However, even in my most optimistic moments, I had set my sights low on this one. At best, I was expecting a replay of General Garner's visit, a minor check of perhaps twenty thousand dollars, accompanied by the usual put-down that the coalition was resurrecting a shattered infrastructure. The zoo, as we were endlessly told, was way down the priority list.
I was wrong. The powers-that-be grasped exactly what I was getting atâthat Al Zawra Park and the zoo offered a gilt-edged chance to show the people of Baghdad that the Americans meant business in fixing their city. If their smashed park was rebuilt, it would be both a tangible and symbolic signal that life was gradually returning to normal. That Baghdad was starting to function again.
We found this out several days later when Sumner sped over to the zoo in his Humvee to tell us the coalition was acting on my proposal “big-time.” A tentative budget of $250,000 was set for restoration work, and the military was instructed to send in its crack engineering unit, the Second Brigade's Fortieth Engineer Battalion.
We received the news in dumb shock that soon turned into “it's too good to be true” disbelief.
Then “where's the catch?”
Then exultation.
That night we celebrated hard. Well, as best we couldâfor celebrating in Baghdad, where party treats were nonexistent, meant sitting up late in Mariette's room, sharing a few warm beers, joking and excitedly discussing what we were going to do to improve enclosures and life for the animals at the zoo.
The highlight of the evening was when Brendan found a hookah and some awful rose-scented tobacco that rasped your throat like sandpaper. We all tried it.
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WITHIN A WEEK, the gears started to shift. Wherever you went in the park you could hear welders hissing blue-hot heat, angle grinders carving through concrete ruins, and generators kicking long-dead electrical installations into life.
It was a formidable assignment. Al Zawra Park had been a key battleground in the fight for Baghdad and covered two square miles, with the zoo taking up three-quarters of a square mile in the center. The area was in ruins, littered with wrecked buildings, bombed bridges, stagnant lakes, and unexploded ordnance. Just clearing that would be a mammoth exercise.
But American ingenuity is a wonderful thing. Soon pumps were spurting water from the river Tigris into the park lakes, electricity was reconnected to the city's stuttering power grid, and the mangled buildings were rebuilt. Burnt-out military trucks and other pulverized relics of war were towed away. The hundreds of lamp posts, all of which had been unbolted and heaved over so looters could yank out the copper wire, were set straight once again.
To our intense relief, all remaining unexploded ordnance was finally cleared and detonated. It was now safe to walk in the park without sticking to the paved pathways.
However, the most impressive renovation was the sprinkler system that kept this green haven in the sweltering sands alive. Piping shredded by tank treads had been replaced, and the whole area was backlit by a rainbow as zillions of droplets scattered across the earth. Al Zawra was becoming an oasis once more.
I watched all this activity with amazement. The zoo would soon be reopened to the public, although no firm date was set. Who would have thought that possible in those early desperate days?
Normality was fast approaching and yet another crisis loomed. This time from a completely unexpected source, threatening to put an end to the zoo itself.
“S
ADDAM'S SON'S LIONS to be Freed in African Wilds,” trumpeted the headline. I stared at the newspaper story again to make sure I was reading it correctly. There it was in black-and-white. Uday Hussein's cats were apparently about to be moved out of Iraq and none of us at the zoo knew a thing about it.
The article continued in the same triumphant vein as the headline, stating Uday Hussein's “war-traumatized” lions were currently in a “bullet-ridded cage,” but the three adults and their six cubs were now about to be freed from an “Iraqi hellhole” to a lush private reserve in South Africa.
Furthermore, in a separate operation Saedia, the blind brown bear, was to be moved to a mountain sanctuary in Greece.
Surely not Saedia! Dr Adel would never let her go, and in any event, she was far too old to move. Someone had to be putting me on.
I quickly scanned the page to find the source of the story. I recognized the name: SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary, a small animal rehabilitation
facility in South Africa's Limpopo Province, and they seemed pretty confident the cats were coming to them.
Further down, backing up everything SanWild said, was our colleague Barbara Maas of Care for the Wild Internationalâand also a former ad hoc member of the Baghdad Zoo Committee.
During the next few days the international media pounced on the story with gusto. It was good copy: Lion cubs born among ricocheting bullets and belonging to a brutal despot's psychotic son were getting their freedom. A blind bear, traumatized by war, would live out her final days in an idyllic mountain retreat. Emotive headlines such as “Free at Last,” “Return to the Wild,” and “War Zone Cubs” took root and flourished in newsprint.
The Arabic media initially did not run with these stories, but when a copy of one of the foreign papers finally reached the zoo the shock to the staff was massive. Although the Zoo Committee had in the past spoken of relocating some of the lions and even given tacit support, at no stage had it progressed beyond casual discussions.
