born 1976, political Scientist and freelance journalist
[03/03/2010]
There are two different ways of getting into Irak. The easiest and most common route is flying from Jordan, Beirut or even Vienna or Stockholm, in a direct flight to Erbil, the capital of the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan. If you chose this route, it is not necessary to apply for a visa beforehand. The Kurdish authorities issue their own entry permits, valid for ten days, after which the foreigner is required to go to an office of the Foreign Ministry in order to extend it for more 10 day periods.
The stamped visa that you get in Erbil airport would not normally be valid to travel outside of the area controlled by the Kurdish autonomous government. The capacity of admitting foreigners and issuing "de facto" valid visas, as well as having their own government, constitution, flag, army and hymn prove that the Kurdish region lives nearly independently from the Baghdad government. However, the visas issued by these authorities are useless if you want to go south of Kirkuk. They will not allow you to reach Baghdad, Najaf or Basra, the cities we have traveled through in this journey. There have been at least three foreigners who have been deported for trying to travel to Baghdad with a Kurdish visa.
If you want to travel to the central and southern regions of Iraq you have to previously request a visa in your country of origin. These visas can take up to two months and it is necessary to present an invitation from within Iraq, a work contract or an international press card. In this last case, the procedure is somewhat faster and you can get your visa in just about two weeks. When the visa is stamped on the foreign passport of the person who wants to visit Iraq, it clearly states, in Arab and in English, that the visa is only valid for a month after its issue date.
However, when we arrive to Basra airport, the entry point into the country, a new stamp will be added to our passport, written only in Arabic, demanding a visit to the residence and nationality office of the Iraqi Home Ministry, in the Karrada district of Baghdad, in order to renovate your stay. Unlike the entry through Kurdistan, you are not forewarned and English is not used in the stamps to alert the foreigner of the required renovation of the visa if your stay is longer than 10 days.
In my case, from the 23rd of December until the 4th of January, without reading or talking Arabic, I went through Najaf and Baghdad without anyone warning me about my lack of visa, or, in other words, about my illegal presence in the country. This is specially blatant if you consider that in the capital I went from one side to the other, crossing an average of 5 to 10 checkpoints daily, registering in three different hotels and showing my passport to no less than a hundred policemen and army officers, among them a General of the Iraqi Federal Police.
It is pointless to recount the number of times I had to slip 20 or 50 dollar bills to cross a checkpoint. But it was never due to me not having a visa, it was always out of the officer's greed. In any case, the foreigner who approaches Baghdad airport with an outdated visa, crossing the -theoretically strict- security controls of this facility, can also pass the controls and check in the luggage for the return flight without anyone taking the trouble to read the expiry date of his visa. It is quite revealing that, along with the dozens of occasions when no documentation was required, the bulky backpacks (with camera and batteries included) were never registered, despite the metal and substance detectors with which the Iraqi government has equipped the security checkpoints. The life of the Iraqis can go into a systematic, daily and lengthy standstill in the tiresome controls that, as witnessed by the foreign visitors, are not very useful. Not to mention the fact that the members of the security forces have not got the remotest idea of how to react to a foreign passport. The key is passing them in silence. Silence and making the most of the policeman's ignorance, along with the effective lack of written or known laws about what can or cannot be done. A barrier that is often overcome with insistence and resolve, while in other occasions it is simply a question of money opening gates. Losing all trust in the usefulness of press cards and credentials. The camera is always -with or without visa and the required permit- out of bounds. It simply cannot be used openly.
When reaching the passport control for outgoing flights, in the booth where they put the exit stamp on the passport, a customs policeman will inform you that, if lacking the required visa renewal, the foreigner has three options: a) to be arrested for exceeding the allowed time of stay, b) overlook the expired visa if the foreigner wants to leave the national territory (as would happen in Spain), or c) -and this could only happen in Iraq- demand that he obtain a visa to leave the country. Iraq is one of the few countries in the world where you need a visa to get in and one to get out.
In other words, the foreigner who has obtained a visa for staying in the country for 30 days finds that the conditions of this permit have varied along the way. Those 30 days have suddenly become the number of days available to reach the country once the permit is issued, not the number of days you are allowed to stay. After the tenth day of residence it is necessary to become a resident in Iraq.
So if a journalist wants to stay in Iraq, let's say, for eleven days, he must obtain a residence certificate. This procedure starts with the document issued by the hotel where he is staying. Afterwards, with this residence certificate, he will have to go, for example, to the Governorship in Baghdad where a residence certificate will be issued. This certificate has then to be presented in a hospital where he will have to undergo an AIDS test, the results of which are indifferent because they will not be sent -weeks later when they are finished- to the foreigner's home address. They will be sent instead to the place where he was registered in Baghdad, where he will obviously not be able to collect the results. With the receipt stating that the HIV tests has been done, he will be able to go to the offices of nationality and residence, where the exit visa will be issued.
