From Norton, a Brief History of Hezbollah

DATE June 13, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Photographer Ashley Gilbertson describes his work
in Iraq

DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily
News, filling in for Terry Gross.

My guest, photographer Ashley Gilbertson, has spent much of the last five
years in Iraq, often getting shot at and capturing dramatic images of the war
for The New York Times and other publications. Gilbertson has photographed
some of the most intense combat in the conflict, including the seven-day
American assault on Fallujah in 2004. Those pictures earned him the Robert
Capa Gold Medal awarded by the Overseas Press Club.

Gilbertson's work is featured in a forthcoming book called "Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot" and in an essay in the summer issue of the Virginia Quarterly Review,
which appears later this month. Gilbertson was born in Australia and, besides
Iraq, his work has taken him to China, Indonesia, Kosova, the Philippines and
Afghanistan.

Ashley Gilbertson, I wonder if you could read for us a bit of the piece that
you have coming from the Virginia Quarterly Review. This involves a trip that
you recently took to Iraq during the American surge, and maybe you could sort
of set this up and explain what's happening here and tell us what's going on.

Mr. ASHLEY GILBERTSON: Well, I'd been out in western Baghdad, which is kind
of the Sunni badlands there and, you know, I'd been at a joint security
station. We were reporting a story about the, you know, the state of the
surge essentially and how these like small, you know, security stations being
set up through Baghdad, how effective they were. And I was out with an
infantry unit who went and picked up and then escorted a unit of Strykers,
engineers from a Stryker Brigade, out to a street that was famous in Ameriya
for having, you know, dozens of IEDs placed there. And I went to the briefing
before the mission, and the engineers were told in no uncertain terms by the,
you know, very experienced infantry guys not to get out of the trucks, no
matter what happened, you know, you should direct the bulldozers from inside
your stryker vehicles but don't get out, because of the threat of snipers and
roadside bombs was so high it wasn't worth the risk.

DAVIES: And the mission here was cleaning up trash to sort of make the
neighborhood safer, to remove cover for insurgents. Was that the idea?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Yeah, I mean, they said it had two purposes. One was to
bulldoze all of the trash from the median strip so that the insurgents didn't
have as many places to hide the IEDs. And the other was a good will
operation. They called it a sanitization mission, but the idea was that, you
know, they cleaned up the street so the residents of Ameriya were more
welcoming to the Americans because they had cleaned up the mess.

DAVIES: OK. So let's hear...

Mr. GILBERTSON: The primary purpose was definitely to, you know, stop IEDs
from being planted there.

DAVIES: OK, so let's hear this reading from your piece where you describe
what happened next.

Mr. GILBERTSON: OK.

(Reading) "I didn't have a picture from this end...(unintelligible)...yet.
And out of sheer desperation, I asked permission to walk around with the
engineers. The GIs told me that I was an idiot. I could get killed out there
but it was my life. I hopped out, ran over to one of the soldiers and started
taking pictures, dancing around him the whole time so snipers wouldn't
consider me an easy target. I got his unit; 18th Engineers, 3rd Stryker
Brigade, 2nd ID, my notebook reads. His surname, Gardner, from his flak jack;
his rank, sergeant, from a patch on his chest. And ran back to the truck. I
just wanted to be behind the armor of the humvee. Another engineer was
shouting at him, `Get off the sidewalk.' They were frightened of bombs buried
beneath it.

I was back inside the humvee, lighting a cigarette to calm my nerves, when a
massive concussion shook our truck. It was an IED. All I could see was a
huge cloud of dust. The gunner made the only sound, a ratchet click of the
spinning turret, while he searched for the man who triggered the bomb. Then
the the radio squawked. `Gardner is messed up. Get a CASEVAC. Gardner is
messed up.' Gardner had being split in two by the bomb.

The next time I saw him he was under a camouflage poncho. Only his feet were
visible, sticking out. If I had taken a photo I would have been lynched by
his comrades. When corpses are around, every eye in the zone, teary or
angered, was on me, ensuring I don't get too close and take a picture. I'm
the outsider, but they don't know that deaths like Gardner's overwhelm me for
days, months, sometimes years. It never gets easier. It doesn't matter if I
didn't know the person or didn't have much contact with him. Just being there
when it happened is enough. With Gardner, though, I ended up being the guy
who engaged him in his last conversation and took the last photograph of him
alive."

