The following article was written by Ben Lando, founder and bureau chief of Iraq Oil Report, a Baghdad-based information service, and contributing editor for Platts. His story is reproduced here with his consent.
Insurgent violence in Baghdad is not new for Iraqis. On the afternoon of January 25, three teams of suicide attackers staged coordinated, vehicle-born bombings of three popular capital hotels. By the morning of January 26, shattered glass was being swept from nearby storefronts and new window panes were being installed.
The Iraqi resolve is born of constant siege. On the morning of January 26, as lives torn apart the day before were being stitched back together, an investigations directorate of the Ministry of Interior was bombed, killing at least 17. Any investor in Iraq has to expect such instability -- both seemingly random and utterly predictable.
The finale of the trio of attacks on January 25 was at the al-Hamra Hotel compound, home to nearly a dozen foreign news outlets and hundreds of Iraqi citizens and businesses. Like so many victims of violence in Iraq, many of these news outlets, including the Times of London, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times, are left without workplace or home.
They also mourn the death of a friend and colleague: Yasser, a brave and beloved driver for the Times of London. He was one of at least 36 killed in attacks on January 25.
Readers of Iraq Oil Report may have noticed our publication schedule was unusually light this week. This is no coincidence. The Iraq Oil Report bureau is not in the al-Hamra Hotel compound. As fate would have it, though, I was less than 40 meters from the white mini-bus as it exploded, leaving a 6-foot-deep crater in the road.
Just before 3 p.m. on the afternoon of January 25, I left the Iraqi Oil Ministry, having just covered the signing of the West Qurna Phase 1 oil contract by Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. I was transcribing notes from an interview with Exxon's Upstream Ventures President Robert Franklin as my Iraqi driver took me back to my office.
Smoke was billowing to the north; the Ishtar Sheraton hotel had just been bombed. We passed the Babylon Hotel. On the side of the tower, large letters in the style of the famous Hollywood sign spelled, "2010 Happy New Years." Minutes later, when we were less than a mile past, bombers attacked. So powerful was the blast that our car seemed to stand still as the rest of the city jumped. We drove onward toward the Hamra, less than a mile away.
The threat level everywhere in the Karrada neighborhood was high. The Hamra's back gate was being shut down as a part of a perimeter lock-down, but the chief of security knew me and my driver, and let us in. As we rounded the corner toward the hotel's front entrance we heard the start of gunfire. The compound was under attack.
In 2005, twin vehicle bombs ran through the back checkpoint, which we had just passed through. If this was a repeat, we thought, we'd better leave through the front as fast as possible.
The gunfight sounded as if it were behind us, an unfortunate trick on our ears. We sped forward. Suddenly, we were 20 meters from two Hamra security guards firing AK-47s towards the front gate, our planned point of exit. My driver, James Bond-like in his talents, reversed the car, pedal to the floor, dodging people and concrete blastwalls, and parallel parked at the hotel's front entrance.
According to eye witnesses and reviews of security tapes, the siege began shortly before 4pm, when a man in a brown suit walked across the main road, toward the Hamra's front entrance, shooting a pistol. There may have been a second gunman, but this has not been confirmed. Regardless, the assailants won out. The man in the brown suit opened the metal gate. Five minutes later, a white mini-bus drove through, nearly flattening an unarmed Hamra employee attempting to stop it.
My driver and I, along with a half-dozen Hamra residents and employees, stood in the lobby of the hotel, unsure whether to run out the back entrance, where there were large windows and, potentially, gunmen. Then the mini-bus exploded. It was as if I were inside a reverberating bass drum, filled with shards of crashing glass. I saw, as if in slow motion, concrete and metal slam to the floor and a plume of dust billow upward.
We rushed down to the basement, fearing a follow-up bomber -- a tactic of maximum damage. We waited. Finally, we walked out the back entrance, some of us carrying others. We were all covered in a layer of dust, some of us also covered in blood. I followed my driver up the stairs. He was limping. My hand was bloody from a small cut on my thumb.
When I walked from the bombed out hull of the hotel, right before stepping into the daylight, I wondered what it would look like. When I saw the reality, I wished somehow the scene could be changed, time reversed, buildings still standing, people still living. On January 27 the Islamic State of Iraq, an affiliate of al-Qaida, claimed responsibility. The Hamra itself was targeted because it was known to be a home for foreign journalists, which ISI now considers legitimate targets.
Since the January 25th attacks, I have spent the rest of the week in mourning and mending with staff and colleagues, assisting other news outlets, attempting to overcome the horror of violence, to resume whatever normalcy can be had in Iraq.
Iraq Oil Report, like other news outlets, will not be packing up. It's vital that we cover Iraq's oil sector and the political and security developments that affect it. Foreign investors who want to do business in Iraq need to know the facts -- and so do Iraqis. Oil here has been used for the benefit of the few since it was first commercially produced in the 1920s; yet oil also fuels Iraq's best hopes for reconstruction.
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