Customer Reviews

Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent Anne Garrels

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In some ways, Anne Garrels had a extraordinary advantage over print and television reporters who covered the Iraq war last spring.

She had no cameras, no tell-tale articles that could be hunted on the Internet by suspicious secret police, no bulky notebooks to mark her as a reporter in a crowd. Only a tape recorder the size of a cigarette pack ... and the sounds of war. She traveled lightly and discreetly, just under the radar of the gatekeepers.

Now, "Naked in Baghdad" chronicles Garrels's Iraq assignments between October 2002 and she left after the war in April 2003 -- from under-the-table visa negotiations, to swimming in a stagnating hotel pool to work off stress, to explaining the haunted life of normal Iraqis to normal Americans nine hours behind her.

"Naked" is intimate, authentic and blunt, without much literary decoration. It's a simple account that offers a real glimpse inside a foreign reporter's life -- and of the grander canvas upon which world events are being painted.

Unlike many of the wet-eared young correspondents dispatched to Iraq, Garrels is a hardened veteran, earning her stripes covering conflicts in the West Bank, Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan. Time zones, border crossings, badge-heavy bureaucrats, language barriers, blood and death are her office furniture.

Garrels's account is scrupulously impartial. She openly discusses her skepticism about a war based on suspicions about weapons of mass destruction, but bluntly explains Saddam's intolerable degradations. Garrels is, as one might hope, ultimately fair and balanced. Her goal is to capture the nuances and the ripple-effects of war among people who are directly splashed by it -- and such people rarely dictate the spin of news.

"Naked in Baghdad" certainly adds the most intimate war-reporting in a conflict that changed many of the rules for journalists.

Anyone who listened to NPR during the 2003 Gulf War probably heard many of Anne Garrels' reports from Baghdad. She could be heard two or three times a day reporting on events before, during, and after the bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of the city. Garrels reported primarily from the Palestine Hotel, calling in on an illegal satellite phone that she managed to keep hidden from the constant Iraqi security sweeps.

The book is a fascinating account of Garrels' time in Baghdad, told through her own journal entries and email updates sent to friends by her husband. It is more about the experiences of a veteran war correspondent than the war itself. As one of only a few American reporters who decided to remain in Baghdad when the bombing campaign began, Garrels displayed remarkable bravery and ingenuity in continuing to file her reports to NPR from a city under seige.

I often found myself listening to her reports during the war and wondering what in the world it must be like to be hiding in a hotel room while broadcasting halfway around the world to NPR - and hoping you don't get caught (or killed) while doing so. After reading Naked in Baghdad, it sounds like that wasn't even the most difficult part of her job. The risks she took in going out into the streets to collect the information in order to have something to report every day sounds comparably more difficult.

It sounds like Garrells has many more stories to tell from other wars zones (Afghanistan, Chechnya, Pakistan, etc). I look forward to reading more from this reporter.

In this day and age it is hard not to become obsessed with following the news but it is easy to forget that what you read in the newspaper is only half the story. NPR reporter Anne Garrels tells the account of what goes on behind the news as she reports from Baghdad leading up to and during the war.

I was also happy to find that Garrels steers clear of the usual journalistic self aggrandizement in writing this incredible compelling book. Weaving together her own daily life in Iraq, the pressures of dealing with the madness of Saddam's bureaucracy and her encounters with regular people, she opens up a whole different world to her readers. This has the effect of humanizing the Iraquies, showing them as neither enemy nor victim as they are so often portrayed to suit the purposes of others but rather showing them as they are. It is also refreshing to read how Garrels also breaks down the traditional barrier between the reporter and the public-showing how Garrels herself is like so many of us in being of two minds regarding the war and its consequences.

This thoughtful and powerful account of reporting from the front line should not be missed!

This brief (222 pages) diary covers October 2002 through April 2003, reported by National Public Radio's Anne Garrels, interspersed with e-mails from her husband, who sent updates on her whereabouts and actions to her friends around the world. Most of the action takes place in Baghdad. The run-up to the March war has Garrels struggling (without much success) to find reliable information and trusted assistants. Language is a huge barrier. Cultural differences are almost as big a barrier. Intrigue and torture by the government makes conclusions almost as unreliable as the raw data. Who can you believe? Did the interpreter interpret the story accurately? How filtered and restricted is her access to sources? Is the source who he says he is? After about four months of uncertainty, the war is over faster than anyone expected. After some short-term Baghdad belief that the Iraqis will hold, their defense folds like a shabby card table. The resulting chaos should not be surprising. The messages she hears and sees are often unclear, inconsistent and contradictory: Iraqis love Saddam, Iraqis hate Saddam; Americans are welcomed, Americans are despised; American bombs hit civilians, Iraqi defenses hit their own civilians; a wounded man is a civilian, the doctor says he is an officer lying to the reporter. It is impossible to decipher the truth. Even with all this technology, the fog of war is compounded to the bitter end by the cruel, petty banality of the Hussein regime. Straightforward stories get reversed and revised. Remember the idiotic information minister claiming that the Americans were not occupying the airport? Some lies become part of the history of the war. Late in her story, Garrels reports on the now debunked story of the looting of the national museum. She notes other reporters and networks who made significant compromises to stay in country; some of these compromises kept them there but made the stories of questionable veracity and ethics.

