The Army had this elaborate plan to find the caves. Dozens of soldiers would be dropped via helicopter into an isolated valley in Taliban country, each carrying enough equipment, food and water for several days of marching.  From there, they would target ten or so suspected cave sites that had been reconnoitered by air, dotted into a nearby mountain range.  It sounded fun, so I tagged along, and jumped off the helicopter onto the muddy farm field with everyone else. Almost before we had a chance to hit the soil, the Blackhawk lurched up again into the sky, the roar of the rotors quickly fading away.  Soon it was quiet. The rising sun was just peeking over the horizon.

The platoons regrouped, and then headed off for their objectives. The one I stayed with was lead by an ebullient and witty staff sergeant from Indiana named Steven Caldwell, whose platoon was a motley group of young men from across America.  They irreverently cracked jokes as they marched, mostly banter about their girlfriends back home or discussions on the bathroom habits of local Afghans.  Also along for the ride was a somber Air Force dog handler named Schwartz and his pride and joy, a black German Shepherd named Bleck, who was trained to sniff out explosives.  All of them were hauling huge packs full of 100 pounds or more of gear, along with their heavy weapons and ammunition.

The entire first day of the mission was earmarked for finding the first two caves, but a short walk took us to the spot where they were, and it turned out they weren’t caves at all, just natural ridges in the rock that apparently looked like caves from the air.  Caldwell shrugged, entered the information on a rugged handheld GPS-type device that he was using to find the targets, and we continued on to look for the rest, some miles ahead on a windy path.

We passed through several villages along the way, the Pashtun tribalists regarding us with curious stares as we walked by.  A few hours of hiking brought us to a road that hugged the base of a long, imposing cliff face.  Caldwell glanced down as his computer and back up at the moutainside.

“Looks like the next few caves are right up there,” he said, pointing to a spot on the cliff far above us. He looked over at his men, “Who’s coming with me?”

No volunteers. Caldwell rolled his eyes, and muttered several unprintable things. Then he drooped his pack with a thud onto the dirt.

“Fine, just watch the road. I need the K-9, though,” and with that, he started clamoring up the mountain. Schwartz and Bleck scrambled up after him.  Soon they were all over the ridge and out of sight.

I hesitated for a few minutes, trying to convince myself there was something productive to photograph right where I was, without venturing up into the heights. The platoon laughed and loudly started back with their discussion about the Afghan’s toilet habits.  I sighed, slung my camera over my shoulder, and headed up the mountain.

It was ridiculously dangers; the route up ranged from a steep incline to nearly vertical, and the rock itself was a grey shale of some kind that had a disquieting tendency to disintegrate as you searched for a foothold on it.  One slip on this thing and you’d go for a long, painful tumble onto jagged rocks somewhere below.  Eventually, I caught up with Caldwell, Schwartz and Bleck on a narrow ridge.  They were barely sweating.

“Caldwell, you’re from Indiana,” I said, panting. “Where did you learn how to climb mountains?”

He smiled without looking up from his computer.

“Man, I’ve been stationed in Alaska for five years. We do this stuff all day… a-ha, it’s over by that crevasse.” He bolted off and started making his way literally across the base of the long vertical crack that wound down the cliff face.  Schwartz and Bleck gamely followed after him.

The way they went looked nearly impossible to me, so I hiked up a bit instead, looking for a better place to cross the crack. But there was nothing a few feet up either, and I couldn’t go down because I couldn’t see, so I went up still farther.  Still there was no way to cross. Before long, I couldn’t go up any more and the sides were nothing but an inclined slope of loose pebbles. Somehow I’d gotten 50 feet over the others, and was completely stuck.

After a few minutes of self-pity, I lunged to the left and danced across the crumbly slope like a barefoot teenager on the hot sands of vertical beach.  I made it to the crevasse and awkwardly landed on my rear, and instantly started sliding down.  But inside the crack I could use my feet to slow myself and it was actually kind of fun, like a waterslide.  (My pants would disagree; I shredded them and, as they were my only pair, an Afghan tailor working on the Army base later laboriously put them back together.)  Finally, I tumbled to a stop at the bottom, landing with a cloud of dust right next to Caldwell, who was still absorbed in his GPS.

