27 July 2023 The Presidential Guard in Niger announce the overthrow of the elected president
11 August 2023 Russia warns the West African peace-keeping force Ecowas not to interfere in Niger. Meanwhile the Wagner Group are said to be moving in. All across the Sahel, conflicts are raging, triggering an exodus of people towards Europe. Experts point to weak corrupt governments and human rights violations.
2003 I travel to Iraq with the British Army as an embedded journalist
Outside the palace entrance is a line of blue portaloos. Any festival-goer would recognise the situation, but this is not Glastonbury, this is a palace that once belonged to Saddam Hussein. The line of soldiers in uniform wait their turn in the sun. The temperature hovers around 52 celsius (127f). On the right are toilets, on the left showers. A sergeant explains the procedure to me and press photographer, Damien. "Take two bottles of water and some soap. Navy shower, right? You know?"
I do know. Inside the blue plastic box, the temperature is unbelievable. I peel off my clothes, wet myself with a couple of splashes of water from the two-litre bottles. Soap up. Then I rinse off. Only then do I notice that the water is from Britain. I'm using imported mineral water to wash myself in the Iraqi desert during a war. My attempts to towel dry are pointless. I do the crazy dance of putting on damp clothes while wet, smacking against the rocking Portaloo. Once out, Damien and I head for the mess. On the way we run into the Brigadier. Damien cheekily asks him for a cigarette. The Brigadier, public school charm incarnate, smiles and sends a subordinate to bring four cartons of Marlborough (that's 800 cigarettes for anyone who has never dealt in such booty).
I had always thought war was a wasteful and futile means of settling differences. Previously I'd seen conflicts - in South Sudan, Zaire, Burma and Yemen - but this was my first opportunity to see modern armies at close quarters, and the complete devastation they can inflict. It made those earlier conflicts seem like models of restraint. After the 1994 war in Yemen, I'd run into an American psychiatrist who expressed disbelief at the low level of psychological trauma he had found among the population. "I think it's because they sit down every day with friends and family," he said, as though this was a miracle, "And they talk." Now I can see that it might also be because those conflicts did not involve pulverising every building, although I accept that the combatants probably would have done, if they had been able to acquire the right weaponry.
In the Basra mess, the soldiers are tucking into meat pies and chips. All the food is brought from Britain. I sit with some American soldiers who are grumbling about the food. "What is this, man? Baked beans? For breakfast? Jesus H Christ."
The Americans seem approachable and less guarded in conversation than the Brits. "We come here, kill people, then go home," says one. Another soldier, in sunglasses, sits down with a tray and, catching the last comment, adds: "We ain't social workers."
This pointed criticism is aimed at the British who are desperately trying to sugar-coat their involvement in Iraq by painting schools and being nice to children. The Americans have employed two giant corporations to do all that kind of thing: Bechtel and KBR (Kellogg, Brown and Root). It would be fun to say that Kellogg's cornflakes were going to rebuild Iraq, but sadly not true. KBR are a giant engineering corporation founded in 1901 by New Yorker, Morris Woodruff Kellogg. The other Kelloggs, though possibly related (the name comes from around Aberdeen in Scotland), were based in Battle Creek, Michigan, where they started out as broom salesmen before converting to Seventh Day Adventism and diving into the breakfast cereal business.
Like his distant cousins dried food business, Morris's engineering company went from strength to strength, first devising methods of processing petrochemicals, then working to enrich uranium for the Manhattan Project. Brown and Root had similar environmentally-conscious pedigree, starting out as Texan road and dam builders before constructing the first offshore oil platforms and naval warships. By the late 1960s they were being renamed, "Burn and Loot", for their alleged profiteering during the Vietnam War. Contracts to build bases, prisons and hospitals for the US army had eventually led the General Accounting Office to denounce them for massive accounting lapses and theft of materials. In 1997 the two companies were put together by their new owner, Halliburton. KBR's main task in Iraq is to get the oil flowing again.
I offer the Americans a carton of Marlborough and they become even friendlier. We get an invite to see some port facilities and head out across a dismal flat wasteland touched with plumes of black smoke. From a distance the towns and villages appear to sit on a glassy pan of superheated air like dilapidated hovercraft. Dogs pick over rubbish heaps and barefoot children herd sheep. Most of the kids wave and shout, asking for water, but the military vehicles do not stop - they say it's too dangerous. All the soldiers, irrespective of nationality, are in a constant state of adrenalised expectation of attack. They've all been through the chemical warfare training. Me too, although the only thing I can remember is the mantra: "Mask in nine, or box of pine." The trigger for action is, apparently, when you smell geraniums. "No geraniums in the desert," says the trainer knowledgeably. "As soon as you smell geraniums, get that mask on."
At the port, vast amounts of equipment are being unloaded. The Americans complain of widespread looting and corruption. The British have trained over 600 local security guards and are reluctant to replace them with troops. All of this kit, billions of dollars-worth, will quickly disappear and either fall into private hands or get wrecked. The Armies gobble up equipment and resources at an astonishing rate. The Bechtel man tells me they have already spent $2.5m on refurbishing police stations and prisons. It's hard to imagine how: the sky is still filled with smoke and fumes, there's live ammunition lying in the streets.