DAVIES: That's my guest Ashley Gilbertson reading from his forthcoming piece
in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

Now one of the things you have to confront are the rules of engagement for
what you can photograph and what you can't photograph. You've been going to
Iraq now, on and off, for five years. How have the rules changed?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, when I started working there, I mean, obviously the
Americans weren't even in the country yet. But from 2003, I mean, we had to
abide by the ground rules that they issued the media, the military issues the
media. And that said that in the event that a soldier was wounded or killed,
we could take photographs and report on what we were seeing, but we had to
give enough time for the family to be informed that their son had been killed
in combat. However, on my last trip, I had to sign--which was, let's see, two
months ago now--I had to sign a new list of ground rules, including
initialling every single paragraph--I think it was like 46 paragraphs on
there. And that had changed because it said that to publish the photograph of
a wounded soldier, we now had to have written prior consent of the soldier
that had been wounded, which is completely ridiculous because it means you
have to stand up in front of a unit as a member of the press, who's already
distrusted, and say, you know, `If any of you are wounded, would you mind
signing this form?' And I mean, no soldier is going to sign a form granting
you access or permission for anything. I mean, soldiers don't sign forms that
aren't issued by the military. I mean, I've tried and I don't do it. That
said, it becomes even worse, because, I mean, myself included, like people
over there in Iraq are generally pretty superstitious. I know it sounds
ridiculous, except to sign a form like that is tempting fate.

DAVIES: Mm-hmm. Let me ask you about another incident on this same trip
where you had an assignment. You were embedded with the Kurdish patrol and
you describe a moment where there was a frantic call from a woman who needed
assistance. Two men had come to evict her. Tell us what happened.

Mr. GILBERTSON: This is really, I mean, every death is very, very difficult,
I think, obviously for everybody involved. But Suaada's death to me really
painted a much larger portrait of the horrible difficulties that we're facing
in Iraq. I was embedded with a Kurdish unit that was attached to an American
unit in the Shiite stronghold of Khadamiya. And, you know, while I was
playing cards one day with the Kurds, a desperate call from Suaada Saadoun,
who was a widow and, you know, seven family members living in a house in this
neighborhood, that two Shiite men were trying to evict her illegally.

So the Kurds and the Americans raced out there to try to assist Suaada, but
eventually established that the men, you know, did, in fact, have legal
eviction papers, they were carrying a pistol. It was the second time they had
been to her house, I mean, so they arrested them. They sent them back to the
base for further questioning, and Suaada sat down in the courtyard after hours
of arguments with, you know, the Americans, with the Kurds, with this Shiite
militia members that are at the front of her house. She smiled and it was an
honest-to-God moment of happiness, which I very rarely come across in Iraq.
You know, so I photographed this beautiful moment where, you know, she had
actually won and she got to keep her house. And you know, like a life had
been saved. I was inspired. I thought it was a wonderful thing.

DAVIES: And then what happened the next day?

Mr. GILBERTSON: I went back to the base that night and woke up in the
morning and walked down the corridor in the American section of the base to
get some coffee from the captain's office and found the captain outside, you
know, sort of ashen-faced. I think Edward--the reporter who I was with
writing the story--and he told me that, you know, Suaada had been assassinated
that morning, close to her home in an alleyway. So we, you know, I went out
with the Americans and we went over to Suaada's house and found, you know, her
seven daughters and granddaughters lining the garage--the driveway, I'm sorry,
just wailing. You know, all dressed in black, mourning and wailing, wailing
Suaada's death. The Americans went inside and spoke to other family members
who weren't as frenzied as those outside, and I stayed outside and
photographed the daughters and granddaughters, trying to illustrate, you know,
the absolute tragedy of the sectarian violence in Iraq. I mean, I felt
horrible taking the pictures, you know, invading their very private moments,
except I also felt that it's extremely important to try to humanize what's
become an impossible situation essentially.

DAVIES: How did you depict Suaada herself after this tragedy?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well after I, and the Americans, left Suaada's house, where
the funeral continued, they went to the crime scene and they, you know, they
wanted to interview some bakers that had heard gunfire. And I sort of walked
up to the side to see what sort of evidence there might be left of her death,
like a way to illustrate her death to readers, and I found a shell casing. I
found a pool of blood by a tree. But I also found the top of a set of
dentures, like a plate, that had her teeth on it, just sitting in the twigs in
the dirt in the ground. And her corpse had been taken away sometime ago,
except, you know, this is the evidence of her that remained. And it was
something very human that I think we can all relate to. I mean, we all know
what dentures look like except here they are, being presented in this horrific
manner.

DAVIES: Lying on the ground. Right.

Mr. GILBERTSON: Lying on the ground, yeah, in the dirt and the twigs of a
Baghdad alleyway.

