Iraq Hack: A Reporter's Blog

Bye-bye Back-to-Iraq

You may have heard of Chris Albritton. He's the former AP reporter who set up Back-to-Iraq some years ago, and convinced readers to send him cash to go to the sandbox, and report.

Really the first blogger to get that kind of business model up and running

He did a pretty good job of it, IMHO (full disclosure -- he is a friend), and in the process became a Time Magazine regular.

He's based in Beirut these day, covered the recent conflict. And in the course of it all was firmly placed in the cross-hairs of the pajamahadeen bloggers who think they know what war is all about, because they read the internets.

Chris has had enough.

His last post pretty much sums up much the state of the blogosphere these days:

Subtlety doesn’t seem to have much place in the blogosphere anymore, where you get the most attention and the most hits by putting out whatever half-assed opinion one can muster. You only have to shout loudly enough and play to whatever audience you want to get the attention. Blogging these days seems to resemble bad vaudeville rather than thoughtful commentary.

Well worth the read.

CBS Sadness

Soundman James Brolan, dead.

Correspondent Kimberly Dozier, seriously wounded.

Cameraman Paul Douglas, dead.

I worked with Paul, Kimberly and James for the better part of three months last summer -- her compassion, their humour and professionalism, were a real inspiration.

Here's the story. Facts, not the nuance and narratives of their lives. But I really don't know what to say right now.

Shocked. Saddened.

I'll post more in a day or two.

Samarra File

More than a couple of times I've been miffed about criticism of Iraq reportage -- my point usually is that the journalism is good -- its just nobody notices back home, too interested with shiny, squeaky-wheel, barking-head, partisanship than any solid reportage.

So I'm not going to let this one slip by you.

Tom Lasseter hasn't left Baghdad much since the invasion. Like many of us, he's had friends die, been threatened himself, and holds the military boots to the fire, fairly. No, he doesn't live in the Green Zone. He goes out, like most journalists, when he can, when its safe, and even then some.

This is his latest (IMHO, outstanding) dispatch.

SAMARRA, Iraq - The gunfight by the Tigris River was over. It was time to retrieve the bodies.

Staff Sgt. Cortez Powell looked at the shredded jaw of a dead man whom he'd shot in the face when insurgents ambushed an American patrol in a blind of reeds. Powell's M4 assault rifle had jammed, so he'd grabbed the pump-action shotgun that he kept slung over his shoulders and pulled the trigger.

Five other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division scrambled down, pulled two of the insurgents' bodies from the reeds and dragged them through the mud.

"Strap those motherf-----s to the hood like a deer," said Staff Sgt. James Robinson, 25, of Hughes, Ark.

The soldiers heaved the two bodies onto the hood of a Humvee and tied them down with a cord. The dead insurgents' legs and arms flapped in the air as the Humvee rumbled along.

Iraqi families stood in front of the surrounding houses. They watched the corpses ride by and glared at the American soldiers.

Fifteen months earlier, when the 1st Infantry Division sent some 5,000 Iraqi and U.S. soldiers to retake Samarra from Sunni Muslim insurgents, it was a test of the American occupation's ability not only to pacify but also to rebuild a part of Iraq dominated by the country's minority Sunnis.

More than a year later, American troops still are battling insurgents in Samarra. Bloodshed is destroying the city and driving a wedge between the Iraqis who live there and the U.S. troops who are trying to keep order.

Violence, police corruption and the blurry lines of guerrilla warfare are clouding any hopes of victory.

"It's apocalyptic out there. Life has definitely gotten worse for" Iraqis, said Maj. Curtis Strange, 36, of Mobile, Ala., who works with Iraqi troops in Samarra. "You see Samarra and you almost want to build a new city and move all these people there."

The whole story is worth the read.

Really outstanding stuff.

Post Ops

The lack of posting should be indirect evidence of my absence -- but to set the record straight, after three months in Iraq I am back in North America for a break.

