JOHN MARTINKUS INTERVIEW - Wednesday 22nd August, 2007
GEORGE NEGUS: John Martinkus, welcome back, safe and sound
and this time, unkidnapped.
JOHN MARTINKUS, DATELINE REPORTER: That's right. Thanks,
George.
GEORGE NEGUS: It’s good to see you. John, do you agree with
that assessment of those guys? We'll talked about exactly what the
ramifications of that might be in a moment. It sounded to me, watching
your piece, listening to what they have written, that they see
themselves as more or less in a no-win situation.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Yeah, and that assessment put out by the guys
from the
82nd Airborne was the same unit we just saw. Now, that was basically as
far, as in my experience there, right on the money. The attitude on
this trip with these soldiers in Iraq this time - I was quite taken
aback, by how negative a lot of them were about the war. There's a few
reasons for that, there's the long deployments, there's the uncertainty
about when they'll be able to go home. But really, it's this surge and
these current operations are really putting a lot of pressure on the
military, and it's really, you know, showing up a lot of their
weaknesses. And it's the guys on the ground, who are being asked to do
these things who know the dangers, know the problems they're facing,
they're the ones saying this, and it's not going back up the chain.
GEORGE NEGUS: Is it the case of, if they're unconvinced that
the policy
being thrust upon them is going to work, their job is so many times
harder than it ever was.
JOHN MARTINKUS: That's right. I mean, you know these are the
guys out
there doing the searches, trying to find al-Qaeda, trying to tackle
IEDs, trying to catch those people who are putting the bombs out. And
they realise the complexity, that that letter said a lot about this,
they’ll realise the complexity of what's going on. You have
Shia militias, you’ve got all different types of Sunni
militias, you’ve got a power struggle going on underneath the
overall footprint of the American forces there. There's almost six or
seven different civil wars going on. And, you know, the surge has, in a
way, created more.
GEORGE NEGUS: Recriminations from that sort of thing, are
those blokes
likely to suffer as a result of coming out and speaking like that?
JOHN MARTINKUS: Yeah, I think most likely they will. The
military is a
very big, bureaucratic organisation. There's any number of ways that
they can be punished. They can have their tours extended, they can be
given some unpleasant duties, they cannot be promoted, that kind of
thing.
GEORGE NEGUS: John let’s talk about you, you always
look cool
in those situations. But this time, how did you feel? You've been there
before, you've been kidnapped. You know the ropes.
JOHN MARTINKUS: I'm a human being. I was scared going back, of
course I
was. I did often think about the whole kidnapping experience, because
it's not something I want to have happening to me again.
GEORGE NEGUS: It's not something you'd put your hand up for.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Definitely not. Like anybody covering the
conflict now,
we just can't operate in the way we used to. It's a big shame, because
we can't get the story from the Iraqi side in anymore.
GEORGE NEGUS: What’s it like moving around, you got
yourself
embedded, but in Baghdad where you spent a lot of time before you
actually went to the Valley. What's it like moving around Baghdad?
JOHN MARTINKUS: It's very difficult. You either move with the
military
in a helicopter or armed convoy or, if you were, say, moving with other
journalists, generally, they will travel in an armed convoy of their
own.
GEORGE NEGUS: The journalists?
JOHN MARTINKUS: With their own security.
GEORGE NEGUS: They're targets?
JOHN MARTINKUS: Definitely. You're a target because you're a
foreigner,
you're worth ransom money. You're a target because you're Australian or
American. There's, you know, it's gloves off.
GEORGE NEGUS: You were saying to me earlier that, with, say,
CNN,
they've got a huge operation there, spending a fortune just keeping
their people in Baghdad and in Iraq alive with security.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Yeah. The security operation they've got over
there is
pretty.. it would surprise many people. I can't go into too much detail
about it but, suffice to say, all the major networks working there now
have to employ, what is pretty much a private army to protect their
officers.
GEORGE NEGUS: It's getting madder and madder.
JOHN MARTINKUS: It is. It is. Every time they go out, you've
got
armoured cars, you’ve got bodyguards with weapons, you've got
three different cars to take one correspondent to a location. It's a
very complex environment.
GEORGE NEGUS: Obvious question, John.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Yeah?
GEORGE NEGUS: Are you going to go back?
JOHN MARTINKUS: Well, look... I think I'll leave it alone for
a while.
Um... but I do think it is such a huge and such an important story that
it does have to be covered and we have to keep an eye on what's going
on there.
GEORGE NEGUS: Nice to know you're thinking about it, though.
JOHN MARTINKUS: Thank you.