Ed Griffin-Nolan is the author of Nobody Hitchhikes Anymore.

It was this interesting moment where George Bush, the father, and Saddam Hussein had conspired to keep the world in the dark about what was happening in the wake of Desert Storm. Most of the journalists were kept in Kuwait, on the border. After Desert Storm, a very brief war, they allowed some US journalists back in. Then they imprisoned a number of them, and pretty much kicked everybody else out. On a separate track, I had been working in Central America with a group called Witness for Peace. What we had done there was a system of documentation of attacks against the civilian population during the Contra war in the mid-80s. I was asked to be part of a delegation to try to document what had happened during what they call the “Shock and Awe” campaign, mostly in Baghdad. 

So there we were. March 17, 1991, we arrived. The Air Force was still taking potshots at the Iraqi military in the desert between Kuwait and Baghdad. Then they were chasing them out of Kuwait, which didn’t take too long. But there was this blackout, which we dropped into the middle of, trying to figure out what happened. 

We came through Jordan in a bus across the desert into Baghdad. Myself, Erika Munk, from The Nation, and a photographer named Rick Reinhard, a DC-based guy, were the only three Western journalists in Baghdad. The Iraqis had these minders that followed you around. They were pretty inept—there were two guys named Muhammad and Ali—we were just giving them the shake. But one night, we got them to drive us to a big hotel, trying to interview people. These guys dropped us off, and they left us, because they didn’t care. Then we had to get back to the hospital where we were staying, and there was just no transportation; there were no buses. 

We didn’t even know which direction we were going. We only knew the name of the hospital where we were staying. So the three of us got out in front of this hotel and started hitching. Erika was pretty fearful, so she wasn’t doing too much. But Rick was a guy who’d been in some situations, so he was standing there too. We were right off the curb, and we had our thumbs up. It was dark, and it was urban, so that’s different. Usually, I’m standing on the side of a highway and it’s daylight. But this was clearly out of necessity. 

We got picked up by these guys from the Republican Guard, which was the secret police. I don't recall any other vehicles. It was a very deserted city. It was pretty much under lockdown. There was a question as to the cohesion of the Iraqi security forces at the moment. These guys could have been rogue. They could have been one faction or another. But it was a ride, so we got in the car.

None of us had good Arabic, so we couldn't tell what these guys were about. They knew a lot more English than we knew Arabic, so they were in charge of the conversation. This was not like, “Hey, how’re you doing? Tell me about your family.” That was not an option. We were looking around at the city, it's dark, and we're wondering where they're taking us. I was once taken prisoner by the Contras, and for a day and a half, I had a lot of conversations to try to establish a human rapport. This didn't offer that opportunity.

Every once in a while, they’d get into an argument. They would stop, and they would begin to try to ask us questions. If you’ve ever been back with the East German secret police or even some of the wannabes, they have this robotic way of asking you the same question endlessly and thinking you’re gonna tell a different lie or something. But there we were, stopped on the side of the road in this town that was still pretty much dark—we had pretty much blown up most of the electric grid—with these guys. We had no idea what their intentions were, what their loyalty was. They seemed to be convinced that we were CIA, which we weren’t. But we had absolutely no leverage in this situation, so we just stayed in the car.

They finally just gave up, figured out that they couldn’t figure us out, and dropped us back at the hospital. That was probably a 20-minute ride that seemed more like a couple of hours. It was pretty nerve-wracking. 

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