Fontan in Iraq
Notes on Victoria Fontan, gathered over two interviews, February 14, 2005 and February 16, 2005 by Mark Bello.
Victoria Fontan
Visiting Assistant Professor of Peace Studies
Colgate University
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346-1398
315-720-9424 (Personal Phone)
315-228-7990 (Office Phone)
vcfontan@mail.colgate.edu
Office: 431 Alumni Hall
Office Hours: 1120am-1210pm MWF
Other Office: 112 Alumni Hall
Office Hours: 1010am-1120am MW
Notes on Victoria Fontan, gathered over two interviews, Feb. 14, 2005 and Feb. 16, 2005 by a Colgate University student who has asked to remain anonymous, fearing retribution.
Victoria Fontan was born in France in 1976 and joined the French Army in September 1991, going through a sort of military school. She enlisted in the airborne regiment, and through what seems to be an intentional error in the entry of her name gained position as a parachuting instructor. Because of this she was the first and possibly only female instructor the French Army has ever had. She left the French Army in 1994, and her rank was that of “Aspirant.”
Between September 1994 and July 1996, Fontan studied history at Sorbourne University. Between October 1996 and July 1999, she studied politics at the University of Sussex. Between 1999 and 2000 she went for her MA in Peace and Development Studies at the University of Limerick. Between January 2001 and September 2003, Fontan was a research associate at the Center for Behavioral Research in Lebanon, at the American University of Beirut. Her impetus for studying in Lebanon was a professor of hers at Sussex who taught an introductory course on Lebanon, which led to her travels and interest in Lebanese Reconstruction. She has a Ph.D. on the Lebanese conflict and the peace-building process there.
Fontan first studied Hezbollah in January of 2001, when she called the Hezbollah Press Office and asked for an interview. She said that members of Hezbollah can be contacted through the phone book, and that it is listed as a legitimate political party. She refers to all of her research as “participant observation.”
Fontan’s “in” at Hezbollah is Husein Naboulsi, whom she was put in contact with through the Press Office. Upon first meeting her, they were suspicious and asked various questions about her past and self, including about who she was, what her research was, why she wanted to study them, whether she had been to the Middle East before, etc. She mentioned that it was like speaking with her dissertation advisor. During the interview process she volunteered information about her experiences in the French Army. After the initial three-person, two-hour interview she was brought to Rima Fakri, the head (?) of Hezbollah’s Women’s Association. After several subsequent meetings with people in Hezbollah, Fontan was asked to meet with Husein Naboulsi, Hezbollah’s head of International Relations. Through three weeks of interviews, and after it was determined that her research questions were not harmful to Hezbollah, she was given “carte blanche” to study the organization, in during this time she researched their “public diplomacy tools.”
During her time in Lebanon, Fontan led 13 Irish students through Lebanon to study the East/West dialogue and perceptions of Islam, which got her on the Al Manar television station. Fontan feels that it’s unfortunate that Al Manar is now titled a terrorist organization, and that it’s unfortunate that Hezbollah is now being used by Syria to negotiate with Israel. She told me that Al Manar qualified for terrorist status after a live guest made strong comments about the Holocaust, and that such labeling of the station was counterproductive. She told me that because of French President Jacques Chirac’s friendship with Lebanese leader Hariri, the French government opened an inquiry as to whether Al Manar would be allowed to broadcast in France. After the inquiry was a court case and that according to the French Ambassador (presumably to Lebanon) that the decision was of politics, and Al Manar was labeled a terrorist organization to retaliate against Syria at the time. Hariri and Chirac were very close and supported the decision to boycott the Lebanese government. Hariri was assassinated on February 14, 2005, two days before our second interview. Fontan, when asked if she felt the labeling was fair, responded that it was not directly addressing the problem, which was Syria, but that she could see it coming, and that it was triggered by Chirac’s support of opposition to Syrian control in Lebanon.
Between July and December 2001, Fontan took a hiatus to Bosnia, where she worked on a subcontracted diplomatic mission of the French government, and she was employed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSC), which she described as “the civilian arm of NATO.” In Bosnia, Fontan was a “Democratization Officer” and worked for six months with refugees.