“Hey there,” he said. “Man, this ain’t no cave here, either. You about ready?”

“Whenever you are.”

It is moments like these in foreign lands that always prompt me to get philosophical, even existential: Why am I here? How did this happen? Why exactly am I hanging on the side of a mountain in Afghanistan this morning? I’m not in the Army, I didn’t sign up for this. I should be back home, watching TV or canoodling in bed of having a strong espresso in Brooklyn. Or just about anywhere else.

But in the end, things tend to work themselves out, I find, and the satisfaction of photographing and documenting the most important issues of our time far outweighs any temporary discomfort, or even fear.  In the end, I found a way down by quickly dancing across the inclined slope like a barefoot teenager bouncing on the hot sands of a vertical beach, and continued on with the mission.

Chris also writes for dscriber.com about his experiences in Afghanistan. To read more about this particular day, click here.

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The Americans left the earthen walls of their base around dawn, taking a left on the dusty unpaved path that runs outside, in the direction of the boarder with Pakistan.  But they weren’t going that far.  Just a few miles in fact, to the nearest village, for a routine foot patrol.  A few Afghan men watched from distant hills above us, crouching stock-still as we passed.

After a half hour we arrived a tiny hamlet, a dispersed collection of mud brick houses set among farm fields and tiny hay barns.  The largest building by far among the dozens or so in the area was the mosque. It was also of mud, and was around the size and shape of an old one-room schoolhouse on the prairie.  Several other buildings abutted the mosque, forming a simple town square fringed with hewn long benches.

The purpose of the patrol was ostensibly to search the farm houses in the area, looking for weapons or signs of militant activity. So as not to rile the locals too badly, the American forces I was traveling with, led by a burly Staff Sergeant named Adam James, brought along members of the nascent Afghan police force to do the actual searching.  The Afghan police didn’t look any different than the men sitting idly in the square, save that they wore heavy blue coats that read “Police” in English on the back.

Staff Sgt. James laconically directed these Afghan forces to begin their search, seeming almost bored; he has two hours of Iraq under his belt before coming here, and has a seen-it-all sort of air about him.  Before long, like everywhere else in the Third World, young boys materialized from the ether and started gathering around the visitors.  No girls approached us, though I could see some in the distance, leading pack animals around or tending to the fields.  Sgt. James ordered some of his men to nearby high ground to watch the road and the land around us. Once these sentries were in place James relaxed, sitting on the log bench and taking some of the pale yellow Afghan hot tea offered to him by one of the men of the mosque.

I looked around at the surrounding hills. “Hey, isn’t this Taliban country?” I asked.  “Pretty much,” James said, blowing on the tea glass while holding it gingerly by the rim. “Aren’t you worried you’ll get ambushed?” I asked. “Naw, they wouldn’t do it here,” he said. “They’ll wait until we’re on the road heading back to the base.”  “Oh. What might you do to prevent that?” “I’ll call in helicopter support. They’ll cover us, and then we’ll head back.”

Just then, one of the soldiers watching on a hill called won, stringing some words together he probably never had uttered before in his life: “Looks like we got a bunch of camels heading for us, sir.” Everyone turned to look down the road.  He was right. In minutes, they were among us.

It was a colorful caravan of at least fifty camels and as many ponies, all laden with ramshackle cloth bags tied with homemade ropes.  Hundreds of angular bearded mean in turbans and shalwar kameez and as many women covering their faces walked alongside.  Sleepy children with wild hair and runny noses rode on hand-woven saddles on the humps, their heads rocking in time with the rhythmic sway of the camels’ steady gait.

