because after a while it became clear that many of us simply lost our humanity without gaining anything in return. Remember the idealism of college, where we were taught to wield the mighty power of the pen with great circumspection, to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afficted? We who lived in the dark who were supposed to give it light, have begun throwing our own darker shadows.

I remember one night in particular. A man was inconsiderate enough to get stabbed to death. Or, at least he was considerate enough to get stabbed during my watch. I rushed to the Philippine General Hospital with a photographer from another newspaper. I don’t recall why I was even there, since the story would never have made the Chronicle’s pages. Perhaps I had hitched a ride in the photog’s service vehicle.

Anyway, we rushed to the morgue, where the poor fellow lay on a gurney, cold and stiffening. Unfortunately for the photog I was with, the doctors or the first responders had already removed the knife from the dead man's chest. Naturally. What doctor leaves the knife in the chest while attempting treatment?

The photog cussed and swore, and complained of inconsiderate doctors who made life more difficult for working stiffs like him to get good pictures of dead stiffs like that. What good was a photo of a stabbing victim if there was no knife to show? So the photog did the next best thing – he asked the mortician to produce the knife, and the mortician willingly obliged.

In hindsight, I now wonder why the murder weapon was with the mortician in the first place. This was long before the police force created the Scene of the Crime Operatives, or SOCO, and long long before hollywood cooked up CSI.

Okay, the photog told the mortician. Stick it back in. To the mortician’s credit, he hesitated. Then, to my amusement, he stuck the blade back into the knife wound. Thwack. Just like that. No complaints from the victim, of course. And at least the mortician had the decency not to make a new stab wound. There was no one in the room except for me, the photog, the mortician, and the dead guy. The photog snapped happily away, and we left with the knife still sticking out of the man’s body. The guys from that CSI show would have gone into epileptic fits. The fact that I was amused and not shocked spoke volumes of my frame of mind at the time.

There’s also a popular story that went the rounds of the WPD. It’s a fact that many reporters and photogs like to beat up crime suspects who are in police custody. Why do they do it? Perhaps it's considered a rite of passage, perhaps it's a show of mindless machismo; perhaps it's a vent for all the frustrations that have built up from seeing all the mindless blood and gore of Manila at night. Or perhaps it's simply mindless. Whatever the case, it is not unusual for reporters to beat a suspect black and blue, in front of the arresting policemen. Naturally, the suspects cower in fear and don't fight back. I would really hate to be a suspect.

One night, the popular story goes, a reporter rushed to the press office. Hey there’s a crime suspect at the theft and robbery section, he tells the rest. So the reporters and photogs rush to the theft and robbery section, where they come across a man standing there alone. There was no policeman, so naturally, everyone started beating the poor fellow up. And on cue, the policeman comes back from the john, and finds everyone ganging up on the man. Stop, the cop says, that's not the suspect. That’s the victim.

The story always draws a lot of laughs, but it brings home a sticky point. Some reporters like to say that the criminals deserve to be beaten up, especially if it involves crimes against children. I have seen, personally, both reporters and cameramen from print, television, and radio, beating up suspects while police officers watch with delight. Some of them were even my own cameramen. And to be honest, I have, on occasion, been tempted to throw in a few kicks and punches myself. After twenty or so years, I still have not given in to that temptation, but it is always there, lurking, maybe waiting for a moment of weakness. How do I explain that feeling? I don’t consider myself a particularly violent person, although I have seen quite a lot of it delivered to people both deserving and undeserving. But what makes a man want to lash out and beat another man to a pulp? How much motivation does it need? Or is it motivation we really need? Could it be that in our deepest, baser recesses, what we really look for is not motivation, but an excuse. Oh yeah, he’s accused of raping a kid. Then a hand lashes out and connects with a nose or a brow, then another, and a few moments later, a man is barely able to see because of his swelling eyelids. Oh he snatched a purse. And a foot lashes out at a groin. Granted these men have been accused of crimes. But some of those who choose to inflict vigilante punishment on them have, if I recall, been guilty of baser offenses: the reporter who extorts from cops and establishments; or perhaps the photog who uses a masseuse’s body for free by threatening her with his connections.

But more than anything, this country is infamous for a law enforcement system that is so inefficient and ineffective, where there is never a guarantee that the man the cops haul off to the precinct is likely to be the man who deserves to go to jail. Woe to the man who is hauled off in front of the cameras by the police as a suspect – he is just as likely to be innocent as he is guilty.

Anyone who has watched any of the primetime newscasts must by now be familiar with the most common scene in police reporting. Whether the crime is rape, acts of lasciviousness, snatching, or petty theft, the cameras almost always seem to catch the exact moment when the victim and the suspect face off in the police station, and the victim, in a fit of anger, lashes out and slaps or punches the suspect in the face. The suspect reels, but remains silent, with his head bowed in embarassment and submission. Has anyone ever wondered how cameramen can be so skilled in timing that they always catch that money shot? It’s standard fare in police reports. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that it would be unusual if the story doesn’t have that shot.

The truth of the matter is that the suspect is often already sitting in a corner of a dingy cell when the reporters arrive at the station with their cameras and mikes. If the reporter is lucky, the victim is seated in front of the detective’s desk, giving a statement. First question out of the reporter’s lips often is: Where’s the suspect? Then, can you bring him out to face his accuser?

That’s all still peachy at this point. Then come the other commands from the journos – point out the suspect for the cameras! Come closer! Can you turn this way? Then, the inevitable. Is it true he molested you? Are you going to let him get away with that? Well, hit him! This is your chance! On the face!

Usually, and to her credit, the victim hesitates, as if unsure if she is really allowed to do just that. But the cameras are rolling, the lights are on, and the reporters are goading, so it must be acceptable, right? So maybe she lashes out with a nice slap on the suspect’s face. The suspect barely feels it. Or maybe the cameraman wasn’t ready for that shot. Maybe the camera lights weren’t on yet. Or maybe the reporter just isn’t happy enough with that angle. Or that slap. Do it again! Harder! And the victim begins getting in the mood, and draws in before letting loose with a snappier slap. Sometimes, it would take several slaps and punches, or several takes, before the camera teams are happy with their footage, and the suspect is led away to his jail cell, the victim takes her seat again, and the camera team leaves in search of another crime to report, or perhaps another crime to commit. The suspect retires to a corner of his cell, no doubt hoping that there aren’t any more camera teams on duty that night. I would really hate to be wrongly accused of anything when there are newsteams around.

And there was the petty corruption. This was a time when there was still an absolute ban on all forms of pyrotechnics. Typically, policemen would haul in a huge cache of confiscated firecrackers in the weeks running up to Christmas. It was not unusual for reporters covering the story to ask for some "samples" of the confiscated goods, and neither was it unusual for cops to give them away, or take home some for themselves. So whenever there was a big haul of firecrackers, reporters would rush to the precinct responsible for the confiscation to report on this blatant criminal violation of the country’s anti-firecracker laws. Then after the coverage, the reporters, myself included, would often leave with bags full of firecrackers, courtesy of the friendly station commander.

The same courtesy also extends to other less harmless hauls. I remember one night when a reporter came back to the press office with some marijuana. Marijuana, then as now, is illegal. The stuff was confiscated by police from drug addicts somewhere in Manila, and the cops divided the loot and gave some to the reporters. This guy generously offered to light up a joint for the rest of the bunch, but someone wisely pointed out that the press office was right behind the front desk of the WPD, and it may be a bit embarrassing for everyone, especially if we didn’t offer any to the desk officer on duty. So we all went to another empty room elsewhere in the WPD headquarters to try this new stash. Suffice it to say that the first joint I ever tried was smoked inside the headquarters of the Manila Police, courtesy of Manila's Finest. It must have been a particularly fine joint, because I don't even remember getting a buzz.

