Chapter Three

Iraqi Border to Baghdad

We eventually reached the Iraqi border post of Trebil and entered the VIP lounge where we went through the formalities. It induced a tightening of the stomach muscles and an intense consciousness of increased awareness that remained both consciously and subconsciously while I stayed in Saddam’s territory. These people meant business as they examined my papers and interrogated me. I was very conscious of the heavies in their dark suits as they stood at each doorway with their hands clasped in front of them. Hassan nonchalantly passed the customs officer the crate of Pepsi. The customs officer put it to one side. It would eventually find its way back to the shopkeeper – for a price, where it would begin the cycle anew. My laptop was removed for examination, the luggage was minutely checked and all my papers were taken away.

I waited in the VIP lounge itself that made an uncompromising statement that the Iraqis did not bother to impress any visitor. There was an air of brooding menace about the place. For all the world it reminded me of the post-War films as escaped POWs waited on German railway station platforms as they tried to ignore the stares of nearby Gestapo operatives. Take us as you find us the place seemed to proclaim. I admired a large photo of Saddam that occupied one complete wall. In this one he was developing the beginning of a double chin. On a later trip I posed in front of it and asked a member of his secret police (the Mukhaberrak) to take my photo.

The sense of menace was especially acute when the handlers searched the luggage. The baggage handling was carried out just outside the room on the tarmac of the car park. This was a problem for the first few visits through the place. I was in the habit of bringing medicines for the Iraqi UN staff and small essential pieces of equipment for the electricity sector into Iraq. My stomach was knotted with tension as the searchers used to go through my baggage. However, this was before one knew who to bribe and with how much to make the operation easier. When money did not change hands the search was thorough. I had to surrender a Persian rug on an early trip but was able to reclaim it on a later trip to Baghdad and got it through later when I was in bribing mode. After an hour the papers were returned, stamped, and we were free to go. On one occasion the custom officials asked for baksheesh for opening my bags but Gaelic contrariness intervened and I told them to get lost. I refused to pay and departed amid some baleful stares. The crestfallen official immediately went to his boss and complained. As luck would have it I had given the boss a lift from Baghdad to the border. He looked over very annoyed but when he saw me gratitude struggled against venality and gratitude won. He signalled me through. I paid the few dinars without protest on my following trips.

In the post-Saddam era his portrait is replaced by the Lion of Babylon. The outline of Saddam’s image can just be discerned underneath. Sic transit Gloria Mundi.

Photo: Staff Sgt. Bryant Maude, US Military.

A feature of the place was the group of old Arab gentlemen that congregated outside the base with their hooded hunting falcons on their wrists. They must have been wandering Bedouin and the border post was a traditional meeting place for them.

Trebil-Baghdad Road. (The map is from the 2003 Special Reference Graphic Map of Iraq by NIMA.)

Hassan stopped at a filling station within the complex and filled the tank to the gunwales. We then eased out and roared down the fine Iraqi three-lane Highway No.10 through Al Anbar province to Baghdad. Due to the darkness there was little to see. We passed through the H3 Complex based on the H3 oil pumping station. It consists of a number of air bases grouped around the pumping station. Saddam used the area as a base remote from Iran to protect his air force and massed his most valuable jets there during the Iran-Iraq war. He also favoured it because of its nearness to Israel and stored large quantities of nerve gas in its warehouses.. For the same reason he quartered his Scud batteries in the area from where they would be capable of hitting Israel.

The Iranians decided they had to destroy the planes Saddam had hidden in the complex and made a daring attack on the 4th April 1981. Their F-4 Phantom fighters could not risk a direct attack through the middle of Iraq so they made a long detour over Iraq’s weakly defended northern border. They were refuelled twice during the long approach, once by Boeing 707s diverted from an Istanbul-Teheran commercial route and the second refuelling from Boeing 747s from Damascus airport. Saddam seemed to have few friends in the Islamic world at that time. The raid was a stunning success with about 30 Iraqi planes destroyed.

CIA plan of the 1981 raid.

This complex was targeted during the Gulf War as American pilots in their A-10s (Warthogs) from the Al Jouf air base just across the border in Northern Saudi Arabia took out the strategically very important Scud Missile Batteries. These were targeting all of Israel from there. I believe that the US and British Special Forces also operating out of Al Joub paid a fairly rowdy visit to this place also. Scuds were found abandoned all over Iraq particularly in Al Anbar province after the 2003 war and had to be collected and destroyed by the allies.

A US soldier secures an Iraqi missile to a truck when removing it from the site where it was discovered outside of Fallujah.

U.S. Army photo by Spc. Derek Gaines 26 June 2003.