They were passing through and didn’t stop, but the Army’s Pashto translator managed to shout out some questions as they lumbered past, and we got the gist of their story — they had been on the road four days so far, and had about a week to go; they were fine thank you though one of their camels was going lame; and they were heading for warmer climates for the winter, toward the village of Salerno and coming from Ghazni.

As the caravan disappeared into the dusty distance, we all watched it quietly, with the kind of instinctive awe one gets when you see something that seems to walk out of history.  Had one stood on this road during the autumn migrating months a thousand years ago, that caravan would have looked completely the same.

Soon the local police finished their searching and it was time to return to the base. Sgt. James called in for Apache attack helicopters to cover the road, but none were available.  So, instead we hiked up into the hills and returned cross-country on the high ground, the soldiers marching single-file on the ridges of the ancient mountains. We were back in time for a late lunch.

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The US Army has some of the most modern military technology in the world.  Yet come to Combat Outpost Zerok, nestled in the remote mountains of Paktika province, Afghanistan, and very little of that technology is apparent.  As it turns out, some things in the military don’t change much over the decades, and the basic setup of a remote Army combat outpost is one of them.

Take the perimeter, which in Zerok’s case, is the size of a football field or so.  It’s simply earth, scooped up and packed into wire mesh cubes and stacked to form crude walls.  Inside the base, just about everything is made of plywood.   The men themselves (and it’s all men on a combat outpost like this) live either in plywood shacks, or half-sized shipping containers set down in a series of rows adjacent to each other, or in clever combinations of the two.  Either way these sleeping quarters are fortified with sandbags and dirt mounds to protect against mortar shelling attacks.  The containers are set very close to each other and the resulting maze-like warrens remind me of the crowded side alleys in the souks of ancient cities, like Damascus or Jerusalem.

Bathroom sanitation is also old school in a place like this.  The larger bases in Afghanistan use white “shower trailers” that are hooked up to plumbing, and supplemented around the base by standard issue porta johns, the same you might find at a big summer outdoor concert in the States.  But those require daily maintenance and cleaning by contracted crews. There’s nothing like that out here, so for these guys it’s simply a row of plywood outhouses perched over open steel drums.  Once a day, a lowly private drags the drums out, pours in diesel fuel, and burns it all away.

There are no showers, but someone has rigged up a hand-sized pressure water sprayer (the kind used to clean concrete sidewalks) to a small water tank, and in theory you can stand in one of the dark, dank containers over a makeshift drain and spray yourself down with ice-cold water, taking care with the trigger so as not to flay your skin off as you do.   (I tried it yesterday; without going into too much detail, let’s just say you need to be very careful with that thing.)   Most soldiers understandably seem to eschew it and clean themselves off with alcohol soaked wipes, day after day.

Food and other supplies are brought in by helicopter.  But this is one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, and over this violent summer several helicopters were shot at as they arrived here, giving a Zerok a notorious reputation among risk-averse helicopter pilots.    So for months choppers would only fly in at night, cutting in half the number of flights and making it that much harder to get supplies onto the base.  (One soldier I met chalked it all up to hyperbole: “They got shot at a few times sure, but they were just potshots that didn’t hit anything,” he said, dismissively.  “And so they stop flying. And I’m like, dude, we LIVE out here.”)  They just started daytime flights again and that’s probably the only reason I was able to get to the base at all.

Guard towers surround the perimeter and are built, again, out of simple wood.  Soldiers pulling guard duty do just as sentries at military outposts for centuries have done; stare out into the blistering day or lonely night, weapon close at hand.  Long weeks pass without incident, but the threat is real: on July 4th of this year militants struck Combat Outpost Zerok in a surprise attack, blasting the outer permitter with a massive suicide car bomb and then swarming the base with hundreds of fighters.  The soldiers of Zerok fought the invasion in a volcanic three-hour firefight, eventually beating it back but at a cost: twenty soldiers were seriously wounded, and two were killed.  That attack is naturally a seminal moment in the base’s short history, sort of its own 9/11; soldiers talk about July 4 with quiet reverence, and still with awe.  Portraits of the two soldiers killed, Privates Aaron Fairbairn and Justin Casillas, hang in the base meeting room.

