Kenneth Morrison - War Hotels

WAR HOTELS

Kenneth Morrison is a Professor of Modern History at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. He is the author of Nationalism, Statehood and Identity in Post-Yugoslav Montenegro (2018) and Sarajevos Holiday Inn: On the Frontline of Politics and War (2016), and the co-author of The Sandak: A History (2013) and Reporting the Siege of Sarajevo (2021). Kenneth was the historical consultant for the Al Jazeera documentary series War Hotels (201821) and is the co-director of the Hotel History Foundation, which is based in Sarajevo, Bosnia & Herzegovina.

Abdallah El Binni is a Lebanese filmmaker and investigative journalist based in Doha, Qatar, where he works for Al Jazeera Arabic. He began his career as a journalist in 1988 and has since covered numerous conflicts as a cameraman and photojournalist in countries such as Lebanon, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Iraq and Afghanistan. As a filmmaker, Abdallah has produced numerous award-winning documentaries, among them Prisoner 345 (2006) and The Imam and the Colonel (2012). He was both the executive producer and director of the acclaimed Al Jazeera documentary series War Hotels (201821).

WAR HOTELS

KENNETH MORRISON &
ABDALLAH EL BINNI

First published in 2022 by

Merrion Press

10 Georges Street

Newbridge

Co. Kildare

Ireland

www.merrionpress.ie

Kenneth Morrison and Abdallah El Binni, 2022

978 1 78537 402 9 (Paper)

978 1 78537 404 3 (Ebook)

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Typeset in Sabon LT Std 11.5/17.5 pt

Cover design by: riverdesignbooks.com

Front cover image: Aftermath of Provisional IRA bomb at Europa Hotel, Belfast, N. Ireland, extreme damage, no injuries. Copyright image from Victor Patterson, Belfast, UK.

Merrion Press is a member of Publishing Ireland.

CONTENTS

In memory of Michael Morrison and Nazih El Binni

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THIS BOOK IS THE PRODUCT of years of research stemming from a rewarding collaboration that culminated in the Al Jazeera documentary series entitled War Hotels , the first three episodes of which were broadcast in December 2018, with subsequent episodes, delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, transmitted in May 2021. The relatively limited parameters of the thirty-minute documentary film did not, however, allow the wealth of research material and remarkable stories that we gathered in pre-production research and the interviews we conducted in London, Beirut, Belfast, Baghdad, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Hanoi, Phnom Penh and Sarajevo to be conveyed as fully as we would have liked. We nevertheless continued to gather interview data that could not be used in the series but we knew could potentially be utilised in a book based on it. Throughout, we had the privilege of interviewing not only a plethora of current and former foreign correspondents who had stayed in the hotels that we were focusing on but also the staff and management of them. The material we collected and the personal stories conveyed to us were far too valuable to leave in our archives. Thus, we committed to telling the stories of these remarkable hotels, their staff and their guests in greater depth.

While there has been some excellent academic research generated on the role of hotels in wartime (the most notable being those studies authored by Sara Fregonese, Adam Ramadan, Kevin James and Robert A. Davidson), this book is the first to document the experiences of staff, management and guests in the worlds most iconic war hotels. In order to meet this objective, we had to conduct extensive interviews and the experience, knowledge and willingness of these interviewees to share their stories with us proved absolutely vital to our project. We therefore owe a debt of gratitude to Martin Bell, Gerald Seymour, Peter Arnett, Jim Laurie, John Gardner, Robin Walsh, John McCarthy, Jonathan Dimbleby, Tom Young, Hoang Van Cuong, Sara Fregonese, James McGinn, Martin Mulholland, Roland Neveu, Julie Hastings, Boba Lizdek, Amra Abadi, Paul Lowe, Henry Kelly, Saleh Rifai, Sami Haddad, Hanan Haddad, Yousef Nazzal, Ramzi Haidar, Ahmed Shebaro, Hajrudin (Hajro) Rovanin, John Simpson, Jeremy Bowen, Nicolas Tatro, Jon Swain, Tim Llewellyn, Allan Little, Remy Ourdan, John F. Burns, Samia Nakhoul and not least to Robert Fisk, Chris Ryder and Samir Kori, who all sadly passed away before the publication of this book. Many of their observations, made in interviews over the years, are included in this book.

Thanks to Giles Trendle, Ingrid Falk and Andrew Whitman at Al Jazeera for their help and support throughout the production of the War Hotels documentary series and the writing of this book. Thank you, too, to all at Merrion Press particularly Conor Graham, Patrick ODonoghue, Sarah Doyle and Wendy Logue for their immeasurable patience and unswerving commitment and for ensuring that the book was brought to completion despite the challenges that we collectively faced during the pandemic. Gratitude, too, to Anne Simpson, who believed in the project from the beginning and has been a constant source of encouragement over many years. Of course, this book could not have been written without the unstinting love, support and endless patience of Norma, Helen, Hannah, Amira, Ghada, Malek and Karim.

Kenneth Morrison & Abdallah El Binni

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABC American Broadcasting Company

AFP Agence France-Presse

AP Associated Press

ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

CBS Columbia Broadcasting System

CIA Central Intelligence Agency

CNN Cable News Network

CPA Coalition Provisional Authority (Iraq)

CPJ Committee to Protect Journalists

CPNLAF Cambodian Peoples National Liberation Forces

EBU European Broadcasting Union

EC European Commu2nity

ECOM European Commission

EOKA National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters

EU European Union

FUNK National United Front of Kampuchea

GRUNK Royal Government of the National Union of Kampuchea

HDZ Croatian Democratic Community

HDZ-BiH Croatian Democratic Community of Bosnia & Herzegovina

ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross

ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

INM Independent Nasserite Movement (also known as Al-Mourabitoun)

IOC International Olympic Committee

IPC International Press Centre

IRA Irish Republican Army

ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

ISIS-K Islamic State (Khorasan Province)

ITN Independent Television News

JNA Yugoslav Peoples Army

KRF Kataeb Regulatory Forces

LNM Lebanese National Movement

NAM Non-Aligned Movement

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NBC National Broadcasting Company

NICRA Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association

NLF National Liberation Front (of Vietnam)

NVA North Vietnamese Army

OHR Office of the High Representative

OIC Organisation of Islamic Countries

OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

PLO Palestine Liberation Organization

PTT Postal, Telegraph and Telephone

PUP Protestant Unionist Party

RAF (British) Royal Air Force

RPG Rocket-propelled grenade