Kanye West: 'Late Registration'

DATE September 29, 2005 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Dexter Filkins discusses continuing problems in Iraq
and his work there as a reporter
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

My guest Dexter Filkins is a Baghdad correspondent for The New York Times.
He's been covering Iraq since the start of the invasion in March 2003.
Earlier this year he won a George Polk Award for war reporting for his
coverage of the battle of Fallujah. More recently, he's written about the
drafting of the constitution as well as new developments in the insurgency.
Filkins is briefly back in the US and returns to Iraq next week.

Let's start with the constitution. Then we'll talk about the insurgency and
what it's like to report now from Iraq. The new Iraqi Constitution goes
before voters on October 15th. What are the chances that it would be voted
down?

Mr. DEXTER FILKINS (Baghdad Correspondent, The New York Times): I think those
chances right now are pretty slim. I think it'll probably pass. That's what
it looks right. I could be wrong there, but that's what it looks like at the
moment. I think the greater danger is that even if the constitution passes,
it will pass without significant support among the Sunni Arab population,
which, of course, is where the insurgency is strongest and which is driving
the insurgency. And so, you know, the whole premise and the entire hope of
this enterprise over the past year and a half of elections and constitution
writing and more elections since then to bring the Sunnis into the
process--into the democratic process and kind of draining away the anger that
drives the insurgency. And so the--right now if you go into the Sunni areas,
what you find--what we find is that the opposition to the constitution--I
think a lot of people are going to vote, but I think they're going to vote
against it in the Sunni areas. So it's unclear if that kind of central
problem is going to be solved by the constitution even if it's approved.

GROSS: President Bush praised the draft of the constitution as a milestone in
Iraqi history and congratulated Iraqi leaders for completing the next step in
their transition from dictatorship to democracy. But your articles raise the
possibility that the constitution might end up dividing, not uniting, the
country. In what ways do you think it might divide the country?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, I guess I'd say two things on that. It is--there's a lot
in this constitution, some of which--some of the elements of them are pretty
contradictory. I mean, it's got a bill of rights in it, and it's got
individual rights in it, some of which are very expansive. But at the same
time it makes Islam the religion of the state. It--there's some elements in
there which appear to enable--or would enable the legislature to pretty
substantially curtail women's rights. There is provisions in there to put
clerics on the Supreme Court. So there's a lot of, I want to say, troubling
kind of aspects in it that may end up making this less of a democratic place
than what people had hoped for.

The second element, which is a little bit trickier, has been that in the
process of writing this constitution over the past couple of months, what you
saw was that when the major groups in the country, the Shiites and the Kurds
and the Sunnis, sat down and actually had to sit down and state their vision
of Iraq and the future of Iraq, in a lot of cases they didn't have a lot to
talk about. And the process of writing this constitution kind of brought
those disagreements to the fore in a way that hadn't really been seen before.
So in that sense it has helped to sharpen some of the divisions, I think.

GROSS: In this new constitution, Islam would become the official religion of
the state and would be regarded as the main source of legislation. What parts
of life in Iraq would that most likely change?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, that's a very good question. I think that the truth is
right now not very much. And the reason why that is is because if you
look--this is just a--the constitution is, you know, paper and ink. And if
you go to southern Iraq right now, if you go to the nine provinces that are
dominated by the Shiites, basically anywhere south of Baghdad, you know, it
pretty much is an Islamic state already. It's controlled by clerics or
political parties that are controlled by clerics. Women's rights are pretty
substantially curtailed. Most of the women wear abayas. The clerics have a
lot of power. It's kind of already there. And so in that sense it ratifies
it.

And then if you go to the Kurdish areas in the north, they're completely
secular. It's a little bit--in the Sunni areas, it's kind of a grab bag.
But--so I wouldn't say this constitution won't actually make the country more
Islamic than it already is, but it certainly appears to be ratifying and
codifying what's already happening on the ground.

GROSS: But there were people who were working on the drafting of the
constitution who were threatened, some who were killed. What kind of chilling
effect did that have on the actual process?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, they--there were people who were killed, and there were
two in particular who were shot dead in the street--two Sunni members, I
think. I mean, first of all, it became extremely difficult to find Sunni
leaders who would participate because the ones who were there were all getting
death threats. There was one guy that I spoke to, Falker Ikasi(ph), who's a
very colorful Sunni guy, and he had taken to--he was actually sleeping in his
car, and he was on the drafting committee. And he had four wives, and so
he would--and they were at different houses around Baghdad, and sometimes he
said he would sort of go visit them during the day. But, you know, when
nighttime came, he would just--he'd put his car seat down and go to sleep;
that he couldn't go to his house anymore because he was--he said, `Everybody
wants to kill me now.' And so it had a great chilling effect, and if you--I
mean, that's sort of one area.

