The Circuit (18 page)

As a fly on the wall during most of the documentary’s filming, I was able to form my own opinions of what was really happening in Iraq and, more importantly, where the situation was headed. My views didn’t at all reflect the optimistic scenarios touted by the White House and Downing Street at the time. Neither did Nic’s documentary, which fearlessly broke ranks with the buoyant reporting of most major American news outlets.

The Iraq war was nearing its first anniversary and the country was tipping into a downward spiral. For CNN, covering the nation’s descent into chaos had gone from impartial to personal. While I was looking after Nic in Kurdistan, a CNN convoy was ambushed on the outskirts of Baghdad. A British cameraman was wounded and two Iraqi CNN employees were killed in the attack including Yasir, the bright young driver who’d taken the job with CNN to pay for his education. I was gutted when I heard the news.

The hazards for security advisers operating in Iraq were falling into a pecking order. Top of the list was running convoys for the military. A close second was driving clients around Baghdad.

Road congestion in the Iraqi capital, as I’d learned during that first run to the Green Zone, was a huge security issue. Get stuck in traffic or take a wrong turn and you could be escorting your client home in a body bag. That’s why, even before I left for Baghdad, I started learning the road systems. By the end of my first week, I practically knew my way around blindfolded. No road could be deemed safe, but some were definitely more dangerous than others. At the start of 2004, the worst was the twelve-kilometre stretch of highway leading from the Green Zone to Baghdad International Airport. As an MSR for the US military, the airport road was a hornets’ nest of insurgent activity. It wasn’t uncommon for multiple attacks to happen there in a single day.

With flying fast becoming the preferred mode of transport in and out of Baghdad, driving on the airport road was unavoidable. My fellow advisers and I would make several runs a week to drop off and collect CNN staffers. There were also occasions when the story required a trip to and from the airport – stories like the plight of Baka Ali Hussein.

After Nic wrapped filming on his documentary, I was assigned to look after Brent Sadler, a highly experienced CNN Middle East correspondent. One of the stories Brent was working on was an update of a report he’d filed right after the US-led invasion. Brent’s original report focused on Baka Ali Hussein, a four-year-old Iraqi boy who’d been accidentally shot in the head by US troops. Though he survived the attack, the bullet wedged into the base of Hussein’s skull affecting his ability to walk and speak. The only hope for the wee lad was a specialist operation which he couldn’t get in Baghdad.

Brent’s first report on Baka Ali Hussein was heart-wrenching; the kind of human interest story that normally gets a response from viewers – and it did. After the story aired, Greek authorities offered to fly Hussein to Athens for medical treatment. Seven months later, the young boy was on the mend and ready to return to his family. The Greek Ambassador to Iraq invited Brent to accompany him to the airport to film the homecoming.

Since we’d be travelling on the airport road, I insisted on the same two-vehicle convoy configuration I’d used for Nic’s trip to Samarra; Brent and his cameraman would travel in the lead vehicle while I would ride in the backing vehicle with an Iraqi driver.

Our first stop was an area I knew well: the al-Mansoor district where the Greek Ambassador kept his residence. Favoured by foreign diplomats and wealthy Iraqis such as Sharif Ali bin Hussein, al-Mansoor was a target-rich environment for insurgents and kidnappers looking to score big ransoms.

Despite all that I’d seen in Iraq, I thought surely security at the ambassador’s residence would be airtight. Not so. We drove right into the compound without being stopped or searched. Imagine if we’d been suicide bombers. We parked up and an armed man – a westerner – walked over. He was tall, clean shaven and carried himself like a Rupert.

I dismounted my vehicle and introduced myself.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked. His accent was English, public school.

I explained that we were with CNN and had been invited to accompany the ambassador to the airport. The man said he’d been expecting us and that we would be joining the ambassador’s convoy.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked.

‘Scotland.’

He laughed. ‘I meant what’s your background?’

‘I served in the British Army.’

‘What unit?’

‘I had twenty years in Hereford,’ I replied. It was not a cryptic response. Anyone with a military background would know I was referring to the Regiment.

‘What about you?’ I asked.

‘I was a Captain in the Royal Logistic Corps,’ he said.