This collection of memories is more about reporters, reporting and technology than politics and war. Journalism under these conditions is more than challenging. Reporters have to bribe, lie and cajole; it is easy to imagine (oaky, let's just assume) that those whose stories are being told are doing much of the same. Garrels is assisted by a quasi-stringer, her minder/interpreter/driver who, at times, is her eyes and front-line reporter. Like the memorable film on Cambodia, "The killing fields", the American reporter is able to do her work primarily because of and through the work of a 'trusted' local who, only later do we find, is not at all what he claimed to be. And the American moves on to another task.

Garrels has contempt for some reporters (e.g., Dan Rather, Geraldo Rivera, an anonymous network bimbette in a tight t-shirt, French journalists who use their feminine guile to orally seduce a minister), general respect for one (John Burns), and no use for those who arrive late to the scene. She is a technical whiz, keeping her cell phone, satellite connection and tape recorder running on car batteries and tape. Garrels was certainly brave, fascinated by the war, yet at times she seems incredibly optimistic about her rights or expectations as a foreogn journalist, regularly surprised or just unhappy at how poorly she is treated, sexually assaulted, expected to pay bribes. She acts like she should have immunity from nervous young soldiers and misplaced missiles.

This book will revive many already dormant memories about a cruel dictatorship and a brief, formal war followed by a chaotic, dragged out denouement.

What an excellent piece of journalism. While excited to read this book, admittedly, I did go into it knowing NPR's propensity to left leaning bias, but nonetheless assured that it was going to be very good. Which it was.

Being admittedly sensitive to anti-Americanism, I was a little uncomfortable at first reading Annes reports of anti-US sentiment in the country but after being honest with myself realized that this is not liberal bias, just honest reporting of what the Iraqis feel. To be noted is the fact the Mrs. Garrels quotes many Iraqi's who are Pro-American. Having said all that, I believe that Anne Garrels honestly reports the general feeling of the Iraqi public without letting her own biases get in the way.

Evidence of Mrs. Garrels non-partial reporting can be found in her reporting and uncovering of the mis-information fed out by the Iraqi Ministry of Information. Reporters with an agenda could have very well taken some of the stories that Anne debunks and dishonestly used them to promote their views on the war.

I found the last 1 1/2 pages of the book both interesting (in a socio-political way) and disheartening. While in Iraq, Mrs. Garrels seems to become quasi-Iraqi and successfully convey a brand of thinking outside the influence of American politics. However, once back in the USA, she again becomes American and instead of the profound questions she asks on page 190 ("Who are the Iraqi's? How did they get a Saddam? .. Where do they go from here?"), we are left with "Where are the W.M.D's? .. Could it be that Saddam was actually telling the truth..?".

I feel that she did a great job of reporting just the facts for 217 pages, but then dropped the ball at the very end. While I'm sure it wasn't her intention, she seems to leave the impression that the whole book leads up to this final bout of political opinion. For this reason, I don't think that the book ended strong.

HOWEVER, 217 of 219 pages were masterfully reported, and I believe give a good idea of the necessity for ousting Saddam. What better evidence can be given then the fear in the Iraqi population as reported through Anne Garrels eyes. While, I'm sure that there are tidbits that both liberals and conservatives wouldn't like, all I can say is ce'st la vie. The truth is rarely Democrat or Republican. Don't read this book to boast your polical views: it's not that kind of book. Read this book to find out what it's like to be in Iraq under Saddam's regime and to live with the fear of uncertainty. I highly recommend this book.

The best thing that I found about this book is how the focus was NOT on the politics of the war in Iraq. Anne Garrels, thankfully, didn't spend too much time analyzing President Bush's choices in starting the war, like so many other books have done. Instead, she chose to talk about the people of Iraq, and focus on the humane aspects of her stay in Baghdad. Although she covered much of the daily corruption in Iraq, she didn't choose to comment on it, and the memorable parts of the book are when she talks to Iraqi civilians, those who choose to speak out or those who stay silent. Although conservatives might decry it as liberal, this book shows one of the most important aspects of the war that often goes unnoticed - the effect on the people of Iraq.

