Quotes of the Day
Last week reporter Phillip Robertson was one of the first Western journalists to make it into Najaf during heavy fighting between the insurgent forces of Moqtada Sadr and the U.S. Here is the account of his trip:
Our journey to the shrine of Imam Ali was a harrowing trip that would take me and photographer Thorne Anderson through the American cordon around Najaf, crossing a stretch of burned out no-man's land and then navigating the al Mahdi Army lines. It took roughly two and a half hours to go from the southeastern edge of the city, which forced us to cross open ground where snipers fired down on us from their perches in shattered buildings.
On Monday morning, a day before our walk into the old city of Najaf, we had gone to see Abu Mohammed, a commander in the al Mahdi Army. He was to be our connection with the underground network of Iraqis who knew how to navigate the American cordon around Najaf. Abu Mohammed explained that we would have to wait for a lull in the fighting if we wanted to cross the lines. The commander also said we might have to wait a long time before we got our chance. Young Mahdi Army fighters with wild eyes stopped by the office to show us their captured weapons. In the late afternoon, an old sheikh visited Abu Mohammed's office and said to us that he had just come from the shrine in Najaf. The sheikh described how he had walked through the American front lines without a problem, but if we wanted to go, we had to leave immediately. Abu Mohammed gave us an al Mahdi man named Talib to take with us.
We followed the sheikh's advice that afternoon and made it all the way to the southern boundary of Najaf before being turned back by a firefight. Talib said he would take us to a hotel and come for us in the morning, and we agreed to try again, not sure if he would show up.
Into the Medina
Talib arrived at eight the next morning. In a taxi with one of his friends. We retraced the route of the day before, moving to the southern border of the city. When we reached the place where we had been scared off by the firefight, we heard the sounds of sustained gunfire and explosions. Talib explained that we would have to walk from there. We gathered our gear and entered into the city. At each corner we asked locals for a way to the medina that would keep us at maximum distance from U.S. forces. We quickly found a place where civilians were crossing the American lines. Small groups of women, old men and children were walking through a 300-foot gap between a Bradley tank and a Humvee lined up on Medina street. Anyone crossing would have to pass through the line of fire of both vehicles. Thorne pulled out a white cloth and we raised our hands and then stepped out into the empty street. Our translator Yasser, Talib, myself and Thorne, all walking slowly, had just crossed the first ring of the US cordon on the southern edge of the city.
A block inside the cordon, there was no traffic, the no man's land between the front lines was ruled by a horrible silence broken by sudden explosions. It was deserted except for a few Iraqi men hiding in doorways who offered refuge and tea. We started to see signs of fighting, blown out windows and burned buildings, but this was just the edge of the battlefield; it would get much worse as we went deeper into the city. We walked another block and saw three teenagers near the charred remains of a car who asked us where we were going. We explained that we wanted to go to the shrine of Imam Ali. "We are going to the shrine,” one said. “You can follow us." The boy who wanted to show us the way was not older than fourteen. As we went deeper into the city, Talib decided to return to Kufa and left us with the kids as guides.
Sniper Fire
We turned the corner, following the kids and found ourselves completely behind al Mahdi lines. The fighters hidden in the windows of a bombed out building recognized our guides and waved to us. Then the shooting started and we ran for cover. We heard the bullets coming in close. Around the corner we hit an open space where the old city joins the new city. I crossed first, with Thorne close behind me, and just as I made it to the opposite curb, the sniper fired again. I found a pillar to hide behind but Thorne was caught in the middle of the street and he curled up in the shadow of a piece of concrete. The bullets made cracking sounds when they hit the wall. After a pause in the firing a group of Mahdi fighters in a nearby alley told us to come closer and take cover with them. From that street corner, it was a five minute walk to Moqtada Sadr's office and the center of Najaf. Half a dozen Mahdi Army fighters walked with us. Long rows of armed young men we passed held their weapons in the air and sang victory songs. They stayed out of the street to avoid U.S. snipers, but they were relaxed and never trained their rifles on us. A few minutes before we reached our destination, the boys disappeared back into the alleys of the city.