There’s a certain sadness in covering the police beat that takes a certain kind of reporter to discern. Despite the occasional action, one is always face to face with the ordinary sadness of ordinary life and ordinary death. In fact, the real danger is of death becoming so ordinary to people who are always exposed to it, and therein lies the real sadness. Too many police reporters have become so immune to emotion that they can stick a knife back into a dead body just to make for a better photograph. Its a tragedy partly borne of the stereotypes formed around reporters in general and police and war reporters in particular. If the British stereotype is the stiff upper lip, the reporter stereotype is the stoic, heartless, emotionless, and detached observer. Many take the stereotype a step further, adding cruel, inebriated, loud, and insensitive to the mix of descriptions. Your father died? Tough luck, life is cheap. Your sister got raped? Was she asking for it? Don’t get me wrong; I am describing the stereotypes that a lot of reporters have been trying to fit into. I’m describing what is, not what should be. In covering the joys and travails of humanity, we seem to have lost our own sense of humanity as well.

That’s why you have a lot of reporters who try to swagger like their nuts are too big, who belch loudly, scratch publicly, and use profanity like they were badges of honor, who act like bad boys because they think that's what they have to do to look like reporters. The truth is that the loud ones are usually the more cowardly louts, while the really brave reporters just go about their business quietly. Its like your dick - if its not big enough, you feel the need to keep pointing to it just to remind people you have one.

Most of the stories we generated at night were crime stories, with an occasional feature thrown in. But there were other things we witnessed that never saw print, at least not the way it should have. On many an occasion, we were witness to a practice called zoning. They also call it the “saturation drive,” which makes it sound as harmless as a newspaper drive. What happens is that police operatives cordon off a particular area in, say, a squatter community. Everyone who happened to be in that “zone” was then picked up and hauled off to the police station for questioning. It’s a throwback to the hamletting system established by the Americans during the Vietnam War, adapted to the Philippine counterinsurgency war, and later adapted to the anti-crime fight in urban areas. The logic, if you could call it that, was that you could identify a criminal because of the way he looked, even if he wasn’t performing a crime at that time. Of course the police never put it that way, but it was obvious that that was the logic. Hundreds of bareshirted grimy sweaty men were hauled off like cattle to the nearest precinct to be inspected for gang tattoos or drug paraphernalia and weapons. There, they would squat on the floor, their elbows on their knees, their tattoos screaming in wild red green, purple and blue swirls, their eyes darting around as police picked out their likeliest suspects. Once in a while, some weapons would be found, and an arrest would be made. But for the rest of those unceremoniously dragged off from their families just so they could be “invited for questioning,” it was just another night of harassment by the police. After the zoning incident, they would just be told to go home, as if nothing happened. No apologies necessary. It’s as if to say that it’s just part of our job to treat you like cattle just to make sure the rest of Metro Manila is safe, and it’s part of your role to be get hauled off to the station and be treated like mindless obedient cows. Surprisingly few people ever lodged complaints, even though it was a gross violation of rights. Imagine doing that to residents of ritzy Dasamarinas Village in Makati. Oh the fury and the indignation of the human rights violations! But of course, you won’t find criminals there, right? At least not of this small caliber. They would only be here in Balut, Tondo, plotting with the rest of the great unwashed for the overthrow of the pink-skinned and the freshly scrubbed. Yet like those before us, most of us took the practice for granted, satisfied with just recording the number of arrests and the weapons found, if any, as if it was the most normal thing in the world to arrest and detain an entire community just because we didn’t like the soap they used, or because they couldn’t afford soap at all.

I turned twenty on my first month on the job, in November 1987. For my birthday celebration, Gerry hauled us off to Quiapo for a double feature in one of the seedy moviehouses that featured x-rated inserts in b-movies. That was how I spent my birthday, watching Scorpio Nights and some other forgettable film [who cares about titles? we weren't there to critique the storyline anyway] in a hot and humid moviehouse where most of the audience would rather stay standing than sit on the hard sticky chairs. It’s like walking into a steam room, since the airconditioners were not working, and everyone was sweating from both the ambient temperature and the collective body heat. The guy playing the films didn’t bother with aesthetics. He had randomly spliced assorted x-rated clips of naked men and women with dirty soles [sorry, you can’t help but notice] huffing and puffing away into the double feature, without any regard as to whether the story still made any sense.

These moviehouses were known hangouts of closet queens and ageing male and female prostitutes who, for reasons you can very well imagine, can only peddle their wares in the dark, and Vincent had to fend off advances from people who were getting attracted to his balding pate which shone like a beacon in the moviehouse. The place stank, the air wet and humid, and we felt itchy all throughout the double feature. Afterwards, if I recall correctly, we graduated to a small restaurant in one of Quiapo’s nooks for a quick cheap snack before our editors found out what we were up to.

It was a sad funny way to celebrate a birthday. But two decades later, we would look back at that day and remember it as one of the more memorable birthday celebrations I had. The cheapest, too.

Of my time in the police beat, I remember the Dona Paz tragedy with the most vividness and clarity, and the images always come back easily, perhaps too easily.
That Christmas Eve was particularly memorable, and it didn’t help that every morning for several weeks, I would see the dirty sneakers I had left outside our doorstep and be reminded of things that I would rather forget. I would always see those sneakers, and every time I would promise I would get around to washing the congealed blood off the soles before I finally bring them into the house. It would take months before I finally did that, yet I still did it gingerly, holding the sneakers under a gushing spigot and hoping that the water pressure would be enough to clean the shoes. After that, I think I dunked the pair into a bucket of soapy water and left them there for a few days. But it was not the images that would haunt me. It was the smell, a minor miracle considering how my wife says my olfactory senses died a long time ago. It was a smell that I kept remembering at the oddest and most inconvenient times, as if it was always there lurking, waiting to be resurrected at the slightest trigger. For a while, the memory of that smell terrified me, especially when it came at night.

I also covered much of the hearings by the Maritime Industry Authority (MARINA) on the culpability of officials of Sulpicio Lines for the disaster. Sulpicio officers were grilled repeatedly over charges of overloading and negligence. I was given the Marina assignment because the hearings were held in the Marina offices just across the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue.

Much was made of the issue of overloading because it was a safety issue. The Dona Paz was crammed with some 5,000 passengers, but its manifest listed only 1,500 passengers. What this meant was that there were 3,500 other passengers who were not listed in the Coast Guard manifest. What this also meant was that there was a huge likelihood that there were not enough safety devices like lifeboats of lifejackets to go around.

Ship overloaded,
Sulpicio admits
The Manila Chronicle
Jan. 1 1988
By Ed Lingao
Correspondent

An official of Sulpicio Lines, owners of M/V Dona Paz, yesterday virtually admitted that the ill-fated vessel was overloaded when it collided with the oil tanker Vector in Tablas Strait between Marinduque and Mindoro last Dec. 20.
Vicente Gambito, Sulpicio vice president, said they had compiled at least 600 names of passengers who were not included in the manifest.
“We’ve collected around 200 personal lists, with a total of around 600 names,” he said.
The Coast Guard-approved manifest listed 1,523 passengers and 58 crewmen. Only 26 survived the collision, considered the worse peacetime sea disaster.

This particular story, which saw print on the first day of 1988, drew the ire of Sulpicio officials. Days after it came out, one of Chronicle’s business/shipping reporters approached Vincent and myself to tell us that Sulpicio’s VP Vicente Gambito wanted to talk to us in person.

The meeting was arranged in a fancy French restaurant in Paco, Manila, whose name I could not pronounce. Being police reporters, we felt so out of place when we entered the restaurant, as if we had just walked in bare naked. Gambito invited us to a table and, without allowing us to warm our chairs, he proceeded to berate us for what he called inaccurate reporting.

