Messenger in War & Peace
David Dodds, ’98, a UND writer, was first deployed to Iraq in 2007 and is currently serving a second time as a military journalist in Kosovo. Here, he shares his story.
By David Dodds
I’ll never forget my first day In Iraq.
It was March 20, 2007, and the war was in full swagger. Suicide attackers and roadside bombs, unfortunately, were so common they didn’t make the front page of the local newspapers anymore.
As I stepped off the C‐130 onto the sun-cracked tarmac of Tallil Air Base, 300 kilometers southeast of Baghdad, the threats around me, though hidden, were palpable.
It wasn’t culture shock. I had been in the Middle East for seven months at that point. But, this place had an uneasiness not felt during my previous assignments in Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait.
I was a military journalist assigned to document the war and the progress being made in spite of it. I visited new brick‐and‐mortar schools that replaced Bedouin mud‐hut classrooms, multimillion‐dollar water upgrades built in lieu of drinking and bathing in polluted rivers and Supermax prisons that supplanted Saddam’s infamous torture centers.
I sold the good that came of war. My target audience was the people of Iraq. My competition was a thriving insurgency sworn to kill the messenger, and any other American soldier who stood in its way.
I had a heightened sense of everything as I rolled “outside the wire” on my first mission. The convoy commander’s words of warning and checklist of what‐to‐do‐in‐case‐ofs replayed in my mind. Not since my catechism in third‐grade Sunday school was something so important for me to know.
I sat in the back of an up‐armored Chevy Suburban traveling the wrong way down the northbound side of an Iraqi interstate highway. We moved at twice the speed of vehicles we met. It was all by design: be swift, and above all, be unpredictable.
My eyes fixed a good half‐mile ahead. For me, the rookie, on my virgin voyage, every oncoming car was a possible vehicle‐borne IED. The same could be said for anomalies on the road surface, freshly‐tarred potholes and the never‐ending parade of trash and displaced soil along the roadside – all potentially concealed a bomb with my name on it.
So, maybe a hundred times during that 20-minute drive to a new children’s hospital in An Nasiriyah, I prepared myself for the worst. And as each imminent threat passed, I sighed, took a deep breath and readied for the next.
This was reality for American soldiers in Iraq in 2007.
The war was still in doubt and young men in An Nasiriyah openly wore their disdain for us. In lawless quarters, where Al‐Qaida in Iraq operated unabated, and to my chagrin, where the children’s hospital was, their confidence was bolstered by the Kalashnikovs rifles they flashed beneath their dingy white dishdashas.
Our goal was to be in and out of the city in less than 30 minutes to deny the “bad guys” enough time to set a trap. In front of the hospital, my vehicle abruptly halted, my door flung open and I was whisked inside. I was reminded right away not to stand in front of open doorways or external windows.
Another soldier was assigned to watch me so I could photograph and interview doctors and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contractors designing the new hospital. When an Iraqi construction worker started snapping photos of me, unbeknownst to me, with a hand-held digital camera, my bodyguard leapt to him, demanded the camera and deleted the images. The worker was escorted off the premises.
At that moment, I realized there was a bounty for soldiers like me. My camera and pen were as lethal to the insurgent cause as anything American forces could throw at them. They needed to silence people like me.
This was my reality in Iraq.
The environment I operate in now is the antithesis of my time in Iraq. One need only walk the main streets of Pristina, the vibrant hub of Kosovo, down to Ronald Reagan Place or Bill Clinton Avenue, past the 14‐foot‐tall bronzed statue of the 42nd U.S. president, to see the unbridled love for America.
The American flag I wear on my right shoulder is met with smiles, handshakes and an eager “hello” from the children who want to practice their English on a real Yankee.
I am a NATO peacekeeper, part of Kosovo Forces 12 (KFOR), based at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, set in the heart of the once war ravaged, now just volatile, Balkans.
In a land where Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs struggle to set aside centuries of blood feuds and religious persecution to live peacefully, there is common ground between the ethnicities when it comes to respect for America. The Fourth of July here is celebrated with as much fervor as the 17th of February, the day Kosovo asserted its own independence. The admiration for America here is second only to America’s love for itself.
I didn’t feel quite the same love in Iraq.
There are similarities. For one, in both cases, I was/am part of a multinational effort to restore peace and order to a part of the world. In Iraq, I served in the U.S.-led coalition Multi‐National Force‐Iraq. Here in Kosovo, under NATO’s KFOR flag, I belong to Multinational Battle Group East.
I also find myself once again in a region that is predominantly Muslim. But, here again, a contrast must be drawn between the radical Wahabism that mainlines in the Middle East and the more pedestrian form of Islam in Kosovo. Islamic terrorism against KFOR soldiers is virtually nonexistent for fear of what the citizenry might do to those who perpetrate it.
In Iraq, the goal for military journalists like me was to put the spotlight on the efforts of soldiers, airmen, sailors, and marines to bring a better day and to focus on U.S. and coalition projects to rebuild the country. The plan was twofold: delegitimize the insurgency and garner support for the coalition.
In Kosovo, the story is the opposite.
Here, we go out of our way to place the U.S., KFOR and NATO in the background as much as possible. The idea is to shine the light on the institutions in Kosovo and their ability to provide for their own people. KFOR’s role is that of a ready reserve – a third responder behind local police forces – waiting to react only if needed.
So, for every story we do about someone such as U.S. KFOR Soldier Spc. Abby Tews, Jamestown, N.D., who volunteers her time to teach English to schoolchildren in Gjilan, Kosovo, we also strive to spread the news of a bread factory in the same city that is using private investments to expand, hire more workers and create more opportunities for farmers of all ethnicities to sell their wheat.
The way war journalists cover their surroundings has everything to do with the stage of the military campaign they find themselves in.
In Iraq, we needed first to win hearts and minds before we could win peace. In Kosovo, a much more mature military setting, where a fragile peace has held for exactly six years now, the hearts were won long ago.
Kosovo should be a model for what Iraq and Afghanistan might look like years from now. And along the way, just like in Kosovo, military journalists will continually adjust the way they cover those parts of the world.
Having seen firsthand the ravages of war, the pure joy of newfound peace and the undaunted resolve to recover, I can relate to the musing of legendary military scribe Ernie Pyle when he yearned to return to post‐war London to see the “peaceful silver curve of the Thames with its dark bridges.”
I, too, hope to return to my familiar haunts in Iraq and Kosovo one day. Preferably, not in uniform, and amid a long‐lasting peace for both.