Hotel Palestine, Baghdad, by Satish Jacob, Roli Books, New Delhi 2003.
Mannika Chopra
As long as there are wars there will be books written by journalists who have covered them. And so Gulf War Two has produced its expected share of tomes over the past month, ranging from New York Times` John F.Burns` account; Embedded; CBS correspondent`s Dan Rather`s version, America at War: The Battle for Baghdad, a Reuter`s Books publication, 31 Days to Baghdad to our very own Satish Jacob, author of Hotel Palestine, Baghdad. Jacob, the book jacket tells us in a practically illegible micro font, was the only Indian correspondent in Baghdad during the US led war.
One would think that the media`s extensive coverage of Operation Freedom or Operation Shock and Awe as Jacob says would have lead to war fatigue amongst the public but if anything it only stimulated appetites, proving the adage that the more you know the more you want to know.
As newspaper readers and television audiences we cherish unvarnished news coverage for its immediacy but as readers we turn to books for new insights, perspectives with the benefit of hindsight and greater details. After ploughing through pages and pages on various aspects of the same subject, we realize how inadequately we understood the whole event. We become aware how journalists reporting on the spot during the war could not possibly have given us a complete picture because they were either dependent on strict government rules, hindered by deadlines or held back by mundane necessities like not having enough money, as Jacob was, and thus not having easy access to filing reports.
By that standard then Jacob`s book falls a little short of expectations. It is not a bitter, sardonic expose full of hindsight about how wars should get covered by a salivating media. Neither is it a chronicle of how war impacts a city and its people. But then it is not supposed to be. The book, as it says clearly in a subhead is, Pages From A War Diary. A simple, unostentatious, account of Jacob`s three weeks in Iraq and the situation that made reporting difficult: Illogical guidelines issued by an antsy Iraqi government; an undercover surveillance system which lead to 52 journalists including those from CNN being asked to leave. Ironically, all the officially deputed `minders` did not do their job effectively. Often times they befriended the media and became sometimes the only way to access information or to get out of tricky, critical situations. Jacob and his cameraperson, Nuh Nizami,closely escaped being thrown out of Iraq twice because of a friendly `minder.`
In many ways the diary is a humble and humane account without the bravado and swagger one comes to expect of wartime coverage. Through Jacob`s log we get a taste of America`s misconceived sense of righteousness. In between, the hardboiled reportage, he does divulge how this war, as is true with any war, is always full of horror stories no matter which flag you are cheering for. Vignettes of crushed Iraqis, bombarded houses, lack of basic amenities assault the reader but more significantly, as Jacob and Nizami are waiting for the war to erupt he gives us a taste of how rich the culture of Iraq is through its history and religion and how that past has been woven into the fabric of its times.
Apart from America`s sense of egotism, posterity will recognize Gulf War Two for coining a new military verb: embedded. Because Jacob was reporting for Third Eye Communications, a Delhi-based production house, that tied up with Doordarshan, he wasn`t part of the embedded corp.`s of journalists that formed a larger part of the media stationed in Iraq. His account then is more independent. But by writing about the presence of such reporters Jacob, Mr. Outside, does apply some kind of value judgment and ends up looking a little virtuous and wide eyed. At the same time, Jacob recognises that embedded journalists, the Mr. Insides, are a professional phenomenon that is here to stay.
Some reporters were so swept up by the camaraderie that existed in the military unit they were attached to that that they became part of the armed forces instead of neutral hard-headed, objective professionals they were supposed to be. Though Jacob doesn`t say so, he does suggest that some journalists who were wearing the embedded badge couldn`t cover a fire even if it started in their pants.
This is the first global war that used embedded journalists officially but it certainly won`t be the last. For the media this was a high price to pay for covering a one-sided contest. A far higher price was the death of 16 journalists who died in the conflict through direct or indirect assaults.
Essentially the embedded and the non-embedded reporters were actually fighting over the same morsel of information, the same exclusive shots. The nerve centre for all news gathering activity was the Coalition Force`s Media Centre, a Hollywood monstrosity in Doha that put Ramaji Rao`s Hyderbad Film City to shame.
Probably because the book`s publishers, Roli, were keen to see it in the market before public interest in the war lost its edge, the book is peppered with some typos and editing potholes. The photographs that occupy 16 pages also look sterile, almost fat-free and don`t really give us a visual sense of what the book is all about. Neither does the picture on the cover, which is supposed to be a visual of a bombed out Baghad but ends up looking like a blurred touristy postcard instead.