In essence, Sulpicio was contesting our headline that they had admitted to overloading. What they had admitted to, he said, was that they had unlisted and unmanifested passengers. This is not the same thing as overloading. Overloading, he insisted, meant that the ship was no longer shipworthy because of the excess number of passengers on board. Perhaps overcrowding was the correct term.

We just stared at him, dumbfounded. I did not know what to say, or how to argue back. He may have had a point, technically speaking. The ship may have been overcrowded, but the more technical-minded may claim it was not necessarily overloaded. On the other hand, we felt that Sulpicio was splitting hairs to sidestep culpability. The point was that there were three times the number of allowed passengers on the ship. It was not a question of one or two passengers who were not listed in the manifest; it was a question of 3,500 people who were not in the list.

After his monologue, the Sulpicio official just stood up and left us. Apparently, he didn’t think that lowly correspondents deserved too much of his time or presence.

Then there was the question of which ship was responsible for the tragedy. The few survivors said that the Dona Paz rammed into the oil tanker M/T Vector, causing it to spill oil, which then caught fire and destroyed both ships. But Sulpicio would insist that the tanker rammed the left side of the Dona Paz, creating a huge gash that let water in. Panicking passengers rushed to the right side of the ship by instinct, causing it to list to the right and capsize into the burning sea. With both ships rusting at the bottom of the Tablas Straits, the truth may never be known.

The arguments would go back and forth, and litigation would cross continents for the next two decades. A class suit filed by the families of the victims failed to prosper because the filing fee was too large. These families banded together to form the Bulig Bulig Kita movement, or the Let Us Help Each Other movement. I haunted their offices in Quezon City constantly, talking and sympathizing with family members, all the time conscious that there were entire families who could not be represented here because they were all lost at sea.

The dead who were lucky enough to be recovered were placed in sealed metal boxes, which were then crammed inside wooden caskets. Having seen the bloated condition of the bodies in Funeraria Popular, I cannot and do not want to imagine how morticians were able to fit the bodies inside metal containers that could squeeze inside regular caskets.

All told, less than 300 bodies were recovered out of 5,000 souls. A few were returned to Manila, where a common funeral wake was held at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum in Manila. I remember the long lines of caskets on the basketball court of the stadium, with the small square glass window through which one normally views his deceased loved one. But instead of the calm face of the dead, you could only see the smooth burnished surface of galvanized tin. The metal containers began to bulge and leak because of pressure building inside that comes with decomposition, so there was a persistent smell of death. At one point, the Manila City government decided to close off the stadium for a day to fumigate the place and prevent an epidemic. I remember, after everyone had been asked to step out, peering inside the stadium and feeling my hair stand on end; the stadium’s strong vapor lights cut through the fog of chemicals descending on the caskets, creating a surreal scene in the middle of the basketball court. Suddenly, the death of 5,000 people was a very lonely affair.

After twenty years, most of my time as a police reporter is already a blur. I do remember much of the frustration and anger, and the sense of exploitation. We were, after all, asked to do so much, and paid so little. I would be lucky to get a thousand pesos a payday, and I was already considered one of the high earners among the correspondents. I remember, too many times, emerging from the Manila Chronicle office in Bonifacio Drive, or from the WPD headquarters along UN Avenue, and breathing a long heavy sigh. At night, I would try to keep myself busy in between calls to the various precincts and police district headquarters by burying my nose in a book. But you can only read so many pages before someone disrupts your reading with cussing and swearing and farting. It would have been nice to have the mobility to go around Metro Manila looking for enterprise stories at night, something I now encourage among reporters. But at that time, that was practically impossible for a solitary correspondent who had to cover the entire Metro Manila at night without a vehicle, a cellphone, pager, or radio, or an allowance, or even a guaranteed retainer. It was passive police reporting, I admit. The tabloids and TV reporters had it better; they had a service vehicle with a driver, two way radios, and a man in each district headquarters. At first I would hitch a ride with the tabloid jeeps whenever something broke. Later, I would hitch a ride more regularly with an ABS-CBN cameraman, Jun Lontoc. I remember that I would at times join the other tabloid reporters on their coverages, not because the story had any value to the Chronicle, but because it gave me a closer glimpse at another facet of life that I never see. Or perhaps I was already bored. On these trips, I would explore the dark alleys and warrens of Tondo and see a life that was worlds apart from the gated subdivisions of Quezon City.

I remember, after getting tired of swatting mosquitos while reading my book in the press office, emerging from the WPD headquarters for a breath of fresh air. I’d plop my ass down on the steps fronting the headquarters and take out a cigarette, my millionth for the night. There, I would watch the lights of vehicles flash by, count the roaches and the cigarette butts on the ground, and glance at the occasional crook that the cops would bring in, morbidly hoping that he had committed a crime sufficiently grave to be worthy of the Chronicle. I had to be selective with the crooks I cover; the Chronicle doesn’t write about just any crook and crime. So there I would stay for around half an hour, swatting at the mosquitos on the steps of the WPD, killing time until I had to return to swatting the mosquitos inside the press office.

By one in the morning, I knew there was already no way I could force a remat of the Chronicle even if the sky fell down. By that time, the night editor would also be either dead drunk or fast asleep or both. The newspaper had already been printed, and was about to be bundled off to newspaper distributors in Manila’s port area. That’s the only time I would shoulder my pack, step out of the WPD entrance one last time for that day, and walk briskly to Taft Avenue for a jeepney ride to Quezon City. If I was lucky, which was seldom, I could get a ride from Taft to faraway Tandang Sora in Quezon City. If I was unlucky, I would have to get another ride in Quiapo. At that time of the night, drivers wait for their jeeps to fill-up before being dispatched, so I had a lot of time to observe my fellow passengers, partly out of curiosity and partly out of the need to identify potential muggers early. This was long before the age of the call centers. The people who rode the jeeps at that time of the night were interesting people indeed. Some were bargirls getting off early, still heavy with make-up and the smell of cigarette smoke; others were night shift workers, tired and wasted, their heads lolling around before dropping down to their chest or on the poor fellow beside them before they suddenly jolt awake. You know the man beside you in the jeep is dead tired when he reaches up and grasps the rail on the jeepney ceiling, rests his head on the crook of his elbow and instantly falls asleep without ever letting go of the rail. I’ve done that myself several times, and thankfully, never had my pocket picked. And of course there were those who are headed home after a night of carousing, red-eyed and with breath stale with beer and yosi.

I would get off at the corner of Tandang Sora and Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. From there, I would walk some three or so kilometers to my home inside one of the subdivisions deep inside Tandang Sora. It wasn’t really a very long walk, although it could get tiresome if you have to do it at the end of each working day. By that time, it’s already 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning, and the tricycles were no longer allowed inside most of Quezon City’s gated subdivisions. I could take a cab, but I couldn’t even afford the flag-down rate, much more take a cab every night. So every night, rain or shine, I would have to take a 30 to 45 minute walk home.

The walk was also an opportunity to de-stress and disengage from the world I left just an hour ago. I would play games with my mind, staying off the road and trying to blend with the shadows, avoiding the lamplight. I suppose there was a certain logic in my madness; I wanted to avoid getting spotted early by potential muggers. In those years, Tandang Sora was pretty much unpopulated, with tall cogon grass dominating both sides of the street. Everytime a vehicle would come up behind me, I would look down at the lengthening shadows so I could, without turning around, see if anyone was behind me.

On bad nights, it would rain hard. Since I had never made it a practice to bring an umbrella, I would just put on a jacket and a floppy hat, and walk home just like any other night except that I had to be more careful that passing cars don’t bump into me. I would get home soaking wet and shivering, but somehow feeling a little cleaner. I’d strip off my clothes and sit down with a heavy sigh.