That’s the room where I’m sleeping, in fact.  The wooden door still has dozens of jagged holes in it from the battle; in the morning, as the rising sun clears the mountains and hits the base like a spotlight, the sun shines through and dapples the walls and the pictures of Fairbairn and Casillas with glowing spots, like bright yellow stars.

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Everyone is asking me if things have changed in Afghanistan since 2002, when I was last here.  Of course it’s a too-simple question, with a non-answer: they have, and they haven’t.  Kabul for instance is still dirty and exotic, still full of tan old sheepherding men with white beards and wrinkled faces (even  now they might be chatting on a cell phone as they guide their flock around town with long sticks).  Some new buildings have gone up, but not that many.  On the military side, the US Army is still stocked with an endless parade of energetic young men and women, and now as ever they are fitness fanatics and will work out every day even if they have to run laps back and forth through some muddy field on the edge of their base as the sun rises.  But they’re more jaded now than they were in 2002, after so many tours in Iraq and now here.

The central military hub in Afghanistan, both seven years ago and now, is Bagram Air Base, an hour’s drive from Kabul across a spectacular plateau nestled between the mountains.  I stayed at Bagram for some time in 2002 as well; back then all the press stayed in one large tent located next to the barbed wire perimeter of a now-infamous detention facility. (No getting anywhere near that place, now.)  Opportunistic Afghans had set up impromptu bazaars just outside the front gates, and we’d discreetly purchase incredibly bad Uzbek vodka and other things for our nightly rabble-rousing party in the press tent. Off-duty soldiers would walk by, peek in, and find themselves downing a quick beer and flirting with reporters for a few minutes, dashing off into the night again if they saw an officer or sergeant-major heading our way.

Those days are gone.  Bagram today has evolved and changed in spirit; everything is far more organized and uptight and the base has spread out, like a California town exploding into a tangle of urban sprawl.  Rather than in tents, troops now stay in long rows of stacked housing units that look like the apartment complexes near college campuses. MPs hand out tickets to drivers who are speeding or not wearing a seat belt.  Sometimes the trappings of home are faintly ridiculous; I saw a flyer touting free swing dancing classes.

One thing hasn’t changed: the troops doing their physical training every morning en masse along Bagram’s broad main boulevard.  Inspired, and clearly not going anywhere for a few days, I laced up my own shoes and went for a run. The main street ends after a few kilometers and opens up onto a broad flat plain; a few kilometers more and the running path fringes the edge of the flight line itself.  I stopped and watched all manner of military aircraft taxi and roar into the sky: stately C-130 workhorses, massive C-17 cargo carriers, strange, Russian-looking planes and the incredible fighter jets, lithe wedges of physics-defying magic that scream overhead louder than a train thundering by.  The scope of it all is staggering; Bagram is a small city and big airport, all built from nearly scratch in the middle of this inhospitable countryside, for billions upon billions of dollars.  And there are hundreds of other bases more or less like it, all over Afghanistan.  If there’s anything I wish I could convey to the general American public who will never visit this place, it is the enormous scale of the undertaking being done here in our name.  Try as I might, photos never seem to convey it.

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The Green Zone is an unlikely place for a performance of Rossini. After years now as a besieged fortress, the seat of American power in Iraq is all but a wasteland: four square miles of empty boulevards riven with internal checkpoints and imposing mazes of adhoc concrete walls. Crumbling buildings and shelling damage linger unrepaired, and blowing trash scrapes along the shell-cracked sidewalks like tumbleweeds.

