Baghdad correspondent tells of life after Saddam

Ulrich Tilgner has been reporting from the Middle East for two decades Keystone Archive

Ulrich Tilgner was a familiar face in German-speaking Switzerland throughout 2003 as Swiss television’s man in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

The veteran Middle East correspondent witnessed the fall of Saddam and narrowly escaped death when his hotel was fired on by coalition forces.

Tilgner heads up the German television channel ZDF’s bureau in the Iranian capital, Tehran, but has spent most of the past 12 months reporting for German and Swiss viewers from neighbouring Iraq.

His recent book, “Der Inszenierte Krieg” (“The Stage-Managed War”), recounts his experience of reporting from Baghdad.

swissinfo caught up with Tilgner while he was on a flying visit to the Swiss capital, Bern, to find out about life on the front line and the prospects for democracy in Iraq.

swissinfo: What for you were the defining characteristics of the war in Iraq?

Ulrich Tilgner: This was a war of firsts. It was the first time that the media played a part in the war in an organised manner. It was also the first time we had real-time pictures from the front line.

This sometimes made things appear to be more shocking than they really were. Let me give you an example: the first strikes by coalition forces in Baghdad happened to be right in front of cameras installed on the roof of the Ministry of Information. Maybe this wasn’t by chance – perhaps it was planned to show what was happening in Baghdad.

swissinfo: So the cameras were offering a distorted picture of events?

U.T.: Well, people watching on television saw [what appeared to be] an overwhelming show of force on the second and third evenings of the war. But we were not far away and saw that these strikes were only on a very limited part of the city. A few buildings were destroyed, but nobody was killed and most probably very few were injured. So it was not a really heavy attack.

But in the newspapers you saw headlines like ‘Baghdad under shower of rockets’ and descriptions of ‘the whole city shaking’, which was absolutely not the truth. It was just that the impact of the attack was directly in front of the camera, and our job was to correct this view.

swissinfo: How difficult is it to report on fact when covering what you describe as a “war of propaganda”?

U.T.: You could rely on eyewitness accounts to check what happened. In Baghdad, you could rely on precise casualty figures from hospitals. So in the morning I would tour the hospitals and ask how many people had been killed. If Iraqi officials told you that only a few people had died, but you knew that each hospital had received ten or 12 bodies, you had a good idea that the official statement was propaganda.

swissinfo: You describe in your book the moment when coalition forces mistakenly fired on your hotel. Did that bring home to you just how dangerous your job was?

U.T.: Yes. There is always a certain risk. We received indirect warnings that hotels might become targets for attack… but nobody believed our hotel would be attacked by the Americans. They had no idea that this was a hotel full of journalists when they were shelling it. I think the risk and danger are things you have to live with.

swissinfo: President Bush’s declared intention is to turn Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the region. How likely is this?

U.T.: There was a chance back in April and May, but the Americans did not give enough thought to the development of democratic structures. If you look back at some of Bush’s earlier statements at the start of the war, he spoke about democracy, but gradually he started to neglect this.

I think the window of opportunity for the creation of a new democratic culture is already closed. Now, you have tribal leaderships trying to play a role, the religious leaders and different sects are coming into the game, and everybody is trying to get a slice of the power. It now seems that Washington is not interested in genuine democracy and has abandoned plans for an early democratic programme, because it fears that most Iraqis will vote for the departure of the Americans.

swissinfo: You say in your book that after decades of fear under Saddam, Iraqis do not trust their freedom or those who gave it to them. How does the US go about winning their trust?

U.T.: This trust was lost back in 1991 [after the Gulf War], when coalition forces basically controlled the southern part of Iraq, when Bush senior was asking the Iraqi population to revolt and 75 per cent of Iraq was controlled by the opposition.

But then the Americans signed a ceasefire with Saddam and Iraqi forces smashed the opposition with helicopters, tanks and artillery. This was the moment when the Americans lost the trust of the opposition, and they have not been able to regain it.

So this time around, Iraqis do not believe the Americans are serious about installing democracy. Instead, they believe the US wants to control the country’s oil, build a power base in the Middle East and establish military bases in Iraq. Nobody – and I’ve talked to a lot of Iraqis – has ever told me they thought the Americans had come to help them.

swissinfo: You paint a bleak picture of the prospects for democracy in Iraq. What is your prognosis for the future of the country?

U.T.: I hope that in the near future we will see… moves toward self-government for Iraqis. This might lead to relative stability. But then the question is how this stability can be used to create a new political culture, and I don’t know if the US is ready to bring in the United Nations and let other countries participate. If they don’t, then they are facing disaster.

swissinfo-interview: Ramsey Zarifeh

Key facts

Ulrich Tilgner has been reporting from the Middle East for television audiences in Switzerland and Germany for two decades.
He was one of only a small number of journalists to stay in Baghdad throughout the United States-led war in Iraq.
His new book, “Der Inszenierte Krieg” (“The Stage-Managed War”) was published in September.