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A FEW DAYS PRIOR to the raid, Sumner, eager to do things by the book, had contacted the World Arabian Horse Association and asked for specifics for transporting thoroughbred Arabian horses. They e-mailed him back an eight-page instruction booklet strictly outlining all the absolute essentials.
The booklet was an eye-opener. For amid the mayhem, dust, and anarchy, Brendan, Farah, and Sumner had barely managed to comply with even the simplest of the stipulated rules.
One rule, for instance, stated each horse should have a special breakaway rope so if it fell, it would not snap its neck. Brendan said that did cross his mind as he watched the first Arabian dangling from a rope with its leg through the rotten truck floor. There also was no mention in the rulebook on how to speed things up in case terrorists lobbed a grenade or two.
Like everything else, they had been forced to fly by the seat of their pants and ⦠well, just do it. The most important factor was that all the horses rescued in the mission survived; even the one with the injured leg recovered completely.
However, saving the horses wasn't the end of the saga. We suddenly had a serious fight on our hands to make sure they would be properly cared for in the future.
Although everyone agreed that the herd was a genetic gold mine and national asset, enthusiasm tended to diminish rapidly whenever the cost of their upkeep was mentioned.
Through Brendan's bullheaded persistence, the City Council eventually came to its senses, grasping these horses were not only an exquisite historical treasure but potential money spinners for the city as well. They now plan to set up a fully subsidized equestrian
program in Al Zawra Park using these magnificent animals as the prime attraction. Thankfully, the future of those seventeen horses whose lineage dates back to the Holy Land wars and who were rescued in a chaotic modern-day mission in the heart of the Abu Ghraib badlands now seems secured.
But where is the rest of the herd that is still unaccounted for? Perhaps they have been sold on the black market; perhaps they are doing menial work such as dragging carts in rural areas; perhaps they are being raced at the Abu Ghraib racecourse. We don't know.
However, at least some of the gene pool of this priceless Mesopotamian bloodline has been saved.
When I returned from America I spent some time with these magnificent creatures. It was an absolute privilege and I was completely entranced. They were so regal I had the urge to stand at attention in their presence; I imagined how many times Saddam, too, had stood admiringly in front of them.
While to the casual observer a thoroughbred Arab may look like any other horse, to those in the know these animals are kings of the equestrian world; muscular, tough, and as unyielding as the desert in which they were born. There is also a particular gleam in their eyesâthe windows to their wild spirit. You cannot help revering them as they effortlessly command respect.
To me the greatest thrill was knowing that against incredible odds we had found these noble creatures secreted away in an anarchic city. What began as an impossible dream had become a reality.
I also derived immense satisfaction in the fact that saving these horses was a huge victory for us, not only over vicious black-market thugs but also in doing something really worthwhile for the Iraqi people. This, after all, was their national herd a priceless asset steeped in the rich history of the region. If it had not been for us, the horses would have ended up scattered in various collectors' herds or being raced to death. Or even worse, being cruelly used as beasts of burden
Brendan, Sumner, and Farah later debriefed me on the raid and
the pernicious problems they had overcome. I looked at them and said one word: “
Unesibindi
.”
Only Brendan understood, as it was a Zulu saying. Directly translated it means “you have liver.”
In other words, great courage.
D
R. ADEL pulled me aside. His voice was urgent.
“Must speak with you.”
“What's the problem?”
“The people say Saddam's secret police are here. Mukhabarat.”
“What?”
I scanned the throng swarming at the zoo's gates, still dangling precariously on torn hinges. There was always a large, noisy crowd in the morning clamoring for work. Sometimes a few would be hired to do odd jobs for the day, cleaning cages or helping staff find donkeys for sale. One man in particular caught my eye: an Arab with pale skin and green-blue eyes, a genetic throwback to the Crusades, when soldiers from both sides raped and ransacked at will. But he certainly didn't look like a security cop on the run.
“People say Saddam's spies are going to places where Iraqis are working with Americans and threatening them with death.”
“Any of our people been threatened?”
Adel shook his head. “Not yet. We tell them we are working
with South Africans, not Americans. We say we are just interested in getting the zoo right.”
“Tell the staff to let me know if anyone is threatened.”
As I spoke, a volley of gunfire crackled at the far end of the street, scattering the civilians, who flattened themselves among the dusty mounds of bomb-blasted rubble still strewn carelessly around the park. This volley was followed by the deeper
thud-thud
of American M-16s returning fire.
We were standing beneath a towering bullet-chipped eucalyptus and glanced briefly over our shoulders to see if we should be worried.
Nah ⦠it was just the usual Baghdad boogie. There was always the sound of gunfire and explosions, every day, and it became part of our lives, most of it in the distance outside of the Green Zone but on occasions in the streets around the side of the park that were open to the Red Zone.