The other one was the whole drafting of the constitution took place, you know,
inside the Green Zone, which is this--basically a giant fortress. And it's,
you know, behind blast walls and barbed wire, you know, inside more blast
walls and more barbed wire inside a room protected by guards. And that's
where this document was kind of hammered out. And so the average Iraqi, even
a very educated Iraqi, hasn't seen the constitution, had no part, you know, or
no input in drafting it, and so it was kind of a disconnected process. I
mean, I think they are in the process of printing millions and millions of
these constitutions to be distributed around, so people can actually read them
before the vote on October 15th. But because of the violence, it was a very
strange and dislocated process.

GROSS: And where exactly was your seat, so to speak, for covering the
drafting of the constitution? Were you...

Mr. FILKINS: Oh, my--well, like most things in Iraq, it was kind of a
nightmare. We couldn't get anywhere near them for the most part. And, you
know, I live outside--in a house outside the Green Zone, and it's hard to get
inside the Green Zone and not--and, you know, you can't always get in. And
usually the Iraqis, with the Americans, would meet until usually around
midnight every night, and then--so it was really impossible to talk to anybody
until after midnight. And then when midnight or thereabouts finally came, I'd
get on the phone. And there's a curfew in Baghdad, so at times I was actually
going to see people at 1:00 in the morning, sometimes with police escorts if I
could get them, to talk to them about, you know, `Which clause did you agree
on to put in Article 3?' And so it was always a mad scramble, and most of
these stories I didn't start writing until 4 or 5 in the morning.

GROSS: It must be hard for you to cover a story where you can't see it or
hear it yourself. You have to rely on witnesses to tell you what happened.

Mr. FILKINS: Yeah. Well, in Iraq, that is more and more the case.
Everything is so hard there. It's hard to move around. I should say that the
phones don't work very well. Nothing works very well. It's terribly
dangerous. And so all of that makes your life feel like, you know, you're
running around in slow motion or, you know, you're running around with leg
weights on, you know? It's just really, really slow and painstaking and hard.
And, you know, you don't always get what you want when you need it, and so,
yeah, it's really a scramble.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins. He's been
covering Iraq since the start of the invasion. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins. He's a Baghdad
correspondent for The New York Times.

Now we were talking a little bit about life inside the protected Green Zone,
where the drafting of the constitution took place. You've also written about
life outside of that fortified Green Zone. And that's where you're living--is
outside of the Green Zone. There's, I think, just a particularly fine
description of that that you wrote in an August 14th piece for The New York
Times. There's an excerpt of that I'd like you to read for us.

Mr. FILKINS: `In 28 months of war and occupation here, Iraq has always
contained two parallel worlds: the world of the Green Zone and the
constitution and the rule of law and the anarchical, unpredictable world
outside. Never have the two worlds seemed so far apart.

From the beginning the hope here has been that the Iraq outside the Green Zone
would grow to resemble the safe and tidy world inside it; that the success of
democracy would begin to drain away the anger that pushes the insurgency
forward. This may have been what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was
referring to when, in an interview published in Time magazine this month, she
said that insurgency was losing steam and that rather quiet political progress
was transforming the country.

But in this third summer of war, the American project in Iraq has never seemed
so wilted and sapped of life. It's not just the guerrillas who are churning
away at their relentless pace, attacking American forces about 65 times a day.
It's most everything else, too. Baghdad seems a city transported from the
Middle Ages, a scattering of high-walled fortresses, each protected by a group
of armed men. The area between the forts is a lawless no-man's land menaced
by bandits and brigands. With the daytime temperatures here hovering at
around 115 degrees, the electricity in much of the city flows for only about
four hours a day.'

GROSS: That's Dexter Filkins reading an excerpt of a piece he filed for The
New York Times on August 14th.

I remember when we spoke after the election, which you also covered for The
Times, you seemed more optimistic. I mean, the election was such a moving
event for you to cover. But I wonder if some of that optimism has faded away
in the light of the insurgency and the problems surrounding the constitution.

Mr. FILKINS: Absolutely. I--you said it. I mean, the day in January was
quite something to see. I don't think I'll ever see anything like it again.
And nothing really could diminish that day. It was extraordinary, all these
Iraqis coming out to vote and braving mortar fire and car bombs and casting
their ballots.

But I think what happened--there was a lull after that, and it was an
extraordinary lull and it lasted for some time. And there was a sense at the
time that, `My gosh, maybe something fundamental has changed.' And I think
with time it's clear that that moment was something of a false dawn; that
there's been false dawns before. And the insurgency after about a month or
six weeks of a lull, they--it exploded again. And I think in May, for
example--I think there were 90 car bombings in May alone. And it's shown
itself to be as strong and as violent and murderous as it's ever been. And
the political process, once the country moved on from just voting, it's shown
itself to be very, very weak and that the art and practice of democracy is
obviously more than just voting.

