The effect of the new team in Baghdad was instant. We could dare to start believing in the futureâand at long last we had antibiotics to treat our sick and injured animals holistically. It was no longer a case of ministering to life-threatening wounds and illnesses with basic antiseptics or whatever else we could scrounge.
Our newly stocked dispensary had wider-reaching implications as well. Adel and Husham had lived under stringent economic and academic sanctions for many years, and although both were highly competent vets, they had little idea of the massive strides made in international veterinary and zoological science over the past decade. Through no fault of their own, they had never visited modern zoos. Much of their reference works concerned diseases that had long been eradicated in the Western world or had no relevance to current zoo husbandry.
For the Baghdad Zoo, those dark ages were now about to end.
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HOWEVER, OUR JUBILATION at IFAW's arrival was dealt a massive blow from another quarter.
It happened a few days later when soldiers arrived one morning and demanded to see Dr. Husham. I asked why, but they merely repeated that they wanted the Iraqi vet.
When Husham appeared he was immediately arrestedâright in front of the dismayed staff, who could only watch in angry silence.
Before marching him off, the soldiers told me he was a member of the Ba'athist party and would be investigated accordingly. Demanding more information, I was told an edict had been issued by the coalition stating all Ba'ath Party members above a certain rank were to be interrogated and would no longer be able to hold any position in government departments. As the zoo was a civic institution, they were under orders to arrest Husham.
I retorted that if they really wanted to destroy the city and any goodwill the Americans still had, they were going about it the right way. Who did they think was going to run things? The irrefutable reality was that the majority of Iraqis with administrative experience were Ba'athists. They had to beâyou didn't get a senior-level job in any state or civic department under Saddam's regime unless you were a card-carrying party member. In most instances this membership was a matter of simple expediency rather than idealism. Saddam's government was no democracy in which you had a political choice. That, I said, was almost certainly the case with Husham.
I was wasting my breath. The soldiers bundled Husham into a Humvee, and as they drove off I called out that we would soon have him released.
But inwardly I was stunned. Husham's contribution in those hellish initial weeks cannot be overstated. He was the first civilian to come to the zoo's rescue, and the lifesaving water “feed” into the cages was solely due to his creative improvisations.
Indeed, if he was a Ba'athist he showed no material gain whatsoever from being one. In fact, he used to wear the same faded shirt to work, day in and day out. It was always impeccably ironed, and no doubt his wife washed it for him when he went home, drying it overnight in the desert air.
My mission now was to get him reinstated. We at the zoo owed it to him, and the next day I started banging on the Coalition Administration's doors, pleading Husham's case.
However, things didn't look promising, particularly when Ted Morse, the interim mayor of Baghdad, bluntly told me their policy was to purge the administration of every single Ba'athist and there was zero chance of Husham ever being on any state payroll ever again.
I took the matter up with Tim Carney, the interim minister for industrial and mineral affairs. He had been the first to take an interest and support my rescue mission when I hatched my plan back at Thula Thula, and had helped get me first into Kuwait and then into Iraq. I stressed to him that Husham was one of our key people. Indeed, the man deserved a medalânot being fired.
Carney, always the diplomat, said he would see what he could do behind the scenes. I must just be patient.
While I was working my way through the bureaucracy, Brendan was like a jumpy kid on Christmas as he sorted through all our new supplies. He and Ashraf, IFAW's Indian vet, drew up scientific feeding programs for the animals. The biggest change for us was that the carnivores would now be fed vacuum-packed buffalo chunks imported from India in order to halt the number of donkey deaths. No longer did we endlessly have to scour the streets for protein, and Kazim, our axman, overnight became virtually redundant, his job outsourced, although we obviously still kept him on our payroll as a charity case.
While welcoming the fact that my men no longer had to wander around an exceedingly dangerous city trying to find donkeys, we never really understood why some of the IFAW guys insisted on hugely expensive imported frozen meat being the preferred diet. Okay, they believed donkeys shouldn't be killedâbut didn't that mean Indian buffaloes were being slaughtered instead? Brendan and I also knew from bush experience that fresh meat, bone, and organs were far healthier fare for the cats than slabs of prepackaged flesh. But despite our questions about the value of buffalo rather
than donkey meat, we were extremely grateful for the much-needed help and the amount of time saved by having a regular source of protein. The plain fact is that animal welfare can often seem paradoxical when the animal you're attempting to save is a voracious carnivore.
The plans for renovating cages to make the zoo more habitat orientated also generated much discussion among the team. Indeed, at times it became a touchy issue. Just fixing up the bear quarters to top international specifics would cost a fortune, and we would need a huge amount of money to uplift the entire zoo to state-of-the-art standards.
IFAW's vet Jason Thrupp openly wondered whether it was worth it. He believed no wild animal should be kept in captivity and argued passionately that it was pointless raising money for a single bear cage if we couldn't upgrade the whole complex as well. As it was unlikely we would ever obtain the necessary funds to do that, he said perhaps it would be better to destroy the zoo.
Brendan, Sumner, and I argued differently. The zoo was a reality and would continue to be so no matter what we foreigners did or said. And while a spacious, habitat-focused bear cage might not mean much to the naysayers, it mattered a whole lot to the bear.
Generally speaking, I do not support the concept of zoos. It's difficult to get away from the fact that they are animal prisons. The great majority of zoos, particularly in the Third World, are absolutely horrific. The only facilities I would support are those that are scientific institutions with habitat-oriented environments and focus on education, such as the San Diego Zoo. I was in Baghdad for the animals, not the zoo, but while I was there I would do everything I could to help improve the facilities, bring Baghdad Zoo out of isolation, and connect Dr. Adel and his staff to the international fraternity of zoos.