First off, the few reviews that slam this book for liberal bias, are far more guilty of prejudging than is Garrells; one wonders if they've even read her work. Her portrait of life under Sadam Hussein is sympathetic only to the citizens who live in terror of speaking freely, not of his repressive regime.

As mentioned by other reviewers, Garrells really keeps her focus on the the Iraqi's personal experiences and on her own difficulties try to do her job in a corrupt and dangerous enivronment, not on the politics surrounding the war. Before it even starts, both she and the Iraqis seem to view the war as a virtually unavoidable certainty.

The book is also a very compelling portrait of what it's like to be an international journalist, specifically a female international journalist. Additionally, Garrells makes compelling comparissions to her experience in Iraq to her experiences covering another repressive regime, the Soviet Union.

If I'd read this book when I was in high school, I might have seriously considered a career in internaitonal journalism. While she doesn't make it seem like a glamorous, safe or easy job, it does come across as one of the most challanging and rewarding.

Ms. Garrells is a terrific writer, and this nearly contemporaneous account of the build-up to the Iraq invasion helps flesh out the portrait of a time and place on the brink of war.

One sentence illuminates the spirit of Anne Garrels' "Naked in Baghdad": ". . . I am fascinated by how people survive, and how the process of war affects the attitudes of all sides involved, and how they pull out of it." Thus, Garrels portrays the attitudes of Iraqis she encounters in Baghdad before, during, and after the entry of American armed forces into that city.

For example, Garrels' informants react to the omnipresent threat of catastropic violence. They react to the early and -- it turned out -- wildly optimistic reports of heroic resistance by the Iraqi army (they reacted with pride, even though they might have secretly despised Saddam Hussein). They react to the euphoric surprise of ugraded weaponry employed by the Americans and their allies, as compared to the 1991 war, because it proved more precise and therefor less disruptive of their lives. They react to the rapid deployment of American troops to protect the Oil Ministry building, in contrast to the more leisurely deployment around national treasures such as the antiquities museum, or even hospitals, which were quickly looted. Rightly or wrongly, this latter fact confirmed the belief in the streets of Baghdad that America fought this war for oil.

Garrel's renderings of the persons she encounters are compassionate and insightful. Her affection for her guide and all-around enabler, Amer, is palpable. In this sense, "Naked in Baghdad" is reminiscent of Freya Stark's "The Southern Gates of Arabia", based on Stark's 1934 journey through Hadhmaraut.

Garrels brings some depth to her reporting from Baghdad under Saddam Hussein. She has reported from the Soviet Union, and she finds parallels between the atmosphere of the Soviet Union and that of Hussein's Iraq. Suffice it to say one does not grow fonder of totalitarian regimes by reading the account of one who has had close contact with them.

Several books exist that follow American troops into Baghdad. In contrast, in "Naked in Baghdad" one vicariously waits for the invasion with the people of Baghdad. This book is a worthwhile glimpse into the Iraqi war and the fall of Hussein as perceived by the Iraqi people, filtered through the adroit reporting of an astute Western observer.

I want more. I cried at the end and was left wanting more. More about Annie's experiences in other parts of the world. More about the people who are now part of her extended family. More about Amer, and how he is doing now. And especially, more of this incredible reporter's insights on Baghdad in the aftermath of the war. I clung to her words during the war as I limited my exposure to what I heard on NPR. It's endearing that she did not (and maybe will never) understand impact she had on those of us who waited daily for her reports. The emails from her husband are a wonderful addition and, at times, provide much needed relief from the intensity of her experience. I have been talking about this book from the minute I opened the cover and have encouraged everyone I know to read it. It's time well spent.

I'm not good with detail so I will just give my impressions of this book. Normally I have trouble reading non-fiction but I had heard Anne Garrels on NPR and couldn't help being curious about the woman behind the insightful reports from Baghdad. I took "Naked in Baghdad" with me on vacation in Maui and had trouble putting the book down. It was an easy read but not at all fluffy. I was impressed not only by her intelligence and sensitivity as she tried to convey what the situation was like for normal Iraqi citizens, but also her bravery and dedication to her job. I also enjoyed her husband Vint Lawrence's email updates to friends and family, which were both touching and entertaining. The story of her relationship with her driver/translator Amer was also impressive. I am recommending this to all of my friends!