I feared that I had become a stooge. Embedded with the British forces, I came to Basra to report on one election, but my stories may be used in the campaign for another

Shortly after the kidnap of the aid worker Margaret Hassan, I decided I would not return to Iraq without military protection. Every journalist has a danger threshold, and mine had just been breached - which is how I ended up embedded with the Duke of Wellington's Regiment in Basra for the Iraqi elections.

I was not alone in calculating that I needed help from the British forces if I wanted not only to get the story, but to live long enough to tell it. Some 70 journalists and TV technicians piled on to the TriStar that left RAF Brize Norton on 22 January. The BBC, ITV and Sky were there alongside Channel 4 News; all the British broadsheet and tabloid papers were represented as well as wire services, German radio, the Times of India and several correspondents for London-based Arabic-language newspapers. The Foreign Office said it had turned down dozens more applications.

Several TV networks corralled their Baghdad correspondents inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound that houses both the interim Iraqi government and the American and British embassies. In Basra, we reckoned, we would have a better chance of getting out and meeting voters. And so it proved - nearly everyone I met was keen to talk, from the black-veiled woman who said the only law Iraqis needed was Islam, to the man in a chequered keffiyeh who said he wanted "peace, freedom and good food", and was therefore voting Communist.

We went out on patrol with British troops in armoured Land-Rovers. The soldiers stood back while we interviewed people. No one interfered with our reporting. British soldiers were not allowed to enter polling stations, so we went in unaccompanied.

None the less, I felt uncomfortable. If you're covering a war, attaching yourself to one side or the other is often the only way of getting close to the action, but this wasn't a war: it was a political process that the British government wanted to promote. I feared I was becoming a stooge. Just as we needed the protection of the armed forces, No 10 needed our reporting and images of happy voters.

So we were delivered into the hands of the Ministry of Defence. The tabloids wanted to go to al-Amarah, north of Basra, where British troops had fought militants last year, so they were duly despatched. Everyone else wanted to be in Basra city, but the Duke of Wellington's could not possibly accommodate and protect 50 extra people, so the four television teams, the London Times and one Arab journalist were given what they wanted and everyone else was removed to a camp called Shaibah, which is, broadly speaking, in the middle of nowhere. Pictures matter more than words - especially in newspapers deemed by No 10 as "negative" on Iraq.

I am in no position to complain - as a television correspondent, I went where I wanted, and I got a good story. Condemned to the backwater of Shaibah, where they knew there would be no story, the broadsheet hacks mutinied, several "disembedding" themselves to risk the dangers of an unprotected Basra hotel and covert transport.

Tony Blair and George W Bush have both declared the January election a resounding success, and in many ways they are right. The people I met in Basra were boundless in their enthusiasm, and many elsewhere in Iraq showed their determination to vote.

But whatever the politicians say, the election coverage does not disprove what we previously reported from Iraq. Back in 2002, an Iraqi friend, Karim, told me how he had been imprisoned and tortured. "We hate Saddam," he whispered, scared to speak even though we were alone in a car. "We need change." When the Americans arrived in April 2003, no one was happier than he. As Baghdad has descended further into chaos, his desperation has grown. In late December, he rang to tell me that a friend had been kidnapped. As I struggled to absorb the news, Karim said the despairing words I would never have believed he could utter. "Lindsey, we need President Saddam back very badly."

Karim cast his ballot. "It was a kind of defiance," said another friend, Ali. "We all held up our fingers with the purple ink and had our photos taken." The elections provide their only hope of emerging from the morass of violence, which they blame not only on the insurgents, but also on the US and British governments.

Our pictures of happy voters in Basra showed a reality that cannot be denied. Yet our reluctant choice to be embedded reflects the other Iraqi reality, which Tony Blair will be trying to downplay. The success of the Iraqi poll helps Blair in his fight for re-election, as he tries to portray Iraq as a triumph for his policy. I came to Basra to report on one election, but I fear that my stories may be used in the campaign for another.

Lindsey Hilsum is the Channel 4 News international editor

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