Yesterday, this Arab News journalist and others who were traveling together were detained by US Military Police for over four hours. We had earlier obtained permission from the Public Affairs Officer in charge of our previous camp — a Lt. Harrington — to proceed onward toward Nassiriyah.

Lt. Harrington said she would notify the checkpoints along the way.

The traveling convoy of clearly marked journalists’ vehicles was allowed to proceed, but moments later was stopped at the first checkpoint. We were all ordered to stop by armed MPs and asked to step out of our cars. As we sat, the entire time a guard or armed soldiers watched our every move. Two hours later, a Capt. W. G. Dragan, the military policeman in charge, explained that we were waiting for a security contact team to “assess the legitimacy of our presence in Iraq.”

He added: “For your safety as well as our own we are going to keep you here until we determine what we are going to do with you. There have been reports of suicide bombers in vehicles, and we are on a higher state of alert.

“Besides, there are not supposed to be any reporters in Iraq who aren’t embedded.”

We waited another two hours, becoming increasingly impatient. I gathered with the other journalists, and in a voice loud enough to be heard by our guard that I would be writing this article about the press being controlled. I approached the guards and in a friendly manner asked for their names. The Portuguese journalists who were with us — who had beaten up by MPs before, as reported in Arab News — asked me to be quiet. I got my laptop out and started writing, in full view of the military police. A few minutes later, we were allowed to proceed.

It was getting dark and we abandoned the idea of getting to Nassiriyah, as we were told by American soldiers along the way that there was still fighting going on there. We did not want to arrive after dark and look for shelter in a place that was still taking fire.

The next closest safe town was Najaf, 278 km away. We decided to head there, as humanitarian relief efforts were under way and the city was declared open and safe by the Americans.

As we were traveling along what we were told was Iraqi Highway 8, we could see the burned out wreckage of everything — from small artillery gun vehicles to bullet ridden passenger buses. Along the same route, we also passed several trucks carrying water and food items marked “For Najaf, a gift from the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society.”

As darkness set in, we pulled over at a bullet-ridden rest stop. Inside, bullet holes let in the remnants of the setting sun. In one corner lay an Iraqi soldier’s dented helmet, and there were blood all over the wall. Below it was a thick pool of dried blood. It was my first exposure to lives lost as a result of this war.

After topping up from the fuel cans we had brought along from Kuwait, we headed down the road on our way to Najaf. As the night began to set in, we stopped to ask for directions from the throngs of Iraqi civilians begging for water.

As we were pulling along the road we were almost sideswiped by a passing military convoy coming round the corner. We were ordered to pass the convoy by one of the US Marines. To have passed at that point would have resulted in our Pajero colliding head on with an oncoming pickup truck. As I tried to motion to the soldier who had commanded us to pass that there was an oncoming vehicle he swung his truck-mounted 50-caliber machine gun at us quickly, in an apparent move to scare us. Another journalist told me that he wouldn’t shoot two unarmed journalists.

We barely squeezed between the oncoming pickup truck and the Marines and accelerated away leaving the madness behind us. After another 120 km of convoys and Iraqi burned out military and civilian vehicles, we decided to bed down for the night outside the food factory just two kilometers from Samawah, where locals told us “dozens of innocent civilians” had been killed within the last four days.

The locals wanted to show us the truck carrying tomatoes that was shot at three days ago, with the dead drivers blood still inside, which was still laden with the tomatoes. They asked us to drive with them to the site of this incident, where the truck remains. Fearing for our safety from the Americans patrolling the area, we decided it was not a good idea to have an Iraqi inside the vehicle, especially after dark, so we said we would see it in the morning.