The writer, Michael Kamber, feels that some of his meaning may have been lost in the editing process. There is an addendum by him at the end of this blog post.Namir Noor-Eldeen stood out among a gifted group of young Iraqi photojournalists who emerged from the war. His well-composed photographs showed his natural sense of color, and his gift for capturing the dramatic moment.
His death, in 2007, is now at the center of a public controversy over whether the American helicopter pilots who shot him acted properly — or callously. On Monday, WikiLeaks.org, released a classified military video documenting the shooting of Namir, his driver, Saeed Chmagh, and 10 others in Baghdad.
I knew them both, though not well. Namir was not a friend, but I covered Iraq in 2007 and occasionally saw him at the scenes of bombings around Baghdad.
At the time, The New York Times shared a compound with several news organizations, including Reuters, where I had many friends. There were only a handful of photographers in Iraq by then, and Namir had a friendly smile and a wave whenever we crossed paths.
Namir made his name with harrowing photos of the insurgency in the northern city of Mosul in 2006, when it was among the most dangerous places in Iraq. His photo of a masked insurgent carrying a looted bulletproof vest marked “Police” in large letters, was one of the seminal images of the war — a single photo that captured Iraq’s descent into chaos and the inability of the Iraqi and American governments to protect resources, or pretty much anything else at that point.
Namir repeatedly got to the scene of attacks while vehicles and buildings still billowed flames and bodies lay in the street. The danger in such coverage is hard to express in words: firefights broke out spontaneously, unseen snipers fired on civilians at will, insurgents killed journalists who they accused of working for the “Western invaders.” And the American forces — sometimes invisible a mile or more away — fired through thermal sights at individuals they believed to be insurgents as they gathered around damaged coalition vehicles in the midst of a combat zone.
Namir Noor-Eldeen
Khalid Mohammed/Associated Press
Namir was 21 years old when he did his groundbreaking work in Mosul. By the age of 22, he had seen as much death as many hardened combat veterans. As threats against his life mounted — from Iraqi insurgents unhappy with the truths his photos revealed — Reuters moved him to Baghdad for his own security. There, he quickly became one of the most beloved members of the Reuters staff, a cheerful, funny, smart young man who loved motorcycles, staff members recall.
On July 12, 2007, Namir set out with Saeed, his driver, to do a story on weightlifting. Hearing of nearby violence, he changed routes and went to the neighborhood of New Baghdad, where fighting was taking place.
I don’t know what the rules of engagement were that day. The military says that the soldiers acted properly. In reality, the rule in Iraq and in most wars is to kill the enemy (usually at extremely long distance, by remote control) before he kills you.
I have been in situations where soldiers are making quick decision in chaos. I was in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle at 2 a.m. one night in Baghdad in 2004. The gunner was looking through a thermal sight at two men carrying a small box — they were 10 football fields away and they neither saw nor heard the Bradley. The men set the box down in the street. Was there a wire coming out of the box? Was it an I.E.D.? The gunner thought he saw one. He received permission to fire, adjusted a joystick and riddled the two men with canon fire. Then he went back to his room and played video games in which he shot small figures on a screen.
If the two men had successfully planted an I.E.D. in the road that night, they might have blown to pieces a Humvee full of Americans.
So in the 2007 video, did the pilots set out to willfully kill journalists and innocent civilians? Based on years of working closely with American troops, I have to say, of course not.
Many times I’ve seen American troops go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. No doubt the pilots would have held fire had they realized they were killing journalists. Still, the video shows the wanton killing of a group of at least a dozen Iraqis. Two children were shot as well.
There is a certain amount of chaos in war. I photographed insurgents a few times in Baghdad and in Karbala in 2003, 2004 and 2007. (My colleague Joao Silva photographed many more). Some days, gunfire and explosions echoed off the buildings, the buzz of drones and the thud thud of choppers came to us through the distance. We glanced around corners and glimpsed hazy figures, four or five football fields away, rush across an alleyway.
Who were they, who was firing at whom, where was the gunfire coming from? Sometimes there were many gunman around us, sometimes a group of onlookers, sometimes even kids. Were they all insurgents? Sympathizers? I never knew. Was it Sunni vs. Shia? Shia vs. Shia? Iraqi vs. American?
It is unclear why, despite Freedom of Information Act requests from Reuters, the United States military refused to release this footage previously, or why it has not released footage in other incidents of accidental killings of journalists by American troops. The Pentagon has repeatedly said the footage was classified, but there appears to be nothing secret about this video — it differs little from numerous videos one can find on YouTube.
If these videos were released, a bipartisan committee could study them and possibly recommend steps to prevent these killings in the future. Based on this incident, helicopter pilots should, at a minimum, be briefed on the presence of photojournalists with zoom lenses in their field of fire.
To the apparent amusement of the pilots, shortly after the killings, a United States armored vehicle runs over a body lying in the middle of a trash heap, a body that is probably Namir’s. I interviewed Mohammed Ameen recently, another Reuters photographer and one of Namir’s closest friends. “We would lie awake at night in this room,” he told me. “We talked about photography and what we would do after the war. Namir was good, he was a kind man, he was brave.”
Mohammed told me of searching the hospitals of Baghdad for Namir, of finding his body in a dilapidated morgue with no electricity, of packing Namir’s body with ice to preserve it until the coming funeral. This is some small decency, some small tribute to the bravery of Namir, a photojournalist who routinely risked his life to bring the reality of the Iraq war home to readers. If the leaked video of Namir’s death shocks some, it is partly because there were not enough photographers as brave as Namir showing us the real war in Iraq.
• • •n Addendum |
Watching the gunner track Namir and Saeed is extremely disturbing. Listening to the helicopter pilots revel in the deaths of what turned out to be brave journalists is blood curdling.
The United States military initially explained that the killing happened during a firefight. The video shows that in the minutes before the pilots opened fire on the Reuters journalists, there is no fighting going on in the immediate area (though there had been earlier firefights nearby). The men walk through the streets in a relaxed manner — none are rushing for cover as we did during firefights in Baghdad. The pilot apparently mistook Namir’s camera (approximately 14 inches long with a 70-200 zoom lens) with a rocket-propelled grenade, which is nearly four feet long when loaded. These may be honest mistakes, but they have grave consequences.
Perhaps most controversial is the killing of the wounded Reuters driver Saeed Chmagh minutes after the initial round of killing. A van arrives at the scene and unarmed men try to load the wounded Saeed into the vehicle. Despite the absence of guns or any offensive threat, the helicopter pilots riddle the van with canon fire, killing Saeed and the good Samaritans, and wounding children who turned out to be in the van’s front seat.
Kevin
Young, who was a National Book Award finalist for his poetry
collection Jelly Roll, was thrilled
to win the Prize. “Words can’t describe how elated I was upon hearing that I
had won the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize for The
Grey Album, the mash-up of music, literature, and lying I have been working
on for more years than I care to admit. I’m all the more excited to appear on
such a distinguished list, and hope to do the prize—and my subject—justice.” 