In the middle of it all is the former Iraqi Convention Center, which under the Saddam government was simply that, host to all manner of mundane gatherings typical of any medium-sized country– business expos, government announcements, and art exhibitions. Those kinds of events of course ended once the Saddam government was toppled. The US Army used the building briefly as the seat of its media operations, but soon after the elections of 2005 the building was given over to host the Iraqi government’s new legislative assembly, and they’ve been holding parliament there ever since. Oddly, despite this new reality even members of the government still call the place the convention center.

So, during my recent trip to Iraq, when I saw a communiqué from the US embassy inviting the press to cover a performance of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra in this convention center, I made my way over to the Green Zone to attend. Tales of endless security checks are cliché to anyone covering Iraq, but the security before the show was heavy even by Iraq’s standards–in addition to the three or four body checks just to get into the Green Zone at all, metal detectors and body-searches were set up outside (and then again inside) the convention center itself. Just before the performance, the hall was cleared and explosive-sniffing dogs were led around by trainers, methodically checking row-by-row for planted bombs.

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Finally, the crowd was allowed to enter and began to take their seats in the hall. The audience milling about and chatting was an invitation-only group: mostly Iraqi government members, American Green Zone bureaucrats, and a few uniformed US military officers. The auditorium was about half-full: a number of the members of the Iraqi Parliament from Islamic parties boycotted the performance on religious grounds.

I was backstage with the performers, as they warmed up. I’m a classical music enthusiast and have hung around many musicians before recitals, and can confidently report that the members of the Iraqi Symphony act like classical performers do anywhere before a concert: the usual mélange of hair primping, reed soaking, bow-tie adjustments and much laughter.

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Woodwinds players idly belted out their upcoming passages, booming tonic-and-dominant chords sounding spare out of context. Violinists warmed up with fragments of Bach, apparently universal around the world. The mood was light, and the men and women of the orchestra mixed and chatted with an ease that’s rare in the new, more Islamic Iraq since 2003 under American occupation. Indeed, a number of the musicians told me they have to carry their instruments around town in black garbage bags, lest Islamic militants, who usually consider music to be sacrilegious, discover their profession.

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Before the performance there was an endless round of speeches, politicians and bureaucrats extolling the importance of music and reminding the audience that afternoon was being held in celebration of something called “World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development” by the United Nations. The power went out during one of the addresses, plunging the hall into darkness. The speaker gamely continued, shouting out his words until the lights came back few minutes later. Finally the musicians entered the hall in two files and took to the stage.

Guest conducting was British maestro Oliver Gilmour, whose brother happens to work for the United Nations mission in Iraq, and flew in via military transport for the performance.

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With a twitch of his baton he started the orchestra in the first number of the afternoon, Rossini’s Overture to The Barber of Seville. The opening chords resounded through the hall, and several toes tapped when the famous main melody came around. The orchestra was capable but (quite understandably) not well-rehearsed; the level of playing was perhaps similar to that a local community orchestra in the States.

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This held true through the other works on the program, the first movement of the Dvorak Cello Concerto (with the orchestra’s usual Iraqi conductor playing solo cello) and the rousing Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. Later the Iraqi conductor took up the baton to conduct some rhythmic works written by local composers. As the final notes died down the audience leapt to their feet with applause.

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The performance, it seemed to me, was more about Iraq’s past than about its future. In the orchestra’s tuxedoed men and uncovered women lies a tantalizing snapshot of the Iraq that was; an authoritarian state that nonetheless was secular and Western-looking. Indeed, the Iraqi National Symphony was once one of the best in the Middle East, and called the convention center’s auditorium their home for many years–before the US invasion. Now, the orchestra is homeless, and plays furtive gigs at secret locations around Baghdad lest they all get car-bombed in mid-performance by militants. It’s a melancholy reminder of how far the Iraqi tapestry has come unglued from its former self, and how different the society that eventually rises from these ashes is likely to be.