DAVIES: You know, you've described this terrible murder of this Sunni woman
and an American serviceman being blown up moments after you'd had the last
conversation he'd had with a living person. And in your five years you've had
so many horrific experiences, I mean, in the battle of Fallujah in 2004. And
at the beginning of your Virginia Quarterly piece, you say that your wife
wasn't excited about your going back to Iraq, your shrink wasn't excited, and
that tells us that you've sought some help. Let me ask you, how do you deal
emotionally with these wrenching tragedies?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, I mean that's--I have the, you know, opportunity to
seek out help when I'm at home in New York. You know, I get a lot of, a lot
of support from my wife, who's incredibly patient and loving with me, you
know, when I might not the easiest person to be around at times. But, you
know, I do go and see a shrink and try to talk this stuff through. I mean,
when I sat down to write this piece for the Virginia Quarterly Review, I
thought, I'll spend a couple of paragraphs talking about what happened with,
you know, with Sergeant Gardner and, you know, I thought, two, 300 words. But
I started writing and all of a sudden it's at 2,000 words. And I didn't
realize how much effect that moment and my short conversation with him had
actually had on me.

So I really think the writing, you know, both of the Virginia Quarterly piece
and of my book, really helped me sort of process a lot of what I went through.
I mean, I couldn't--I was in Fallujah during the offensive in 2004 for one
week, and I literally couldn't remember a single thing that took place, with
the exception of the very first day and the very last day. I mean, everything
in the middle was just blacked out. I mean, I had to force myself over months
of writing to try to remember things that had taken place and talk to people
who had been there. I mean, it was really difficult because your brain, as a
means of survival, forces itself not to remember a lot of this stuff.

DAVIES: My guest is Ashley Gilbertson. He is a freelance photograph who has
spent much of the last five years in Iraq, much of it working for The New York
Times.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining me, our guest is photographer Ashley
Gilbertson. He has spent much of the past five years in Iraq. His
experiences are recounted in a forthcoming piece in the Virginia Quarterly
Review, that's in the summer issue, which comes out at the end of this month.

Well, Ashley Gilbertson, in this piece you describe some of your experiences
in your most recent trip to Iraq, and there was a fascinating episode where
you describe working in a neighborhood. I think it's called Ghazaliya. You
describe what one might think of as a relatively routine mission, that was to
pick up a body that had been dumped there, which is a fairly routine
occurrence. Describe what happened.

Mr. GILBERTSON: Yeah, a body was found on a street that was, you know,
famous with the Americans and the Iraqis for being, you know, a very dangerous
street. I mean, four Americans had been killed there the week beforehand when
a massive IED ripped through their humvee. A tank had been disabled. A
couple of Iraqi soldiers had already been killed trying to collect this body
that was in this clearing and, you know, being, you know, chewed by the dogs
and rotting in the sun. I mean, it had been there for nine days by the time I
went there with the Americans.

DAVIES: Maybe you could just describe the picture you took of that body that
appears in this piece.

Mr. GILBERTSON: Yeah. I mean, it's one of the pictures I actually went back
specifically to shoot. I mean, I think it's very representative of Baghdad
today. And it's just a body in a clearing, you know, very much part of the
landscape except it's being dragged further into the clearing by a stray dog.
You know, it's shot at dawn so it's kind of a quiet and flat light, except you
can see houses in Baghdad in the background. You can see the trash-strewn
cleaning. But then, you know, as part of it, there's this dog dragging a
corpse. And it seems, I mean, I shot it and I really feel like it really
seemed like a very normal and everyday scene in Baghdad. I mean, it looks
like a nightmare, I think, to anybody else, except I also felt it was a very
representative scene of what is taking place in Baghdad today.

DAVIES: So what happened when the Iraqi unit arrived to recover the body?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, the Iraqi unit came in and got close to the body only
after an entire infantry platoon of Americans with support of a Bradley
fighting vehicle, with support of tank, an anti-IED team--an anti-IED truck,
I'm sorry--a bomb squad team had already gone through and tried to clear the
area and make sure there were no roadside bombs, make sure the corpse itself
wasn't booby trapped. But even then, you know, the Iraqi unit that had been
charged with picking up this body drove straight back to the base. I mean,
they didn't want to have anything to do with because they had already lost two
soldiers trying to pick up this very corpse. So another Iraqi unit came in
and, you know, they were told that it was safe and that it was OK to pick up
the body, so they went and approached it. And, of course, as soon as they got
close to the body, you know, they both started vomiting, which was very
humorous to the Americans who were standing on a roof 150 yards away, but, you
know, not so much to the Iraqis who were trying to pick this thing up. I
mean, one of them was wearing these bright yellow gloves to handle the body
with. Another guy was wearing like red shopping bags around both hands to
handle with, you know, obviously they didn't have enough gloves to go around.
So after vomiting a couple more times, they finally put this body into the
back of the truck and, you know, nine days later and you know, more and more
deaths, it's finally cleared.

DAVIES: Do you know who the body belonged to?

Mr. GILBERTSON: It was just another anonymous corpse in Baghdad.