Rush hour traffic. Late taxes. Fast and not so fast food.

I'll try to keep on throwing out the occasional commentary, perhaps some stories stored in the back of my memory bank over the past two years.

This blog isn't work, rather a labour of love (that is often neglected and fighting competing, paying, suitors).

So your patience is appreciated.

I hope to be back in Baghdad in October.

Stay tuned.

I'l keep posting and hope to add a podcast or two.

This story is not finished. And neither am I.

Inshallah

Daily Constitutional.

So what happens if Iraq's constitutional negotiators don't reach a compromise by August 15th?

Iraq's Transitional Administrative Law (article 61) calls for the immediate dissolution of the National Assembly, with new elections to be held by December 15th. Constitution drafters have up to another year to work thing out.

Now, if they reach agreement, the constitution goes to referendum, where Iraqi voters must must ratify the charter by a simple majority, AS LONG AS two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it.

This essentially gives the Kurds, and Shias, a veto.

If the referendum fails -- same as if they missed the August 15th deadline.

So, as we hit the final stretch, its no surprise to see some very heavy lobbying -- from Shias and Kurds strengthening their demands, Sunnis rejecting the powers that would weaken their position even further, and the U-S pushing for all this to be resolved, according to schedule, so troop withdrawal and exit strategies can be claimed in time for mid-terms.

But, over the weekend, Baghdad's Shia-controlled provincial council threw out the city's outspoken American appointed, former Canadian resident, Sunni, Mayor -- essentially at gunpoint. The national government shrugged their shoulders. Inshallah.

Now, the head of the Badr Brigades, a large, armed, Shia militia aligned with one of the country's main islamic parties, is demanding the oil rich Shia south be granted the same level of autonomy granted to the potentially oil-rich Kurdish north. Hadi al-Amiri appeared before thousands of supporters in the holy city of Najaf. Its is a not too subtle threat. The Badr Brigades, despite Shia leaders' assurances of their disarmament, has been accused of imposing islamic order, and vigilante peace, in places like Basra.

Of course, the Kurds still have their peshmurga militia.

And the Sunni insurgency isn't slowing down.

The point of all this is that constitutions, and democracy, are supposed to protect minority rights as well as majority rule.

The question now, is how much of Iraq's constitution will reduce the former, to ensure that latter -- either regionally or nationally, isn't imposed by force instead of law.

It's crunch time, folks.

This isn't about democracy, or freedom. It is about power.

And all those velvet gloves are coming off.

Peter Jennings 1938-2005

In journalism school, there's a stock piece of advice professors pass on to the bright-eyed, hungry, would-be reporters: pick a pro you admire, and emulate them.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who thought Peter Jennings was that consummate journalist.

I only had the chance to meet him a couple of times: first after public lecture in Toronto, the second in the field here in Baghdad.

At the public lecture, he faced a broadside of criticism from some members of the audience and fellow journalists, for the supposed dumbing down of TV news, of the bias of mainstream media and any variety of journalistic sins. Jennings didn't apologize, challenged the audience on some assumptions, but still allowed that news, and the people who produce it, are fallible.

We try to be perfect, but we won't be, so all we can do is try harder, day in, day out.

His advice after the debate: go out and report. Get out in the world. Ask questions and learn.

Maybe that's why I wasn't surprised when he showed up at a bomb scene here. Some high-profile network faces fly in and out of the country, only leaving the hotel to tape a couple of standups, leaving the reportage to their producers.

Jennings, I was told, was one to witness the story, then report.

There are many tributes, pointing out exactly how much he witnessed, and reported, over his career.

But he also faced criticism over the years. Too cold, too Canadian, some argued. But even those points were challenged on 9/11, and when he took out American citizenship.

"There are a lot of people who think our job is to reassure the public every night that their home, their community and their nation is safe," he told author Jeff Alan. "I don't subscribe to that at all. I subscribe to leaving people with essentially — sorry it's a cliche — a rough draft of history. Some days it's reassuring, some days it's absolutely destructive." (via wires)

Journalism isn't the final word. Its a process, a journey.