From September 2003 to June 2004, Fontan had a post-doctoral fellowship in Turkey at Sabanci University. During that time she went to Iraq four times for research. In Iraq, she worked for journalist Robert Fisk (Osama bin Laden named Fisk as one of the best journalists) as a researcher. Their employer was the London Independent.
Fontan first went to Iraq in May 2003, arriving in Fallujah from Baghdad. She came by car from Jordan and without a visa, which she said was not required until July of 2004. At that time she saw many foreign fighters crossing the border into Iraqs, Wahabis and Shi’ites all coming for a common cause. Her driver was a man named Muhammed, who formerly worked for Saddam Hussein’s Ministry of Information, was working with journalists before the invasion, and was not political. Her translator was a woman named Haida. By insistence of her office-mate, Fontan would not provide me with last names for either of these individuals, and she defended telling me their first names because there are so many Muhammeds and Haidas in Iraq that nobody could find out anyway. She told me that she met Muhammed and Haida by chance after the liberation of Baghdad.
In Fallujah, Muhammed and Haida already knew some people, but the first night they were there they went to a kabob restaurant, famed for being the “Best in Iraq,” and stayed for a long time getting to know people. The first time I asked where she stayed during her time in Iraq, she said that she stayed with local families and people that she had met. The second time, she told me that most of the time she was living in hotels. Fontan told me several times over how easy it is to find people to stay with and make friends and connections, to be accepted as part of the group, once a clan or tribe accepts you. Fontan, by whatever means, was accepted by a tribe that she would not name. When she first arrived in Fallujah, the Iraqi resistance was highly unstructured, “off-the-cuff,” and so on. All she had to do was tell people that she was in Iraq to study the escalation of violence and how the population was taking it. As far as organized resistance, she told me that it started with only meetings and verbal resentment. Once things got further in, she claims to have kept away from sensitive information for fear of a “conflict of interest.” However, her acceptance seemed to me to be carte blanche to be as close to everything as possible. Fontan claimed to have been an impartial observer who was not actually “embedded.” For all intents and purpose, though, she was as close to family with this tribe as possible.
When she was in Fallujah the first time, she visited the site of the April 26 “massacre” by the 82nd Airborne Division with Peter Bouckaert (spelling?). After this, she separated from Peter and went with Robert Fisk to a roadblock where U.S. troops were searching private houses for weapons. At first sight, because of the headdress she wore her entire time in Iraq, U.S. troops feared that she was an insurgent, until Robert Fisk spoke with them, at which point they were welcomed to observe. Fontan claims to have stayed in a hotel in Baghdad during this trip, and that for three to four weeks she monitored and did research on the roadblocks. She claimed to have once seen a schoolteacher being taken to Abu Ghraib.
During her first stay in Iraq, Fontan went back and forth many times to the hospital in Fallujah, which she considered a “good source of information.” She talked with many parents and relatives of insurgents, as well as with most of the injured Iraqis. I believe that these trips helped her build and maintain strong contacts within the insurgency.
At the end of the trip, Fontan drove back to Lebanon through Jordan.
From July to September 2003 Fontan went to Spain, where she had been conducting research on “transgenerational transmission of identity” in the Basque conflict during her time at Limerick. Fontan worked on various peacekeeping projects and a book with Colonel Fritz Leben of the Wertheim Police Academy in Baden-Wurttenberg. I have an excerpt of this that I can send in the mail. During this time she was studying the ETA in Bilbao, and a friend of hers served as an “in” to their highly structured organization. While in Basque country she met with political actors in the conflict, founding members of ETA, and various “military” actors in the organization. Fontan finished her work there in December 2003.