And so there is a sense now--and if you ask me, I would say, yes, absolutely,
I'm not as optimistic as I was back in January. It's much more depressing
now, and it seems--it doesn't seem as hopeful as it did.

GROSS: Well, one of the things you've written about is this group of people
who are called allas. They're Iraqis who lead killers to their victims for a
price. Is this a new industry?

Mr. FILKINS: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, you've just touched on one of the more
depressing things. I mean, I should step back and say that one of the things
that's happened and one of the things that gives Iraqis and Americans the
greatest concern is this sense of incipient civil war, an ethnic civil war.
And Iraqis by and large will always say to you, `No, no, you know, we've--the
Sunnis and the Shiites have lived together here for hundreds and thousands of
years--or hundreds of years, and civil war's not possible.' But what's
happened--and what's happening at a growing rate--in Iraq now is people are
kind of lining up and events are turning along ethnic lines. And what's
happened, I mean, in most or many of the mixed neighborhoods, certainly around
Baghdad, a city of four and a half million people, five million people, is
that they're being cleansed. And in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods, the
Shiites are being killed, and they're being run away--run out of the
neighborhood. And in--the same goes in predominantly Shiite neighborhoods;
the Sunnis are being killed. And it's happening all over the place.

And I was kind of looking into this, and I was trying to get to neighborhoods
where this was happening, which is very difficult to do, and talking to Iraqis
where this was happening. And someone just kind of casually said to me,
`Well, there's a new word. There's a new Arabic word, and it's called allas.'
And the allas is the person--for example, if it's a predominantly Sunni
neighborhood, for a price, the allas will lead the killers to the Shiites who
live in the neighborhood. And, of course, the--it's difficult to identify a
Shiite in a--among a bunch of Sunnis. They look more or less the same. But,
of course, if you live in the neighborhood, you know who they are.

And so the allas is this--is a word that's kind of grown up in the last
several months as this practice, as the ethnic cleansing of these
neighborhoods has picked up. And so in places like Abu Ghraib--there's a
neighborhood in--west of Baghdad where the prison is, and it's a predominantly
Sunni neighborhood, Sunni area with a lot of Shiites in it. And the Shiites
are being killed, and they're being run out of town. And people will say,
`Well, the allas came and pointed out the Shiites, and then they were killed.'

GROSS: So why do you think that, you know, here are Iraqis, like, voting, you
know, supposedly heading toward more democracy, and at the same time they're
killing each other in ways they never thought of before? Why are there more
ethnic divisions as well as political divisions? You know, how would you
explain that?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, I think if you step back and put it in the broadest kind
of possible way, I think that what happened was in April of 2003, when the
regime of Saddam Hussein was brought down, there was a sense that there was an
Iraq that existed. You know, it was imprisoned in this steel frame of this
regime. And when the steel frame was broken, there'd be a real country
underneath that with a national identity and with a history and a sense of a
common future. And I think what happened when that steel frame was broken was
that the country that we discovered inside of it was already broken. And
there isn't--I mean, there's some Iraqi national identity, but it's not very
strong. It's very, very weak. I mean, this is was a country that was, you
know, literally drawn on a map in 1920.

And so what's happening as this insurgency, which is so unbelievably
murderous, churns on, you know, and--is that people are falling back on what
they think they can trust and what they know, and that's family, that's tribe,
and that's religion. It's not the state because the state doesn't work. And
it's not the nation because the nation doesn't get them anywhere. And I think
that's--so that's what's happening.

And so I was in--a remarkable moment--I was in an Iraqi official's office
inside the Green Zone, of course; this was about a month ago. And he pulled
out a large map of Baghdad. It was about as big as a card table. And he
leaned it up against the wall, and he took his finger at the top of the map
and he just ran it right down the middle of Baghdad. And he kind of swerved
his finger around, and he said, `On this side it's Shiite, and on that side
it's Sunni, and that's the line. And it's happening.' And he asked me--he
said, `Do you know anybody I could call in the West to talk about when civil
wars start because I need to think about that?'

GROSS: Well, yeah, I mean, I'm not sure how to put this. Should I ask you
whether you think there will be a civil war, or should I ask you if you think
a civil war has started in a more informal, less-declared way?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, you know, I--that's a good question. I think somebody--I
can't remember his name--said about Bosnia that some of the Bosnians never
regard it as the civil war having just started on one single day; that things
happened. You know, Serbs started killing Bosnians and vice versa, and things
just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And kind of everybody woke up
one morning and said, `My God, I guess we're in the middle of a civil war.'
And if you look at it that way, what's happening right now in Iraq is, to a
certain extent, a low-level civil war. You know, it's not out of control,
it's not a full-blown blood bath yet, but it's pretty bad right now. And
I--the question really now--the central question--is whether the forces that
are holding the country together will be stronger than the forces that are
pulling the country apart. And nobody really knows the answer to that right
now.