DAVIES: So after the body was recovered, the Iraqi unit arrested two Sunni
men, believing that they were insurgents. And you write that they tested
positive for gunpowder and explosives, appearing to confirm the suspicions.
What kind of treatment did these two men receive?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, this is one of the most troubling aspects of my last
trip, I think. I mean, it brought up a lot of very direct and, you know,
major moral issues, in both my head and I hope the American troops that were
involved as well. Yeah, the Iraqi army picked up two suspected insurgents,
who they tested for exposure to gunpower and explosives, and they both came up
positive. The next day I was at the joint security station where the
Americans and the Iraqis are based in Ghazaliya, and I walked outside of the
station to have a cigarette on the terrace, and I found these two men, Mustafa
and Ziad, sitting on a cot, you know, sort of keeled over and quite obviously
in pain. So standing above them, I could actually see down Mustafa's--down
the back of his jacket. And, you know, very clearly I could see lash marks
like all up and down his back. So I shot a picture, you know, looking down
his collar, and I asked through an interpreter--to a nearby Iraqi soldier--you
know, `What happened to this man?' And the Iraqi, you know, essentially
laughing, said, `You know, he's got very sensitive skin and he got a rash.'

DAVIES: Mm.

Mr. GILBERTSON: You know, I mean, I was kind of aghast. So I went around
behind him and I lifted up his jacket so I could get, you know, a clearer
picture of what I suspected was abuse. The Iraqi soldier stopped that, you
know, immediately and became quite angry with me, but it turned out that the
Iraqis had interrogated the prisoners before they were given to the American
interrogators. And when they were presented to the Americans, they gave up a
lot of information, a lot of names of al-Qaeda fighters in the neighborhood,
placements of roadside bombs and an al-Qaeda safe house. So the Americans
suited up and raided this suspected safe house, with Mustafa in tow to ID the
house, and found an enormous cache of weapons. And, you know, almost without
a doubt, it was the house that the bomb that had killed the four Americans
only the week beforehand had been built.

So, I mean, it was, by anybody's standards, it was a very successful raid.
But I was sitting with the Iraqi captain, you know, across the street
afterwards, and I told him, `Congratulations, you really got the right guys.
Like, this is pretty amazing.' And he started telling me that, `You know, we
beat the hell out of this guy. We beat the hell out of Mustafa in front of
Ziad, so that we could make them both talk with only one beating, and we only
had to, you know, hit Mustafa with slaps to make him talk." And...

DAVIES: That was the second guy they hit with slaps? The first guy was more
than slaps, right?

Mr. GILBERTSON: The first guy got whipped with an electric cable. The
second guy just got slapped. Mind you, he was visibly in pain as well.

DAVIES: Were you shocked to hear? Were you shocked to hear this kind of
behavior?

Mr. GILBERTSON: I mean, my world stopped. I was sitting--this is really
ridiculous, I was sitting on a patio swing in the afternoon sun with this
captain. But, I mean, the second I heard, I say in the text that, you know,
the patio swing kept going back and forth but my world really did stop, I
mean, because without a doubt they couldn't have got this information without
the kind of abuse or duress that they had placed on the suspects. But, you
know, and had they adhered to the Geneva Conventions, they wouldn't have got
the intel. But the intel they did get with, you know, unquestionably saved
lives, both Iraqi and American. So the conflict that arose in me, and I still
haven't got an answer for because I will never condone torture. The conflict
that arose was like how else can you do this? Like, the
only...(unintelligible)...that they are ever going to use in Iraq is pain.

DAVIES: Photographer Ashley Gilbertson, who spent much of the last five years
in Iraq. He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Dave Davies and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies filling in for Terry Gross.

Our guest is photographer Ashley Gilbertson, who has spent much of the last
five years in Iraq, covering the war for The New York Times and other
publications. He has a forthcoming book called "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot," and
an essay with his photos will appear in the summer issue of the Virginia
Quarterly Review.

Is there one of your photos, an image that you think captures where the war is
today?

Mr. GILBERTSON: I wish I could say yes to that, but I think that Iraq is
such a complicated and multilayered story that no one photograph can entirely
encapsulate the experience there, that can tell the whole story of the war. I
mean, there are so many different things at play that I don't think I've got
one that is symbolic of the entire war.

DAVIES: Is there a photograph from your early days in Iraq that you think
that is particularly memorable, that says something about...