Fortunately, it never became a problem between Jason and us. We agreed to disagree. A true professional emergency aid worker, Jason focused on the project at hand and did a great deal of good.
IFAW's logistics controller Mariette Hopley was an absolute
gem. She tackled her job with Herculean energy, and things were always happening around her. I introduced her to the CPA's chief of staff, Pat Kennedy, and a couple of weeks later, presto!âwe had a spanking-new black SUV for the zoo.
“How did you do it?” I asked.
“It's my job,” she said, smiling.
For the first time since the Kuwaitis left with my car, we had reliable transport. No longer did we have to take our chances in our old street-salvaged jalopy or rely on lifts to get anywhere.
On another occasion we heard we were about to be evicted from the now-renovated Al-Rashid Hotel, where we stayed for free in the relatively safe Green Zone, to make way for the scores of contractors pouring into the country. This intrigued me, as Brendan and I were by far the longest residents at the Al-Rashid and despite all the work at the zoo we were still not even on the administrations' radar.
As unflappable as ever, Mariette went to see Kennedy. She returned a few hours later giving a triumphant thumbs-up.
“He says we can stay. We've been put on the official list.”
That was a close call. Brendan and I nearly ended up camping in the zoo grounds, which was my original plan.
As interim administrator of the Baghdad Zoo, I was at this stage moderately pleased with our progress. Despite the bleak financial situation, something always seemed to crop up at the last minute. Such as when an army officer called Brian Hoyback arrived out of the blue one afternoon for a look around.
His department was responsible for financing restoration projects, and Brendan escorted him around the premises. Brian told us he had always enjoyed taking his kids to zoos back in the States, and after inspecting the lions' cages he asked Brendan if we were happy with the current situation. Brendan said, “No,” and outlined what we were trying to achieve and what already had been achieved under crippling circumstances.
Hoyback was impressed. “Tell me how much you need right now to make a difference to these animals.”
Brendan was caught off guard and said he couldn't quote a figure
off the top of his head. We hadn't done any formal bookkeeping at the time, as everything had been so chaotic. We had been living hand-to-mouth and just spent whatever we had available and tried to scrounge more. All we did know was that it had cost us many thousands of dollars.
Brian and Brendan agreed to meet the next morning to discuss it, and Hoyback promised to get us funds.
He was as good as his word. Within a day he had cleared fifty thousand dollars with the CPA's Baghdad Central office and handed it over to us. The only condition was we gave ten thousand dollars to the Ministry of Irrigation to help fix the water systems ⦠well, we could have thought of worse demands.
The money was an absolute godsend, but like General Garner's donation, it soon disappeared in the swamp of daily survival demands.
What we really needed was a shove from somewhere high up, some frictionless momentum to glide the project through the mountain of obstacles confronting us. In other words, out of the “emergency” situation where we could guarantee food on a daily basis, materials to finish building the enclosures to acceptable standards, and a budget for the staff salaries and running costs. After that, the zoo could be handed back to the Iraqis with full international sponsorship.
The bottom line was simple: money. But how could I persuade the coalition to prioritize the zoo among the barrage of other urgent demands? It was an elusive problem but one that had to be solved soon if the zoo was to prevail in a meaningful way.
One morning while chatting to Adel I asked out of simple curiosity how many people used to visit Al Zawra before the war.
“Zoo get half million people each year,” said the Iraqi. “Parkâone million.”
I was astonished. So many! This battle-trashed tract of real estate we were sitting on had previously attracted 1.5 million people a year. That was more than a quarter of Baghdad's total population.
In a flash I had the answer. The coalition was desperately trying
to get the city back to normal, and it didn't take a sage to deduce that the Al Zawra complex was one of the biggest social institutions in the city by far.
But somehow nobody had yet realized that!
We needed to do a complete about-face. To “sell” the rescue project it was crucial we focus on recreation and a return to normalityânot animal welfare. The only way the zoo could get the cash injection it desperately required was for us to convince the Coalition Administration it was sitting on a golden “human” public relations opportunity. Even though to me this project was in its widest sense about the plant and animal kingdom, to get the hard sell across I had to plan things another way. Our new proposals had to fixate on what direct benefits restoring Al Zawra and the zoo would have on the people of Baghdad, not the animals of the Baghdad Zoo. In order to help the animals, we had to focus on the zoo's value for humans.
Mariette and I immediately set off for the coalition headquarters at the Al Salaamânow known as the Four-HeadedâPalace to speak to Pat Kennedy. Kennedy was not in, and while waiting we bumped into the interim minister of irrigation, Eugene Stakhiv. I outlined my new proposal that we restore the park for the people, emphasizing how many Iraqis visited Al Zawra each year.
He was immediately interested: “Give me that in writing and I personally will get it to Ambassador Bremer.”
So I sat down and wrote the proposal right there in the waiting room. The words flowed and I stressed that the zoo and park had been a vital cog of Baghdad's leisure life in the past. It was more than just a zoo; it was the city's only green belt, and as most Baghdad residents lived in cramped concrete quarters, it was the one place they could get out and breathe some fresh air under date palms and eucalyptus trees. They could have a picnic. Indeed, 3.5 million people each year had done just that.
I was presenting to the administration a blue-chip option for showing some signs of a return to normality and strengthening of community relations with the people of the cityâif they could only
see it. Rescuing the animals, the most important thing for me, was barely mentioned. But as they would be the prime beneficiaries, it didn't matter.