GROSS: Well, what are the implications of this for the United States' ability
to start withdrawing troops and start to withdrawing period from Iraq? If
we're moving closer towards civil war, where does that leave the United
States?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, it leaves the US in a pretty difficult situation, I
think, as, you know, any of the commanders there would tell you. The American
strategy is pretty clear. It's to train and to arm and to equip an Iraqi
army, which, not coincidentally, is largely Shiite and Kurdish, and to train
and equip an army that will essentially substitute for the American Army and
will allow the Americans to leave.

Basically what that means is--I mean, if it comes to civil war, then the Iraqi
army would win that civil war or, I guess, ideally prevent it actually from
happening; that the Americans would be able to train and put in place an army
that can hold the country together and can keep order. There isn't an army
yet that can do that. And the American strategy is to try to build this thing
and to make an army, an Iraqi army, that can do that; that will let the
Americans go home. And what we're going to see in the next year is whether
that plan works.

GROSS: Dexter Filkins is a Baghdad correspondent for The New York Times.
He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is
FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: An Iraqi who worked as a stringer for The New York Times was recently
kidnapped and murdered. Coming up, we talk with New York Times Baghdad
correspondent Dexter Filkins about what it's like to report now from Iraq.
And Ken Tucker reviews Kanye West's new CD.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Back with Dexter Filkins, a Baghdad correspondent for The New York Times.
He's been covering Iraq since the start of the invasion. Earlier this year,
he won a George Polk Award for war reporting. Filkins is on a brief trip back
to the US.

Now about a week ago, a stringer for The New York Times was kidnapped and
killed in Iraq. His body was found on the outskirts of Basra. He had a
bullet hole in his head, bruises on his back. He was 38 years old. Did you
ever work with him?

Mr. FILKINS: Yeah, absolutely. Fakher Haider. He's a very sweet guy and
very street smart. He'd actually fought in the uprising in 1991 against
Saddam. Very tough, very smart, very shrewd and very brave, as all--as are
all the Iraqi stringers who help Western news organizations. They become
targets. It's not clear exactly why Fakher was targeted. He worked with a
lot of different news organizations, ours included. But yeah, it was a
horrible, horrible death.

GROSS: What does it make you think about in terms of your own safety?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, we've all known for a long time how dangerous it is
there. It's--if you're a Western correspondent, you're a target, and you've
been a target for a long time. It's a much more different proposition if
you're an Iraqi journalist. In some ways it's safer. You're not an obvious
target. On the other hand, people are gunning for you, as well. And, I mean,
Fakher, for example, who lived in Basra--Basra, generally speaking, it's a
predominantly Shiite city. It's much more calm than, say, Baghdad is or
someplace in the Sunni triangle. And so, generally speaking, people don't
drive around--like American reporters in Baghdad, they don't drive around in
armored cars and they don't have armed guards carrying them--you know, going
around with them. And--but at the same time, here was a guy, Fakher, an Iraqi
guy, he was going around asking questions of public officials, and that's a
new thing there and it's a very dangerous thing there. And it's not--again,
it's not clear what happened, exactly, to Fakher--why he was targeted--but
it's hard to believe that it would be unrelated to the fact that he was asking
questions of some very powerful people.

GROSS: Did he actually write articles for The Times or did he work in both
translating and doing interviews that were background for the reports of
American writers for the Times?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, he actually--Fakher didn't really speak much English, but
he was--so he didn't write for us. And this is the way we work and the way a
lot of Western organizations work. It's hard to be--of course, you can't be
everywhere at once and our resources are limited, so you can't have a
correspondent in every city all the time. And so Fakher knew Basra, which is
a really complicated city with a long history. He knew it like the back of
his hand. He knew every neighborhood in the city. And so when something
would happen there, he would call us usually on his satellite phone and he
could do some reporting and he could either--if his computer worked or if the
phone lines worked, he could e-mail us or report in Arabic and then we'd
translate it and then try to integrate it into one of our stories. Or
when--more important, when one of the American correspondents would go to
Basra, he would be there as a guide who knew the town and who knew where you
could go and where you couldn't go and who was dangerous and who you could
trust, and the kinds of things that, you know, somebody like me going to a
city like that--it would take me a hundred years to try to figure that out.
And he knew it. You know, he knew it instinctively.

GROSS: One of your colleagues at The New York Times, James Glanz, wrote an
article recently about--you know, after the death of this stringer, James
Glanz wrote an article about the challenges with working with stringers in
Iraq when you didn't know really who they were or what their connections were,
and that sometimes it seemed like they had kind of secret connections or
affiliations that they weren't telling about. And I'm wondering if you have
run into that kind of ambiguity, too, that left you feeling that you weren't
really sure about the person.