However, threats to Iraqis working within the system were an escalating problem, and Brendan, Sumner, and I were getting some idea of just how gutsy the zoo team was. One of the reasons we were able to travel relatively safely around Baghdad's Red Zones without the phalanxes of bodyguards that surrounded the growing number of Western civilians was because there was always someone from the zoo to vouch for us.
It was also thanks to Adel and Husham that the staff obeyed us unquestioningly. The two directors' unswerving support of the work Brendan and I were doing to keep the zoo functioning during those dire days was made plain to the Iraqis. They knew we were on their side.
For our part, we went out of our way to make friends and ally ourselves with the staff in particular and Iraqis in general. We thus managed to remain marginally separated from the conflict, emotionally if not physically. Well, as far as one could in a simmering war zone.
However, the threat of assassination or kidnapping by militants aimed at anyone even vaguely perceived to be assisting the coalition
government hung like a pall. In one case assassins broke into the home of a particularly courageous Iraqi logistics contractor who was working in the park just outside the zoo and shot her dead in front of her children.
Also, a few days before we heard these rumors about spies, a well-armed group of insurgents had sneaked past American troops in broad daylight and mounted a machine-gun attack on an amateur radio station in the park just a couple of hundred yards from the zoo, killing several people. The gunmen were apparently unhappy about the broadcast content, and this vicious shoot-out right next door scared the hell out of us. The radio staff knew Adel and regularly came over to the zoo for a chat, so we could be forgiven for getting a little paranoid when we heard that the attention had now turned to us.
Closer to home, on one occasion zoo staff were cooking lunch outside on open fires when a man walked up and without a word spit into the pot of stewing chicken. He sauntered off, leaving the animal caregivers too stunned to do or say anything.
An attack on our people was bound to happen; that we all knew. It came just days after Adel voiced fears about the Mukhabarat when a trainee animal supervisor, who for his own safety shall remain nameless, was savagely beaten and stabbed three times in the head one night at his home.
What was worse was that the knife wielders were his uncles, his mother's brothers, and we learned that it wasn't the first time he or his mom had been beaten up. Apparently the militants were trying to extract information about U.S. troop movements at the zoo and Al Zawra Park. But despite repeated assaults, the young Iraqi showed immense courage and refused to be cowed, saying he was working with South Africans. Fortunately, none of the knife wounds penetrated his skull, but it still took him three days to recover from the savage thrashing. Undeterred, he reported back for duty as soon as he could.
At times like this even the hardiest must have nursed unspoken doubts. It could seem at times as if we were fighting against quicksand,
but the example of those Iraqis who remained unbowed in the face of such savagery was an inspiration.
I relayed the staff's growing trepidation about security to Sumner, who said he would do what he could to bolster a military presence at the zoo. But he didn't hold out much hope, as similar problems were mushrooming everywhere in what was now being called the Sunni TriangleâSaddam's key support zone. The triangle roughly comprised a line drawn west from Baghdad to Ramadi and north to Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace. In this concentrated area of Sunni Muslims a heavily armed fanatical few were able to terrify the many, which is terrorism's prime motivation.
But the mounting security headaches could not be allowed to cripple our work and all I could do was urge our people to be careful out there. And somehow we kept the wheel of survival grinding. If we weren't scrounging the city for donkey meat, we were plugging leaking pipes or treating a host of animal infections with our rapidly depleting supply of medicines. There were no hard-and-fast rules on how to stay alive. You just had to remain constantly alert and observe the obvious. If a situation looked dangerous, don't question whyâjust get the hell out of the place.
Maybe it's stating the obvious, but it still needs to be said: The heroism and commitment of the Iraqis at the time, led by Adel and Husham, was one of the most outstanding fundamental aspects of the fight for Baghdad's Zoo. They put their lives on the line daily just venturing out to work.
When I mentioned the threats to the South African bodyguards, their response was instant. They would keep coming to the zoo whenever they could, and they repeated their offer to bump off a few troublemakers as “a lesson.” I again refused, and they shrugged.
“Your funeral,
boet,
” said Jeremy.
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TO COMPOUND THE VOLATILE SCENARIO, another ominous trend was gathering momentum. Suicide bombers, who had always been
on the periphery, now seemed to be radically on the increase, and I was worried this terrible publicity would scare other conservation agencies off from coming forward with aid.
At least, that was my suspicion. For the past two months the only two foreigners continuously at the coal face had been Brendan and myself. We had received some welcome aid from Stephan Bognar and Barbara Maas. Stephan had stayed for about a month, Barbara for a week, although she was scheduled to return. But for the most part, it was just Brendan and I working directly with the Iraqis and the military.
It was obvious we would have to get some serious financial and material backing soon; we couldn't go on living hand-to-mouth forever. But I had little idea who to approach.
The first chunk of financial aid we received fairly soon after I arrived was largely thanks to a group of South Africans guarding Gen. Jay Garner, the initial interim administrator for Iraq before the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was formed. By all accounts General Garner enjoyed the company of his tough South African minders immensely, and when they told him about a group of mavericks keeping animals alive with little more than spit and sweat, he asked his men to arrange a visit.
