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Gulf War Flashback
NPR's Neal Conan Reflects on 1991 Gulf War Experience
 March 9, 1991: NPR's Neal Conan describes being held captive by Iraqi soldiers.
NPR's Neal Conan in 1991 just after his release by Iraqi soldiers.
(Photo: Jacki Lyden/NPR)
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March 27, 2003 -- NPR's Neal Conan, host of Talk of the Nation, was among a group of three dozen journalists held by Iraqi soldiers for nearly a week in the waning days of the 1991 Gulf War. Conan looks back on the event.
As the war ended, reporters in Kuwait started to hear reports of a
Shia rebellion centered in Iraq's big southern city, Basra. I ran into
an old friend, Chris Hedges (then and now of The New York Times) who
said he planned to poke around on the other side of the border the next
day and I prevailed on him to take me along.
We drove from Kuwait City the next morning on the "highway of death," the road taken by the last,
doomed Iraqi column to flee northward. Past that, we saw the
astonishing pillars of flame and smoke gushing from a dozen oil wells
and the charred corpses of Soviet-built tanks. There were small groups
of Iraqi soldiers headed north too, trudging home from the debacle in
Kuwait, some armed, some not. We stopped to speak with them -- Chris
speaks Arabic, I do not -- and ask about what they knew of the situation
in Basra. We ran into more and more of them after we crossed the
frontier -- we begged for a couple of the prepackaged Meals-Ready-To-Eat from
the most advanced American tank, which was from the Vermont National
Guard.
Neal Conan (R) and radio reporter Lou Garcia in 1991 before leaving Kuwait City for Basra.
(Photo: Donatella Lorch)
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One Iraqi we met after that said that his army had completely
re-established control of the city, and, after we thanked him and headed
on our way, Chris remarked that, if he was right, we might find
ourselves in trouble.
If memory serves -- and it probably doesn't -- it
wasn't 10 seconds before a speeding jeep overtook us, with armed
soldiers inside, gesturing to pull over. Soldiers leapt out and, without
saying a word, put their AK-47s in our faces and pulled us out of our
Land Rover, patted us down for weapons and threw us in the back of the
jeep.
It turned out the Iraqis were part of a regular army formation that
was isolated south of Basra, out of touch with higher command. We also
learned that they were holding four other reporters -- two Brazilians, an
Uruguayan and a Catalan -- and, because we were suddenly six, or because
there were now two Americans, or because one was from The New York
Times, they decided they needed to send us up the chain of command. And
we found the rebellion we'd been looking for.
As our tiny two-car convoy raced at full speed along an elevated highway through Basra, we could
see the green flags of the resistance flying from several buildings and
white trails of tracer bullets from the automatic weapons that hosed
much too close over our heads.
When we finally climbed a low hill and turned out of the line of fire, we were driven onto the campus of Basra University, which had been taken over by a Republican Guard division,
which had lined its artillery along the driveway. The tide of the Shia
uprising reached us twice more -- that evening, at sunset, we heard the
unforgettable sound of mortar fire, incoming, and, soon afterwards, the
concussive whumps of Iraqi howitzers, outgoing.
The next day, we joined a convoy of about 150 vehicles -- trucks, command cars,
fuel trucks, towed artillery and a few APCs and vintage tanks -- that, we
were told, would drive us to Baghdad. As all the bridges across the
Euphrates had been blown, we had to wait in a village not far from
biblical Ur for slack tide to steady the pontoon bridge Iraqi engineers
had thrown across the river.
We started to move out just at sunset and gunfire erupted from the village. Our "minder," Maj. Hassan, herded
us down an alley to safety, and exposed himself to fire to protect us.
Half an hour later, when we were back in a now thoroughly confused
convoy, more shots rang out and, as we huddled in the back seat, Maj.
Hassan blasted away with his AK out the right front window, and handed
us his ammunition pouch and empty magazine to reload.
We had no way to know, but the worst was over. We were taken to another
army camp on the south side of the Euphrates the next day as the column
proceeded north without us and, a day after that, flew by helicopter to
Baghdad where we were soon joined by a much larger group of reporters,
most of them French, who'd been picked up trying to crash the ceasefire
talks at Safwan.
After being locked into rooms in the Hotel Diana by the
secret police, we rejoiced the next afternoon when one of our colleagues
heard on shortwave radio that Iraqi authorities admitted that we were in
their hands. We might still be tried for anything between trespassing
and espionage, but this meant they could no longer just take us out back
and shoot us. As it turned out, we were delivered into the gentle care of
the International Committee of the Red Cross, who piled us into a bus
the next morning and drove us to safety in Jordan.
In Depth
 Iraq Flashback: NPR's Tom Gjelten reflects on face-off's similarities to 1991 war.
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