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, my--yeah, my favorite image that I've made in Iraq is
from the Fallujah campaign, which was a photograph of an insurgent who had
been captured by the Marine unit that I was with. And, you know, he had been
shot by the Marines before he surrendered, shot in the back, and he was
bleeding. You know, they had patched him up and put him against the wall
while they waited for another unit to come and pick him up and send him back
to a base to be detained, except while they were waiting for the truck to come
and pick him up, a Marine was standing guard over the top of him, you know,
casting this very dramatic and quite powerful-looking silhouette, shadow, you
know, against the wall that he was sitting in front of. And it was shot at
dawn, again, you know, so it's this rich orange light. I mean, for all
intents and purposes, you know, it's beautiful, except when you look at it,
it's actually a very painful and troubling image. And I think that, you know,
that photograph, like this very faceless insurgent with a very faceless
American, and I think that both Iraqis and Americans would be able to identify
with that image. I mean, that's without a doubt, I think, the strongest image
that I've made to date in Iraq.

DAVIES: What's the relationship that that picture captures?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Immense distrust from both sides, I feel is seen there. I
mean, the anonymity of both the insurgent and the American soldier, I think,
is really important there as well. I mean, you know, both of them see the
other as a faceless enemy, you know, as this much larger thing than just, you
know, a human being against human being. It also says to me, you know, the
huge military power of the United States, you know, very dominating military
power, and this very small, I mean, what looks like a ragtag insurgency, with,
you know, an AK-47 and a rocket launcher like standing up to this superpower.

DAVIES: Do you ever find any of the images that you've taken hard to look
back at, or that look very different when you look back at them?

Mr. GILBERTSON: Yeah, I mean, there's images from that campaign that I can't
even remember taking.

DAVIES: Fallujah.

Mr. GILBERTSON: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the images that I find difficult to
look at are not necessarily the gratuitous photographs, I mean, where, you
know, there might be a lot of blood or there might be a lot of death in the
image. I mean, it's normally the images when you'll see, you know, like
friends who were like playing baseball together or, you know, volunteering to
be medevaced in a, you know, example sort of medevac training session back in
base camp. And then you know that later on they were actually killed during
the battle. Or images of, you know, people working and people alive that I
know died later on. I mean, I look at those imagines and I think, `Where
would they be now, you know, had it not have happened?' And I think that's the
most haunting part of it. I mean, it's not necessarily the extreme violence
that's so haunting. It's more the, you know, what if.

DAVIES: You know, as I read your stories about your experiences, there's a
sense of despair that comes through. And I wonder if you feel that the
journalism you're doing makes a difference? Does it affect what's happening
in Iraq in a positive way?

Mr. GILBERTSON: I'm 29 years old and I feel like I'm like some bitter like
old man already. But when I started going to Iraq in 2002 and then, you know,
more intensively in 2003, and '4 and then '5 and '6, I mean, at the outset I
was very pro-war. I really wanted to see the Americans come in there and
overthrow Saddam. I didn't--I felt the man was a monster. I didn't want to
see him in power. And, you know, so I was all for the invasion and all for
the war. I mean, I felt like it was a means to an end.

But as the occupation became, you know, less and less effective and the
insurgency picked up and, you know, more and more decisions that, you know,
essentially ruined the country were made, I became a lot less positive about
the country. I mean, up until, I think, 2005 and 2006, I still felt like
there was some hope that things could turn around, except, you know, like
middle-late 2006 and '7, it's, you know, I really feel like there is no hope
anymore. I mean, I don't know what we can do to try to remedy this situation.

I mean, I don't think that my photographs affect any change whatsoever. I
mean, you know, while at the beginning of the war, I felt like I could--and
even up through until 2005--I felt like I could humanize the American
soldiers. Like, you know, show the sacrifice that they were making to try to
introduce democracy into this, you know, very difficult Middle Eastern
country, and tell the stories of the Iraqis that were suffering or that were
trying to themselves make a difference. I felt like giving their human side,
I could really show the American people what, you know, what was happening
over there.

But now I feel like I'm documenting a demise. I feel like I'm just a
historian archiving this foreign policy disaster that isn't working. I mean,
I don't think my pictures are making any difference whatsoever. I don't know
whether they did or not in the past. I mean, the war goes on, except I really
feel like I'm over there now purely as, you know, as an archivist.

DAVIES: You have a book of your experiences in Iraq coming out soon that the
title is "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot." Explain.

Mr. GILBERTSON: "Whisky Tango Foxtrot" is an American radio code for kind of
a profanity-ridden statement of confusion and...

DAVIES: WTF, in other words, right?