Fontan visited Iraq for the second time in December 2003 and stayed until January 2004. Once again, she drove in from Jordan, with her translator Haida and driver Muhammed. Although she meant to go to Fallujah, she was steered away from her course for two days to cover the capture of Saddam Hussein for Swedish news agency 24 Heurs (?). Once in Fallujah she met with shopkeeper Abu Ali, who was the coordinator of the Iraqi insurgency in Fallujah at the time. Fontan would not tell me how she met Ali, only that she did so through “snowball relations.” As of that meeting, the insurgency was still loosely organized and she claims to have met no foreign fighters. She told me that during this stage of the insurgency, the resistance was just emerging, casual, and done in vigilante style. During this trip, Fontan continued her frequent visits to the hospital in Fallujah meeting people. Fontan claims to have stayed in a hotel in Baghdad for most of the trip but sometimes in the homes of people in Fallujah. Her purpose this time was to “[look] at the way the vigilante movement was being organized and contracted to carry out hostile acts” including roadside bombs, etc. She carried on this research until mid-January, and she left the same way as she came in, driving from Baghdad to Beirut to Istanbul. Fontan avoided Syria because she was on a list of people the Syrian government wanted to arrest in December 2001 for some of the research that she had done in Lebanon.
On December 11, 2003 Fontan was staying with an Iraqi family in Samara when their house was raided at night. She told me that U.S. troops were looking for insurgents, and that this random neighborhood she was in was near where a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) was fired. The troops were searching every house and she said that the family there had nothing to do with it, no connection to the insurgency whatsoever, and that the raid came as a total surprise. When the house was raided, the men and women were taken into separate rooms. The women were “brutalized” (kicked, punched, insulted) but Fontan claims to have spoken up in English, which stunned the American troops. The day after this happened, the staff sergeant in charge of the troops in that operation request that she stop by to meet with him. She never did, but she plans to write about it in the near future.
The people in the house were “regular” people, by her words. The men were arrested and taken to Abu Ghraib for “being at the wrong place at the wrong time,” and she claims that they were not involved with the insurgency.
From January to March 2004 Fontan was continuing her post-doctoral studies and teaching in Turkey at Sabanci University. At that time she taught a course on the media and political conflict, which she claimed she was not allowed to teach at Colgate. Fontan mentioned that she has received numerous death threats in the form of emails and comments on web logs.
In March 2004, Fontan took her third trip to Iraq, which lasted ten days while she was supposed to be teaching at Sabanci. This time around she flew in, which she found scary because the resistance shoots at all incoming aircraft. She had no visa with which to enter Iraq and flew into Baghdad from Amman. At this she mentioned not to divulge this information, that she “could be deported” if it got out. This third trip was not as easy for Fontan because Fallujah was close to collapsing. At the time, groups within the Iraqi insurgency were warring with each other in Fallujah, which she claimed was the result of a power struggle brought in by Al Qaida. Around that point in time, I believe she wrote a paper on Fallujah that “didn’t get through Colgate’s Ethics Committee.”
Fontan had difficulty getting into Fallujah during her third trip to Iraq, and spent her time in Baghdad, with people coming to Baghdad from Fallujah and also corresponding via telephone with people actually in Fallujah. At the time, Fallujah was too dangerous for entry. She told me that this was a turning point for the insurgency and that she had difficulty accessing the resistance.
Fontan returned to Turkey to work on her post-doctoral studies between March and July 2004.
Between June 25, 2004 and July 7, 2004 Fontan was on her fourth trip into Iraq, and was with Robert Fisk. She flew into Baghdad again and wanted to meet with her people in Fallujah, many of whom were dead. During this time she kept an eye on what was happening in Fallujah from Baghdad, while she conducted research on the abduction of women. The day after she arrived in Iraq was the first day she would have needed a visa for entry. She stayed at the Hamera Hotel in Baghdad during this trip. Fontan’s driver this time was Muhammed’s brother-in-law Basil, a taxi driver. Once again, she was with her translator Haida.
Fontan was at high risk for abduction twice in Iraq. The first time was when her car broke down in the middle of a market in Mahmoudya. The second time was when she and Robert Fisk met for an interview with an Iraqi man who still had an American boat from the days when the United States gave military aid to Iraq. In Mahmoudya she was just lucky not to be bothered, and in Baghdad she described her escape as something similar to a James Bond movie, where she sailed away just in time in the man’s boat. Either way, she explained to me, she probably would have been released and not harmed. She had, after all, many important names and contacts.
During her fourth trip to Iraq, Fontan was able to get a grip on the current state of things in Fallujah by talking over the phone and meeting with people who drove to Baghdad from Fallujah. At the time, she asked who was “running the show,” what was happening, where was Al Zarqawi, what was his involvement, etc. She said they didn’t know where Zarqawi was and she didn’t tell me what his involvement was, that Abu Ali was no longer the coordinator, and that the insurgency was highly structured and being run by former members of the Iraqi Army, led by a former general she did not meet until Christmas 2004.