And it wasn't a sigh of relief. With that sigh comes a question oft repeated by many caught in this kind of life: would there ever be more to my life than chasing ambulances and making a living off the dying? Such is a reporter's life, but coming from college, it was easy to rebel.
After half a year, I finally did. I told Cris that I had had enough of being exploited, enough of living like a bat. So I resigned, vowing never to return to journalism, and promising to find a job that would make plenty of money with as little work possible. Chris had a knowing smile on her face. She said, ok, just come back when you want. Maybe she knew something I didn't.

From journalism, I jumped to corporate public relations. I joined the PR machine of the defunct Magnolia, a company that made ice cream, fruit juices, and soft drinks. The pay was good, the working hours were much better, and the people actually looked and smelled clean. I lasted two months.

I have nothing against corporate PR, but it was extremely difficult for me to make the transition from my world to theirs. Their world revolved around ice cream and fruit juice, and the never-ending battle against the competition. Of course, much later I would get a taste of that myself with the never ending battle between ABS-CBN and GMA, but that was far in the future. I was with people who would rather die of thirst than drink a glass of the competition's softdrink. I was supposed to think Magnolia every waking minute, and even when I was asleep. It was too much for me.

So when I came crawling back to Cris, she gave me that knowing smile again, as if to say, we’ve been waiting for you, you lasted longer than we expected. Without a question, she threw me back into the fray, and I started getting more assignments, even from the lifestyle section. It was almost inconceivable, a police reporter writing for Sunday lifestyle, the chronicle's famed features section.

Things changed somewhat when I returned to the Chronicle. I was still assigned to cover the WPD, but I was beginning to get more assignments during the daytime. That may not sound like a big deal to most, but it was at the time. Daytime meant making the normal deadlines, and getting to write more stories, and actually seeing them in print. Daytime work also meant I wouldn’t have to live with the ghouls at midnight, and I could have some of my life back.

After months of living like a bat among cavemen, it was refreshing to work with daylight all around you. Items were so much clearer, although issues were not. Why, now you could actually see the gunshot wound! There was a lot more variety in the kinds of stories you could tackle. In working the day shift, I began covering less of the dead and more of the living.

Nemesio Prudente was one of the luckiest persons in Manila. He’s been the subject of countless assassination attempts. Now, those two statements may sound like a contradiction. But the fact is that despite so many attempts on his life, the president of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines lived through all of them, to simply expire of old age in a Cavite hospital in March 2008.

When I first joined The Chronicle, Prudente had just been the target of another ambush attempt. On November 10 1987, unknown gunmen shot his car full of holes near the Lambingan bridge in Santa Ana as he rode to his office at the PUP campus in Santa Mesa. In doing so, they also put some holes in Prudente himself, but not enough to kill him. It was Prudente’s lawyer who was killed in that ambush.

Then on June 30 1988, or less than a year after the first ambush, gunmen peppered his convoy with some more bullets. Prudente was badly wounded, but survived the attempt. Three of his bodyguards who were riding in the lead car did not.

It was puzzling for the uninitiated. Professional hitmen trying to kill a school president? Was it an argument over grades? Prudente had created a lot of enemies among the resurgent right even before the shaky Cory years. Prudente had served as PUP president from 1962 to 1972, when it was still known as the Philippine College of Commerce. That early, the nationalist and outspoken Prudente, who encouraged activism and nationalism in the school, was already targeted by elements from the Marcos military and police. So when Martial Law was declared in 1972, Prudente was one of the first to be arrested and thrown in jail.

When Cory took power in 1986, Prudente was reappointed to his old position in the renamed Polytechnic University of the Philippines, or PUP. Prudente never forgot his old mission of spurring the student body into a more active and militant role in politics and society. But his enemies never forgot him either. Rightist elements suspected that Prudente had allowed the left to use the PUP campus as a base for leftist rebels and assassination squads as well.

It was a hairy time to belong to the legal left. Rightist hitmen were assassinating leftist leaders and labor leaders. Kilusang Mayo Uno chairman Rolando Olalia was tortured and mutilated before he was finally murdered, his body dumped in an empty lot in Antipolo with his underwear stuffed in his mouth. Young activist Lean Alejandro also met the same fate. Rightists in the police and military, the same people who tried to topple Marcos before they were saved by People Power, were now putting immense pressure on the Aquino government to let go of suspected leftists in her cabinet. The pressure would occasionally find an outlet in the numerous coup attempts against Cory. In the first three years after Edsa, the Cory government always seemed to be tottering on the brink of collapse, as the security forces tasked with defending the new democracy were always of suspect loyalty. Two years into the new government, Cory had to use a pressure valve. Acceding to demands from the right, she let go of Labor Secretary Augusto “Bobbit” Sanchez, Presidential Spokesman Rene Saguisag, and Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo. This stabilized the situation somewhat, at least until the next coup attempt in 1989.

But the rightists weren’t the only ones with death squads. This was also the heydey of the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the communist hitsquad more popularly known as the sparrow unit. Young sparrows would case police and military officers accused of crimes against the people, and shoot them down in broad daylight when the opportunity arose.

This had also been the problem in Davao City in the last years of the Marcos regime. The sparrows had free reign over the city, assassinating their enemies at will – at least until government found a solution: vigilante justice.

Local police and military officials organized vigilante squads and hunted the sparrows down. Thus was organized the infamous Alsa Masa, the Force of the Masses, a group of paramilitaries answerable only to their police and military handlers. The Alsa Masa movement was whipped into a frenzy by a popular AM radio announcer in Davao named Jun Pala, who paraded around town with a pistol tucked into his waist.

Borrowing from the experience of the Alsa Masa, the Manila Police under then Brig. Gen. Alfredo Lim organized its own vigilante force, headed by the colorful police commander of the Tondo District.

Colonel Romeo Maganto is neither telegenic nor photogenic. Yet he was probably the best known and most sought after [at least by the media] policeman in Metro Manila in the late eighties because of his quotable quotes and his propensity for staging dramatic performances for the press. Maganto is short, dark and stocky, and tends to talk to everyone like a policeman interrogating a suspect. But in that sense, he was perfect for his new role as the godfather of Metro Manila’s anti-communist vigilante force. To him, it seemed, everyone was guilty of something until proven innocent. Communists were peering from every street corner, just waiting for the right time to assault us with quotes from Karl Marx or Mao’s little red book. Like most people, he probably wasn’t really a rabid anti-communist; he was just a man who rabidly went after whoever his superiors said were the enemy. Thus, the raids on squatter colonies and the “zoning” became more frequent, as police operatives turned the squatter shanties inside out to hunt down the sparrows. In all these raids, no sparrow was ever arrested, although a whole lot of people lost a lot of sleep, not because they were guilty of assassinating enemies of the people, but because they simply didn’t smell good enough. But then again, who could complain? Certainly not Manila’s jaded press.

I remember one weekend, when Maganto invited media to his Police Station 1 in Tondo for a photo-op of him and his men training his vigilantes in the fine art of killing people. In a makeshift shooting range at the back of the station, Maganto and assorted wannabees hefted .45 caliber pistols and bravely dry-fired at paper targets for the cameras, pretending they were criminals, leftists, and perhaps mediamen. Naturally, some mediamen with their pot-bellies and their oversized sunglasses, joined in to show off their pieces. They lined up as well and proudly dry-fired at the paper targets, pretending they were evil editors and deskmen, or cheapskate police station commanders. Of course, Maganto, with his grim countenance and his shiny .45 pistol, ended up splashed all over the front pages of Metro Manila’s dailies the next day. I suppose that was also his intention. But Maganto also miscalculated. The ensuing outcry from the photographs of armed vigilantes in Metro Manila streets forced the government to clamp down on Maganto, preventing him from arming his gang of volunteers. In the end, Maganto agreed to just arm his volunteers with nightsticks. Still, the zoning of squatter communities continued.

