Rajiv Chandrasekaran answers questions from students at the Martin Institute. Chandrasekaran gave a presentation on the future of Iraq yesterday as a part of the Martin Forum Program. Eric Petersen/Argonaut

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the former Baghdad Bureau Chief of The Washington Post, said he didn’t plan on becoming a war correspondent — it was a role he didn’t see himself in.
“It wasn’t what I envisioned for myself personally,” Chandrasekaran said. “All that bang, bang stuff … but I was a foreign correspondent, and as you all well know, there was a war.”
Chandrasekaran authored the 2006 award-winning book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone,” and is one of the speakers sponsored by the Martin Institute to discuss international topics.

He spoke at the Agriculture and Life Science building Thursday.
Before the war in Iraq, Chandrasekaran was The Post’s Southeast Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta, Indonesia. In the months following Sept. 11, he was part of a team of Post reporters who covered the war in Afghanistan.

“I came to Iraq in the summer of 2002 and lived in Baghdad until 36-hours before the first bombs dropped,” Chandrasekaran said. “I was lucky to get a visa. Hundreds of journalists applied and were rejected. That’s mostly because many of them had been there for a while and managed to piss off the government, which wasn’t hard to do.”
Living in Iraq, which was still under the rule of Saddam Hussein, gave Chandrasekaran a new perspective on what it was like to live under an oppressive regime.

“Even if you were in some small town in South America or Africa, you’d find a Coke bottle or a McDonald’s … some connection to the larger global economy,” he said. “There the only billboards were portraits of Saddam Hussein. I felt like I was witnessing some cult of personality, but that’s a military dictatorship.”
Chandrasekaran said the situation created a highly paranoid environment for the journalist and one woman, who was afraid of hidden cameras and developed the habit of changing her clothes in the shower.

Getting honest stories from the people was one of the most difficult tasks for Chandrasekaran. He said he was required to walk with a guide, who behaved more like a chaperone, whenever he went into town. All interviews had to be preapproved by the government and story ideas had to be worded so they would seem sympathetic to the government.
“I remember one situation when I found myself in the used book market,” Chandrasekaran said. “My handler was preoccupied, looking at some sports book, and I was in the classics section when this Iraqi walks up to me.”

The man opened a copy of Julius Caesar and pointed to a couplet that said “I was born free of Caesar and so were you.” 
“I didn’t make a big deal about it or anything,” Chandrasekaran said. “But in that moment I knew what he was saying. I needed to be reminded that people didn’t like the way they were living.”
He said the vast majority of Iraqis didn’t like living under Hussein, however if the American government had been more transparent, much of the anger brewing among the people could have been avoided.

Bill Smith, the program director for the Martin Institute, said he is excited to have Chandrasekaran as a speaker because of his international experience and cultural appreciation.
“When we’re looking for speakers we always want someone who has played a role in international studies and who can share that experience with the community,” Smith said.
Chandrasekaran was brought to the University of Idaho as part of a collaborative effort between the Institute and individual community members.

Co-sponsors of this event include the Schreck Family Foundation, the Eder Family Trust, the Palouse Peace Coalition, and the Departments of History, Political Science and Journalism and Mass Media.
“When it comes to serious issues, it’s easy for people to become fatigued,” Smith said. “Iraq is still an important issue and people can forget that.”

In Iraq the tension is still a very real part of daily life, he said. Chandrasekaran said that Gen. David Petraeus put it best when he called it the Man on the Moon phenomenon.
“America is supposed to be the most powerful nation in the world and the way they see it is ‘you’re deliberately trying to screw us,’” he said. “’You know how to do it you just won’t.’”
Chandrasekaran is only one of a series of speakers who will be coming to UI in the next few weeks.

At 7 p.m. tonight, Professor Ellen Spiro will present “Body of War” at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center. At 3:30 p.m. in the Silver and Gold Rooms in the Student Union Building Lazare Ki-Zerbo, of the Organization of the Francophone World, will speak about “Peace, Democracy, and Human Rights in the Francophone World.”

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