As I journeyed through the area what little of my courage that remained would have evaporated had I known that the Al Walid air base within the H3 complex stored a large proportion of Saddam’s cache of R400 binary type nerve gas munitions. Some bombs filled with this agent had been hastily buried with mechanical diggers and a few had been damaged in the process and one, in fact, had burst. There is no guarantee but that one or two are still undiscovered and are corroding away in the desert sand ready to make their lethal reappearance at any time.

CIA photo of UNSCOM inspectors at Al Walid air base with some excavated bombs filled with the R400 binary type nerve gas agent. One of the bomb casing has burst.

Shortly after leaving the H3 complex in pitch darkness we came on a pick-up that had broken down and of course Hassan had to stop to help. I was not happy as I felt we could be shortly saying “Hallo sir” to the local version of Dick Turpin. (I had just come from Zambia and I had to drive near the Congo border where a civil war was raging. The rebels used to cross over to the Zambian side with a shopping list of 4x4 vehicles and their contents. My instructions there were to drive at 100mph and not stop for anything and this included police or even after causing a fatality.) There followed a period of loud exchanges and the clatter of hammers. I sat with motionless dignity in our car, now cold with the freezing desert night air, while the work proceeded. After an hour the racket ceased and we were on our way again with the melodious blessings ringing in our ears. Our final stop was at a trading post near Ramadi (capital of An Bar Governorate) for a cup of coffee and the usual reluctant visit to the facilities. This one was guarded by a lone, elderly attendant, who sat on the ground outside his charge. The stench was overpowering and conditions were extreme. Yet this poor individual had to sit out all night in the cold desert air to earn his grudgingly given miserable pittance.

Later that year in December I was in an UN Land Cruiser leading a convoy of three busloads of UN staff out of Iraq as we were ordered to leave the country due to President Clinton’s bombing campaign. We passed along this road and encountered many pick-ups loaded with armed volunteers on their way to cross swords with any Allied Special Forces they encountered in the desert. I was sorry for them as they crossed the sand in the dark, lightly armed against potential foes with body armour, night vision, heavily armed and the capability to summon ferocious air strikes to their aid. They were buoyed up with inculcated patriotism as they rode out to stop the crusaders (Western Armies) invading their country. They were not going out to battle for Saddam but to defend their ancient homeland with the ghosts of the victorious hosts of Saladahin riding at their side; this Iraqi mindset was never understood by the Allies. This area later became a very fertile region for Sunni insurgent activity and was frequently used by the insurgents as a base from which to attack aircraft approaching and departing Baghdad Airport with surface to air missiles.

Damaged DHL Air 300 cargo plane veers off the runway at Baghdad International Airport on 22/09/2003 on landing after it was hit by man held SAM.

Photo source: US GOV – Military.

These insurgents and their activities were no idle threat. On 22nd September 2004, a DHL Airbus 300 took off from Baghdad International Airport. Shortly afterwards it was struck on the left wing by a surface to air missile (SAM) that destroyed all the hydraulic controls and punctured the fuel tank. Heroically, the pilot managed to get a form of control by using the throttles of both engines to steer the plane in the manner of driving a tank. When he got the plane down at Baghdad it veered off the runway and its engines choked on sand and security fencing before it came to a stop.

In the later analysis of the attack it was obvious that the slow gradual climb of the plane to reach its allocated flying altitude was responsible for keeping the plane within the SAM range for too long. This type of climb was used to conserve fuel consumption. Thereafter it was ordered that all planes were to corkscrew their way up to an altitude safe from hand-held SAMs within the perimeters of their air base and so make them vulnerable to SAMs for a much shorter time.

Meanwhile back on the road with Hassan we sped on to our next town, Fallujah, that was to become another bastion of the Sunni triangle. A road led from our motorway to the King Faisal Bridge in the city that was later christened Blackwater Bridge by the Americans because of the four armed American Blackwater contractors who were beaten and burned and their mutilated bodies hung from the bridge. The efforts by the Americans, and their depleted uranium munitions, to retake the city resulted in many casualties and an aftermath according to the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, a leading medical journal, which shows the rates of cancer, infant mortality and leukaemia recorded in Fallujah exceed those reported in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

We then passed the prison of Abu Ghraib of torture and infamy on our left and finally reached Baghdad where we progressed through a number of military check-points on the deserted streets. There were no late-night revellers here and no fashionable shop windows brightened the still and dark streets. The final military checkpoint with its old fashioned brazier was left behind and we reached The Hotel Babylon. After some delay I got inside. It was four o’clock by my watch and the sky was still dark as I paid and bid a relieved farewell to Hassan. After reassuring him of his peerless driving prowess I went to my room on the 12th floor and tossed back a generous glass of Jack Daniels. I found it difficult to sleep from sheer exhaustion and lay back pondering on what on earth brought me to the most military saturated city on earth and placed myself at the mercy of a psychopathic dictator. I read later in one of the reputable travel books that the Baghdad Highway was the most dangerous in the world and warned travellers to be aware of the roving highwaymen.