WHERE ARE THE FISH FINGERS?

John Simpson on

the behaviour of some refugees from Kuwait

Baghdad THERE is a new censor at Iraqi television in charge of Western television reports now. He is an educated man with a doctorate from an American university, but his ear for the nuances of British English is lamentably insensitive. Last week he took exception to a brief sequence in one of my reports in which I described the reactions of several British women to the unpleasant experiences they had been through. We interviewed them in the five-star Mansour Melia Hotel, the best in Baghdad, which is the staging-post for people who are being evacuated to the West from Kuwait and Iraq.

Some of the women reacted impressive- ly. They smiled and kept calm while the cameramen of 50 broadcasting companies sweated and shoved around them. They talked in terms of quiet affection about the husbands and sons whom they had been forced to leave behind, and whose fate is unknown. Many had no homes to go to in England, and no certainty about their future income. Yet they spoke about get- ting back to nice cups of tea and the English countryside as though nothing had changed since the blitz. They fought the tears for their children's sakes and busied themselves with their luggage so the cameras couldn't pry into their emotions.

Others complained. Their meals were cold, they couldn't use the swimming pool, it had taken too long to reach Baghdad by coach from Kuwait. 'My little boy is used to proper food — burgers, fish fingers, chips, things like that. All this rice and vegetables upsets his tummy.' Several said the British embassy had told them to do the wrong thing. Many felt it was all Mrs Thatcher's fault, as though Saddam Hus- sein were an act of God, like drought or flooding, and the Government should do something about it. 'I don't see why we should suffer because of her and President 'Emma went for ages until Toby put his foot down.' Bush,' said one affronted woman. Another agreed. 'If she's going to call Saddam a dictator, why didn't she wait till we were safely out of Kuwait?'

In the background there was muzak: an incongruous soft medley of English folk songs, in which 'Dance To Your Daddy' melded into `Greensleeves'. It was an expensive and luxurious place to be, and far from unpleasant; although the women were confined to the upper floors for most of the day. The more independent-minded of them — often British Airways steward- esses, whose morale was high and who rarely complained — took advantage of the confusion and the television cameras to slip away to the coffee shop. The rest stayed.

They had more complaints to make. 'Why did the Foreign Office tell us at first to report to the authorities? That could have got us into real trouble'. 'And why didn't the embassy do more to help us? I think it's disgusting.' Like the British girl who ex- plained a few days later how she'd taken the Iraqis to her father's hiding-place because they'd threatened not to let her leave otherwise, they needed figures of authority to tell them what to do.

One or two lost all control. 'I'm speaking for the children,' said a blonde from the Midlands in a voice loud enough to attract a dozen camera crews. She wheeled round in the circle they made, egged on by their attention. 'Someone's got to speak for the children. They're ill. They've got dysen- try.' She meant diarrhoea. In our report that night her words lay in apposition to those of the sensible, quiet women who were making the best of a difficult and worrying situation. But the censor missed the point. She whinged, therefore she must be cut out.

Her spirit seems nevertheless to have taken over the British tabloid press. 'Jour- ney through hell', one headline described the boring, hot and trying trip by coach from Kuwait to Baghdad. 'Burning desert', 'torturing thirst', 'fiends', 'evil', 'sobbing',

'loved ones', 'anguish': the hacks' Roget was in constant use. Tenko had met the

Sheikh; there was a hint of strategically ripped clothing, of beautiful white women menaced by lustful natives. A hundred and fifty years of the nastier side of the Empire lay behind each loud headline, and to prove the superiority of our system over Saddam Hussein's someone heaved a brick through the window of the Iraqi Cultural Centre in the Tottenham Court Road.

'Thatcher Warns Evil Saddam' yelled a newspaper placard, in something of the same spirit. Some of us have been writing and broadcasting about the unpleasantness of Saddam Hussein's regime for years now, while the British Government regards Iraq as too valuable a customer to upset and the tabloids thought it was a misprint for Iran.

But now that they have discovered his crimes and put a compulsory 'evil' in front of his name, you know there's a particular need for coolness and rationality. `Silly bitch,' a British tabloid journalist said, sotto voce, when one British woman, newly arrived in Amman, ex- plained to him how she liked it in Iraq and wanted to go back as soon as possible. He wasn't going to quote her; she didn't fit the pattern. Instead he turned to another, and got her to say that if she hadn't brought plenty of boiled water with her, she and her son would have gone thirsty. Now he had his story: he might have been doing an exposé of shady tour operators who failed to live up to their brochures.

Not long afterwards, I saw how these tour operators dealt with other people — people who were not white, and whose governments were of no account to Sad- dam Hussein. My colleagues and I, having just left Baghdad, were walking back to our hotel after a celebratory dinner. A crowded bus drew up beside us. There seemed to be more people standing than sitting inside it. The driver started pushing and kicking them out and they spilled onto the pavement, where they settled down among their cardboard boxes. Children began to cry. Many of the mothers were no more than 16 or 17 themselves, and just as much in need of comfort. `Where are you from?' I asked one older woman. `Please,' she said, looking up at me, `We are from Philippines.' The bus had brought them to Amman from Kuwait via Baghdad. It had taken them more than 30 hours, and they had only once been given food and water. They were skinny and feeble, and quite incapable of defending themselves. Some had been locked up by their employees in the houses where they were servants, and ordered to stay there. They were nature's victims.

Now there was nothing for them to do, nowhere for them to sleep, and still no- thing for them to eat or drink. The only available reception centre was already full to overflowing, and the only place for them to sleep was the front garden. There was no sweating, helpful man from the British embassy to look after their interests. Vir-

gin Airlines wasn't laying on a charter flight to take them home. Jesse Jackson wouldn't be coming to rescue them. The television cameras weren't waiting for them, and the British tabloid press wasn't polishing up its adjectives to describe what they had gone through.

They sat in the warm darkness, 50 or 60 of them, quiet now except for the occasion- al whimpering of a tired child. My friends and I hung around awkwardly for a little, towering over them, and then we left too. The problem went far beyond the scope of individual acts of charity to deal with. All we could do was fetch our camera and film them, in the hope that some foreign government might feel obliged to intervene and help. As we walked off to get the equipment I looked back. They were still watching us, but no one complained that we seemed to be deserting them. Life had taught them that there was no one to complain to.

John Simpson is foreign affairs editor of the BBC.