Mr. FILKINS: Well, in a place like Iraq, you know, a Westerner, an
American--particularly one who doesn't speak Arabic, like me--you're never
really sure of anything like that. I mean, you do the best you can and you
talk to as many people as you can, but there's so much that you don't know.
And if you're lucky, you will know that you don't know it; that--absolutely.
I mean, often, you know, I think what my colleague Jim was referring to is the
stringer--whether it was Fakher or somebody else--the Iraqi stringer would
take you in to see some Iraqi official or a sheik or something, and they would
have a long conversation between them in Arabic that would go on forever. And
you were kind of wondering, `What are they talking about exactly?'

And Fakher was totally straight-up and trustworthy, but there were times
when--and this has happened to me as well--when suggestions were made to
stringers about, `What are you doing here with this American correspondent?'
and, you know, `Gee, couldn't we get a lot of money for this guy if we
kidnapped him? And we don't trust you, either, you know.' And so it's all
very, very fraught and very complicated and sometimes pretty dangerous as
well.

GROSS: You're saying that you think they sometimes actually have those kinds
of conversations about, like...

Mr. FILKINS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

GROSS: ...`Can we get a lot of money if we kidnap this American reporter?'
Yeah?

Mr. FILKINS: Absolutely.

GROSS: How do you know? How do you know?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, they'll tell you later, you know. I mean, and it's always
really funny. I mean--you know, I mean, I've been in situations where, you
know, I'll go in and interview some guy, and again there's all sorts of--you
know, there's other conversations going on in Arabic or Kurdish or whatever.
And I'm doing the best I can. And I'll leave with the stringer, we'll be
driving down the road, and he'll turn to me and say, `Yeah, the guy, you know,
thought it would be--we could make a lot of money if we--you know, he could
just make one phone call, and we could both make a lot of money.' And then,
you know, he'd laugh, and we'd drive on, you know. I mean, that's happened a
number of times. I mean, that's just kind of the way it works, you know? I
mean, it just--you never really know what you're getting into.

But--and it's why--you know, it's why, for somebody like me, an American
reporter in Iraq, I mean, you know, the Iraqis we work with are incredibly
important, and we have to trust them and we do. And, you know, God, I can't
count the number of times that the Iraqi that I was working with saved my
life. I mean, you know, whether it was steering me away from a checkpoint or
telling me not to drive down this particular road or saying the right thing to
somebody who was inclined to do something really bad to me. I mean, it
just--you know, these Iraqis are absolutely invaluable to us, and certainly in
trying to understand that country. I mean, it's the only way in.

GROSS: So you really personally miss Fakher Haider.

Mr. FILKINS: Personally, yeah. Plus he was a really good guy. He was just
a--you know, he was a really good guy, and he understood--you know, he
understood that--the historical moment that he was in and, you know, that the
window was open and he didn't know how long it was going to stay open. And he
was going to do everything he could to keep the window open, you know, and he
died trying.

GROSS: My guest is New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins. He's been
covering Iraq since the start of the invasion. We'll talk more after a break.
This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins. He's a Baghdad
correspondent for The New York Times. He's briefly in the United States.
He'll be going back to Baghdad next week.

You know, we've been talking about some of the things that have been going
wrong in Iraq. There are American troops who have tried really hard to change
the country and to be a force for good in Iraq. And you write about one
example of that.

Mr. FILKINS: Absolutely.

GROSS: You write about a project that was overseen by the 1st Cavalry
Division to restore a river park on the east bank of the Tigris. Would you
describe the project and what happened to it?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, I should say before I describe the project that the 1st
Cavalry Division did amazing projects and amazing work when they were--they
were--I think it was like 38,000 soldiers in charge based in Baghdad for about
a year. And particularly under that general at the time, Major General Peter
Chiarelli, he had this vision of, you know, `Basically, if you give me enough
money and I can put enough Iraqis to work, I can win the war.'

And he has--you know, he's put--he put thousands of Iraqis to work, and he did
an--you know, they did an incredible job, like, in Sadr City, for example,
which--I mean, there was a time last year when, I mean, I couldn't go into
Sadr City, it had gotten so bad. And the 1st Cavalry Division very deftly
kind of turned that and basically neutralized the Mahdi Army and then, you
know, set up these gigantic public works projects that--you know, and if you
talk to the American commanders about it, they say, `Look, if we can put an
Iraqi to work, a young Iraqi male to work, you know, he's too tired to join
the insurgency. You know, he's got a job.' You know, and that's kind of the
vision that this particular general had.

