ARRIVAL

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

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

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.