Photojournalists Discuss Iraqi Resistance

Renowned photojournalists Steve Connors and Molly Bingham ’90 attempted to paint a more accurate picture of the Iraqi resistance movement as they repudiated claims made by the American media about resistance fighters in a speech in the Kirkland Junior Common Room yesterday.

Connors and Boyle spoke to an intimate gathering of both students and faculty about their travels in Iraq, which they said were prompted by a growing suspicion that purportedly random, unorganized attacks on American troops after the removal of Sadaam Hussein were actually part of an organized resistance.

Though Connors and Boyle said they had planned on spending six weeks in Iraq, they ended up staying in the country for more than ten months.

Connors, a photographer since his days serving as a British soldier in Northern Ireland in the early 80s, opened the presentation yesterday by challenging the term “insurgency,” which members of the media frequently apply to those in Iraq fighting against the U.S.

“An insurgency is an uprising against a constitutional government.” Connors said, instead labeling the fighters as members of a “resistance movement.”

Boyle, who was arrested by Saddam Hussein shortly before the outbreak of the Iraq war and spent eight days in Abu Ghraib prison, said she encountered numerous resistance fighters while overseas.

She and Connors said they proceeded to conduct extensive interviews with several resistance fighters in an attempt to collect information about the nature of the movement.

Boyle talked about one such fighter, “the teacher,” whom she described as a “kind, jovial guy” who hated Saddam Hussein.

Despite his kind nature, the teacher vowed that he would fight the foreigners who were invading his country after he saw American tanks in Iraq for the first time. To repel the American forces, he organized like-minded members of his mosque into a resistance cell.

Boyle said that while the teacher was not particularly religious when he started the cell, claiming not even to know his way to the mosque, he became a devout follower of Islam within a year.

Both speakers said the teacher’s increase in religious zealotry fit a trend they found throughout their interviews. According to the two journalists, many members of the Iraqi defense movement who initially began fighting for nationalistic reasons eventually grew to use the Islamic religion as a means to rationalize their attacks.

Boyle chronicled other resistance fighters who did not quite fit the mold projected by the media. One such character, whom she called “The Syrian,” was a Shiite and not a Sunni, the sect that comprises Saddam’s Baathist party.

The two noted that The Syrian, a foreigner, represented a minority among the mostly Iraqi resistance. According to both speakers, far more Iraqis have fought and led cells against U.S. troops than is commonly reported by members of the media, who usually attribute resistance to foreigners.

Connors closed by saying that U.S. troops will have to leave Iraq before the resistance fighters quit, quoting an Iraqi fighter who told him, “I’d rather live in a hovel than have my country reconstructed by people on the outside.”

Scott A. Fruhan ’03, back on campus for the event in his former House, said, “I thought the presentation gave a great perspective to the war. It’s valuable to see people give a first-hand account of the war without the filter of traditional media.”