Phil Taylor's papers
|
BACK TO : WAR & CRISIS REPORTING
Reporting, and Surviving, Iraq's Dangers by Ian Fisher  =
New York Times, July 18, 2004 Reporting, and Surviving, Iraq's Dangers By IAN FISHER BAGHDAD, Iraq - We were cornered last week by a few dozen members of the Mahdi Army, the violent and unpredictable militiamen loyal to the rebel Shiite Muslim cleric Moktada al-Sadr. They were yelling at us - it seemed like all of them at once, these poor, angry young men who two months ago would have chased us away or worse. But this time, the screaming was not about the injustices of America or the glory of jihad but about about about their high school final exams. "We studied!" bellowed Mahdi Kazal, 20, who wants to study communications (and whose other vision of the future included a threat to kill the new Iraqi minister of education). "There is no water. There is no electricity. But we studied!" This is the sort of moment that a reporter dreams of stumbling upon, because it was surprising and revealing. But as the violence in Iraq spiked this spring, such scenes had become largely off-limits to Western reporters because it was just too risky to wander around watching the new era in Iraq unfold. It turned out that many Shiite high school students in Baghdad had flunked final exams, leaving them blocked from applying to college, because of suspected cheating. They said that the accusations were trumped up: that the new government was cracking down on Mr. Sadr by punishing his young followers. Whatever this says about the Mahdi Army, it was an instructive moment for me, as a reporter here. The young men in the slum of Sadr City were approaching us. We did not feel threatened. They wanted to talk, and not just about the evil of America. They were talking about their futures. Scenes like this tell you that something in Iraq has shifted, even if it is unclear exactly what or for how long. In the last few weeks, since the new Iraqi government took over, the hair-trigger tension has slackened, and many Iraqis are permitting themselves the luxury of hope in the midst of a long and unpleasant occupation. And the Western reporters here - most of us having been locked down in Baghdad for months - are beginning to think what it might mean to get out and cover more of Iraq again, and see first-hand whether things are improving or getting worse. For months it has been too dangerous for obviously Western reporters to spend time in places like Sadr City, the biggest slum in Iraq, or Falluja, now a safe haven for Iraqi insurgents and outright terrorists. Around the country, reporters were kidnapped, chased and threatened. A few were killed. Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, complained that we were too scared to tell the whole story of Iraq. It felt to us like a cheap shot, but he got it half right: We were scared, and we, too, wondered how we could possibly cover America's biggest story since Vietnam without the most basic security. What Mr. Wolfowitz didn't say was that Iraqis were scared, too. Just ask them. And the list of blank spots from the last crucial months of this war is long. With the exception of a few brave European reporters, there were few outsiders to document the fighting in Najaf and Karbala between Mr. Sadr's forces and American troops. It was not just that hundreds of the badly-armed Sadr militiamen died in April and May, with few American casualties. There was an important political story, too: how more moderate Shiites, who are likely to run Iraq some day soon, tried to sideline Mr. Sadr, even as they reckoned with the growing popularity that his fight against the Americans brought him. How influential are the foreign fighters or Al Qaeda members in Falluja? Did American bombs in May wipe out a wedding party of women and children or what the military called a "rat's nest" of foreigners being smuggled in from Syria? It was impossible to know any of this first-hand, in the kind of detail and nuance that yields the shrewdest insights. Our main source was the American military - fine for what it is, but not nearly enough to assemble the full picture. So, with what has felt like several weeks of relative quiet, the urge is strong among reporters to roam. But it seems too early, by any measure, to declare Iraq a free-travel zone: Foreigners are still being beheaded, and even if there have been relatively few massive car bombs, there were enough to kill two-dozen Iraqis on Wednesday and Thursday. In a rare firefight in downtown Baghdad recently, I found myself between the close crack of a gun and the little dust plume where the bullet hit. (It is either scrupulousness, since I have no clue whether it was me or something else the gunman was aiming at, or dead denial that prevents me from writing that I was shot at.) But if this gathering perception of safety continues to grow and reporters are again pushing the boundaries gingerly, it will be interesting to test Mr. Wolfowitz's assertion: Will the Iraq that reveals itself be better than the awful images on television or in newspapers in recent months, or will it be worse? From the perspective of Western journalists, and the people who watch or read them, this new calm may begin to answer another question: While the danger was extreme, and we were trying to improvise around it, how well did we do at covering the news? How true and complete a picture did we get, when we ourselves were confined largely to hotels and walled-off houses? It is important to say first that expectations placed on reporters in Iraq have been at what may be a historic high. We get e-mail all the time from supporters of the war policy complaining that we don't get out to tell all the good news in Iraq (to which our answer recently has been: It is too dangerous). Opponents of the policy complain that we don't report enough on bad news like reports that American missile strikes in places like Falluja killed women and children (the answer is the same). I often think that expectations are, in fact, beyond what has been historically possible: Were American reporters embedded with the Nazis or the Vietcong? But today the lines are blurred, and since the insurgency turned most of Iraq into a no-go zone for Westerners this spring, the public appetite to know what is going on there has only increased, and for good reason. Coverage of the other side has been possible for Arab networks like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Anyone with a digital camera or video recorder (and that seems to be everyone) can instantly document the news. The impression created by this daily jumble of images is that anyone can go anywhere in Iraq, even if it isn't true. So when it became too dangerous, Western news organizations began to rely on people who could go almost anywhere: their Arab and Iraqi staff members. Some were trained reporters. Many were just ordinary people who spoke English and were willing to put their lives at risk for the Westerners who employed them. This year, many have received warnings from the armed resistance to the occupation, and two have been shot to death. We at The Times have been able to see Iraq through the eyes of an Iraqi housewife, a college student and a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, and others who came from professional careers. Using them has helped Western reporters to see the news as Iraqis do - often fact by fact, each excruciatingly excavated by debriefing people who are not really trained to collect news. We have also had to rely more on colleagues, especially from the wire services, which have Arab and Iraqi staffs. We have had to watch Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya more. We scan Islamic Web sites, for unfiltered and unprovable claims of responsibility for bombings and beheadings, for reports of tension between the groups who vie for power in Iraq. So far, still largely hunkered down in Baghdad, we just don't know how successful this experiment in war journalism has been. It is presumptuous to say that when Westerners can travel more freely we will have a more accurate version of reality. The fact is simpler than that: We will at least be playing again by our own rules. Which means that the people who write and stand up in front of cameras will again be reporting on events they have seen with their own eyes. Sadly, this moment has not come yet: My bosses would object, on security grounds, to my going into too much detail, but after three days of trips to Sadr City, it became clear that we had been followed back to our house in Baghdad. A message was delivered bluntly through an Iraqi: We know who you are, where you live, and we are watching you. We are trying to find out about them, and they are doing the same to us. |