Fontan was at Colgate teaching between July and December 2004.
Her fifth and final time in Iraq was from December of 2004 to January 4, 2005. This time, she entered Iraq by air from Kurdistan on a humanitarian flight to Baghdad on Airserve, an airline that provides air travel to Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) agents. Once again she did not need a visa, this time because she came from Kurdistan. She claims that her business at the time in that nation was a job interview.
Victoria Fontan was in Amman, Jordan on December 23, 2004 when she met with “General H.” From November 2003 to April 4th or 5th of 2004, former Iraqi Army general, “General H,” (that was all she would tell me of his name) had been captive in Abu Ghraib because he was suspected (and she believed guilty of) carrying out acts of violence (“resistance” in her terms) against American troops, and he was let out of Abu Ghraib because interrogators had finished asking him all of the questions they needed answered. Fontan noted to me that the questions they asked General H were “stupid,” and that they were about politics instead of strategy, that the interrogators at Abu Ghraib didn’t even bother finding out if he was in the leadership of the insurgency. She commented about how there are no longer any proper spies within the insurgency, so intelligence gathering is a problem.
“General H” is currently the head of an Iraqi insurgency that is highly organized by former members of the Iraqi Army. His associates live mostly in Jordan (I believe in Amman) and they conduct their business via satellite telephone and visiting in Fallujah. “General H” lives in Syria and they met when he was on his way back to Syria from Fallujah. Fontan suspects that “General H” has connections to international terrorist organizations including Al Qaida, but that she would not elaborate on her suspicions. In fact, she stated affirmatively that she believes “General H” has links to Al Qaida, that she wants to know more about them, and in the same breath mentioned that that kind of information was “too close for comfort.”
Fontan met with “General H” through a friend of Robert Fisk. She claims that the “resistance” actually contacted Robert Fisk to interview “General H.”
Associates of “General H” transported Fontan and Robert Fisk from some place in Amman to a “safe place” to meet with “General H.” The safe place is not any sort of military compound; it is a construction business that serves as a terrorist front, which Fontan claims that everyone in the area knows about. She would not provide more specific details.
Fontan and “General H” discussed the current state of the resistance, the state of the city of Fallujah, the Iraqi elections, how “General H” conducted battle, and so on. I am not sure what she knew of the coordination of insurgency in Fallujah. She first responded that she didn’t exactly know, and later said she wouldn’t tell me. She did say that “General H” believes that the Iraqi elections are a fallacy and simply provide him with more support.
On December 24, 2004 Fontan was in the town of Zerqa, Jordan where she met with the wife of Al Zarqawi and with former Guantanamo prisoner Husein Mustafa. Mrs. Zarqawi lives in a poor, average home of three rooms. Fontan met Mrs. Zarqawi at her home for an hour-long meeting. This was arranged through someone Fontan’s translator Haida knows.
Mrs. Zarqawi is a school janitor. She believes that her husband died in Mosul in 2003. The reason for this was that she has not heard from Al Zarqawi for a long period of time, and that Zarqawi’s mother died 2-3 months earlier: even Osama bin Laden would come to mourn the death of his mother, claimed Fontan. Mrs. Zarqawi has had no news of her husband since March of 2003, and Fontan claims that Mrs. Zarqawi also did not know what her husband was doing when he left.
Fontan claims to never have had contact with Al Zarqawi himself.
On the same day as Fontan met with Mrs. Zarqawi she met with the Palestinian Husein Mustafa, who had left Afghanistan for Pakistan in 1988. Mustafa was apprehended on May 25, 2002 and was not released from Guantanamo Bay until December 2004. At Bagram (prison?) Mustafa claimed he was sodomized with a broomstick by American troops. The reason he was incarcerated at Guantanamo was because every prisoner at Bagram had to be transported to Guantanamo, even though they supposedly told Mustafa they knew he was “innocent.” Husein Mustafa was a teacher of what Fontan called “Afghan refugees” but later elaborated as children of the Taliban. At Guantanamo, Mustafa was asked similar “stupid” questions to what “General H” was asked.