Mr. GILBERTSON: WTF, that's right. So when that comes across the radio, it
invites the listener to try to explain what had just taken place in front of
them. I mean, in the book I talk about it. I'm in Samarra with the New York
National Guard, you know, at the beginning of the big offensive against the,
you know, insurgent-controlled towns in the Sunni triangle. And this guard
unit had found a commander's house that was filled with artillery shells, so
the lieutenant decided to blow the house sky high. Now while they're counting
down before the house is blown up, a humvee starts driving down towards the
house, and he obviously didn't get the memo that they're about to blow it up.
So they try to get through to him on the radio. They can't get through. So
somebody jumps out, like, you know, moments before this house blows up, and
we're very close by, and starts, you know, like waving their arms and trying
to turn them around. So the humvee eventually does turn around and the guy
gets back in the truck. The house blows up, bricks and mortar falling down
all over the place. And you know in the seconds of silence after the bricks
have fallen down, the radio crackles to life and says, `Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot,' because, I mean, not everybody knew what was about to happen, and
then all of a sudden there's this exploding house. It's almost comical. You
know, you're blowing up a house and not everybody knows what's going on, and
then the radio crackles to life with that. But I didn't even know what that
term meant until late 2004, after the Fallujah campaign, when I came back to
New York and I was like, `What does this mean?' So I looked it up on the
Internet and found out, you know, it was a question essentially.

DAVIES: WTF, "What the Heck" in a more profane way.

Mr. GILBERTSON: So I figured that was a perfect title for the book just
because there were so many strange--I mean, war is not all combat and
shooting. You know, the majority of it really is tedium, and kind of
ridiculous moments, even on, you know, battlefields. Like down in Kabula when
I was with the 1st Armored Division and they were attacking Muqtada al-Sadr's
militia down there. You know, there was a battle in an amusement park where
there were grenades being thrown out of, you know, like fairground rides. And
so I was at the back at one point and, you know, talking to some engineers who
were wrestling with a donkey, trying to pull it out of the trees and then used
the, you know, like the method with their fingers as Crocodile Dundee did in
the film, where they try to tame this wild beast in the middle of a battle
field. And you see some really strange things. And you know, `"Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot" really, you know, encapsulated a very large portion of the war for
me.

DAVIES: Well, Ashley Gilbertson, I want to thank you for talking with us...

Mr. GILBERTSON: A pleasure.

DAVIES: ...and wish you safe travels in your future work.

Mr. GILBERTSON: Well, thanks a lot. It was lovely to talk to you. Thank
you.

DAVIES: Photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson. His forthcoming book is called
"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot." His essay and photos appear in the summer issue of
the Virginia Quarterly Review, out later this month.

You can find a link to that essay on our Web site at freshair.npr.org, or you
can also listen to the show and download a podcast.

Coming up, what's at stake in the fighting in Lebanon.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Boston University professor Augustus Richard Norton
discusses Lebanon and book "Hezbollah: A Short History"

DAVE DAVIES, host:

For nearly a month, fighting has raged in a Palestinian refugee camp in
northern Lebanon between an Islamist militant group and the Lebanese army.
Besides the considerable human toll of the fighting, scores killed and
thousands made homeless, there are concerns that the fragile Lebanese state
could unravel, as it did during the country's 15-year civil war of the late
'70s and '80s. The government has been nearly paralyzed for months in a
mostly peaceful confrontation with the Shia group Hezbollah, which is
supported by Syria and Iran and its Lebanese allies. But there are worries
violence may escalate. Just today, an outspoken anti-Syrian legislator was
killed in a car bombing in Beirut.

For some perspective on the situation in Lebanon, we turn to Augustus Richard
Norton. He's a professor of international relations and anthropology at
Boston University, who has studied Lebanon for nearly 30 years. Norton is a
former Army officer and West Point professor and was an adviser to the Iraq
Study Group. He is the author of a new book, "Hezbollah: A Short History." I
spoke to him yesterday.

Augustus Richard Norton, welcome back to FRESH AIR. We're here to talk about
fighting that now rages in and around a Palestinian refugee camp in northern
Lebanon. This is between the Lebanese army and militants from a group calling
itself Fatah al-Islam. What do we know about this group?

Mr. AUGUSTUS RICHARD NORTON: Well, this group, Fatah al-Islam, is one of a
number of Islamist groups that have prospered actually in Lebanon over the
last decade or so. So this is a group that takes some inspiration from
al-Qaeda. It also has been inspired by the so-called jihad in Iraq. In fact,
a number of the members have participated in jihadist activities in Iraq. So
this is part of a broader phenomenon, and it exploded about a month ago when
the group tried to rob a bank close to the second major city in Lebanon,
Tripoli.

DAVIES: And while they were being pursued for that, I gather they ambushed a
Lebanon army outpost. Right?

Mr. NORTON: Well, what happened initially is that Lebanese police tried to
capture these guys. It was kind of a high adventure operation where they
didn't really think about it very much, the police that is, and they raided
the headquarters of this group. And in retaliation, Fatah al-Islam then
ambushed a number of unsuspecting Lebanese soldiers, killed a number and quite
literally gouged the eyes out of one guy, and really it was really a
horrendous--and already we've had over 60 Lebanese soldiers killed in the
fighting. So this has been very serious.

