This is what it's for. Look at the website, read her other stuff and understand why the Americans didn't want her out. She has insight into the incredibly complex relationships thrown up by war.

For me the sitye is ammunition for use in editing and campaigning. Particuarly useful is the supply of articles even from mainstream UK papers that you don't have time to pick up - don't have time to read newspapers myself - and it's very reassuring to know that if the Times/Independent/Telegraph has a good piece it will turn up here. 

Not bothered myself whether or not it's a discussion/encounter/conscious-raising group - only takes 2 seconds to delete what you don't need! 

TimG



-----Original Message-----
From: Julie-ann Davies [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 08 March 2005 11:28
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: My Truth - Guliana Sgrena - il manifesto - 06/03/2005


Following Ian's email and to aid any further debate if anyone has not seen
Sgrena's writing on this- here it is:

Julie-ann

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/pag/sgrena/en/



My truth


Giuliana Sgrena

I'm still in the dark. Friday was the most dramatic day of my life. I had
been in captivity for many days. I had just spoken with my captors. It had
been days they were telling me I would be released. I was living in waiting
for this moment. They were speaking about things that only later I would
have understood the importance of. They were speaking about problems
"related to transfers."

I learned to understand what was going on by the behavior of my two guards,
the two guards that had me under custody every day. One in particular showed
much attention to my desires. He was incredibly cheerful. To understand
exactly what was going on I provocatively asked him if he was happy because
I was going or because I was staying. I was shocked and happy when for the
first time he said, "I only know that you will go, but I don't know when."
To confirm the fact that something new was happening both of them came into
my room and started comforting me and kidding: "Congratulations they said
you are leaving for Rome." For Rome, that's exactly what they said.

I experienced a strange sensation because that word evoked in me freedom but
also projected in me an immense sense of emptiness. I understood that it was
the most difficult moment of my kidnapping and that if everything I had just
experienced until then was "certain," now a huge vacuum of uncertainty was
opening, one heavier than the other. I changed my clothes. They came back:
"We'll take you and don't give any signals of your presence with us
otherwise the Americans could intervene." It was confirmation that I didn't
want to hear; it was altogether the most happy and most dangerous moment. If
we bumped into someone, meaning American military, there would have been an
exchange of fire. My captors were ready and would have answered. My eyes had
to be covered. I was already getting used to momentary blindness. What was
happening outside? I only knew that it had rained in Baghdad. The car was
proceeding securely in a mud zone. There was a driver plus the two captors.
I immediately heard something I didn't want to hear. A helicopter was
hovering at low altitude right in the area that we had stopped. "Be calm,
they will come and look for you...in 10 minutes they will come looking for."
They spoke in Arabic the whole time, a little bit of French, and a lot in
bad English. Even this time they were speaking that way.

Then they got out of the car. I remained in the condition of immobility and
blindness. My eyes were padded with cotton, and I had sunglasses on. I was
sitting still. I thought what should I do. I start counting the seconds that
go by between now and the next condition, that of liberty? I had just
started mentally counting when a friendly voice came to my ears "Giuliana,
Giuliana. I am Nicola, don't worry I spoke to Gabriele Polo (editor in chief
of Il Manifesto). Stay calm. You are free." They made me take my cotton
bandage off, and the dark glasses. I felt relieved, not for what was
happening and I couldn't understand but for the words of this "Nicola." He
kept on talking and talking, you couldn't contain him, an avalanche of
friendly phrases and jokes. I finally felt an almost physical consolation,
warmth that I had forgotten for some time.

The car kept on the road, going under an underpass full of puddles and
almost losing control to avoid them. We all incredibly laughed. It was
liberating. Losing control of the car in a street full of water in Baghdad
and maybe wind up in a bad car accident after all I had been through would
really be a tale I would not be able to tell. Nicola Calipari sat next to
me. The driver twice called the embassy and in Italy that we were heading
towards the airport that I knew was heavily patrolled by U.S. troops. They
told me that we were less than a kilometer away...when...I only remember
fire. At that point, a rain of fire and bullets hit us, shutting up forever
the cheerful voices of a few minutes earlier.

