Will Robb Photography

Spring 2006

Arriving in Iraq was bizarre. Everything seemed turned backwards and was just fucked up.

I arrived at the airport after a short and extremely expensive flight from Jordan. 4500 dollars for a 45 minute flight on a small plane with a handful of rich locals and the rest were security guys accompanying a business client who looked like he was going to shit in his pants. Can’t blame him, sometime the planes get shot down. The plane was a heap, there was no service to speak of, the price was danger money for the pilot. Doing it in and out the once or twice is bad enough, can’t imagine doing it twice a week, it must just fuck up your nerves.

“Baghdad has to much red tape, you won’t get in” my contact in Iraq told me. “Come in overground from Turkey through the mountains with a guy I know or fly into Irbil and bribe the staff” he advised. Heavy rains washed out the roads, my decision was made for me. Take the expensive flight. Some people who had never been to Iraq told me “Irbil is safe, it’s in the North.” I presumed the people telling me this were not aware of the large car bomb which killed more than 100 people a few months before I arrived and the spate of kidnappings and be-headings that was rife in the area. As the plane circled at high altitude waiting for a safe window to land I wondered what I was doing. Will we get to the ground safely? Will I get through the next month and get back on the plane out of here? Will the guy in the back shit his pants?

Then we landed, everything went fine. No surface-to-air missiles, not shitting of pants, just me and the other passengers quickly shoved off the plane to collect our gear from the tarmac as the plane quickly refueled and got away….did the pilot know something I didn’t? What’s the rush, it didn’t seem too bad…yet. The airstrip was new, looked well kept, nothing much surrounding it. Heck, not half as bad as I thought, I’d been in much worse airstrips than this.

There I was, last in a queue in the airport. The guy with the security who didn’t shit in his pants was quickly ushered through customs with his entourage, maybe he did have some kind of accident I wasn’t aware of? I’m stuck with the locals as usual, my fault for being on a self funded mission. I didn’t have any buyers lined up for stories or photos, I just had the chance to get there and I looked into it and made some arrangements to make sure I had somewhere to stay and people I could photograph and I was happy enough with that. I had been introduced through a friend to a British guy who worked for a Swedish charity called Qandil dealing with refugees. He had assured me a semi-safe place to stay and access to refugee camps and an introduction to the guys digging up the mines that littered Iraq. Enough for me to jump on a plane and get there. My contact told me he would come with his security guys to get me at the airport. Sweet.

There’s lots of shouting going on up front. A guy I am standing behind tells me some people don’t have a visa so they are being refused entry. “Fuck I don’t have one either” I think. I took a 35 hour trip from Tokyo to Jordan via a 23 hour stop over in Moscow where I slept on newspaper on the floor and then used my life savings to get me into this country. If I got refused entry, it would have all been for nothing.

It comes my turn.

“Passport and papers please.” I hand over my passport and a letter of introduction from the charity to tell them I am there to take photographs for them and I will be staying with them.
“OK, visa please.”
“I don’t have a visa”
“Get on the next plane back to Jordan then. You must buy one there from the embassy. If you get one you can come back”
“Can I speak to someone else about this? Where’s your supervisor? This charity has invested a lot into me getting here (I lied) and they will be pissed if I have to go away and come back.”

The supervisor comes, I explain again that I have to get in, people are waiting for me, if I don’t meet them there will be trouble, they are doing most of the humanitarian work in the area and you don’t want to piss them off. I was desperate and the lies started to flow naturally. I began to believe them myself. The supervisor looks at me sternly and pauses.
“No visa, no entry” he repeats.

Last chance for me. I lean across the table and ask him gently, “how much will it cost to get a visa here?”
He smiles. “100 dollars US.”

YES, I’m in. Bargain bribe as well, I would have paid a lot more, but now I am in and I’m through customs, just have to find my contact, shouldn’t be hard, not many foreign Nationals….none waiting either. Shit, wonder if something is up?

“Mr. William?” a smiling young Iraqi with a muscular build man says to me.
“Yes I reply.”
“I’ve been sent to pick you up?”
“I was expecting my British contact?”
“He’s busy.”
“He said he would come and I wasn’t to go with anyone else!”
“Something important came up and he sent me, so I will take you to him.”

The guy looked OK, my instincts said he was OK, but I was new to the whole Iraq thing. If I trusted him and he was OK, no problem, I’d be somewhere nice having sweet tea and cookies in 30 minutes, but if I was wrong, I could be getting tortured for a while before they realized I wasn’t anyone important and no one would be paying a ransom for me and then in the orange jump suit having my head cut off for political reasons.