I was in South Africa on a brief fund-raising trip and phoned Brendan in Baghdad to get an update. He told me Adel was incensed, particularly with the news that the bear was “included” in the relocation package, as Saedia was zoo property. He wasn't happy about the lions going, but said that was out of his hands. The big cats came from Uday's palace and technically did not belong to the zoo.
However, Adel's view was that as Uday had plundered the country's national wealth, his assets, which included the lions, should be bequeathed to the state. It was a powerful argument.
But then again, equally powerful was Barbara Maas's case: was it not better for the lions to roam free in the wild?
A bitter dispute with the Iraqis over relocating animals was the last thing we needed, coming just as the rebuilt zoo was on the cusp of being reopened.
IFAW in particular was recoiling at what they believed was going to be a huge public relations fiasco and a raging row over whether animals should be caged or released. They frantically got hold of me and called me back to Iraq.
I canceled all meetings and caught the next available flight out.
But by the time I was able to say “whoa” and ask everyone to take a deep breath, it was too late. The situation was flaring out of control. The Iraqis were adamant that Uday's lions and the bear must stay. Care for the Wild International was equally determined to relocate them.
The project was on the verge of collapse. Everything I had done, all that we had achieved under incredibly difficult circumstances, the risk and danger, the effort and discomfort of life in Baghdad, all for the sake of the animals, could now go down the drain. The whole rescue initiative was always precarious and never needed much to knock it off the rails. Now it looked like we had another mountain to climb. The difference was this time it was about relationships and the trust of Adel and the Iraqi staff.
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THE IDEA TO RELOCATE Uday's pride of three adults and six cubs was, in fact, first put forward by me as soon as I realized that Xena was pregnantâjust days after the Green Berets had taken us to them.
I was uncomfortably aware that the zoo had too many lionsâeven more than the massive San Diego Zooâand soon there would not be enough room to accommodate them. An adult lion eats about twenty-two pounds of meat a day, and having too large a pride would severely tax our lean resources. Lions also breed like cats, because ⦠well, because they are cats.
My initial idea was we find a suitable reserve in South Africa and run the relocation program as a joint Iraqi__South African venture. Dr. Adel and the Baghdad Zoo staff would be closely involved and it would be an educational as well as humanitarian project.
Adel was originally open to the idea as long as it didn't involve the zoo's animals. But the Iraqi vet was adamant that nothing should be rushed, as the issue was extremely sensitive. The zoo had already lost almost all of its inhabitants and on no account did we
wish to appear to be imperialist foreigners decreeing that more must go. We were thus content to let the idea proceed at its natural pace.
All of this had been discussed at a zoo committee meeting attended by Barbara during her first visit to Baghdad. Adel had stressed to the ad hoc committee, which at the time consisted of himself, Brendan, Captain Sumner, Stephan, Farah, Barbara, and me, that it was essential there should be no publicity whatsoever; otherwise the lions would never taste freedom.
The SanWild press release was a serious miscalculation of the political dynamics involved. By being associated with it, Barbara unfortunately alienated Adel and the Iraqi authoritiesâand, as we later discovered, unwittingly placed Adel's life in grave danger.
Barbara arrived in the Middle East on the same day as I did and we bumped into each other at the American air force base in Kuwait, where she was persuading a marine helicopter crew to ferry her to Baghdad. She told me she had specifically flown out from London to oversee the animals' relocation and was literally bouncing with excitement.
I said little, dread mounting in my gut at what I knew was going to be an explosive confrontation with the Iraqis.
Slim and dark-haired, German-born Barbara is absolutely dedicated to her cause of relocating animals into the wild. While I normally find such dedication admirable, in this case it was blurring the current situation. Once we arrived in Baghdad she would tell anyone within earshot of her “Uday's war cubs back to Africa” project, and such was her infectious enthusiasm, she would blow complete strangers away with her passion. She also had apparently clinched a deal with a London-based newspaper to do a feature on the relocation. She said they were prepared to pay for an exclusive, which would help cover the costs of the project. Once the newspaper story appeared, she said, TV stations were scheduled to do follow-ups.
“This will be the best news story of the war,” she told me, eyes glowing.
That was not quite Adel's viewpoint, and on the afternoon of my hasty return he cornered me outside his office, his normally placid face hard with anger.
“The animals belong to the Iraqi people,” he kept repeating in his lyrically accented English. “What is happening?”
To test the waters, I gently put the counterargument to him. The zoo would have nineteen lions once Uday's pride was brought over. It was obvious some of the animals would eventually have to be relocated, either inside Iraq or elsewhere. Sending the extra lions back to Africa would be good for the cats and good for the zoo. He could send some of his staff with the animals to settle in, as part of the relocation program. What did he think of that?