And so this is not a terribly happy example of what became of his work, but
there's a park along the east bank of the Tigris that just--it's right across
the river from the Green Zone, and it actually happens to be pretty close to
The New York Times' compound there. So I actually go through there quite a
bit. I go running through the park sometimes. And so I just--yeah, I wrote a
couple of paragraphs about what had happened--what's happened to that park.
And I can just read that here if you like.

GROSS: Sure.

Mr. FILKINS: (Reading) For much of last year, the soldiers of the 1st
Cavalry Division oversaw a project to restore the riverfront park on the east
bank of the Tigris River. Under American eyes, Iraqis planted sod, installed
a sprinkler system and put up swing sets for the Iraqi children. It cost $1.5
million. The Tigris River park was part of a vision of the unit's commander,
Major General Peter W. Chiarelli, to win the war by putting Iraqis to work.

General Chiarelli left Iraq this year, and the American unit that took over
had other priorities. The sod is mostly dead now, and the sidewalks are
covered in broken glass. The sprinkler heads have been stolen. The northern
half of the park is sealed off by barbed wire and blast walls. Iraqis are
told to stay back lest they be shot by American snipers on the roof of a
nearby hotel.

GROSS: Now when you wrote about this, did you single it out because it was
such an unfortunate and atypical example of what happened to good work that
was done by the military, or did you find this an all too typical example,
that good works are being undone?

Mr. FILKINS: Well, that's a good question. I'd say a couple--the American
military there has done amazing reconstruction work. I think that what's
happened or what sometimes does happen is--and often, you know, they'll
question us and say, you know, `We just opened--you know, we just painted a
new school in this neighborhood and why don't you write about that?' And I
think that, you know, the criteria by which this giant American enterprise
will succeed is whether they stabilize the country and end the war and bring
about, you know, a stable, possibly democratic government. And so it's--you
know, oftentimes I think that these projects that they do--it says more about
the Americans than it does about Iraq, but, I mean, the intentions are
obviously very good.

But what happens--what's happening in some cases and what happened in this
case was a new general came in and he had different priorities. And there's
another thing at work here, which is just as I said in the piece that I wrote,
the first American--when General Chiarelli's guys came in, you know, they set
up this park and they had the sprinkler systems and it was great and it was a
beautiful place, and now the park is cut in half by these giant barricades and
there's, like, snipers up on the roof and there's, like, barbed wire and you
literally can't go in there, I mean, you can only go so far. And it
illustrates another thing that's happened, which, to reconstruction, in
particular, is that it's just been swamped by the insurgency and by the need
for security.

And so if you take--I mean, if you take, for example, the $18 billion--which,
my God, is an enormous amount of money--that the American government
appropriated last year to spend on reconstruction, so much of that money, I
mean, the overwhelming majority of that money, has been diverted to train and
equip the Iraqi security forces and so it doesn't go towards building schools
or building parks, it goes towards, you know, building blast walls and giving
uniforms and guns to Iraqi soldiers, all of which is necessary, but what's
happened is that projects like this have kind of fallen by the wayside.

GROSS: This park that you were describing--a couple of minutes ago, you said
that you often go running through it and I wasn't sure whether I should
imagine you running because you were fleeing something or hope to run through
before you were shot by a sniper or whether you were jogging through the park.

Mr. FILKINS: Yeah, I actually sometimes go jogging. It's not the wisest
thing that I do, but it's because--literally because there are so many
checkpoints in the park and, actually, they allow me to run around the barbed
wire where they don't and actually run over the barbed wire and to go through
some of the checkpoints that they don't allow the Iraqis to go through. I can
actually run in what amounts to a protected area, and I'm protected by
snipers.

GROSS: So you're familiar enough there that you can do it?

Mr. FILKINS: Yeah. Yeah. And it's weird because, you know, most of the
time these checkpoints are manned by Iraqi soldiers. And actually I've
been--often one of the guards in our compound likes to come and run with me,
and so we'll go and as soon as we get to the checkpoint, you know, where the
park is cut in half by this giant blast wall and these, you know, armed guards
and everything, they'll say, `Well, you know, the American can come, but the
Iraqi's got to go back,' and so it's kind of sad.

GROSS: Huh. You've been in the states a couple of weeks, so you were here
for, you know, some of the aftermath of Katrina. And I'm just interested in
what you were thinking about knowing that there were National Guard troops
from New Orleans who could have helped with the hurricane but they were in
Iraq.

Mr. FILKINS: Well, it's just a fact that some enormous percentage of
American citizens over there in Iraq now--you know, 140,000 American
soldiers--I don't know, 40 percent, close to, are National Guard or
Reservists. And, you know, most of these guys didn't really--frankly
didn't--when they signed up had no idea that they would be going away for a
year to fight a guerrilla insurgency in a foreign country. I mean, they
thought, you know, one weekend a month and maybe, you know, peacekeeping duty
in Bosnia or something for six weeks, but--and now they find themselves in
this really, really difficult situation which tests, you know, everything that
they ever learned and then some. Most of the National Guard guys and the
Reservists that we run into over there, you know, they're all--they're doing a
remarkable job and holding up remarkably well. But you do--occasionally
they'll say to you, `My God, you know, I never had any idea I was going to get
into anything like this.'