Jennings practiced it with with an unwavering sense of balance, fairness, accuracy; with curiosity and honesty, and good dashes of humor and humility. And there was always room for doubt. And surprise.

That's more than a good example.

That's a good life.

Another Baghdad morning

Sounds of gunfire and explosions are not unusual in the capitol: unless there are fatalities, particularly security force casualties, the vast majority go unreported.

The attacks are often spread out, almost randomly across the city. Car bombs, like the one pictured here, explode in the distance. But the bang-bang often hits this neighbourhood.

This is what the streets sound like, after a mortar round landed about a half-block away, a couple of days ago.

After five minutes, things are back to normal. Almost everybody, journalists included, are so used to it, that we only interrupt our work to rubberneck, like slowing down on the highway to check out a stall on the side of the road.

If you can't do anything about it, why be sacred? Just life as usual here. Inshallah.

Steven Vincent

The American embassy here in Baghdad has confirmed the death of investigative freelance journalist Steven Vincent in Basrah.

The New York resident and his translator, Nour Weidi, were abducted by five men in a police car, at gunpoint, Tuesday. His body was discovered riddled with bullet, the translator suffered serious wounds.

Vincent recently published a book on post-war Iraq, In The Red Zone, and was investigating life, and crime, in Basrah. (I noted an earlier CSM article here). He had just filed a critical opinion piece in the New York Times about reconstruction and corruption in the Shia Governate.

There's much speculation that the piece led to a retaliatory killing -- he points out militant Shia infiltration in the police force. But, just as likely, it could be simple crime; journalists are known as walking ATM machines. He was abducted leaving a currency exchange shop.

As a freelancer, Vincent travelled without security.

A read through his excellent blog reveals the extent of this loss:

Layla and I have heard numerous stories about how, on big multi-million dollar projects, Iraqi translators and engineers--which the Americans, British and non-Iraqi NGOs are forced to use because of language difficulties--often accept bribes from companies to steer contract their way. Since most Westerners don't know Arabic, and must rely on the translators and engineers as their eyes and ears, the funding sources are rarely the wiser. "In my case," said the Captain, "there's just me, my database and Iraqi companies. No chance for corruption there."

I'd wanted to introduce Layla to the Gary Cooper side of America, and I felt I'd succeeded. Instead of the evasive, over-subtle, windy Iraqi, fond of theory and abstraction, here was a to-the-point Yank, rolling up his sleeves with a can-do spirit of fair play and doing good. "I want to have a positive effect on this country's future," the Captain averred. "For example, whenever I learn of a contracting firm run by women, I put it at the top of my list for businesses I want to consider for future projects." I felt proud of my countryman; you couldn't ask for a more sincere guy.

Layla, however, flashed a tight, cynical smile. "How do you know," she began, "that the religious parties haven't put a woman's name on a company letterhead to win a bid? Maybe you are just funneling money to extremists posing as contractors." Pause. The Captain looked confused. "Religious parties? Extremists?"

Oh boy. Maa salaama Gary Cooper, as Layla and I gave our man a quick tutorial about the militant Shiites who have transformed once free-wheeling Basra into something resembling Savonarola's Florence. The Captain seemed taken aback, having, as most Westerners--especially the troops stationed here--little idea of what goes on in the city. "I'll have to take this into consideration..." scratching his head, "I certainly hope none of these contracts are going to the wrong people." Not for the first time, I felt I was living in a Graham Greene novel, this about about a U.S. soldier--call it The Naive American--who finds what works so well in Power Point presentations has unpredictable results when applied to realities of Iraq. Or is that the story of our whole attempt to liberate this nation?

I didn't know him, but his penetrating insight, journalistic passion, appreciation for the absurd, and humor obviously shine through.

UPDATE: more of Vincent's work can be found at National Review Online.