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BAGHDAD, IRAQ – MAY 09: Sgt. Kwame Williams of Aurora, Colo. of the 3-89 Cavalry in the 10th Mountain Division stands guard during a night patrol in the tense eastern suburbs of Baghdad in the early morning hours of May 9, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. Sgt. Williams is a member of a small scout squad that patrols under cover of darkness in advance of large teams of soldiers that work main thoroughfares at night, searching for roadside bombs and other insurgent activity. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

It’s dark, nearly pitch dark, and that’s the way the soldiers like it. They use no light on this midnight patrol; they stride down the sides of streets in the shadows. If they pass a glowing florescent tube, they disconnect it or break it. Their footfalls pad the sandy pavement in quiet crunches. Nothing else makes a sound.

I’m with a small squad of the 3-89 Cavalry in the 10th Mountain Division, three men roaming the empty alleys of a neighborhood in eastern Baghdad after the midnight curfew. They’re part of a larger operation, but no one has clearly explained to me exactly what we’re doing; I think these men are tasked with searching empty buildings and fields for weapons, while protecting the flank of other soldiers who are absorbed in mine-sweeping on an important main road. Staff Sgt. Dale Ogden is the squad leader. He’s not happy to have me tagging along at first, but warms up progressively as he discovers I’m not going to slow him down as he makes his way through the dark. He takes a knee briefly behind a low wall and we’re able for the first time to talk, our voices kept low.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – MAY 09: Members of the 3-89 Cavalry in the 10th Mountain Division stand watch with night vision equipment in the tense eastern suburbs of Baghdad in the early morning hours of May 9, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. These members of a small scout squad patrols under cover of darkness in advance of large teams of soldiers that work main thoroughfares at night, searching for roadside bombs and other insurgent activity. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

“Kind of eerie out here,” I say.
“Not to me,” Ogden says. “I’d rather be out when it’s dark.”
“You would?”
“Oh yeah. We own the night,” he says, with whispered confidence.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – MAY 09: Members of the 3-89 Cavalry in the 10th Mountain Division scope out unknown men in the distance with night vision equipment and lasers mounted on their rifles in the tense eastern suburbs of Baghdad in the early morning hours of May 9, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. Members of a small scout squad patrol under cover of darkness in advance of large teams of soldiers that work main thoroughfares at night, searching for roadside bombs and other insurgent activity. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images)

And they do: the soldiers peer through night-vison goggles attached to their helmets, which allows them to see even in complete darkness. And each of their weapons has laser sighting, projecting a beam invisible to the naked eye but deadly clear through the goggles, a small point of light they can place on any target up to half a mile away. Because of this US soldiers are most accurate with their weapons in the black of night.

An Iraqi man is walking down an isolated road in the distance, flouting curfew as he makes his way between two farm houses. The soldiers see him and cautiously raise their rifles and aim. I’m not wearing night-vision equipment but I know what’s happening; three ominous invisible laser points are marking his chest and head as he casually walks, completely oblivious to the fact there are US soldiers in the area and that he is a trigger-pull from sure death. A sudden move to grab a weapon on his part and he’d instantly be shot in half. But the man simply walks, and eventually disappears into the next house. The soldiers lower their rifles with relief, and continue the patrol.
Throughout the night they march on, from place to place in this jumbled neighborhood of houses and businesses. One house is empty. The next is a carpenters shop; they search around for weapons in a large bin. Another is a small school; the courtyard is brightly illuminated by overhanging streetlights. The soldiers climb through a window and find the fuse box, and shut off the main switch; suddenly it’s dark again. I click pictures without flash, using the highest light settings on my camera. Most I know won’t come out. Some will catch tiny stray beams of illumination and be usable.

BAGHDAD, IRAQ – MAY 09: Sgt. Shawn Hummel of the 3-89 Cavalry in the 10th Moutain Division reaches up to disable a light bulb during a night patrol in the tense eastern suburbs of Baghdad in the early morning hours of May 9, 2008 in Baghdad, Iraq. Sgt. Hummel is a member of a small scout squad that patrols under cover of darkness in advance of large teams of soldiers that work main thoroughfares at night, searching for roadside bombs and other insurgent activity. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) 

“How can you take pictures out here, when there’s no light?” Ogden asks.
“It’s hard,” I tell him.

