Iraqi
Journalists Stare
Death In The Face
By Firas Al-Atraqchi
12 October, 2006
Aljazeera
Iraq's
translators, journalists and cameramen are living on borrowed time as
they repeatedly come under attack in the war-ravaged nation, a group
of Iraqi journalists say.
At an impromptu meeting in
the Abu Kamal restaurant near the Najma (Star) Square in downtown Damascus,
three members of a new crop of journalists discuss the hopes for press
freedoms they had after the government of the former president, Saddam
Hussein, was overthrown.
They asked for their real
names not to be published and some admitted writing under different
tribal names when working with foreign media to protect their identities
from reprisal attacks and kidnappings.
MF, once a theatre enthusiast,
told how he and his colleagues at Mosul University had believed the
US military presence in Iraq would transform the country into a post-World
War II Japan.
In the first few months after
the US invasion, dozens of Iraqi newspapers, websites, blogs, satellite
and terrestrial television stations sprung up with unprecedented buoyancy.
"I joined one of the
new television stations for the province of Nineveh as a television
producer for their arts and culture programming," MF tells Aljazeera.net.
"But soon it became
evident that our idea of media reform was rather different from those
who took over the media in the country."
His colleagues complain that
the press in Iraq has become increasingly politicised and affiliated
with sectarian political blocs in parliament.
Threats and intimidation
MF says he drove to work
every morning from the Meidan sector of the city picking up two colleagues
on his way to the Al-Iraqiya Nineveh station in Karma district near
the Arbil checkpoint.
But then the threats came.
In November 2004, MF received
a note promising him certain death if he continued to work for "the
agent's media".
MF's colleague, Yasser Zaid, was kidnapped in Baghdad and beaten. He
was told not to work with the new media organisations or US forces.
His family paid a $15,000 ransom and he was let go – many consider
him lucky.
He escaped via Syria to Lebanon
and the last any of his former colleagues heard of him, he had fled
to the US.
But another aspiring presenter
working with MF persisted. She refused to allow fear and intimidation
to affect her work. A Christian, divorced and 40, she was particularly
vulnerable but did not heed her friends' warnings.
She was killed in late November
2004, her throat slit, her corpse bundled up near the road leading to
the northern village of Bahzani. A translator who worked with her and
had been in hiding for more than two years was hunted down and executed
in June 2006
Walking on coals
Another journalist with 12
years reporting experience says anyone working for the media in Iraq
is living on borrowed time.
"We are all walking
on coals, slowly burning away, but what can we do? Someone has to tell
the stories happening in Iraq," he told Aljazeera.net.
With two children and a wife
in Amman, life will not be easy, he knows. He says he plans to travel
back and forth every one or two months, giving himself a reprieve till
the security situation in Iraq improves.
"My life ... in Allah's
hands," he says.
Nir Rosen, an American freelance
writer who spent more than two years covering Iraq and author of In
the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq, says
many Iraqi journalists keep their work secret from their families.
"I have a good friend
who just a few months ago was beaten by the police. He has worked with
various Western publications and television outlets and has to hide
the fact he is a journalist from his family because one person could
tell another and eventually he could wind up dead."
Shooting the messenger
In February 2006, former
Aljazeera reporter Atwar Bahjat was found murdered a day after reporting
on the Samarra Askariya shrine bombings, which later plunged the country
into a virtual civil war.
At the time, Iraqis speculated
that there had been sectarian as well as political motives behind her
death - she was of mixed Shia-Sunni parentage.
Lynn Tehini, the Maghreb and Middle East desk officer for Reporters
without Borders (Reporters sans frontiers – RSF), says of the
107 journalists killed in Iraq in the past three years, nearly 80% were
Iraqi.
"We have correspondents
in Iraq ... more than one ... but no one knows they are working for
us, gathering data and reporting on the situation in the country, because
it is very dangerous," she told Aljazeera.net.
Tehini said sectarian vengeance
was behind most of the killing of Iraqi journalists. As Iraqi media
outlets begin to take sides on such issues as federalism and the amending
of the constitution, journalists and commentators find themselves at
higher risk.
"If a Sunni journalist
is killed because his newspaper says something others do not like, there
will be a killing of a Shia journalist to take revenge ... and so on,"
she says.
The sectarian strife has
led to the perception that journalists are working as spies for armed
groups or political parties.
"Whether you are an
Iraqi or foreign journalist, you are perceived as being a spy, especially
if you are working with foreign outlets. If you are working for Iraqi
outlets, you can get killed for sectarian reasons," Rosen told
Aljazeera.net.
A Pentagon policy?
But Iraqi journalists have
also been detained by US forces on suspicion of working with resistance
groups and, in some cases, US soldiers have fired at and killed Iraqi
cameramen.
"Iraqi forces are very
violent against Iraqi journalists," says Tehini, "but the
American army also detains journalists without explanation."
According to RSF, five Iraqi
journalists were detained for months without charge and without access
to their families or lawyers in 2005. The US military would later release
the men.
In recent weeks, several
Iraqi journalists were detained and later released by US forces. Bilal
Hussein, an Associated Press photographer, has been detained since April
12.
Dahr Jamail, an independent
American journalist who spent eight months reporting from Iraq, believes
the US military is mostly to blame for the killing of journalists.
"It has been clear since
the US invasion that the policy of the Pentagon has been to target non-embedded
reporters. More journalists have died in Iraq than did during the entire
Vietnam War, and even world war two.
"It is so dangerous
because not only must one be careful from the US military, but also
the criminal element. One never knows if a criminal gang will decide
to kidnap you and sell you to some militia or resistance group,"
he told Aljazeera.net.
But for Ali F, who reports
from Baghdad and surrounding towns, it is not the US soldier he is worried
about.
"Now I am mostly worried
about being killed or strangled by those who are dressed in ministry
of interior uniforms or men in black who move freely because of their
ties to the security forces."
© 2003 - 2006 Aljazeera.Net
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