For those keeping track: The Committee to Protect Journalists reports at least 45 journalists and 20 media support workers have been killed while covering the war in Iraq since March 2003.

Duty-free fracas

In one of those small, but telling, anecdotes, the Washington Post reports:

Alcohol Banned in Baghdad Airport

BAGHDAD, July 29 -- Iraq's transportation minister, a Shiite Muslim, has ordered a ban on alcohol sales at Baghdad International Airport, declaring that the facility is "a holy and revered" piece of Iraq, a spokesman said Friday.

The airport duty-free shop so far has refused to comply with the order by Salam Maliki. Airport officials said Maliki threatened to have the store's $800,000 supply of alcoholic beverages destroyed.

The alcohol ban heightened fears of some more-secular Iraqis that the Shiite Muslim majority might seek to impose a rigid interpretation of Islamic law in Iraq, traditionally considered to be tolerant in its observance of religious law.

"The airport represents the new Iraq," the [Minister's] spokesman said. "We are an Islamic country."

In the south, liquor and music stores have been fire bombed; women, regardless of their religion, have been forced to wear hijab. There have been a spate of threats, and murders, of barbers in Baghdad, because they offer to shave off beards -- considered by the more fundamentalist muslims as a sign of faith.

And Shiites continue to flex their power in constitutional negotiations, which are likely to conclude that Islamic sharia law will be the main influence on legislation and judicial precedent.

The more cynical observer would see all this all as more of a push for old middle east style authoritarian, political control, than of any religious observance.

Over the months, many of the "old ways" have cropped up in Iraq's new government. Contracts have more to do with contacts than blind tenders. Baksheesh, bribes, help smooth the way. The braver citizens are protesting over alleged Interior Ministry torture.

In short: the future Iraq, despite the democratic trappings, is looking more like Iran than America.

Fog of War

Phillip Robertson has been doing some terrific reporting from here in Iraq.

In the latest file for Salon (reg. req'd) he finds the American sniper that shot Knight Ridder local reporter Yasser Salihee earlier this month".

It is amazing reportage, great writing, sympathetic and objective.

For anyone who wants to choose sides, throw blame, debate right and wrong, criticize coverage -- this is not the war reportage you'll like.

But it is one of the best descriptions of the reality on the ground here, for Iraqis and American soldiers:

"... he brought up a photograph of a white Daewoo Espero sedan on a Baghdad street. The sedan had a single bullet hole in the driver's side of the windshield. Behind the wheel there was a lifeless man, slumped in the seat with a shattered skull and a torrent of blood staining his shirt. The image carried a sudden shock of recognition and despair. The dead man behind the wheel of the car was my friend and colleague, Yasser Salihee.

The sniper lowered his voice when he talked about the pictures of the car and the man inside it. His self-assured manner disappeared and he became nervous. "Here is one of ours. I really hope he was a bad guy. Do you know anything about him?" Then he said, "See, I don't know if I should be talking about this."

"Did you fire the shot that killed him?" I asked."

Street with no name.

It is difficult and dangerous to get around Baghdad for western journalists. Stories that would take a couple of hours back home, often take days here. Given the immediate news cycles of cable tv, the internet and wires, it means many many good stories from Iraq, simply become old news, barely sketched.

That hasn't stopped the Washingon Post from going to the Baghdad neighbourhood where, just last week, 25 children were killed by a suicide car bomber. The story focuses on the family and friends of 11 year old Hamza Firas Khuzai:

On Monday, a single boy stood in the glare of the heat in the two blocks around Hamza's house, staring at something in his hand. He didn't look up as strangers passed.

"They didn't see anything of their life," said Hamza's uncle, Safa Khuzai, speaking of the boys who died. "They spent it with wars, no electricity, no water and no security," he added. "They were all the same age, born at the same time, went to the same school, played the same games, and died together at the same time."

"Even their funeral services at the same time," he said. "A whole generation of this neighborhood gone."