He arrived one morning surrounded by the South Africans carrying enough weaponry to quell a major insurgency. Although the zoo was in the still-to-be-designated Green Zone, its northeastern boundary was wide open to the chaotic Red Zone and easy to infiltrate. The bodyguards protecting the highest-profile member of the U.S. force in Iraq at the time were taking no chances.
Garner was friendly and approachable and I could see why he was such a popular general. We walked him around the zoo explaining what we were doing, and as we went from enclosure to enclosure it was obvious that he had empathy with animals. At that stage Stephan and Barbara were still there and we had only just started sourcing regular food for the animals. Garner was visibly shocked at the debilitated state most of them were in. He also went
out of his way to talk to Adel, Husham, and as many of the Iraqi staff as possible.
But most important, he was genuinely interested in the project and how we were doing it on less than a shoestring, grasping instinctively that this was a vital community asset. Finally, we did a quick video shoot where he thanked us all, and out of the blue he told me twenty thousand dollars for the zoo was on its way.
Just before they drove off, one of the guards whispered that Garner had remarked the zoo was “the only goddamn place that worked” in Baghdad. Huge praise indeed, coming from the man in charge. I passed this on to Adel and the staff and there were smiles all round. It was a welcome boost to morale.
The cash, though helpful, was instantly swallowed up in a quicksand of expenses such as animal food, staff wages, and repairing basic infrastructure. The speed at which the money vanished hammered home just how much money we needed to get the zoo beyond its current critical level. If twenty thousand dollars evaporated so quickly, we would need hundreds of thousands to keep the momentum going. Where would it come from?
Without an answer, I decided not to dwell on that. The seeming hopelessness of the big picture could drive you crazy.
So the struggle for survival continued, hour by hour, day by day. From keeping water flowing with spluttering pumps to lugging buckets of detergent and scrounging for food, the daily routine was relentless.
However, fate plays quirky tricks and the major breakthrough for us didn't come from some high-powered CNN report or tubthumping politician but from a story published thousands of miles away in a regional South African newspaper, the
Zululand Observer.
The twice-weekly community paper was much respected in its circulation area and had run a feature on me as a local boy in a foreign war zone. The fact that the managing director and editor in chief was my mother, Regina Anthony, just might have helped as well.
Sarah Scarth, the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW)
director of emergency relief in Cape Town, picked up the story on the
Zululand Observer
's Web site and phoned Reginaâor Reg, as she is known by her friends. IFAW does not turn a blind eye to emergencies, and Sarah wanted confirmation of what she intuitively knew: that this was something they should be doing something about.
My mom was in regular contact with me via satellite telephone and told Sarah that Brendan and I were the only foreigners at the beleaguered zoo. We seriously needed help, the type of help the IFAW specialized in.
That was all the info Sarah required before she swung an international Emergency Relief (ER) team into action. A few weeks later the first convoy of trucks rolled into Baghdad carrying three tons of food; essential medical supplies such as drip feed kits, suture kits, drugs, and antibiotics; building equipment such as angle grinders, welding machines, and electrical and plumbing parts; and gallons of detergent and pesticides.
It was the wish list I had long been asking for. The cavalry had arrived.
Indeed, the mountain of equipment and food being off-loaded in front of us was something we had scarcely believed possible. From laboring with buckets and banged-up hotel carts and killing donkeys with axes to suddenly having tools and medicines and huge food supplies all hygienically packed was beyond comprehension.
IFAW's advance guard was made up of logistics experts Mariette Hopley and Amed Khan. They were joined later by Jason Thrupp, a veterinarian from New Zealand; Jackson Zee, a zoologist who manages IFAW's moon bear sanctuary near Hong Kong; and Ashraf Kunhunnu, a wildlife veterinarian from India.
With the exception of Jackson Zee, all were specifically contracted for this particular ER mission. Jackson works full-time for IFAW and has the whole of Asia as his stomping ground. His usual work focuses on saving moon bears, which in China are captured and caged in abominable conditions, as their gallbladder bile is milked for medicinal purposes.
Our main aim now was to get away from a hand-to-mouth survival situation and function as normally as possible under the abnormal circumstances. Once that was achieved, I wanted to “plug” the Baghdad Zoo into the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, who would work closely with the Iraqi administration. AZA, one of the most respected zoo organizations in the world, would be there for the long haul in an advisory capacity, guiding the Iraqi administration in developing the Baghdad Zoo according to internationally accepted standards and assisting with transforming it into a habitat rather than caged environment. Animals would eventually be kept in open enclosures with surroundings imitating their natural habitat as closely as possible. The bears, for example, would have large outside enclosures with trees and other foliage similar to that of the mountains of northern Iraq. The stress for the animals would be lowered immensely in comparison to being caged in cold concrete.