It’s with hindsight that we can also analyze how war shapes images and content. For journalists working in Iraq during the height of the conflict, it became a profession of high risk and danger. The following entry looks back at some of the Iraqi journalists who risked their lives – some murdered – to write the stories on human rights.
Sahar Hussein al-Haideri must have understood the dangers. The threats were there, the intimidation and angry cold stares of unfamiliar faces along with it. In early 2007, she moved her husband and children from their home in Mosul to Syria. Haideri stayed behind to work on her stories for Voices of Iraq news agency and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR). The stoning to death of a 17 year-old Yezidi girl had caught her attention. Not long after its publication at IWPR, she was shot dead in front of her house by Ansar al-Sunna insurgents. Guilty of being both an Iraqi and a journalist, her slumped body is a fate shared by many.
Embedding, objectivity, attachment are all valid issues for journalists covering the conflict in Iraq. Less discussed is the issue of being Iraqi. While foreign journalists face numerous dangers, Iraqi journalists constantly juggle their lives and their jobs amidst the relentless horror. In many cases, it has become impossible for foreign media to even report in Iraq. Perhaps the dangers have become too great, perhaps this is why photo credits published in Western media more often than not end with Iraqi surnames. When is the risk no longer worth the story? Iraq ranked 157 in Reporters without Borders (RWB) press freedom index, worse than with Saddam in power.
Press restrictions imposed by the fragmented state have not made life any easier. In May 2007, Iraqi police fired shots in the air to prevent and disperse Iraqi journalists reporting a bombing at Tayaran Square in Baghdad. The Interior Ministry then formally banned cameras from bombing sites as a supposed measure to quell sectarian violence.
In November 2006, the Iraqi parliament banned Iraqi journalists from reporting contradictory statements made by politicians. A three day ban was imposed on Sunni owned dailies during Saddam’s execution, a clear breach in press freedom by an impolitic democratic regime. Hisham El-Rikabi reports in the Global Journalist that two Sunni broadcast stations were closed for protesting the execution. Even the Green Zone was off limits until international pressure lifted the ban. Baghdad however is not alone. Anbar, Sala Aldin, Wasit and Najaf have incarcerated the most journalists. As a result, criticism directed against city officials and police authorities have visibly dropped.
Basra, Najaf, Karbala, Arbil and Duhok openly and without impunity impose severe censorship laws. In Kirkuk, journalists compromise integrity for heavily slanted media organizations strictly aligned along Arab, Turkoman and Kurdish divides, aggravating citizen-press relationship. In turn, Al-Qaeda insurgents exploit Kirkuk tensions by detonating bombs. Caught up in the crossfire, Iraqi journalists become tools for religious rivalries.
The everyday violence of Iraq embellishes a salient disregard for life where journalism has become one of its most hazardous occupations. For Iraqi journalists it is akin to Russian roulette where words and images become the trigger finger. 28-year old Bassam Sebti, a former Iraqi special correspondent for the Washington Post, lived incognito in Baghdad. In a city where Sunni and Shiite allegiances capitulates access, getting the story from any other angle is a death sentence. Personal safety, rather than impartiality, means keeping Sebti’s family and friends oblivious of his publications. Instead, everyone believed he ran an Internet café. And Sebti wanted to keep it that way. “Paranoia has become my shield,” he writes in the Washington Post late October, a few days after 12 Iraqi journalists were slaughtered at the Al Chaabiya TV station by armed gunmen.
Fear, intimidation, death threats and assassination are issues an Iraqi journalist must deal with on a daily basis. According to a 2007 report by RWB, Iraqi journalists are deliberately targeted by insurgents and in some cases, by Iraqi police and coalition forces. 65 journalists were killed in Iraq in 2006, 63 were Iraqi, most of whom were murdered by insurgents.
The extreme interpretation of Islam prohibiting the reproduction of images has particularly affected Iraqi cameramen and photographers. Immediately after his colleague Aswan Lutfallah Jaf was shot, Mosul journalist Karim Abbas received a cell phone call from the insurgents who murdered him. In an Iraqi crisis report by IWPR, Abbas recounts the insurgent group telling him over the phone that all camera and photojournalists will die. Mosul has Taliban style restrictions and was designated the capital Islamic emirate in the North Western Provinces by militias operating in the area.
In the Eastern Province of Diyala, TV Al-Iraiqya correspondent Mohammed Ali has a $10,000 bounty on his head. In the streets, the insurgent group Iraqi Islamic Nation, distribute his photo, his death their new shibboleth. Incredibly, Mohammed Ali’s name has yet to appear on the News Safety Institute (INSI) long list of killed Iraqi journalists. For others, death comes quickly and unannounced until that finite moment of realization. Al Mada newspaper correspondents Najam Abd Khudair and Ahmed Adam along with Al Safeer Ali Jassem had their throats sliced after handing over their press cards to militiamen on the way to Karbala. Iraqis in the minibus accompanying the three journalists were left unharmed.
The News Safety Institute reported (INSI) 212 Iraqi journalists killed since the US invasion, RWB 200, and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) 233. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported 22 foreign journalists killed. The numbers do not reveal those wounded, nor the psychological distress that many suffer. Many have simply disappeared. But despite the catastrophic conditions, organizations abroad and within Iraq are struggling to protect and monitor the country’s dwindling journalists.
Two weeks after Haideri was murdered outside her home, the IFJ launched the global solidarity day with Iraqi journalists. An Iraq Journalists Safety Committee was then established and met for the first time in Arbil. A courageous group of individuals in Baghdad have also launched the Journalist Freedoms Observatory. These are indeed small initiatives in the grand scheme but vital to the memory of those who have died and those most certainly will; persecuted for being an Iraqi and a journalist.
References
al-Haideri, S. (October 2, 2007). “Militants Pick Off Mosul Snappers.” IWPR.net
Cooper, A. (2005). “Jailing Iraqi Journalist.” CPJ.org
El-Rikabi, H. (July 6, 2007) Operation Iraqi (Press) Freedom. Global Journalist
Feuilherade, P. (June 25, 2007). “Analysis: Surge in killings and death threats targeting Iraqi journalists.” Newssafety.com
Fischer, S. (2007). “Requiem for a Brave Woman.” IWPR.net
IWPR. (June 7, 2007). “Iraqi Reporter Latest Victim of Violence Against Women Journalists.” IWPR.net
Institute for War and Peace Reporting. (October 2, 2007). “Biased Kirkuk Media Inflame Tension.” IWPR.net
Jalal, F. (June 15, 2005) Iraqi Journalists Risking Their Lives. IWPR.net
Prothero, P. M. (2004). “Letter from Iraq.” CPJ.org
Reporters sans Frontieres. (2007). “Iraq – Annual Report 2007.” RSF.org
Sebti, B. (2006). “Heading into Danger.” CPJ.org