I was right. He was a Rupert. What I couldn’t understand though was why he was working Close Protection for a senior diplomat. The Royal Logistic Corps teaches great skills for moving large numbers of men, materials and equipment around a war zone but it has no bearing whatsoever on CP work. A better military background for a team leader in Close Protection is ex-Special Forces or ex-Royal Military Police trained in CP (the Royal Military Police have always had good liaison with the SAS on the subject of Close Protection).

‘How did you get into CP work?’ I asked.

‘The company I work for prefers my kind of background,’ he said. ‘All my men are ex-Royal Logistic Corps.’

‘That’s all well and good but what do you know about Close Protection?’ I asked.

‘We’ve all read up on it. We know what we’re doing,’ he assured me.

I had never heard of an adviser’s CP training consisting solely of ‘reading up’ on the subject. What seemed even more shocking to me, though, was that his client, an ambassador, hadn’t been given a top-of-the-line team. Of all the individuals requiring Close Protection in Iraq, you’d think diplomats would be assigned only the most experienced advisers.

The way in which the CP team approached their task struck me as extremely laid back, to put it mildly. Not only did they allow us to drive right up to the ambassador’s residence without so much as flashing a credential, but the armoured vehicles for the ambassador’s convoy were sitting empty on the street twenty minutes before our scheduled departure.

‘Where are your men?’ I asked the Rupert.

‘Out back having a brew and cigarette,’ he said.

Those vehicles should have been manned well in advance of the ambassador’s departure. A CP team needs to be at the ready at least thirty minutes before a client undertakes a journey in a hostile environment. The Logistic Corps lads should have been in their vehicles ensuring they were serviceable and observing the area for signs of possible surveillance.

Twenty minutes later the ambassador emerged from his residence and climbed into his vehicle, a large blue 4x4 with a big Greek flag stuck on the back window. Why his CP team would want to advertise the ambassador’s identity was a mystery to me. When I looked at that sticker, I didn’t see a flag. I saw a target. Had the ambassador been my client, I would have insisted the flag be removed.

The convoy consisted of six vehicles including ours. Once the ambassador was in position, I slipped our 4x4s behind his backing vehicle. That put Brent’s vehicle in position 4 and mine in position 5.

The convoy cleared al-Mansoor without a problem and headed towards the airport road. Everything was going like clockwork as we turned onto a slip road connecting to a flyover. Then it all went pear-shaped. Vehicle 1, containing members of the ambassador’s security detail, missed the turn-off for the flyover and continued down the slip road. At first I thought they’d done it intentionally. I waited for someone to radio with news that the trip to the airport had been aborted.

The radios were silent.

Then, to my utter amazement, vehicle 2 – the ambassador’s vehicle – took the flyover straight onto the airport road, while vehicle 3, his backing vehicle, missed the turn-off. The ambassador was driving on the airport road unaccompanied! I radioed ahead to Brent’s vehicle and instructed the driver to follow the ambassador and told them I’d be right behind.

As my vehicle turned onto the flyover I looked in the rear view mirror to see if vehicle 6 was on the ball. It wasn’t. Vehicle 6 missed the turn-off as well and continued right on down the slip road. It was The Circuit’s version of a comedy of errors; the Greek Ambassador was driving on the most dangerous road in all of Iraq and his CP team was nowhere to be found.

My Iraqi driver burst out laughing – and I must admit, so did I, though my amusement was mixed with embarrassment over the fact that the CP team was British.

It was a farcical situation but my giggle was short lived. When we got within a mile of the airport, traffic on the highway slowed; a US military patrol had been hit by an IED and soldiers were working furiously to clear the road. The attack reminded me of the drive to Samarra; I scanned the area to see if the insurgents who’d detonated the IED were waiting to launch a follow-up attack with small-arms fire. The US military patrol’s misfortune turned out to be a lucky break for the Royal Logistic lads. It gave them a chance to catch up with their client.

When we got to the airport, the Rupert in charge of the ambassador’s CP team pulled me aside.

‘All these fucking roads in Baghdad look alike,’ he said, searching my face for some sort of confirmation that this was a legitimate reason for his blunder.

