Margaret Sloane

Personal Perspective: Images from Nine Months in Iraq & Qatar

I took these photographs during the period from August 2003 to May 2004 while I was working for the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) in Doha, Qatar and Baghdad, Iraq. The ISG was an American-British-Australian effort, which began work in May 2003, whose mission was to find, exploit, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The ISG was made up of American, British, and Australian military personnel, analysts, scientists, linguists, case officers, and support personnel, both civilian and military, who worked in Qatar and Iraq. The ISG conducted its investigation through site visits, interviews, debriefings of scientists and former Iraqi government officials, document collection, translation, analysis, and laboratory work. Although the ISG did not find stockpiles of WMD nor active large-scale production facilities, on 30 September 2004 it issued a comprehensive report of its findings. The report is more than 900 pages long and is publicly available on the web at: http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/.

The majority of these pictures were taken in Iraq where I spent six months. Some of them are what I call drive-by shootings, that is, I took them from a moving vehicle. After a while I got pretty good at this, but I missed shots either because a vehicle passed, blocking the view, or I was too slow. The rest were taken from the air or on foot. I chose these photos out of the hundreds I took over nine months for their quality and for their subjects in hopes that I could show you something different from the smoke and death which dominates reporting about Iraq. They are by no means all images that will make you happy, but they will show you more of Qatar and Iraq than you might otherwise see.

During the time I was deployed, I lived in places and saw concepts come alive that I had been introduced to by Professor Shultz, Professor Hess, Professor Pfaltzgraff, and Professor Martel. I hope this exhibit will serve as a thank you to them for opening up new worlds for me and giving me the tools to understand what I saw and experienced while I was deployed. I also hope it will serve as a thank you to Fletcher’s staff and administration who have helped make all of this possible for me.