The British base in Basra is Saddam Hussein's old palace, full of vaulted roofs, octagonal rooms and endless geometric motifs in stucco and wood. I manage to track down the phone number of the man who did most of this artistic decoration. This is not really why I am here: I am supposed to be writing about reconstruction, detailing the herculean efforts of Bechtel and KBR to snatch a profit from the jaws of Iraqi defeat. I’m desperate, however, to escape the unremitting utilitarian boneheadedness of the military. The British, in particular, have a wearying cheeriness about them. Morale has to be maintained. Let morale slip, even for a second, and you might wonder what the hell you’re doing.
One day I slip out the base and head into Old Basra. There are beautiful antique houses here, huddled around canals where geese are foraging. There's a dreadful stink too, but the former charm of the place is obvious.
Inside one building I find Fadil, a 76-year-old. "Life here in the 50s was wonderful," he tells me, "We would eat ice cream, drink beer and dance. I owned a Chevrolet. What a car!"
He tells me that in the first days of the war, he watched a British tank fire a shell point blank into the door of the Central Bank. "Then the Britishers shouted at the crowd, 'Come on Ali Babas, get some loot!'"
Ali Baba is what everyone calls thieves. Around the corner is a restaurant where I sit and eat roast chicken with warm fresh flatbreads straight from the oven. It makes a change from warmed-up meat pies and baked beans. No one here saw the incident with the tank, some deny it happened. Many have stories of Saddam's brutality. "Saddam and his sons, Uday and Qusay, had to kill every day before they could sleep," says one cheerful man. The walls are covered in idyllic rural scenes of the Iraqi marshes: all flights of birds and happy tribespeople in rush canoes. It makes a strange backdrop for the stories that I now hear.
"My sister was a beautiful girl but Uday Hussein saw her one day and ordered her to visit him. She refused and then she disappeared. We never saw her again."
"I am only 40 years of age and I've seen this city destroyed four times. Iranian shells did it twice, then US sanctions, and now this. My father died in the Iran-Iraq war. Lots of other friends and relatives just disappeared. You'll see over the road is a grove of palms. There are hundreds buried in there, victims of Saddam's police. You could hear the screams at night."
"One of my brother's children died in hospital because there was no oxygen, another one was caught peeing behind a statue of Saddam. He was seven years old, but they gave him 20 lashes. He was lucky not to die."
I get a sweet glass of red tea and more people want to talk. Furad, an engineer, claims he saw what happened at the Central Bank. "The British tanks arrived without any officers and saw that the money was already being looted. I mean people were running out with bundles of notes and getting shot by others who then robbed them. The British did nothing to stop it. I shouted at the British, 'Shame on you!' But they did nothing."
Another man pours scorn on this version of events, claiming that the British had already emptied the bank's reserves, leaving only the petty cash for the Ali Babas. I ask everyone: Are you glad the British and Americans invaded? The answer is always guarded. We are glad Saddam is gone.
I go outside. The heat bears down on the city, squeezing oily black shadows from under the buildings with agonising slowness. In one street there is a demonstration in progress, about 350 people marching with placards that denounce Bechtel for only employing Americans at exorbitant salaries. I find the house of the artist that I'm looking for.
Sabri is a Christian Iraqi who graduated in Fine Art from Baghdad in 1966. His home is filled with murals of the marshes, richly colourful rugs and camel bags. A television is on somewhere. "As a boy I was always sketching. I'd travel just to draw, going all over the country."
His wife and daughter come to say hello. Both are unveiled and wear crosses around their necks.
"Basra used to be a beautiful city full of different nationalities," Sabri says, "There was even a casino. We would sit by the river and drink tea, or go to the cinema."
One day Saddam Hussein saw one his paintings in a show and he was asked to decorate the new palace that was being built in Basra. "It took eight years," he says, "I would plan everything on card first, then cut templates."
When it was finished, Saddam came to view the results. "He took my hand and held it. 'Are you a Ba'athist?' he asked. I said to him, 'I am an artist.' Then he dropped my hand and turned away."
When Saddam saw he had included some Christian crosses in the motifs, he ordered them destroyed.
"Saddam-time was terrible. They took my son for the Iran war. Then I could no longer paint. For ten years I never did any art." He laughs. "Come see..."
We go to his study. There is a small desk piled up with empty 7 Up bottles. In one corner is a lawnmower and a bike. Ropes of garlic hang from the ceiling. There is also an easel and a stack of new paintings. "As soon as Saddam was toppled I started painting again. I've already done forty."
When I leave, we stand in the street outside his house, saying goodbye. The shadows are finally gaining a bit of ground, although it is not cooling down. Boys kick a football around. The dusty battered cars look like they will never move again. A neighbour says hello and starts tending a few precious plants in pots outside her door. Will he leave Iraq? He shrugs. "There's no security here. Every night people are killed. We Christians are afraid that when the British leave, we will be murdered. But where can we go?"
The neighbour is splashing a bit of water over the foliage of her plants and I catch a familiar scent. I’m trying to recall what it is as we drive away. And then it comes to me: it's that musty smell of geraniums.
2009: KBR plead guilty in a Houston court to amassing a $182m slush fund to bribe Nigerian officials into accepting a KBR bid to build Liquid Natural Gas facilities on Bonny Island, River State, Nigeria. KBR agree to pay a $402m fine.
2011: A Nigerian court acquits three former presidents of any wrongdoing in the case.
2018: KBR are awarded a new contract to build the next stage of the LNG plant on Bonny Island, taking production to around 22m tonnes per year, most of which goes to Europe. It has been estimated that KBR were awarded around $39.5bn in US federal contracts for services in Iraq between 2003 and 2013.