By four in the morning the first glimmer of day is glowing on the horizon. By four-thirty the dusky gloom seems radiantly bright. A distant mosque sounds the first call to prayer. Night patrol abruptly ends, and Ogden shepherds his men back to their base.

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Iraq, many people might be surprised to learn, has a functioning court system. Well, “functioning” might be too strong of a word, but it does have an array of non-religious criminal courts run by the Iraqi government. A few days ago I had chance to see a small one operate, up close.

The chance came up suddenly. I was on the ground at an Iraqi-run jail, photographing the conditions there, when one of the Iraqi guards called out a series of names. One by one prisoners hopped up from their spots on the floor to assemble in the courtyard outside. An Iraqi translator working with the US Army was with me; he keeps his real name secret, like all the Iraqis working for the Americans, though his nickname was emblazoned on his US-style fatigues: Slim. I asked Slim what was going on.

“They are calling them to appear in court,” he said.

“Well, I better go with them and see what it’s all about,” I said, after a pause.

“Why not?” Slim said.

The ten or so prisoners all seemed to know what to do: they grabbed orange jumpsuits and blindfolds from a pile in the corner, and started to don them over their clothes. Then they silently lined up for the trip. They were surprisingly docile, with the vacant stare of prisoners resigned to their lot.

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The prisoners were loaded onto the back of a truck to head to the court building nearby. They removed their blindfolds themselves long enough to scramble down from the truck when they arrived, then put them back on. Each prisoner laid a hand on the one in front and they were led in a long file into the court building.

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

Chris Hondros/Getty Images

This court building clearly wasn’t designed as such; it was a just simple small structure, the size of a small house.

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The prisoners were brought into a room in the back, and then one by one brought into a makeshift courtroom. Two judges, balding men in ties, sat behind small desks, with a stack of prisoner dossiers by their elbows. A middle-aged woman in black sat intermittently in a chair across from them; she, it turns out, was an Iraqi lawyer and acted as a sort of public defender. A TV was on in the corner, quietly playing Lebanese music videos.

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A prisoner was brought in before the judges; I asked Slim to translate what was going on.

“The judge is telling him that he is accused of being in a kidnapping ring,” he said.

“What is the prisoner saying?” The young man in orange was rambling in Arabic and gesturing wildly.

“He says, ‘No, I am not.’”

“That’s all he’s saying? Look, he’s still talking.”

Slim cocked his head toward the prisoner.

“Okay, he’s saying: ‘No, I don’t know any kidnappers, I am innocent, I just own a simple shop in Ameriyah,’ things like that.”

The judge nodded, took a few notes, and then sent the prisoner off. Once he left I talked to the judge.

“So the guy says he’s innocent?” I asked.

“Yes, he says he is not a kidnapper,” the judge said, still writing. “Maybe yes, maybe no.”

“How many people admit to guilt here? Does anyone come here and say ‘Yes, I did what you say?’ “

The judge thought a few seconds. “It happens sometimes. Maybe five percent of the time.”

“What’s going to happen to this guy?”

“He will go back to jail, until he has a trial.”

“When will that be?”

The judge smiled. “Oh, I don’t know. Sometime.”

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Each of the prisoners was seen in this way, most of them accused of either kidnapping-related crimes or of insurgent activity. One was allegedly found with a bomb in his trunk; he was the most quiet. Most of the others animatedly engaged the judges; some of the prisoners seemed relaxed and smiled a lot, like they were giving a sales pitch.

By lunchtime all the hearings were finished, and I headed back to the US portion of the base, which was so close I walked there. I wasn’t sure if what I’d just seen was an example of justice, or a perversion of it. I’m still not sure. Like any photographer I strive to get to the center of what’s happening, but sometimes even when you get there it’s difficult to ascertain the truth behind what you see. Especially in Iraq.

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