Minutes after we arrived at the shrine on Tuesday morning a fighter took us across the street to the shrine. We walked in without being searched. In an office below the north wall, we met Seed Hosam al Husseini, a Mehdi Army official who, along with his superior, Sheikh Ahmed Sheibani, would be our host and protector. The militiamen never threatened us, and while the population in the mosque went as high as several thousand in the evenings, none of the men carried weapons inside its walls.
The Hospital
Outside there were a explosions and deafening bursts of machine gun fire. Much of the fighting was taking place in the cemetery. From an office in the north wall of the Shia shrine we listened to several simultaneous battles taking place, and when they paused there was the sound of sniper rifles echoing off the blue and white tiles of the inner walls.
Our first stop was the makeshift trauma hospital near the south gate. Inside the hospital, Dr. Walid Jasim, a volunteer from Baghdad, tended wounded fighters with horrifying injuries. While Thorne and I were standing in the hospital, a group of Mahdi Army carried in a stretcher with what was left of a man. The man was missing his arm and a leg above the knee, and the fighters had saved a piece of the arm and put it in a cigarette carton next to him. A friend of the dead man screamed at the doctor to take the pulse, and Dr. Jasim did it to calm him down. He had turned away from the corpse moments before, and simply said, "Shaheed," which means martyr and had gone back to tending a living patient. The fighter then lost his control and started screaming and we had to turn away.
Blood covered the marble floor and streaked the walls of the makeshift hospital. We saw fighters run down Rasul street to attack U.S. positions. Minutes later, injured men were wheeled through the gates of the shrine on blood-soaked carts. Casualties were brought in every few minutes.
A Funeral
When a fighter was killed in battle, soldiers wrapped the body in white sheets and placed it in a box on the white marble tiles of the shine. Men lined up behind the box and prayed over it. They bowed their heads and prayed in a careful row. As many as a hundred fighters would join in this ritual, and then carry the coffin around the tomb of Imam Ali, chanting the name of God. We witnessed twenty of these funerals over the course of three days. It was a relentless and terrible sequence, the explosions and incoming rounds, the men rushed to the hospital through the gates of the shrine, the dead carried in a final circuit around the tomb on the shoulders of their friends.
Fighters in the Alleys
Thursday we woke up to the familiar sounds of fighting in the cemetery and mortar attacks, which destroyed our hopes for an easy exit. Thorne and I walked out into the alleys and talked to militiamen in their positions. To get to the alleys across from the shrine, we had to dash across the open plaza where we could be seen by U.S. snipers. We ran this route to get food and drinks on Rasul street more than once.
After we crossed to the west side of Rasul, we found four fighters waiting in the alley with their weapons. One fighter brought cold water for us to drink. After we introduced ourselves, Haider, the 23 year old cell leader told his story. “I was a history student, but now I have this,” he said, holding up a Kalashnikov. His family lived in the city south of Medina street. He hadn’t been able to see them in more than a week, and he wasn’t sure he would ever again.
Another one of the fighters was a strange and thin man wearing a white tasseled scarf around his head. His eyebrows were missing and his name was Karrar. he had been in the cemetery, a place of brutal and sustained fighting and I asked him to describe what it was like, “The Americans are using every kind of weapon in the battle. Aircraft, artillery, rockets, so when you leave the cemetery you feel that it is a miracle.” Karrar told Thorne that the route to the cemetery was a sniper’s alley, that there was no safe way in. During the past few days significant number of Al Mahdi fighters had fought and died there, and were now buried close to where they were killed.
The Convoy
On Thursday morning we started to think about ways we could get out of the medina and through the American lines without retracing our steps through the sniper field. It was a tough problem. Dr. Walid Jasim, the infirmary doctor said we could leave with the wounded in the ambulance. I liked this approach, but it turned out to be unnecessary; our colleagues were in the middle of organizing a convoy to breach the siege. Some friends of ours in Baghdad had put together a dual-purpose trip: Other reporters would get their Najaf datelines, and Thorne and I would get a ride out if we needed one.
What I thought was a brief lull in the fighting in the early afternoon was actually our colleagues coming in for a press conference. Thorne and I agreed to leave the shrine an hour later with the convoy, saying hurried goodbyes to men we had met over the past three days. Hundreds of fighters were at the gate as we left. They all knew us.
- Phillip Robertson/Najaf
- Inside the city during heavy fighting between the U.S. and the insurgent forces of Moqtada Sadr