"The streets are so quiet now," Hamza's sister said. "So quiet."

Is is about as good, and honest, a snapshot of life for Baghdad families caught in the violence, conflicted, these days.

Lost in Translation

The military loves jargon. And acronyms. And swearing.

Confusing?

To help everyone out, scroll down and find the new Iraq Slang list, some more obscure than others.

Go to the comments if you have more. Happy to add them when I have time.

Maybe-see TV

CNN presents has a comprehensive look at developments in Iraq over the past year. It follows last week's excellent program on European lessons of terrorism.

Give most journalists an hour, and they can give you a pretty good snapshot of what's happening here.

Still snapshots are static. The NYT's Ed Wong paints a different picture of Falluja's future:

Transformed into a police state after last winter's siege, this should be the safest city in all of Iraq.

Thousands of American and Iraqi troops live in crumbling buildings here and patrol streets laced with concertina wire. Any Iraqi entering the city must show a badge and undergo a search at one of six checkpoints. There is a 10 p.m. curfew.

But the insurgency is rising from the rubble nevertheless ...

Googled.

Search for "Iraq Reporter Blog" on Google and this humble site pops up at the number one spot.

Thanks for all your support.

Feeling Lucky?

The Rise of the Shias

There have been many reports of the rise of Shia theocracy in southern Iraq. Steven Vincent has one of the better ones in today's Christian Science Monitor

"In Basra these days, it's not uncommon to see armed men from Shiite religious groups standing at the gates of Basra University, scrutinizing female students to make sure their dresses are the right length and their makeup properly modest.

Any woman violating their standards of Muslim dignity, relates Henan, a psychology student, is ordered home. "These religious militiamen tell us how to dress, and prevent us from listening to music in public or interacting with male students," she says. "It makes me burn inside."

Henan is not the only Basran furious at the extremist Shiite Muslims who now dominate this southern Iraqi port city bordering Iran. Especially among the middle and intellectual classes, an increasing drumbeat of resentment is rising about what many see as a distortion of Basra's traditionally easygoing, tolerant attitudes toward life.

"No alcohol, no music CDs, woman forced to wear hijab, people murdered in the streets - this is not the city I remember," says Samir, an editor of one of Basra's largest newspapers."

Iran's support of the region, and connection to their politicians, is giving little comfort to American authorites, Iraq's other internal ethnic groups and parties, or Iraq's Sunni neighbours.

Shia authorities in the south are now pushing for the kind of autonomy granted to the Kurds in the north. Southern Iraq holds the country's richest oil field. A good measure of that wealth, that has flowed to Baghdad and central Iraq's Sunnis over the past decades at the expense of the Shias, would stop flowing.

Old CIA friend, shia politician and current Oil Minister Ahmed Chalabi has given some support to the initiative.

In short, all signs point to a weakened Iraqi central government, ethnic divide, power and revenue sharing struggles, and inconsistent standards of democracy and law in the country.

Shia militias, like Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army, still operate. So do the Kurdish Peshmerga. And the Sunni insurgency remains potent.

It is no wonder American officials here are now bringing up the problems of sectarian tensions, quite unprompted by reporters.

Who are Al-Qaeda's bombers?

NYT op-ed contributor Robert Pape compiled and tracked the 17 Al-Qaeda attacks, committed by 71 terrorists, that killed over 700 people between 1995 and 2003, and comes to the conclusion:

the overwhelming majority of attackers are citizens of Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries in which the United States has stationed combat troops since 1990. Of the other suicide terrorists, most came from America's closest allies in the Muslim world - Turkey, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia and Morocco - rather than from those the State Department considers "state sponsors of terrorism" like Iran, Libya, Sudan and Iraq. Afghanistan produced Qaeda suicide terrorists only after the American-led invasion of the country in 2001. The clear implication is that if Al Qaeda was no longer able to draw recruits from the Muslim countries where there is a heavy American combat presence, it might well collapse.

