Journalist's documentary leads to kidnapping in Iraq

One digital photograph too many of an Iraqi marketplace almost cost New York documentary filmmaker Micah Garen his life. \nGaren and his Iraqi translator, Amir Doshi, were kidnapped from a gun market in Nasiriyah and held captive for 10 days by members of the Iraqi militant group Martyrs Brigade, which threatened to behead him. \nSimilar to the recent kidnapping of four Christian peace activists by the Iraqi militant group Swords of Righteousness Brigade, Garen's family and friends learned of his abduction after viewing an Al-Jazeera broadcast of the terrorists and their captives. \nGaren and his fiancée Marie-Helene Carleton, spoke to a Bloomington crowd about their August 2004 ordeal at Borders Bookstore recently before reading excerpts from and signing copies of their co-authored book, "American Hostage: A Memoir of a Journalist Kidnapped in Iraq and the Remarkable Battle to Win His Release."\nGaren spent five months shooting more than 200 hours of film footage during the summer of 2004 that detailed the continued looting of archaeological sites in southern Iraq.\nGaren told the audience the primary mission during their trip to Iraq was to expose and document the destruction occurring at archeological sites throughout the country. \nHidden beneath a haircut styled to match local trends, a beige-plaid polyester shirt and a bushy mustache, Garen told the audience he and his translator stopped by the Iraqi market because they "had an hour to kill" on their way to a scheduled meeting at the Nasiriyah Museum. \nAfter a brief run-in with an "enraged man" toting a machine gun, Garen said he was identified by a shout of "Foreigner!" and the crowd mobbed him before he was whisked away by the blade of a large knife and the barrel of a gun into the backseat of a waiting car.\n"I thought of running, but I would have to break free from this man with the knife. The others had guns. I wouldn't make it a block and what about Amir?" Garen read to the audience from his book. "If I said I was an American, I was dead."\nGaren said he instead told the enraged man he was a French journalist and a "sadiqi," which means "friend." He said he also resorted to shouting the Iraqi tribal-traditional phrase "Ana bisharbic," or "I am in your mustache," which his driver taught him to say for occasions when a person has no other options and has to beg for protection.\n"There was intense fighting in the area at the time between coalition forces and the Madhi Army," Garen said. "My kidnapping became political because I was the only card (the Madhi Army) had to stop the fighting." \nGaren said he and Doshi were held captive in an enclosure made of date palms surrounded by a remote marsh somewhere in southern Iraq. \nCarleton, Garen's mother and his sister directed an international grassroot effort to free him after transforming Garen and Carleton's New York City apartment into a "war room," Carleton said. She said she left Iraq about two weeks before Garen was abducted.\nEven before the Martyrs Brigade released the video threatening Garen's life, Carleton said friends and family decided to petition radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for Garen's freedom as opposed to U.S. government intervention. Carleton said the FBI supported their efforts, although a network of international journalists and Middle Eastern friends tracked down the radical cleric, who was in hiding and on the run from Coalition forces, via satellite phones and the Internet. \n"When I saw the video I thought it was the worst thing to happen," Carleton said. "But then I thought it was a good thing because it was proof of life."\nSeventy-four journalists have been killed in Iraq and two are still missing since the March 2003 invasion, according to Reporters Without Borders, who have declared the country "the world's most dangerous place for journalists."\n"I am both sad and happy. I am happy (Garen) came back alive, but I'm sad because that Iraq is not the Iraq I have known for 40 years," said Bloomington resident and IU Professor Emeritus Salih J. Altoman, who teaches Arabic and comparative literature. "I left the country in 1964, and I consider myself a Hoosier. There was no kidnapping in Iraq before the current conflict -- it's a new phenomenon."\nCarleton, a member of Soka Gakkai International, a Buddhist association claiming more than 12 million members in 190 countries worldwide, said she and other members of the Soka chapter in Bloomington, Chicago and New York City took shifts to chant during Garen's captivity in the hope they might communicate with him. Garen said he could feel their collective energy. \nBloomington resident and SGI member Chris Jaffe, who chanted with about 40 other local SGI chapter members for a week straight, said he joined the spiritual chorus for Garen's release immediately after he found out about the kidnapping. \n"We chanted for (Garen's) safety and for his release," Jaffe said. "The whole purpose was to help him overcome his individual suffering." \nGaren and Carleton said they are still working to edit the archeological documentary that almost cost Garen his life. He said protecting the remnants of the Sumerian and Babylonian kingdoms, among other archeological sites throughout Iraq, was worth the threatened beheading.