The driver started yelling that we were Italians. "We are Italians, we are
Italians." Nicola Calipari threw himself on me to protect me and
immediately, I repeat, immediately I heard his last breath as he was dying
on me. I must have felt physical pain. I didn't know why. But then I
realized my mind went immediately to the things the captors had told me.
They declared that they were committed to the fullest to freeing me but I
had to be careful, "the Americans don't want you to go back." Then when they
had told me I considered those words superfluous and ideological. At that
moment they risked acquiring the flavor of the bitterest of truths, at this
time I cannot tell you the rest.

This was the most dramatic day. But the months that I spent in captivity
probably changed forever my existence. One month alone with myself, prisoner
of my profound certainties. Every hour was an impious verification of my
work, sometimes they made fun of me, and they even stretch as far as asking
why I wanted to leave, asking me stay. They insisted on personal
relationships. It was them that made me think of the priorities that too
often we cast aside. They were pointing to family. "Ask your husband for
help," they would say. And I also said in the first video that I think you
all saw, "My life has changed." As Iraqi engineer Ra'ad Ali Abdulaziz of the
organization A Bridge For [Baghdad], who had been kidnapped with the two
Simones had told me "my life is not the same anymore." I didn't understand.
Now I know what he meant. Because I experienced the harshness of truth, it's
difficult proposition (of truth) and the fragility of those who attempt it.

In the first days of my kidnapping I did not shed a tear. I was simply
furious. I would say in the face of my captors: "But why do you kidnap me,
I'm against the war." And at that point they would start a ferocious
dialogue. "Yes because you go speak to the people, we would never kidnap a
journalist that remains closed in a hotel and because the fact that you say
you're against the war could be a decoy." And I would answer almost to
provoke them: "It's easy to kidnap a weak woman like me, why don't you try
with the American military." I insisted on the fact that they could not ask
the Italian government to withdraw the troops. Their political go-between
could not be the government but the Italian people, who were and are against
the war.

It was a month on a see-saw shifting between strong hope and moments of
great depression. Like when it was a first Sunday after the Friday they
kidnapped me, in the house in Baghdad where I was kept, and on top of which
was a satellite dish they showed me the Euronews Newscast. There I saw a
huge picture of me hanging from Rome City Hall. I felt relieved. Right after
though the claim by the Jihad that announced my execution if Italy did not
withdraw the troops arrived. I was terrified. But I immediately felt
reassured that it wasn't them. I didn't have to believe these announcements,
they were "provocative." Often I asked the captor that from his face I could
identify a good disposition but whom like his colleagues resembled a
soldier: "Tell me the truth. Do you want to kill me?" Although many times
there have been windows of communications with them. "Come watch a movie on
TV" they would say while a Wahabi roamed around the house and took care of
me. The captors seemed to me a very religious group, in continuous prayer on
the Koran. But Friday, at the time of the release, the one that looked the
most religious and who woke up every morning at 5 a.m. to pray incredibly
congratulated me shaking my hand, a behavior unusual for an Islamic
fundamentalist -- and he would add "if you behave yourself you will leave
immediately." Then an almost funny incident. One of the two captors came to
me surprised both because the TV was showing big posters of me in European
cities and also for Totti. Yes Totti. He declared he was a fan of the Roma
soccer team and he was shocked that his favorite player went to play with
the writing "Liberate Giuliana" on his T-shirt.

I lived in an enclave in which I had no more certainties. I found myself
profoundly weak. I failed in my certainties; I said that we had to tell
about that dirty war. And I found myself in the alternative either to stay
in the hotel and wait or to end up kidnapped because of my work. We don't
want anyone else anymore. The kidnappers would tell me. But I wanted to tell
about the bloodbath in Fallujah from the words of the refugees. And that
morning the refugees, or some of their leaders would not listen to me. I had
in front of me the accurate confirmation of the analysis of what the Iraqi
society had become as a result of the war and they would throw their truth
in my face: "We don't want anybody why didn't you stay in your home. What
can this interview do for us?" The worse collateral effect, the war that
kills communication was falling on me. To me, I who had risked everything,
challenging the Italian government who didn't want journalists to reach Iraq
and the Americans who don't want our work to be witnessed of what really
became of that country with the war and notwithstanding that which they call
elections. Now I ask myself. Is their refusal a failure?