Most important, the figures show that Al Qaeda is today less a product of Islamic fundamentalism than of a simple strategic goal: to compel the United States and its Western allies to withdraw combat forces from the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries

The figures do not include suicide attacks in Iraq, claimed by Abu Musab al-Zarqaui's al-qaeda off-shoot, believed to be mainly carried out by non-iraqis. it is also worth mentioning that many analysts now consider Al-Qaeda to be a loose network, with little or no central operational or financial coordination: terror had been simply "franchised" since 9/11.

London bomb links

Broadcast: BBC Newsfront, BBC audio / video feed, BBC London Radio (Real Player), ITV News , Sky News (video), Channel 4

Wires: NewsNow UK Feedroll, Reuters, Press Association,

Newspapers: The Times, the Guardian, The Independent, This is London, The Telegraph, Daily Mail Group, The Sun

Update Blogs: Uk Blog Aggregator, BBC reporter's blog, guardian NewsBlog London Bloggers, London photoblog, Metroblogging London

Technorati Tags: London, Explosions, Terrorism, includes Buzznet and Flickr Photostreams (also pooled here).

Wiki: 7 July 2005 London bombings includes timelines, statements, links, updates.

Al-qaeda's claim for London Blast

Time magazine reporter Chris Allbritton posts a translation at his Back to Iraq Blog:

Rejoice the nation of Islam, rejoice nation of Arabs, the time of revenge has come for the crusaders' Zionist British government.

As retaliation for the massacres which the British commit in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mujahideen have successfully done it this time in London.

And this is Britain now burning from fear and panic from the north to the south, from the east to the west.

The statement was posted on a site often used by jihadi groups, the language and phrases follow the common pattern, but all internet claims are near impossible to verify.

Update: the claim has been pulled from the source website by administrators, who questioned its authenticity. One, perhaps minor discrepancy: an analyst I've talked to noted that past claims of responsibility have made appeals to Islamic nations but do not usually, as this one does, to Arabic nations as well.

Rampant American Violence

American culture shows up in the strangest places. Sitcoms pop up in Siberia, CNN on desert border towns: if you can set up a sat dish, people will watch.

And few exports are more popular than cartoons. Humour is universal, a good gag needs no translation.

So flipping through the cable box today, I stumbled on Acme Inc's favourite customer, chasing his prey through the desert. And Wile E. gets to that part where he runs off the cliff, looks down, defies gravity. Waves.

And falls.

And then something strange happens.

Poof.

Viewers stateside have apparently missed that landing for some time now, the scenes cut to save sensitive youngsters from violence.

I'm sure there's some smart-ass ironic comment, cynical aside, or long anti-imperialist argument to be made about censorship, violence, in the Mideast and back in the States.

Hey: sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon.

The War Back Home

There's a lot of press back in the States about polling numbers showing a shift in war opinion.

The Pew Research Center continues to generate interesting, deeper, breakdowns of the issue:

With the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq exceeding 1,700, there is widespread awareness of the rising American death toll. As a consequence, baseline public attitudes toward the war are gradually turning more negative. Support for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq continues to inch up from 36% last October, to 42% in February, and 46% currently.

I found two things worth extra mention: there is some evidence that Americans are becoming less emotionally involved in the news from Iraq. More than four-in-ten (44%) say that people they know are becoming less involved emotionally with news of the conflict. That is the highest percentage expressing that view in the past year.

Also, surprisingly: "54% answered correctly that there have been between 1,000 to 2,000 U.S. military casualties in Iraq. As is the case with news interest, there is a significant age difference in knowledge of the American death toll. Fewer than half of those ages 18-29 knew the range of U.S. casualties

In other words, the generation that is fighting this war appears to have the least interest/knowledge of it.

It will be interesting to see if the separation between those serving in the war, and the majority who are not crystalizes into political differences in the future.

(graphics courtesy Pew Center: click to pop-up full image)