Thus, it was hardly a surprise that someone with that bad an aim would want to kill Prudente that badly. Months after the 1987 assassination attempt on Prudente, Attorney Artemio Sacaguing of the National Bureau of Investigation, the agency tasked with investigating the incident, would confide to reporters their initial finding – that the ambushes were masterminded by a very senior police official. His only other clue – the official was one of the highest ranking officers in Manila. Needless to say, that finding was never reflected in the official NBI report. In 1999, almost ten years after the second attempt on Prudente’s life, five Manila policemen were convicted for the Prudente ambush. With that, authorities declared the case closed, although one would wonder why five ordinary policemen would take it upon themselves to repeatedly try to kill a prominent leftist; somehow it felt like authorities took the easy route of bagging the triggermen while letting the mastermind get away.

2009-04-27T23:19:00.000-07:00

ed's note: this is the first ten pages of one chapter of a book I'm writing. Please feel free to comment. Will post other pages and chapters later. The book is tentatively titled Correspondent. Please feel free to post comments on the writing and the details. If you were mentioned in the first few pages, that should tell you something about your age :)

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Two hundred years before the Christian Century, the Roman Empire saw the birth of the earlier kind of opiate for the masses. In Rupert Matthew’s book The Age of the Gladiators, Rome’s patriarchs and politicians adopted and modified the Etruscan tradition of sacrificing men to honor their esteemed dead. Thus was born the Roman munus [munera in the plural form], the bloody public fights by gladiators that had started off as “obligations to honor the dead” but soon became instruments to entertain and enrich the living.

The first gladiators were ordinary slaves, thrown into a makeshift arena in the public market with crude but lethal weapons. But much like today’s TV audience, the Roman public soon grew tired of the simple hacking and slashing, and began to demand more, in today’s terms, production value from those who sponsored the games. Realizing that ordinary slaves untrained in the martial arts died too fast to keep the crowds sufficiently entertained, the sponsors of these munera began to stage even more elaborate shows, featuring gladiators trained in special schools, fighting in specially built arenas that featured trapdoors, wild animals, and exotic weapons. Matthew writes that some of these veteran gladiators soon became entertainers as well, spinning and leaping and sometimes juggling their weapons to the delight of the crowds, even though a simple hack and slash would have sufficed.

The rich and powerful who sponsored these games also realized the power they had over the Roman mob. The holding of an extravagant and much celebrated munus would almost guarantee a man’s election to high public office. This was, after all, the era where Rome was defined by two words, and they were not Republic and Empire, but Bread and Circus. It could also guarantee an unpopular Emperor’s hold on power. Soon, rich families were spending fortunes for the smallest excuse to have a munus, no matter that the deceased to be honored probably died several years ago. Several Roman Generals took this route to become dictator of Rome. Roman Emperors emptied the coffers of the treasury to hold fights that lasted for weeks and involved thousands of gladiators. Gaius Julius Ceasar even flooded a portion of Rome and staged naval battles using real, although scaled-down warships.

The rich Roman businessman, patriarch, or politician who sponsored the gladiatorial fight, he who wanted to woo and awe the public with a garish display of blood and gore, was called an editor, from the Latin phrase E DITUS, or to put forward. The editor had yet another power; in the event a gladiator was severely wounded or disarmed in the ring, the editor alone had the power of life and death over the poor fellow. The mob of course needs to make its opinion known – a clenched fist for a missus, or a reprieve and a chance to fight another day, or a stabbing motion with the thumb, to mean no mercy. No thumbs up or thumbs down, as the popular myth went. The editor would invariably follow public opinion, since it was to court public opinion that he spent for the munus in the first place.

Thus, a gladiator’s life or death depended on the whims of one man called the editor, who, depending on his scruples, may choose to challenge the mob’s wisdom, or surrender to its appetite for entertainment.

After two decades in print and television, it all begins to make sense.

----------------------------------------------------

October, 1987

I'm not really sure why I chose to apply with the Manila Chronicle. I could have tried the Inquirer, which had a much bigger circulation. But the Chronicle sounded pretty prestigious, with a nice line under the masthead that read: Number One in Readership Quality. It was also another good way of saying we didn’t have the circulation. It was basically a business-political broadsheet, while the Inquirer was called a tabloid in broadsheet form, even by its own reporters. Of course I could have just been lazy - the editor in chief, the respected Amando Doronila, was a cousin of my mother.

Not that I expected to be allowed to be lazy. I was a correspondent, and correspondents, as I said, were paid 12 pesos per column inch, not for stories that you submit, but for stories that see print. With that kind of a deal, no amount of nepotism would get me a bigger salary. It didn’t even guarantee a fixed salary. It meant hard work, good writing, and a good nose for news.

My first boss was Cris Cerdena, a petite young lady who manhandled all the correspondents. She was the metro editor, which meant that, for all the correspondents, she was either the Virgin Mary or God Almighty. She gave me a cursory exam, stuffed my biodata under a pile of papers, and inflicted me onto the world. She also gave me my first assignment, which was an innocuous feature on the flora being planted on the center islands of Roxas Boulevard that would later come out on the second to the last page of the Chronicle sometime in October 1987. The story struck me as somewhat odd. Why would anyone want to read about flowering plants in the middle of the old Dewey Boulevard, I asked myself as I balanced in the middle of the island while vehicles whizzed by on both sides. At best, I hoped it was a test, to see if I could make an uninteresting topic somewhat vaguely interesting. At worst, it could mean that my editors thought I was as useful to them as a calachuchi was to a truck driver during rush hour.

It was my first byline. I think my mom even clipped the boxed article, although I’ve since lost it. No big deal really, except that the next time I was peeing in the john, the old man Doronila would unzip at the urinal beside me, and let fly more than just his afternoon coffee. Good feature, Doro said, except that there was a complaint. Complaint? Controversy over calachuchis along Roxas boulevard? What gives?

Your plants, Doro said. A plant expert called to say that the plants on the accompanying picture were not calachuchis. I zipped up as calmly as I could and told him that the people who planted them said they were calachuchis, although frankly I wouldn't know the difference between a tossed salad and a venus flytrap. Besides, I didn’t pick the photo that came out with the story. The accompanying photo may really have been wrong. But the point was made - you never believe everything they tell you.

Chris stuck me in the Western Police District, which was a relatively good beat for a police reporter. My partner was Vincent Atos, a young correspondent/photog who often gets mistaken for a Japanese journalist because of his chinky eyes, round face, and his helpless stutter. In the beginning I felt like Vincent resented my intrusion into his territory. Correspondents can be very territorial, especially since they only get paid per column inch and every story they file counts. Vincent would eventually warm up, and we would get along with the rest of the gang just fine. Later, it turned out that Vincent was simply quiet and taciturn towards everybody, at least until you get him laughing, after which his stuttering would be overtaken by his helpless giggling.

I said the WPD was a pretty good beat because it’s the anchor of Metro Manila police reporting. On a given night, Manilenos seem to like giving their police force the greatest number of beatings and stabbings than the rest of the other districts combined. Proof of this was the fact that Manila had an entire police district all to itself, while other police districts like, for example, the Northern Police District, had jurisdication over three or four towns. There was a major hitch though - I got the late afternoon and night shift. What this meant, in an era that preceded the pagers and the cellphones, was that I would only get published if my story was big enough to rouse the night editor from his drunken stupor to "remat" or change the front page. In other words, it’s either a breaking story big enough for the front page, or it wasn’t big enough to see print at all. At that time, the front page closed much earlier, and changing the front page was a mighty affair that took a great deal of arguing, cajoling, and threatening. This was before it was a fad to have a computer in the newsroom; everyday, the clackety clack of dozens of typewriters was the music of the newsroom, and it was a point of pride for a correspondent to have a new ribbon or a fresh scroll of newsprint in his old typewriter.

