THE HASHIDA FAMILY AND THE ILLUSORY “NON-COMBAT ZONES” IN IRAQ

On May 27, 2004, freelance photojournalist Shinsuke Hashida (61) and his nephew, Kotaro Ogawa (33), were shot and killed in Mahmoudiya, Iraq, while traveling from Samawa to Baghdad. So far, they are the only Japanese journalists that have been killed in the Iraq War.

When the war started in March 2003, the vast majority of Japanese reporters scampered out of the country and went to Amman. Hashida did the opposite—his policy was always to get closer to the flames than to run away from them—as he explains in his book, “Screaming ‘What Idiocy!’ in the Middle of Iraq” (Iraku no chushin de, Baka to Sakebu).

Shinsuke Hashida was a veteran reporter who had once reported from Hanoi while American planes were carpet bombing the city. In 1993, he was even captured by Khmer Rouge soldiers in Cambodia for a spell. Hashida had quite an adventurous career over the years.

As the bombs were dropping on Baghdad in March 2003, Hashida stayed in the Al-Mansur Hotel with blasts of hot air coming in the windows and shockwaves sufficient to crack his bathroom mirror. Forced to retreat to Damascus by the growing extortion of Iraqi officials, he made his way back into the country by claiming to be a mujahideen. Wrote Hashida:

“A man in a white suit and a large beard came out: ‘Today we are offering visas for mujahideen’.”

“Can’t a Japanese be a mujahideen?”

“Actually, there isn’t any rule about nationality.”

And so he was able to return to Iraq and continue his reporting. At the time of his death a year later, he was reporting on the GSDF in Samawa and trying to help a young Iraqi boy, Muhammad Haitham Saleh, to get eye surgery in Japan. Indeed, the young boy did eventually get his surgery in Japan, through the efforts of Hashida’s family and their supporters.

Before Hashida left on his final visit to Iraq, he took out a life insurance policy from AIU Insurance Company. The policy was supposed to pay his family about US$68,000 in the event that Hashida should die while outside of Japan. However, the company later refused to pay out the money because of an escape clause in the contract in the event that death should come as a result of “war, revolution, civil war, or armed rebellion.”

Hashida’s widow, Yukiko Hashida—who is a clever lady—took the company to court. She argued that Prime Minister Koizumi and the Japanese government consider the areas around Samawa as “non-combat zones” for the purposes of the GSDF deployment. Indeed, under the special measures law, it would be illegal for the GSDF to be deployed in a combat zone. Shinsuke Hashida and his nephew were killed in Mahmoudiya, immediately after having left Samawa.

Photo: Yukiko Hashida in Kuwait on May 30, 2004
Source: Reuters

On August 23rd, Tokyo District Court Judge Hiroyuki Shibata made his ruling: the company does not have to pay the insurance money to the Hashida family. The judge declared: “The shooting attack was implemented by anti-US armed forces with the aim of destroying the rule by the US military stationed in Iraq, and the Iraqi Governing Council, and it is tantamount to an armed insurgency cited among reasons for exclusion of liabilities in insurance clauses.”

Of course, the judge is right about Iraq—even southern Iraq—as being a place where an armed insurgency has been occurring. However, that common sense interpretation is not shared officially by the Japanese government, which continues to insist that areas around Samawa are a “non-combat zone.” Therefore, if southern Iraq is an official non-combat zone in the eyes of the Iraq deployment law, why shouldn’t it be a non-combat zone for the Hashida family’s insurance claim? This is a logical contradiction.

Picture: Japanese Political Cartoon Criticizing “Non-Combat Zones”
Source: Unknown

Well, that’s not exactly true either. In a certain way it is entirely logical; that is, from vantage point of the logic of power. According to the logic of power, Prime Minister Koizumi can call Samawa a “non-combat zone” because it is convenient for powerful interests to do so. Likewise, the Hashida family’s claim can simultaneously be rejected because there is an “armed insurgency” in southern Iraq, because that too is convenient for powerful interests.

One of the luxuries of being powerful is that you can have it both ways.