DAVIES: Now, are the Fatah al-Islam members primarily Lebanese or foreigners.

Mr. NORTON: No, it's a mixture. You have Palestinians and Lebanese, and you
also have Egyptians and Bangladeshis and some Algerians, so really this is a
kind of confab, if you will, of jihadists. You find similar groups in some of
the other Palestinian camps, for example, in southern Lebanon. And in
Hezbollah, you have a number of these groups that have actually began
developing in the 1980s but have gained momentum over the last decade or so.

DAVIES: And do we have any reason to believe that they are actually connected
to Osama bin Laden and others in al-Qaeda?

Mr. NORTON: Well, I think there are some connections. Fatah al-Islam, in
particular, is more connected to the al-Qaeda subsidiary, if you will, in
Iraq, the so-called al-Qaeda of the Two Rivers, and they have actually sworn
their fealty--their baya as it's called in Arabic--to the head, the prince,
the emir, he's called, of that group. But, of course, the al-Qaeda of the Two
Rivers in Iraq is in turn tied to al-Qaeda, so the connections there are
pretty clear, it seems to me.

DAVIES: Now you mentioned that Fatah al-Islam finds itself now in this
Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. A similar Islamist group is
ensconced in another Palestinian refugee camp in southern Lebanon near Sidon.
There are, I guess, between two and 400,000 Palestinian refugees in the
country now. Why do these groups locate themselves among Palestinian refugees
and what is their relationship with that population?

Mr. NORTON: Well, there are precisely 12 refugee camps in Lebanon. And, of
course, these camps date back to the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49. The
registered population is more than 400,000. The actual number of Palestinians
in the camps is lower than 300,000. People have left for economic reasons and
so on. But these camps are basically areas where there is very little
economic activity. They're surrounded by Lebanese soldiers. Lebanese have a
national consensus against what they call the naturalization of the
Palestinian population. So the result is that you have a lot of people who
are sort of cooped up in what amount to outdoor prisons in these camps. In
that context, all of the different political trends found in the West Bank and
Gaza are reproduced in these camps, and, in fact, in many cases are reproduced
and exaggerated. So in Ein el-Hilweh the largest camp in southern Lebanon,
you literally have dozens of Islamist groups and secular revolutionary groups.
These groups are oftentimes competing over small pieces of land within the
camp. You have what amounts to sort of gang territories, so really it's a
reproduction of Palestinian politics in these camps.

DAVIES: Now, the Lebanese army, of course, has responded to this with
shelling and tank fire into the camps in their battle with Fatah al-Islam.
You know, we remember that Lebanon has, for much of the past three decades,
lacked a strong central government. Remind us who the current government of
Lebanon represents.

Mr. NORTON: Yes. Well, first of all, if I may say, the army response in
northern Lebanon against Fatah al-Islam has provoked a strong national
consensus of support in Lebanon, and that, I suppose, is a hopeful thing. In
any case, the government in Lebanon today is dominated by a coalition of some
Christians, many Sunni Muslims and many Jews, who basically won the election
of 2005 following the assassination of Rafic Hariri, the former prime minister
of Lebanon. One of the leaders of the government is Saad Hariri, the son
actually of the former prime minister, and of course the primary minister is
Fouad Siniora, who was a longtime associate of Hariri. The opposition
consists of a number of Christians, probably about half of the Christian
community; Hezbollah, the Party of God; and other Shiite and various secular
opposition groups, including the Amal Movement, communist parties, Syrian
Socialist Nationalist Party and so on. In terms of public support, my
judgment would be--based on, you know, close following of events and a number
of recent trips to Lebanon--that basically the opposition actually attracts a
majority of support, probably 55-60 percent of the population. But the
government is very much officially the government and in control.

DAVIES: And you mentioned that the government's response, its military
response to the Fatah al-Islam group, has generated some sense of national
unity. Does that include members of the opposition, the Shia and the
Christian, which have not been supportive of the government? Is this in a way
tying this country together?

Mr. NORTON: Yes, I think this might actually be something of an opportunity.
The main Christian leader of the opposition is a former army general by the
name of Michelle Aoun, who's the most popular politician amongst the
Christians in Lebanon, second only to Hassan Nasrallah in total popularity in
the country. And he has called for decisive action by the army, and Hezbollah
has also made strong statements of support vis-a-vis the army. So this is
really an opportune moment because, as you know, Dave, there's been a
stalemate in Lebanon for the past seven months. The Parliament hasn't been
meeting. Basically, the political system and the economy, for that matter,
has been immobilized, so I hope that actually this will be an opportunity to
really build some bridges between the opposition and the government forces.
To that end, the French have invited both pro-government and opposition
figures to France at the end of June to discuss how those bridges might be
built.