What this meant was that, on a normal day, I would almost certainly not get printed. Vincent would get the day stories that would make the first edition. In addition, stories that happened the night before that were not big enough to tickle the night editor’s fancy were written and re-angled by Vincent for the first edition. Working the night shift was really a losing proposition for a broadsheet correspondent, although it meant big bucks for correspondents of the evening tabloids. The trick, I learned, was to churn out features and stories behind the headlines, which they lapped up. After a while, they started giving me the anchor of the front page, the bottom part of the page that usually had a news feature.

I was also lucky because these were extremely interesting times. Gringo Honasan had just tried to kick Cory Aquino out of Malacanang, and the hunt was on for the poster boy of RAM. So “happily”, once in a while, a bomb would go off at night, a cache of weapons would be discovered during a late night raid. These events kept me alive, and kept the night editor grumbling. The Chronicle also had a concession to the poor correspondents that would often be helpful. Many times, a story would be bylined by several names: staffmembers who are senior reporters who get a regular monthly pay, and correspondents who live on the column inch. The paper's policy went like this - with stories that are jointly bylined by a correspondent and a staffmember, the correspondent gets paid for the entire length of the story regardless of how much he contributed to it. For example, if the editors wrap two paragraphs from me with a 20-paragraph story from staffmember Patrick Paez, I get paid for the entire 22 paragraphs. On a busy month, I could squeeze into the headlines almost every other day.

Here’s a good example – my first real story for the national page. Since I covered Manila, I also covered the Red Cross, whose offices were along Bonifacio Drive. Less than a week after getting “hired” by the Chronicle, Cris told me that a landslide had occurred in Kalinga Apayao. Now, I had no idea where Kalinga Apayao was, or whether it was part of the Philippines. But the instructions were simple enough – call up the Red Cross, and see what details they have. So I picked up the phone and did just that. A few details here and there, and I got my first banner story without even leaving the office

LANDSLIDE
KILLS 40 IN
KALINGA

By Ed Lingao
Correspondent
The Manila Chronicle Oct. 28 1987

Forty people were buried alive in a landslide in Kalinga Apayao, triggered by the heavy rains of typhoon “Pepang,” the Philippine National Red Cross (PNRC) reported yesterday.

Evelyn Litap, Kalinga Apayao Red Cross administrator, said the landslide hit Barangay Macarian Balatoc in Pasil, near Tinglayan, forcing at least 12,812 inhabitants to flee.

Tinglayan was rocked by earthquakes last June.

Litap added that 58 families were rendered homeless by the typhoon in Tabuk, the capital town, and are now staying in a schoolbuilding.

The story went on for some eight more inches, much of it details from other staffmembers. I don’t even remember how much of the words were mine, and how much were the editor’s. I was so happy to get a banner story that I didn’t care that I never heard of Kalinga, and would never imagine sticking my nose there. Five years later, I would finally visit Kalinga Apayao, and come home with my tail between my legs.

Before the 15th or the 30th of the month, the correspondents would start collecting their published stories and pasting them on sheets of bond paper to submit to the library. The librarians would then take out their rulers and measure the column inches, for payment by the cashier. It should be a pretty honest arrangement, except that editors sometimes neglect to put the byline.
In cases like that, the librarians just take your word that it’s your unbylined story, or they ask the editor. Once in a while, some correspondents would use this system to pad their earnings; its not hard to blame them, since the paper requires them to work seven days a week with no allowances or guarantees that their work would be used. Things came to a head when the editors caught a correspondent with a heavily padded submission. Apparently, this particular police correspondent wasn't a very good cheater - some of the articles he submitted to the library were clipped from the foreign news section.

The Chronicle newsroom was a large, old fashioned affair, with the news editor Rolly Fernandez seated in the middle and everything else radiating outwards like spokes on a wheel. Well, that was the general idea. Honestly, the physical newsroom arrangement looked more like domino tiles run amuck. Rolly was a salt and pepper type of a guy. We didn’t really get to talk to him as much, us being lowly correspondents and bottom feeders. But we build myths and legends around people we see often but seldom get to talk to. Like we do with the Pope, I guess. In our minds, we painted Rolly as a gentle, fatherly guy, who strokes his mustache as he ponders on the wonders of the universe or figures out which correspondent to send to the morgue, literally or figuratively. He was probably sports minded in a couch-potato way, quiet and reserved until liberated by alcohol, with an occasional crack of wit. On the surface, and this is where our imaginations really flourished [we are, after all, supposed to be writers], he looked so much like the basketball player Mon Fernandez that we decided he was probably a brother of the cager. Decades later, with Rolly manning the Inquirer Baguio bureau and the rest of us dispersed elsewhere, we realized that most of our guesses were correct. Except for the last guess – no one bothered to confirm it, as if afraid to destroy the myth.

Characters were legion in the newsroom. There was Cris, my boss. In the pecking order of things in the newsroom, she was still somewhere in the bottom rung, handling the Metro section. Which is to say, most of the editors probably picked on her. So logically, she picked on us. Her pen was eloquent, her appetite overwhelming, and her mood swings legendary. Woe to any reporter who gets her goat when she’s just hit a bump with her boyfriend-photog, a ladies man named Gino.

Then there was Rusty, a gentle man with a jagged name but a smooth literary and journalistic style. Rusty is the quintessential deskman, the type you would cast in a 50s movie as a newspaper editor with a cigarette dangling from a corner of his mouth. In fact, with his salt and pepper flattop, he could pass off as Peter Parker’s mean-spirited newspaper editor in the Spiderman movie series, if he just adopts a mean disposition and puts on a lot more weight and height. He just looked so… newsy in an editor kind of way. When I came into the Chronicle, he must have been in his fifties already, although it’s really hard to tell. He was, and two decades later, still is, single but married to his journalism. He was, and maybe still is, in his fifties, a never aging icon in a newsroom. During the day, he would consume vast amounts of copy with the intensity of a brain surgeon, proving himself to be one of the best wordsmiths this side of the south harbor. At night, after the newspaper has been put to bed [yes, that’s the term we use, no malice there], he would graduate with the rest of the desk, Cris included, to a Malate bar to consume vast amounts of alcohol, still with the intensity of a brain surgeon. Rusty apparently believes in doing everything with passion.

There were plenty of other quirky characters that we bottom feeders got to observe from a distance, Doro being the least of them with his big pipe and an aussie drawl so hard to understand that you simply nod and say yes sir to whatever he says and hope that he wasn’t asking for your name. Alan Robles with his sharp wit that would leave us in stitches; The golden girls [no reference to age here] Malou and Sheila who were high up in the pedestal for us along with the Dalai Lama. Then there were the disciples, also known as staffmembers – Patrick Paez, who was later to transfer to television; Lito Zulueta, or Lito Zu, perpetually wagging his finger skyward and pontificating endlessly on religion, morals, or literature, a quirk we quickly attributed to his apparent lack of a sex life.

And there was Manny Mogato. Ahhhh who could forget Manny Mogs, a bear of a defense reporter who would fall asleep while seated in the front row during a high level press conference and proceed to snore like a rusty sawmill. Fellow reporters like to recall an incident where Manny fell asleep during a press conference of President Fidel Ramos. Naturally, Manny chose to sit at the front row. Naturally, too, Manny began to snore. Loud. With a grating crashing scraping sound that reverberates from the bottom of Manny’s generous belly before bubbling out of his equally generous lips; it’s a sound that would send war veterans running for cover. It was so loud that even the President was for a moment unsure what to do - ignore the incessant rumbling that was loud enough to make NORAD raise the alert to DEFCON 4, or call a cease-fire and declare an impromptu siesta? In the end, FVR, ever the suave media manager, and having endured Manny’s quirks when he was still Secretary of National Defense, simply smiled at the embarrassed reporters and quipped that Manny appears to have fallen asleep while the President of the nation was holding court.

