In 2003, in the early stages of the Allied invasion of Iraq, American journalist P.J. O’Rourke joined a Kuwait Red Crescent aid convoy on a journey to the southeastern Iraqi city of Safwan.
The convoy, he wrote in The Atlantic, stopped in the countryside instead of entering the city itself because the previous convoy to Safwan had been looted in what he called “a riot.”
Standing on top of one of the aid trucks, O’Rourke described in great detail the chaos on the ground as the workers tried to distribute the packages.
“Below, a couple of hundred shoving, shouldering, kneeing, kicking Iraqi men and boys were grabbing at boxes of food,” he wrote.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
Lazar Berman is the Times of Israel‘s diplomatic reporter and a Middle East Forum Writing Fellow.