And I think, in particular, the guys from Louisiana and that area were in a
base, I think called Camp Victory, which is just by the airport outside of
Baghdad. And, you know, we couldn't really get to them because, you know, we
wanted to actually go out there and talk to them and--but apparently they
were, you know, they were pretty frustrated. I mean, some of them, you know,
their homes were flooded and their, you know, families, they couldn't talk to
them, and I think that they were--I think that some of them were pretty upset.

GROSS: So when do you go back to Iraq?

Mr. FILKINS: Next week.

GROSS: So when you go back to Iraq, you'll be covering the referendum on the
constitution, among other things.

Mr. FILKINS: That's right. Yeah. Yeah, October 15th.

GROSS: I must say you must feel like in spite of all the dangers of covering
this story that you're seeing a very remarkable part of history unfold before
your eyes.

Mr. FILKINS: It's pretty amazing. I mean, you know, I've been there. I
went in on, you know, in March 2003 when the invasion started, and so I've
been able to see the whole arc of this really monumental event unfold, and it
is--it's extraordinary to see how far it's come along--two and a half years
now. And every time I go back there, I mean, if I leave for two or three
weeks--I leave the country for two or three weeks, I come back in and it's an
entirely new country and the whole paradigm has changed. And there are
different people and everything's different and I have to relearn it again,
and it's unbelievable. I mean, every time that I go back I think there's no
way it could be as intense and as amazing and extraordinary as it was when I
was here the last time, and it always is.

GROSS: Well, Dexter Filkins, thanks a lot for talking with us and I look
forward to talking with you again.

Mr. FILKINS: Oh, thank you very much.

GROSS: Dexter Filkins is a Baghdad correspondent for The New York Times.

Coming up, rock critic Ken Tucker reviews a new CD by Kanye West.

This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Kanye West's new album "Late Registration"
TERRY GROSS, host:

Kanye West's debut album "The College Dropout" was released in 2004, sold over
three million copies and won three Grammy Awards. Our rock critic Ken Tucker
says this feat, along with his distinctive production work for performers like
Jay-Z and John Legend, has made him the most significant new hip-hop act to
emerge since Eminem. Unlike the up-from-the-street toughness of Eminem or 50
Cent, West projects an image of middle-class aspiration. He also voices
strong opinions outside the recording studio. He went off script during an
NBC fund-raiser for the victims of Katrina to assert that quote, "George Bush
does not care about black people," unquote. Ken has a review of Kanye West's
new album. It's called "Late Registration."

(Soundbite of "Touch The Sky")

Mr. KANYE WEST: (Singing) I gotta testify, come up in the spot looking extra
fly. For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky. Gotta testify, come up in the
spot looking extra fly. For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky. Back when
they thought pink polos would hurt the Roc, before Cam got the shit to pop,
the doors was closed. I felt like Bad Boy's street team, I couldn't work the
Lox. Now let's go. Take 'em back to the plan...

Me and my momma hopped in the U-Haul van. Any pessimists I ain't talked to
them, plus I ain't have no phone in my apartment. Let's take `em back to the
club. Least about an hour I would stand on line, I just wanted to dance. I
went to Jacob an hour after I got my advance. I just wanted to shine. Jay's
favorite line: `Dog, in due time.' Now he look at me, like `Damn, dog, you
where I am.' A hip-hop legend. I think I died in an accident, cause this
must be heaven. I gotta testify...

KEN TUCKER reporting:

I doubt there's any young performer more interesting, more exciting and more
frustrating than Kanye West. This 28-year-old, the son of an English
professor and former Black Panther turned marriage counselor, Kanye West has
appeared on the cover of Time magazine as the new face of hip-hop. As the
track I just played called "Touch The Sky" suggests, West bursts with ambition
and is aware that his skyrocket career is something he's both grateful for and
worked hard to achieve. As far as image goes, his sartorial finesse, a
fondness for pastel sweaters and polo shirts, signals an inner ease. He
doesn't have to pose as street-tough to talk tough, which he does; that is,
whenever he's not being playful or poignant or making clever puns.

Sometimes he does all of this at the same time, as on the album's breakout
hit, "Golddigger."

(Soundbite of "Golddigger")

Mr. WEST: (Singing) She take my money when I'm in need. Yeah, she's a
triflin' friend indeed. Oh, she's a gold digga way over town that digs on me.