And here is where Manny works his magic. Manny immediately jolts awake, raises his hand, and asks a smart follow-up to a question that had been asked while he appeared to be fast asleep. It’s something he does often. Apparently, Manny has mastered the art of listening and absorbing data even during deep sleep. Minus the snoring, it’s a talent every reporter wishes he had.

There was one more character in the Chronicle story, although he was never in the newsroom, at least while I was there. There was a homeless vagrant who inhabited the small crowded parking lot of the Chronicle offices. He had long dirty matted hair, and his face and rail-thin body were long stained with grease and dirt that no amount of rainfall could wash away. He was there, rain or shine, night of day. At times I would catch him shivering in the rain, curled up under a tree. Everytime I was in the Chronicle, he was there in the parking lot, an unofficial parking attendant of sorts who was tolerated by the Chronicle guards. The Chronicle staff had named him Rambo, for no apparent reason other than he probably looked as bad as Rambo after a torture session. His vocabulary also appeared to be as rich as Rambo’s. On occasion, he would be helpful, guiding cars that were backing up inside the crowded parking lot. Once, I learned too late that he had just learned the gestures of a parking attendant without necessarily understanding them. One time I brought my dad’s car to the office, I followed his hand gestures and promptly backed into a tree. I leaned out the window to chastise him, only to see that he was still gesturing to me to back up even though my bumper had already acquainted itself with the tree.

The scuttlebutt was that Rambo used to be a deskman for the Chronicle. Of course that wasn’t really likely, and Geny Lopez probably wouldn’t have liked the idea of one of his wordsmiths sleeping on the pavement. Not good for morale. Still, it was the popular myth that went the rounds, and terrified the young employees of the newsroom. Here, in the parking lot, was proof positive that journalism was for saints and/or madmen, and a reminder that you often can’t really tell the difference between the two, not even with their clothes or their smell. But if it was terrifying for young reporters, imagine the impact of this message on the older deskmen like Rusty - Rambo the deskman was driven mad by bad copy. Beware, the wrongly used word is really mightier than the sword.

As for the correspondents, we had our own little corner by the entrance of the newsroom, where the ricketiest and most obsolete typewriters were set up. It was always a mess, and no one owned any particular table or typewriter. In fact, correspondents had no right to own anything, least of all their time. The first thing any correspondent does when he gets to the newsroom is to locate a free roll of newsprint and scroll it into a free typewriter. In those days, we didn’t type on bond paper – that’s too expensive for the type of copy we churned out. Our typing paper came in rolls from the press downstairs, in brown newsprint with the regular width of 8 inches, ending in a hard cardboard roll. It sort of reminds one of toilet paper, which in itself may be a hidden message, since we use it for our copy. It was actually a practical way of doing things, since correspondents tended to have great difficulty choosing a way to start their stories with. It is not unusual to hear a load groan, and a tearing sound as a correspondent ripped off the first two inches of his roll. Later, after the copy is submitted to Chris, we would hear, from her side of the newsroom, an even louder groan, with sounds much similar to the ripping of hair and gnashing of teeth.

This was when correspondents [and reporters] would still come to the office to file their stories. Since correspondents never seem to earn enough, they usually don’t have the money to commute to the Manila newsroom from Malabon or Pasig just to type out a story that may or may not be used anyway. A lot of copy was turned in through phoners. This was way before the age of the fax machine, and eons from the internet age. Eventually, deskmen tended to develop that funny crick or angle in their necks from cradling the phone and shouting at correspondents over scratchy phone lines. They also sometimes develop a tendency to talk out of the corner of their mouths, a result of doing much of their business over the phone.

We lowly correspondents often kept to ourselves, murmuring and whispering in the corner behind the hulking typewriters, dreaming of a day when we would be regularized, or at least, get a new typewriter ribbon. For many of us, many typewriter ribbons would pass us by, but the day of regularization would never come. Once in a while, an odd staffmember or two would grace us with their presence, and we would stare wide-eyed and gape in wonder at these mythical beings who received regular paychecks.

This was our newsroom, circa 1987. Computers were still far in the future; computers were for launching ICBMs and solving the mysteries of the universe. Typewriters were for writing. Liquid paper worked too slowly. And given the vast amounts of corrections necessary, you may as well use a paintbrush. The trashcan was much more efficient. You literally tore out whole paragraphs, cut and pasted lines, and if really unlucky, the copy editor would summon you, and in front of all your peers, ask you in a voice dripping with sarcasm to sit beside her and just tell her the whole story from the start so she can write it from scratch.

It was difficult adjusting from the colorful adventures of college to the dark seedy life in the night shift. College, after all, clothed us with that feeling of invulnerability and omnipotence, as if we could change the world a different way each day. But reality was different; it was here where I learned that the police beat would change a small part of you each day, in ways you would never have imagined or noticed. During the daytime, the press office was peopled with colorful, cussing, belching and farting police reporters of all size and shapes, and smells. Once in a while, a reporter would throw his gun on the table, use language so colorful that you don't have to know the dialect to get the message, and hit another guy on the head. This was on a good day. On a bad day, there weren't any people around at all, which meant that everyone was out, and that you were getting scooped.

The Manila Press Office was a hole in the wall just behind the front desk of the Manila Police headquarters along UN Avenue. A swinging glass door would bring you to a small narrow room dominated by a wooden table topped with fake wood, with benches on both sides. A television set sits on a shelf above an annex room, that holds several small wooden lockers. Sometimes, a group of reporters would shut the door to the annex so they can make their deals in private; other times, a reporter would bring a lady in and shut the door. On the other side of the main room is an anteroom with a cement toilet. Although the toilet was the smallest part of the press office, the whole place reeked of stale urine and sweat. Despite the smell, some reporters would conduct their secret business here, away from prying eyes.

The favorite pastime then was the game of dominoes. For some reason, cards never seemed to have caught on. One would almost assume that rough and tumble veterans of the police beat would play poker every night in a haze of cigarette smoke. But no. WPD’s press corps preferred arranging and rearranging small black wooden tiles and putting white dots end to end. Perhaps it had to do with the solid feel of the wooden tiles, which you could slam on the wooden table with a hard satisfying clack during a particularly heated bout. Somehow, slamming cards on the table didn’t seem intimidating enough.

I remember Teddy Laway and Teddy Junior, the father-son tandem of the Journal group. Teddy Laway got his nickname from his propensity for showering everyone within a three feet radius with a healthy splatter of saliva and digestive juices. And that’s when he's not yet excited. He looked like he was born here in the Manila police press office, and grew old here; most of the police characters from both sides of the fence seemed to know him. He’s been in the police beat so long that some of the veteran policemen probably learned the ropes from him. It didn't matter that he didn't seem to care much about writing his stories. Often, I would hear him dictate his facts to his editor over the telephone. Clearly, his desk editors did the writing for him. A lot of reporters during that time didn't know a verb if it tried to hit them in the face. There were plenty of reporters who were former photographers, who, before that, were former drivers. That’s because some editors didn't mind asking the driver to take a photo when the photographer was absent; and when the reporter was absent, editors didn’t mind asking the temporarily promoted photog to get details and ask questions as well. Blink long enough, and your driver could end up with a byline. Naturally, the quality of reportage suffers. Still, many editors would rather rewrite a badly written story than deal with a cub reporter who can't get the story at all. It’s not to say that the college grads were better journalists, or more morally discriminating. There were some reporters from prestigious Catholic universities who reinforced the idea that a good education won’t necessarily make you a better person; it could, given the right circumstances, however, make you a better crook.

His son, of course, was Teddy Junior, also known as Bong and it seemed that his father made sure he was born here as well. Father and son would work together, copying stories from each other and from other reporters. Often, they didn’t act like father-son at all. I would hear them curse or shout at each other like decent competitors would. And there was Angel from the Manila Bulletin. If people named their babies based on first impressions, Angel's parents must have had a healthy dose of irony. The guy was big, black, and scary looking in all senses of the word, with eyes that glared at you even when he smiled. He seemed to prefer sitting at the end of the table, although it may have been because his large size wouldn’t let him squeeze onto the benches on either side. He was gentle to cubs like myself, but otherwise he could practically threaten to sit on anyone who dared cross swords or words with him.