In other words, a foreigner who wants to stay 11 days in Iraq will have to spend at least three of these days fulfilling the necessary paperwork for the issue of his exit visa. I do not think anybody does that. I did not. Can you guess the alternative? Yes, you guessed right. Money. Money for the person putting the stamps. Money for the policemen who guard the doors of the administrative offices. Money and time. If nobody speaks English in the administrative offices and to issue a visa you can only enter the administrative facilities with your passport in your hand and the local translator does not have a passport, then it is impossible to complete the paperwork. Money. An administration designed to be negotiated with money. There are things that never change.
Press credentials are useless. That the visa has been issued in the category of "media work and camera" is irrelevant. Every time that the camera is shown in the street (and I mean every time), all the procedure will start anew. This will happen to you in the middle of the road or in the city center. Every policeman, every soldier, is the owner of his fiefdom. He can spend hours calling on the phone asking for the standard reaction to a foreigner with a camera. Nobody knows what to answer. And an additional factor is the local population who will, in certain places, act as policemen, out of fear or mistrust. Not more than five minutes can go by between the moment when a strange car with a foreigner stops until the moment when any of the neighbors see him, phone the police or the army placed in a nearby street to inform them that something strange is going on. A recording day that will probably be lost. A common comment in our recording attempts was that "in Iraq, it was probably easier to travel with explosives than a camera". The camera is always considered a threat, a potential danger. To try an obtain a permit to record a bridge or a military checkpoint, in order to illustrate an interview on the security situation or the transfer of control to the Iraqi army can become a question of days. It takes days to record a simple shot. This turns work into a nearly underground activity. Hiding, trying to go unnoticed and working hurriedly generates mistrust. Not to mention the fear that, in the present situation, without kidnappings, many Iraqis (taxi drivers, friends or translators) still feel when they are moving around with a foreigner, and specially so in certain districts in Baghdad.
Press credentials are useless. That the visa has been issued in the category of "media work and camera" is irrelevant. Every time that the camera is shown in the street (and I mean every time), all the procedure will start anew. This will happen to you in the middle of the road or in the city center. Every policeman, every soldier, is the owner of his fiefdom. He can spend hours calling on the phone asking for the standard reaction to a foreigner with a camera. Nobody knows what to answer. And an additional factor is the local population who will, in certain places, act as policemen, out of fear or mistrust. Not more than five minutes can go by between the moment when a strange car with a foreigner stops until the moment when any of the neighbors see him, phone the police or the army placed in a nearby street to inform them that something strange is going on. A recording day that will probably be lost. A common comment in our recording attempts was that "in Iraq, it was probably easier to travel with explosives than a camera". The camera is always considered a threat, a potential danger. To try an obtain a permit to record a bridge or a military checkpoint, in order to illustrate an interview on the security situation or the transfer of control to the Iraqi army can become a question of days. It takes days to record a simple shot. This turns work into a nearly underground activity. Hiding, trying to go unnoticed and working hurriedly generates mistrust. Not to mention the fear that, in the present situation, without kidnappings, many Iraqis (taxi drivers, friends or translators) still feel when they are moving around with a foreigner, and specially so in certain districts in Baghdad.
It finally all comes down to the fact that, in order to work, you need the full trust of a group of people (as reduced as possible) without whom a foreigner in Baghdad would as useful as one of the street lights that have not worked for years. Bearing in mind that, along with the trust, the time and the patience, in order to undertake any scene or interview, the preparations may last for hours, even days. Fear and money in order to get from one place to another. It is not only a question of ability in obtaining certain shots or in identifying relevant stories, that will transmit some information to our audience. Many times, journalism depends exclusively on logistics, contacts and, as usual, a level of uncertainty at work that, given the working conditions, not only is it impossible to pay for its dangerousness, a danger assumed without complaints, willingly, as a part of the job, but also due to the very high probability that you always have of doing the return journey empty-handed. An interesting job. That nearly nobody would leave. You visit places and you meet people that are unapproachable for most of the population. Let's forget about fine hotels, politicians and press conferences. The streets. The story is in the streets, a place where you can reach conclusions, even contradictory, unorthodox ones, with which you do not necessarily agree. Proximity journalism.
It is important to remember Baghdad when it is no longer a dark room in which nobody really knows who is lighting the fire, when there are no longer thousands of armed militiamen threatening its citizens, when you are able to travel without knowing that you are putting your life at risk, when the morbid curiosity and the tragedy of the corpses lining the streets is over. Relative normality in Baghdad. A situation that is taking in oxygen and breathing, with a level of violence much lower than it used to be two years ago. Even if this can obviously change in any given moment. This is also information and it must interest us, even if it is without headlines and scoops. Very real information. Proximity information. Which will bring us another type of knowledge, more human and increasingly necessary.