I asked a few questions to the guy about the charity and he answered correctly without having to think. I didn’t have any other options, there’s no taxis, buses or train to town. So, I followed the guy out to a nice big Toyota 4×4 parked outside with an older fatter man with graying hair at the wheel. I get in and the car shoots off throwing me back into the seat and we speed for 500 meters towards the perimeter before the driver slams on the breaks and we skid to a halt outside a hut. The younger of the 2 men runs out as the older man who doesn’t speak any English smiles at me and says something I don’t understand. I begin to worry a bit. The younger man comes back to the car with 2 AK-47’s and 3 pistols, hands a rifle and pistol to the driver and he keeps a pistol on his lap and straps one to his waist and cradles the AK-47 in his arms. Both lock and load all their weapons, the security gates open, the driver slams his foot on the accelerator and we speed out of there like we are in a movie or something. Cold sweat starts to trickle down my neck, have I made the right choice? Sweet tea or jump suits? Please let it be the tea, please let it be the tea.

We reach the road and make a sharp right not really giving a shit about the other traffic. The road is a mess, just dirt, full of pot-holes and puddles. Traffic consists of high end 4×4s, pickups full of men in balaclavas holding a vast array of weaponry and by the side of the street packs of dogs were ripping the last morsels out of a dead donkey that lay mangled in a heap. I felt my heart sinking deeper and deeper. It was just weird, like nothing I had experienced, like nothing I had expected.

We drove past a U.N compound, the younger of 2 men jovially points out the scorch marks where insurgents had launched rocket attacks.
“The UN people are scared to come out he says” so they just give the local handlers money to assess the refugee camps. It’s only people in our group and other independent groups who go out and see with their own eyes what goes on, tomorrow we take you too.”

I start to feel better. I’m sure the guys I am with are OK, I start to get used to my new surroundings. I start to feel a bit of a buzz, the fear has given way to adrenalin and I am getting giddy like a kid on the way to a fairground. I get 2 cameras out my bag and start to load them with film, one B&W, one colour and I start to take shots. There is a big South Korean military presence. They sit at junctions, why I am not sure. The vehicle has a cracked windshield. It makes a good frame for the military vehicle.

As we approach town the the traffic starts to slow. We are approaching a checkpoint to have our ids checked. It’s something I came to hate over my time there. In checkpoints you are exposed, boxed in by other vehicles. Later I found out this is the most likely place to be blown up by a car bomb. It does the most damage to the most people. Also, if someone in another vehicle doesn’t like you, it’s easy to shoot you. As we sat in the queue a pick up draws up next to us full of heavily armed men in the cab and sat on the back. They are checking out all the cars. I know I shouldn’t look at them, but I can’t help it. One of the guys looks at me and smiles. “You American?” he asks and I quickly shake my head. “Good” he replies. All the time the guys sitting in front of me are looking ath the pickup with guns pointed at them below door level. We stay stationary and let the pick-up draw in front of us. My young minder in the front looks at me smiling and says “if you said you were American they would have shot you.” He just spits it out casually like he’s talking about the weather. Another reminder for me to stop getting giddy, I’m just here, I don’t know the lay of the land, I don’t know how much I can just shoot or make eye contact. Still got a lot to learn. Learn to fear the checkpoints. They freaked me out, always too many people pointing guns whilst kids darted in amongst them trying to sell sweets or tissues or some none essential item to the people in the cars. Often they were sent scuttling with a slap round the head. Rough being a kid there.

Soon we are in town and pulling into a compound where the charity has its offices. First we have to pause outside to do a sweep for bombs. Sometimes they get attached at the checkpoints. As we sit and a security guard walks round the vehicle with a mirror to check the under carriage a car draws up behind us and the guys sitting in front of me are out of the car like a flash with their guns in hands before I know what is going on. Just someone looking for directions. He gets them and goes on his way. It seems the guys looking after me really know what they are doing. Sharp as razors and they don’t fly off the handle. Traits they showed throughout my stay. I was glad they were looking after me.

I go to meet some of the staff member in their offices, got to see them doing their thing and then we headed off to another part of town. We drove towards a heavily fortified compound and I was told it was for the foreign workers in the area….then we kept driving past to a regular suburb. I would be staying in a regular house on a regular street. There were guards at the end of the street and guards across the street from our house. Not quite a security compound, but enough to help you sleep with ease.

Power wasn’t reliable in Iraq, it kept cutting out. Our house had a generator and 24 hour power. We had a fridge and TV, luxury items many of the locals didn’t. I’d arrived, I got to where I was supposed to be safely and I was beginning the biggest journey of my life. After an emotional roller coaster of a day I was ready to sit down in front of the TV to watch the news with a cup of sweet tea. Outside the guards sat in their hut in front of their TV with a heater and an AK-47 for company. I definitely would sleep safe.