Chorus: (Singing) She give me money.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Now I ain't sayin' she a gold digger.

Chorus: (Singing) When I'm in need.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) But she ain't messin' wit no broke broke...

Chorus: (Singing) She give me money.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Now I ain't sayin' she's a gold digger.

Chorus: (Singing) When I'm in need.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) But she ain't messin' wit no broke broke...

Chorus: (Singing) I gotta leave.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Get down girl, go ahead and get down.

Chorus: (Singing) I gotta leave.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Get down girl, go ahead, get down.

Chorus: (Singing) I gotta leave.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Get down girl, go ahead get down.

Chorus: (Singing) I gotta leave.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Get down girl, go ahead and get down.

Chorus: (Singing) I gotta leave.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Yeah, she give me money.

TUCKER: Kanye West made his initial impact for other artists by finding just
the right old-school R&B track, sampling its best-known riff and then
decorating it with bright percussion and throaty backup vocals. He's done the
same for himself on that song, using both Ray Charles and Ray Charles'
foremost imitator, Jamie Foxx.

It's a track that excoriates wanton women who exploit men even as it expresses
a certain admiration for anyone, including female gold diggers, who can hustle
a good living through guile and hard work. That's what I meant when I said
that West was both exciting and frustrating. He gets you bobbing your head to
mixed messages that leave you wanting to sit down and debate him on.

(Soundbite of "Crack Music")

Mr. WEST: (Singing) That's that crack music, crack music. That real black
music, black music.

Chorus: (Singing) La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. La-la-la-la-la-la.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) That's that crack music, crack music. That real black
music, black music.

Chorus: (Singing) La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la. La-la-la-la-la-la.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) How we stop the Black Panthers? Ronald Reagan cooked up
an answer. You hear that?

Chorus: (Singing) La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) What Gil Scott was hearin' when our heroes and heroines
got hooked on heroin. Crack raised the murder rate in DC and Maryland. We
invested in that it's like we got Merrill Lynched and we been hangin' from the
same tree ever since.

Chorus: (Singing) La-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) Sometimes I feel the music is the only medicine. So we
cook it, cut it, measure it, bag it, sell it. The fiends cop it. Nowadays
they can't tell if that's that good (censored).

Chorus: (Singing) La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.

Mr. WEST: (Singing) We ain't sure, man. Put the CD on your tongue, yeah,
that's pure, man. That's that crack music, crack music.

TUCKER: For a guy with an ego so big he badmouthed country singer Gretchen
Wilson for winning this past year's Grammy Award for best new artist backstage
during the show itself, telling the press, `I was the best new artist'--well,
for a young man who can be so self absorbed, West shows a very encouraging
engagement with the world outside himself. And the track I just played,
"Crack Music," excoriates drug use and its enshrinement in so much hip-hop,
while taking the government to task for letting drugs flood the ghetto and
letting loose puns like, `We got Merrill Lynched.' Kanye West understands a
fundamental pop culture principal: That you can use your fame to rattle the
very establishments that are as eager to exploit you as you are to exploit
them.

(Soundbite of "Roses")

Mr. WEST: (Singing) I know it's past visitin' hours, but can I please give
her these flowers? The doctor don't wanna take procedures. He claim my heart
can't take the anesthesia. It'll send her body into a seizure. The little
thing by the hospital bed, it'll stop beepin'. Hey chick, I'm at a loss for
words. What do you say at this time? Remember when I was nine? Tell her
everything gon be fine. But I'd be lyin', the family cryin', they want her to
live and she tryin'. I'm arguin', like, `What kind of doctor can we fly in?'
You know, the best medicine go to people that's paid. If Magic Johnson got a
cure for AIDS and all the broke motha (censored) passed away, you tellin' me
if my grandma's in the NBA, right now she would be OK, but since she was just
a secretary that worked for the church for 35 years things supposed to stop
right here? My grandfather tryin' to pull it together, he strong, that's
where I get my confidence from. I asked a nurse, `Did you do the research?'
She asked me, `Can you sign some T-shirts?' Is you smokin'? You don't see
that we hurt? But still...

Chorus: (Singing) I smile when roses...

TUCKER: That song, called "Roses," proved that Kanye West can play nicely
with others. It was co-produced, as a number of other tracks here, with Jon
Brion, a fixture on the LA pop-rock scene best known for elaborate string
arrangements and his work with singer-songwriters like Aimee Mann and Fiona
Apple. The idea that West appreciates Brion's eclecticism, that he recognizes
the originality that can arise from crossing musical borders, is another
reason to see and hear him for what he is: the most enjoyably confounding hit
music maker around.

GROSS: Ken Tucker reviewed "Late Registration" by Kanye West.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
Transcripts are created on a rush deadline, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of Fresh Air interviews and reviews are the audio recordings of each segment.