Fontan was introduced to Mustafa by contacts of her translator Haida.
On December 25, 2004 Fontan was in Beirut and on her way into Iraq for her fifth time. During this visit there was a lot of violence on the streets of Baghdad that prevented the vast majority of journalists from leaving their hotel rooms. Fontan went out several times with Dave Enders, a colleague of hers from The Nation. In their outings they met with Dr. Womidh Nadhmi, a professor of politics at the University of Baghdad. Nadhmi is part of the Iraqi National Conference, and advised his followers (sheikhs and intellectuals) not to vote in the elections. While in Iraq Fontan interviewed various journalists for a paper she was writing on “fixers,” the people and process involved in preparing a news site for the appearance of a famous journalist for a remote broadcast. She and Robert Fisk were forced to constantly remain costumed “like it was Halloween” so as not to be targeted in the street violence.
In this last trip, Fontan told me “off the record” that she had come very close to Fallujah but not too close because they required ID for entry. She claims that all she was doing outside of Fallujah was talking to whatever people were around. At the time, everything was dangerous and she stood the risk of being taken by people on any side.
At the Fallujah Refugee Camp at the University of Baghdad, where, she mentioned, an Italian (if I recall correctly) journalist was abducted because he didn’t know what he was doing. Fontan, on the other hand, did. She went directly into the camp to meet with a sheikh from Fallujah, with whom she ate and gained the acceptance of the refugees. Fontan would not tell me the name of the sheikh, but I believe that he has some relation to the tribe she told me she was accepted in, which she also would not name.
Fontan has been at Colgate University since she returned from Iraq. She plans to publish a book early in 2006, two chapters of which she has finished. The book will be called Winning Hearts and Minds? and it focuses on humiliation, terrorism, and polarization in Post-Saddam Iraq.
Fontan was hired by Colgate three months past the application deadline by then acting director of the Peace Studies Department Nancy Ries. Fontan heard of the position at Colgate while she was on a U.S. lecture tour.
Victoria Fontan asked that I hold off on publishing an article about her until April, when she has a lecture she will be doing through the Student Union in coordination with Robert Fisk. Fisk plans on writing an article about Colgate after this lecture.
She has been hired by Muhammad Sadile of Salahadin University in Kurdistan and starts there in May 2005. She will be in charge of “reshaping the politics department” there. Fontan is also going to be the Field Coordinator for Columbia University’s Iraq Project, which is headed by Thomas Hill.
I asked her several times if she felt endangered in Iraq. Fontan told me that she feels more endangered in the United States than she does in the Middle East, and if I recall correctly she even told me that that is where “[her] people” are. She is very smug about this: Fontan is about as fully incorporated in Iraqi society as one can possibly get. She remarked that if she was to be abducted or caught by anyone, all she had to do was drop a few names and “if they had any sense” they would let her go without further problems.
Fontan never once entered Iraq with a visa.
In our first interview, Fontan told me that her funding came from various private organizations, schools, and the government. She said that traveling in the area is very inexpensive, as well. Her funding came from a European Union Fellowship, the Government of Ireland Scholarship, some of the other schools she attended, and private groups such as one in Holland that leases out private college dormitories. She would not tell me her other sources of funding.
Fontan has never been debriefed by the United States military. While she was in Iraq, she stayed far away from all U.S. troops, except on the occasions I have already mentioned. The troops, in her opinion, attracted death. Communication with them would have also sorely damaged the trust she built with members of the Iraqi insurgency and with the entire community of Iraqis who accepted her. The closest thing to telling the military of any of her findings was lecturing students at the United States Academy at West Point and answering questions as to what they can expect there.
Professor Fontan has a tape of an interview with “General H” in which he discussed his mistreatment at Abu Ghraib. She played this tape to one of her classes yesterday.
Finally, I feel that I should mention that the hospital in Fallujah that she visited so many times was eventually overrun by U.S. forces for the exact same reason as she was there: the hospital was a breeding ground for the insurgency, and it seems that anyone who wanted any part in it would be able to work their way in through meeting people at the hospital, and, of course, through the tribal connections Fontan spoke of so often.