He mused for some moments. Okay, he said. Perhaps he didn't have an intractable problem with Uday's lions going, although he believed the Baghdad Municipality would need much persuading. But the bearâhe shook his head.
“She is too old; she will die in the move,” he said, which was likely the truth. And what would his staff think if they saw one of the zoo's stalwarts being carted off?
Adel's body language told me that if the bear was taken away, he would have nothing more to do with us. To him it would be the ultimate betrayal. We foreigners could come and go, but Adel and his team were there for the long haul. Baghdad was their home; the zoo was their livelihood.
A rancorous internecine dispute had to be avoided at all costs, and I assured Adel he had my support. The bottom line was that the zoo was going to be handed back to the Iraqis soon and weâthe international groupsâwere simply helping out. Whether the lions were relocated now or later wouldn't alter the big picture. But it was obvious that if they were moved out now in the current hostile climate, causing irreconcilable resentment, the entire project would collapse in acrimony.
The zoo had lost almost 90 percent of its animals in the looting spree, and the Iraqis were adamant that none of the survivors should be relocated. We had to treat this with extreme sensitivity.
An emergency meeting was scheduled for the next day so Barbara could put her case before the Zoo Committee and hopefully we could thrash the issue out amicably.
In the interim, Brendan, Sumner, Farah, and I gathered at the Al-Rashid to discuss the issue. They updated me on the news from their side, warning we could not underestimate the Iraqis' anger. What did I think?
My heart, I said, wanted the lions to go free. But my head said they must stay until the Iraqis gave the go-ahead. At that stage I believed Adel could still be persuaded if the matter was treated delicately. But my greatest fear was that Barbara would try to force the issue, particularly with the bear. The bear belonged to the zoo, and that had to be respected.
Brendan interrupted me. “Guys,” he said. “Are we talking about Uday's three lionsâthe Special Forces lions? Brutus, Heather, and Xena?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“That's crazy. Heather and Xena have been declawed. How are they going to hunt? They'll never survive in the wild. No way!”
“What! Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Xena and Heather actually have to take their food in cupped paws,” replied Brendan.
Farah also nodded. Apparently Uday Hussein had enjoyed parading his cats on a leash when they were cubs and to prevent himself being scratched he had had their claws surgically removed.
There was a stunned silence. This was a whole new ball game. In fact, as far as we were concerned, all arguments concerning Uday's three lions and their cubs being returned to the wild were now moot.
“And don't forget they're also heavily rumored to be man-eaters,” Brendan reminded us. “How are we going to explain that away?”
Of course!
Unfortunately, we had to break early, as Sumner, Brendan, and Farah were going to a symphony concert in the fortified conference
center, the first to be held in Iraq since the invasion. Brendan is not your average classical music aficionado, but he said he was so starved for entertainment that anything would suffice. He dressed up for the highbrow cultural event in his typical fashion: khaki trousers, bush boots, and jungle green shirt with the Thula Thula elephant logo embroidered on the pocket.
The group was back in an hour, thanks to a power failure. Brendan claimed he had enjoyed the music. However, what he did not know was that Iraqi TV had filmed the show and, according to Adel, there had been a fine shot of Brendan snoring his head off.
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WHATEVER THE ARGUMENTS, there was no escaping the fact that some lions did need to be relocated and it was a problem we eventually would have to face. But at the moment the situation was clear: to protect our excellent relationship with Dr. Adel and his staff in the current hostile climate we had to convince the Iraqis that no relocations whatsoever would go ahead without their approval.
All this I hoped could be cleared up at the meeting. But we were off to a bad start even before talks started when Adel cornered me to say the headline story on local TV news directly accused foreigners of wanting to remove Iraqi lions to South Africa.
I went cold. The fact that South Africa was regularly being mentioned was serious cause for concern. As Brendan and I were South Africans, the Iraqis would now almost certainly believe the two of us were involved in the deal as well.
On that disconcerting note, the meeting began. I asked each present if they supported the proposed relocation of some lions in principle. I was first to go on record as saying I did, provided Adel and the Iraqi authorities concurred, and the others around the table nodded their assent as wellâexcept Adel, who sat tight-lipped.
Barbara was then asked to explain her position and immediately stood up, arguing her cause with fervor. Yes, she said, everything in the papers was true. Uday's lions, Brutus, Xena, and Heather and their six cubs were going to SanWild. The crates were
already in Kuwait and a vet was on standby to accompany them to Africa, courtesy of the Emirates airline. There, she said, they would be kept in an enclosure where they would be fed mechanically and have no human contact. They would later be released into the wild on a game reserve, where they would fend for themselves.