DAVIES: Our guest is Professor Augustus Richard Norton. He's an expert on
the Middle East and the author of a new book about Hezbollah.

We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with Professor Augustus
Richard Norton. He is a professor of international relations and anthropology
at Boston University. He's an expert on the Middle East. He was an adviser
to the Iraq Study Group, and he has a new book, "Hezbollah: A Short History."

Lebanon has long been this delicate balance of ethnic and religious groups,
and in the late '70s the country unraveled with suicide bombings and
kidnappings and factional strife among militias that lasted for more than a
decade. Are you seeing violence spreading in Lebanon now and to what extent
could this lead to a another wider conflict, another civil war?

Mr. NORTON: Well, the level of violence right now between Lebanese is very,
very low. There have been 10 deaths since the demonstrations against the
government began in December, so this is of course regrettable but is nowhere
close to the pace of killing that was going on during the civil war when about
150,000 people in all died over the course of 15 years in a country which then
had a population of only three million people. So that's an enormous number
of people. So the problem right now is the fact that there's a stalemate,
which has immobilized the country. Now we fear, and I fear, that if that
stalemate continues for too much longer, we could see an explosion of
violence.

DAVIES: Creating a workable national politics, of course, is easier if
citizens have prosperity. What's happened to the Lebanese economy with this
fighting and with the fighting last year between Hezbollah and Israel?

Mr. NORTON: The economy has positively tanked and Lebanon is a country that
depends on several sectors for its income, the banking sector. And much of
the banking sector has been displaced to other places like Cyprus and Bahrain,
and the Persian Gulf. The so-called services sector but particularly tourism,
last summer's war is estimated to have cost the Lebanese $2 billion in lost
income. Some people say the number is actually much higher. And, of course
this summer you're not exactly seeing tourists flocking to Lebanon either. So
from the standpoint of the everyday Lebanese, there's really a recession or
even a depression underway.

Mind you, this is occurring in a state in which half of government revenue has
to be used to service debt. Lebanon, during the time of Rafic Hariri in the
1990s, made a big bet, if you will, a big investment in what it saw as a
peaceful future. In the early 1990s there was a sense that the Middle East
was moving towards a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It was a time
of great optimism. And as a result, the Lebanese, under Hariri's leadership,
made enormous investments in infrastructure and so on, and repaired, you know,
the ravages of the civil war--many of the ravages of the civil war.

The problem is that cost a lot of money. The peace process didn't go where it
was expected to go. It got derailed, as we know, and the result is the
Lebanese are left with this enormous burden of debt. So the economy is really
a major issue, and it's one of the reason that some of these Islamist
groups--like Hezbollah, for example, in the Shia community--have been able to
generate a lot of support, because they're frequently providing services that
the government does not provide well or does not provide at all.

DAVIES: What are the lingering effects of the fighting last year between
Israel and Hezbollah?

Mr. NORTON: Well, the war caused enormous damage, particularly in southern
Lebanon and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, where we find significant
populations of Shia Muslims. Now, there are several things that are
noteworthy. One is that many people are still waiting for a permanent place
to live. There were about 15,000 families displaced by the war. But groups
like Hezbollah have very much sort of benefited from the war politically in
that they have actually been, in many instances, much more effective than the
government in providing services, subsidies and so on. People I've known in
south Lebanon, some cases for 20 years, who were neutral--I mean, were
pointedly neutral in political terms--after last summer's war have actually
gone over to Hezbollah because they saw the response of Hezbollah to the war.
They'll even admit that Hezbollah provoked the war and perhaps did so
stupidly, but nonetheless they've seen the response of Hezbollah to the war
and it's left them very impressed with the organization.

Of course, there are many other problems Hezbollah's not dealing with. For
example, the Israelis dropped at least a million cluster bombs in southern
Lebanon, particularly in the last few days of the war, and these, of course,
are being removed by international bomb disposal groups. They're only about
10 percent through right now, and that's part of the sort of lingering
dangerous environment in south Lebanon, which unfortunately oftentimes has the
effect of reminding people that Israel is their enemy and therefore that
Hezbollah is the necessary protector. And indeed for the people in south
Lebanon, I would say, if you ask them about their own security problems--and
they have big ones--they'll tell you that they trust neither the Lebanese army
nor the international force in south Lebanon, but basically Hezbollah, which
they see as a much more effective provider of security.

DAVIES: Well, Augustus Richard Norton, thanks so much for spending some time
with us.

Mr. NORTON: My pleasure to be with you again, Dave.

DAVIES: Boston University professor Augustus Richard Norton. His new book is
"Hezbollah: A Short History."

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.
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