First Person: Sneaking Into Iraq, 10 Years Ago

Photograph by Peter Dejong

It was either this or go home. But there was no way I was going to miss covering the biggest war in my lifetime. (Watch a National Geographic video: "Saving Lives on the Front Lines.")

Then I got a call from a photojournalist named Chris Hondros, who'd hired a couple of locals to get him across the Tigris directly into northern Iraq. They'd left him in the river's muddy banks at the first sign of trouble. I had no idea where he was. All I could do was erase his texts in case I got questioned by Turkish authorities.

Eventually, the guys he hired fetched him back. He was unharmed, but so frustrated (and muddy) that he went to Kuwait to cover the war from there. Hondros would be killed covering the Libyan civil war in 2011.

Traveling Light

Another team, with CNN, had twice tried to cross the Tigris. On their first attempt the swift flow of the river separated them from their gear. On the second, that team took the longer, indirect route through Syria. Not only did they make it into Iraq, but somehow they managed to retrieve their TV gear on the other side.

The Turkish authorities didn't know what to make of a bunch of journalists gathered on the border, so they watched us closely. It's a Kurdish area, so they keep a close eye on it anyway, but you could always spot the government spies by their use of English and the nice cars they drove.

A colleague and I decided to ditch pretty much everything, leave it behind at the hotel. I carried only two lenses, two camera bodies, a broadband global area network (BGAN) satellite phone, and my computer. Everything went into double plastic bags to protect it from the rain. No extra clothes or anything. Whatever we needed we'd buy on the other side.

We traveled only at night. We spent the day in safe houses in Syria. It was supposed to be a two-day trip, but the rains turned it into a sloppy and miserable slog. We first crossed the Tigris from Turkey to Syria.

The deep mud was treacherous, like something out of a movie. We tiptoed past both Syrian and Turkish guard posts, rolling through the mud at night and hiding in the day.

Getting Close

On our second night we were close to Iraq. We needed only to slip past a few more Syrian border posts and cross the river to get there. Then a thunderstorm hit. Every time the lighting struck the whole area would light up.

Passing by small villages was hazardous. I was worried someone would come out to see why the dogs were barking and discover us. Every approaching car would force us to dive into the nearest water-filled ditch. It didn't matter, we just had to hide.

We couldn't talk to our guides, as we shared no common language, so we got on a satellite phone and made a call back to Turkey, to a local guide who arranged the crossing. The guides decided we had to make the long, muddy walk back our last safe house and try again. The lighting made it too easy for us to be spotted.

That was probably the worst part of the trip, being so close and having to make the grueling walk back.

We rested for a day. The rain stopped. The last leg, walking to the river and trying to cross again, seemed manageable. From the Syrian side, the river looked narrow and Iraq seemed close. It looked easy, but it was anything but. The water was ice cold, and the river was mighty wide.

Our smuggler's boat looked like something you'd see kids using in a backyard pool. Like something you'd pick up at Toys"R"Us. Instead of kids, there were four of us adults kneeling and squashed together, using a stick with a piece of plywood nailed to it as a paddle.

The river suddenly seemed much wider. About halfway across tracer bullets and other assorted gunfire started bouncing around us. I started to panic. We had three likely and unpleasant outcomes: death by hypothermia, drowning, or bullet.

No Regrets

At this point, most of the world went into slow motion. Everything except the river's current and the bullets. (See "Inside the Iraq War" on the National Geographic Channel.)

We couldn't move fast enough and the river wouldn't let us get to where we needed to go. We missed our intended landing point and were forced to abandon our boat in waist-deep water and wade the rest of the way into Iraq.

We needed to make our way to the Northern Iraqi police station and safety, but we didn't know how they would receive us. Thankfully, they welcomed us. The Kurdish police were happy to see foreign journalists in their country after living under Saddam Hussein's oppression for so many years.

I showed my passport, filled out a little paperwork, dried my clothes, caught a little sleep, and was on my way to Erbil, the Kurdish region's capital, in the morning. I stayed in Iraq for a month, photographing Kurds trying to secure the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and American forces trying to secure Mosul.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Do I regret it? Not for a second. As a photojournalist, I wanted to record history. At least I knew I gave it my best. If I didn't, I would have had to answer to myself.

Photographer Yunghi Kim has covered stories around the world for 30 years, from Iraq to Somalia to her native South Korea. She's a special contributor to Contact Press Images.