[Media-watch] Times journalist on what's wrong with embedding

[david Miller]

original audiofile:
http://www.rte.ie/rams/ecs/radio_weekly/Mon/pkenny2.ram 

transcript:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/2003/03/24.html#a1843
Excerpts from the interview with London Times war correspondent Christina
Lamb on Irish radio today [24 March] [she is a so-called 'unilateral'
journalist rather than an 'embedded' journalist]:

CL: I'm not under any restrictions at all [in what I say]. I want into
southern Iraq on Friday having heard all the reports that the Pentagon and
the MoD [UK ministry of defense] kept issuing that Umm Qasr had fallen and
that southern Iraq was going well and went in following an American military
convoy and right over the border at a small place called Safwan we were
greeted, instead of the cheering people you had heard about, we were greeted
with people throwing stones at the tanks, making angry gestures and a very
hostile environment which was quite a shock. I then carried on the road
towards Basra and came under fire with a colleague and some British military
police and it became quite clear that that area wasn't under control at all.
What it seems is that because they've concentrated so much on pushing
towards Baghdad they haven't secured the areas on the way. And it seems
based on a strategy that, on an assumption that all the ordinary Iraqis
would support them and defect, and we've always heard that the south in
particular would be easy, because it's Shi' ite and they don't like Saddam.
And that wasn't what I saw at all.

Pat Kenny: Why do you analyse that this is the case, because we know that
the Shia rose up after Gulf War 1, and of course their rising up was
rewarded by indifference by the international community and Saddam was able
to crush them. Is it that feeling or is it the sense that they perceive the
motivation for coming into Iraq this time to be different?

CL: I think it's a mixture; I think they did feel betrayed before but I
think they don't like seeing Americans to come in to occupy or what seems
like to occupy the country particularly knowing that an American general
would be administrator once Saddam has fallen. A lot of these people we saw
and this general sort of lawlessness and people going around shooting, the
military are telling us that they are Iraqi militia dressed in civilian
clothing, which may well be the case. It's very difficult for us to know
that.

PK: What about the city of Basra, we know they haven't gone in deliberately,
they don't want to get involved with house to house and street to street
fighting, but what is the situation there?

CL: Well again, they certainly a few days ago thought that Basra would be
easy, they kept saying that the 51st division, the main division guarding
it, was about to surrender, they were in negotiations, and that the local
people were all ready to welcome them, and they were even arranging a press
trip for us to go from here, that we were going to be flown in to see all
the welcoming crowds. So initially they did intend to go in, and now they're
saying they didn't intend to go in, they only wanted to secure the road
alongside. The situation at the moment is that they are outside the city,
more or less surounding it, but they certainly aren't in the city.
[...snip...] They could just leave it, because if the objective is to go to
Baghdad and to secure the route up then they don't need to have Basra, but
psychologically to have it, it's the second biggest city, to be able to show
pictures of the capture of a major city, of people welcoming them would make
a huge difference.

PK: There are some humanitarian concerns for Basra, isn't that so?

CL: Yes the area is very poor and a lot of the people were coming up to us
asking for water and for food. Now I know that President Bush yesterday
promised that humanitarian aid would start within 36 hours. It's very
difficult to see how that could be so because they still haven't secured the
port of Umm Qasr right on the border which the aid needs to come through.

PK: And how great is the resistance at Umm Qasr?

CL: Well it's quite astonishing. We were first told on Thursday night that
Umm Qasr had fallen. It's a small place, right, just across the border and I
think now nine times we've been told that it's fallen and in fact it still
hasn't. And certainly when I was in the area yesterday the road between the
border and Umm Qasr is not secured and it was not possible to get even up
near the town so they really don't seem to control anything in that whole
southern area at the moment.

PK: I suppose though that it's very difficult of being sure of holding an
area when you can't venture out into the hinterland for fear of being shot
by snipers. So unless they bring massive air power to bear on this kind of
thing they can never be sure, can they?

CL: No, it is very difficult, I mean this whole strategy of trying to do
this with minimum interference with civilians and with daily life means it
is very difficult and they keep saying they're 'securing' places, but
they're not actually 'safe'. But I think there's no doubt they never
expected this kind of resistance in that area, and we've just been told
today that even Safwan, which is right on the border, it's the kind of place
you go to if you want to enter Iraq; a lot of... 50 journalists that were on
the other side have all been cleared out today. They were told that they
were going to be ambushed, and that there were people in Safwan saying they
were going to kill Western journalists. Now this could be propaganda from
the US military becaue they don't like having us so-called unilaterals
(non-embedded journalists independent of military oversight) inside
covering, they want just the embedded people because they're giving a more
positive side, because they're with the troops that are going through on the
way to Baghdad, and they're not out in the streets or out in the countryside
seeing what's actually happening there. So, it's difficult to know if that's
true, but there's certainly a very hostile feeling in the area.

PK: Now the humanitarian problems in Basra. There were some claims that
utilities in Basra had been targetted by the coalition but [UK
defense minister] Geoff Hoon denied that, he actually said 'I'm concerned
that the Iraqi authorities are inflicted harm on their own people'.

CL: Well it's very difficult to know. As I say everyone kept asking us for
water, saying they hadn't got water so it does seem that the water supply
has been interfered with. Now who has done that, it's hard for us to know.

PK: Because it would suit the propaganda aims of Saddam's regime to say the
allies were inflicting this kind of punishment on the population, but
equally it could happen that as Basra was bombed, allied missiles did affect
the utilities.

CL: Yes, there's an awful lot of propaganda. We're seeing on the ground that
an awful lot of what's coming out of Washington and London is complete lies
and doesn't bear any relation to reality on the ground, just the same way as
what's coming out of Baghdad, so it's very hard to know.

[snip... the interview goes on to discuss why there were expectations for an
early end to the war etc] 

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