And there were Edong Reyes and Edd Reyes, both veteran photogs for the Journal group. It was confusing to get their names right at first, until we got to calling Edd Reyes "Edd Baba", for reasons I no longer have to expound on. Edong Reyes was a class act on his own. He was as rough as the roughest could get, and he could cuss like Donald Duck on steroids. Rumor had it that he lost a testicle when a grenade exploded near him during coverage of a rally in Mendiola, although I don't recall anyone ever mustering the courage to ask him if it was true. Long after I left the police beat, I was somewhat flattered to learn that he still remembers my name. He would greet me whenever I dropped by the press office. It was only later I realized that it shouldn’t have been too hard, since we had the same first names.

There was also Macon. How can I forget Macon. A small, fragile-looking girl reporter for one of Manila’s tabloids, she was crippled by polio at a young age. Yet she had a character and stamina that were hard as nails. Every day, well into the night, she would do the rounds of the WPD, scrabbling around with a crab-like walk that would have shamed the lazier reporters into doing some real legwork. She didn’t just limp; her polio was far too advanced for a mere limp. One of her legs was so badly deformed that you had to give her a little more space whenever she passed by. Yet she would cover just like anyone else, run after stories with the fastest reporters in the press corps, and not expect any special treatment from her colleagues at all. Whenever fellow reporters would whimper about how bad they had it, or how hard their jobs were, or complain about the hand that life dealt them, all I had to do was remember Macon and feel ashamed for myself. Many times I wondered why she didn’t get a job that required less time on her feet. She showed an amazing determination to get her job done, decently, in as dignified a manner as her disease allowed her. Long after I left the police beat, I would still bump into her, older and wiser, with a child of her own, still racing after the sensational stories to make her front page, never realizing that hers was the best story of all.

There was Ka Ruping, or Rufino Miranda of the Ang Pilipino Star Ngayon tabloid. I think he was really named Ka Rufing, after his first name Rufino, but you know how it is when men try to take on a tougher edge so as not to be labeled sissies. Holed up in the press office where everyone tried to show that they sweat testosterone, we tended to drawl a bit more, cuss a little louder, scratch our balls in public, swagger with a lazier step, all because we thought this was what our environment called for. It was basically idiotic, and a glaring sign of immaturity, of course, but when you’re alone at night and trying carefully to make friends with police characters, impressions seem to matter a lot. Thus, Ka Rufing easily evolved into Ka Ruping, all because you don’t want to use the letter F too much. But I digress.

Ka Ruping lived on a world all his own, and would have little to do with the other mortals in the press office. He was always muttering about outscooping the mediocre reporters from the other tabloids. For someone who worked for a political newspaper, I had some difficulty relating to the sense of scoops of the tabloid reporters. But Ka Ruping was definitely one of the more enterprising ones. While the rest would move in a dense noisy pack, Ka Ruping would only move alone, haunting the halls of the WPD and the NBI like a shadow, pressing flesh with confidential agents and cops. Of course, Ka Ruping had his own quirks. He was one of the older reporters in the police beat, having pushed past fifty several centuries ago. But be careful if he offers to shake hands; he has a viselike grip that he liked to show to unsuspecting new guys. Those who know better than to shake hands with him aren’t spared either. He may just reach down and grab a chunk of muscle from your thigh, and yank it up with such force that the muscle contracts and spasms up and down your leg like a mouse trapped under your skin.

Also, I have never seen the man without his baseball cap, proudly embroidered with the name of his publication. This man really believed in having pride in his work, and wore it on his head day or night. Really, until now I have no idea if Ka Ruping was curly or straight-haired. He also complained loudly and openly of corruption among police reporters, especially the cartel that controlled the press office and basically held police officials and precinct commanders by their balls. No one had any illusions that he was clean as a whistle, although, true to character, Ka Ruping appears to hate corruption all the more when it’s done as a pack.

One particularly slow night in the press office sometime in 1988, Ka Rufing barged in and started cussing at all Christians in general. Apparently, the guy had suddenly gotten an epiphany of sorts, although it was not clear if this religious experience was in any way assisted by spirits of the physical or ethereal kind.

You Christians got it all wrong, he raged. All of us were lapsed Catholics, but it was a really slow night, so we decided to bite.

Ok Ka Ruping, what did we do this time?
Fools, he thundered! Don’t you know that the man on the cross you worship is not even Christ?

Whoa, stop the presses. This was getting deep, even for Ka Ruping. And Holy Week was still way off the calendar.

So who’s the unlucky guy, then?

Read your Bible, Ka Ruping snorted. Carefully. Christ fell three times while carrying the cross to calvary. On the third time, the centurions ordered Simeon, a poor fellow who just happened to be passing through, to carry the cross the rest of the way.

That is in the Bible, he said. But did the Bible say that Simeon gave the cross back to Jesus? No! The Holy Book says the man carrying the cross was crucified on Golgotha. Therefore…

Now, we were no experts in Biblical verses, but we still had much difficulty grasping Ruping’s radical logic. Nevertheless, Ka Ruping would not be put off. Proof! I have proof, he said.

What were the seven last words? My God, forgive them, for they do not know what they do. Clearly, these words do not number seven. Perhaps in ancient Armaic, the numbers would fall into place?

There was a moment of silence as everyone digested the import of Ka Ruping’s revelation. Someone had made a mistake, and the poor fellow on the cross was spelling it out for everyone, yet for two centuries, we who claim to know the Good Book have ignored the obvious and the literal in place of more spiritual explanations?

Yet more proof! Ka Ruping was definitely on a roll.

The man who was nailed to the cross looked down at Mary and another man weeping at his foot, and said:
“Woman, behold thy son. Son, behold thy mother.”

By that time, the logic had gotten much clearer, although epiphany was still to descend upon us. Was the man on the cross trying to tell the whole world that mother and son were at the foot of the cross, and an unlucky stranger had been nailed in the son’s place?

We looked desperately for any sign that Ka Ruping was joking. No such luck, although we snickered behind his back the rest of the night. Many times, the mad would have a logic more sensible than that of the sane, and in hindsight, Ka Ruping made a lot of sense in a lot of things, much more than a lot of people I knew then, as now.

And then there was the bunch I hung out with. Gerry Lirio, AKA Gerry Libog, AKA Gerryli, was the closest I had to a mentor, demented as he was. He was the Manila police reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, who, with his partner Omar Acosta, took me under his wing. It’s not like they had any choice. In college, our teachers required us to log several hours of internship in a media organization. I ended up in the Inquirer, with Gerry and Omar as my trainers. Of course, there was no formal training to speak of. That simply wasn't their style.

It was Gerry and Omar who made life somewhat bearable for Vincent and me. They hung around the station during the day, and prodded us along and in more or less the right direction. Gerry had that devil-may-care attitude, and giggled so adorably that the hospitality girls of Happy Sauna loved having him around so much they started giving him discounts. That’s not to say that Gerry didn’t have a serious side; he’s won several awards for the Inquirer for writing several investigative pieces, although personally I think he’s spent a little too much time trying to investigate Manila’s nightlife. He’s also the type of guy whose age is difficult to define. Twenty years ago, he looked like he was in his late twenties or early thirties. Last time I saw him, he still looked and laughed the same.

GREETINGS TO THE WEB FROM A LO-TECH GUY

2009-04-27T21:17:00.001-07:00

this is my first attempt at blogging, so please bear with me.

i'm ed lingao, a journalist based in manila

i am now in the process of writing a book, and i plan to post portions of it here. please feel free to comment, so i can improve on it