He wasn’t a bad lad, but there was no excusing his actions. You don’t lose your client in a hostile environment.

‘Don’t you and your men use spotted maps?’ I asked.

‘What’s a spotted map?’ asked the Rupert.

Spotted maps are a basic tool of the CP trade. They mark locations using an encrypted system. In my opinion, they are an indispensable navigation tool in any environment, especially if you have to give your location out over unsecured communications lines. They also eliminate the need to memorize foreign street names. Spotted maps aside, at the very least the team should have done a dry run ahead of time.

‘Didn’t you recce the route before taking your client out?’ I asked.

‘We don’t have time for recces,’ said the Rupert.

That was no kind of answer. You make the time.

The airport was well secured so I was fine with staying off to one side and letting Brent and his crew get on with it.

While they were filming, I had a word with another member of the ambassador’s CP team, a lad in his late thirties. He’d been on The Circuit less than a month. When I asked him what he did before taking up CP work, he told me he’d been working in Manchester as a social worker for the past nine years after retiring from the Royal Logistic Corps.

The ambassador’s CP team were well meaning, but neither their military nor civilian backgrounds had prepared them to look after a diplomat in a hostile environment or indeed any other environment. Ultimately, I didn’t blame them for accepting the assignment. At that point in time, The Circuit was paying advisers in Iraq on average between £300 and £500 per day; an eye-popping sum for most ex-military lads, Ruperts included. The fault in my opinion lay firmly with the team’s managers back in the UK. They were the ones responsible for ensuring that the advisers dispatched to Iraq had the backgrounds and skills to execute, amongst other things, a competent vehicle move. Instead, they sent a team who lost their client on the most dangerous road in the country.

It was another sad day for The Circuit in Iraq. For Baka Ali Hussein, however, things were looking up. As I watched him leave the aircraft, it was obvious the wee boy had been through hell; his head was shaved and there was a huge scar across his skull. One of his eyes was slightly askew as a result of his injuries. But he was a strong little character. He was full of energy as he walked completely unaided off the aircraft and into the terminal where members of his family and the Greek ambassador were waiting to greet him.

It was a very emotional scene. Hussein hugged and kissed the ambassador and Brent, whom he thanked again and again. The boy’s family couldn’t stop crying and expressing their gratitude. In a city of despair, it was nice to see people crying tears of joy for a change.

It was the only happy ending I would ever see in Baghdad.

CHAPTER 18

‘We’ll be landing in Kabul, inshahallah, at ten-thirty local time,’ said the air hostess. I braced myself for a nail-biting journey. Even if I were religious, the Arabic for ‘God willing’ isn’t what I want to hear right before take-off.

It was April 2004 and I’d signed on for another turn with AKE looking after CNN’s Nic Robertson while he filmed a documentary – this time in Afghanistan. I’d met up with Nic and his crew in Islamabad for the short flight to Kabul. Not having been to Afghanistan I was very excited about the assignment. Getting there was another matter.

You’d think, given the miles I’ve flown in my adult life, that I’d be as comfortable on an aeroplane as I am in my own home. Not so. When I was a nineteen-year-old soldier in the RAF Regiment Parachute Squadron, a C-130 on a routine maintenance flight crashed in a wood six hundred yards from me. I still remember, clear as day, the huge fireball shooting up from the treetops and the overwhelming smell of aviation fuel. I ran to the site to try and help, but electrical explosions were erupting everywhere and I couldn’t get near the centre of the crash. All I could see was the broken tail fin, pieces of fuselage and body parts strewn across the woods.

Though I went on to make hundreds of parachute jumps when I was in the military, I never forgot the horror of that C-130 crash. To this day I have to summon all my courage before boarding a plane, even in good conditions – which are rare when flying into Kabul, especially the final part. Kabul sits in a bowl surrounded by mountain ranges and the currents flowing over them can toss an aeroplane like a child in a bouncy castle.

The first twenty minutes of our flight were smooth. Then the plane started shaking violently. With every jolt my fingers gouged the armrests. I practically clawed through to the seat frame when I looked out the window; the wings of our aircraft appeared to be inches from the snowy peaks of the southern Hindu Kush Mountains.