Best Journalists, Iraqi Women Risk Their Lives For the Truth

Some of the best reporting is done by journalists employed by McClatchy, formerly Knight-Ridder. I've been a regular reader for a long time because they provided the truth when others failed. ---BBB

Iraqi Women Risk Their Lives -- For the Truth
By Greg Mitchell - E & P
October 24, 2007

Six female staffers at McClatchy's Baghdad bureau won a major award this week for courage. Here's how one of them in recent months has revealed, as few others have, the horrific day-to-day life in that country, in blog postings.

For several years now (and counting), brave Western reporters and editors based in Baghdad have had to rely on even braver Iraqi staffers and correspondents to help provide at least a reasonably informed picture of what is going in that country amid almost unfathomable danger. The vast majority of the dozens of journalists killed in Iraq every year are native Iraqis. E&P has hailed them often, but until this year they remained names without much of a voice.

That changed when, early in 2007, the Baghdad bureau of McClatchy Newspapers launched a new blog called Inside Iraq. It is written entirely by Iraqi staffers and E&P has quoted or reprinted items from it more than dozen times in recent months.

Yesterday, six Iraqis who have worked in the McClatchy Baghdad bureau received the International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award at a luncheon at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. In introducing the six McClatchy reporters ?- Shatha al Awsy, Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed, and Sahar Issa ?- ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff said: "These six Iraqi women have reported the war in Baghdad from inside their hearts. They have watched as the war touched the lives of their neighbors and friends, and then they bore witness as it reached into the lives of each and every one of them.

"All the while, they have been the backbone of the McClatchy bureau, sleeping with bulletproof vests and helmets by their beds at night, taking different routes to work each day, trying to keep their employment by a Western news organization secret," said Woodruff, who was wounded while covering the war. "All have lost family members or close friends. All have had their lives threatened. All have had narrow escapes with death."

The New York Times carried an editorial today on the six women from a rival news organization. It quoted at length Sahar Issa speaking for the six: "Every interview we conduct may be our last&hellip.Hundreds of thousands have been killed for seemingly no reason. It is our responsibility to do our utmost to acquire the answers, to dig them up with our bare hands if we must....

"We live double lives. None of our friends or relatives know what we do. My children must lie about my profession. They cannot under any circumstance boast of my accomplishments, and neither can I. Every morning, as I leave my home, I look back with a heavy heart, for I may not see it again ?- today may be the day that the eyes of an enemy will see me for what I am, a journalist, rather than the appropriately bewildered elderly lady who goes to look after ailing parents, across the river every day&hellip

"So why continue? Why not put down my proverbial pen and sit back? It's because I'm tired of being branded a terrorist: tired that a human life lost in my county is no loss at all. This is not the future I envision for my children."

Reflecting on this, I went back and looked at all of our excerpts from the Inside Iraq blog, dating back to February. The contributors write under partly hidden names, but I found several powerful postings by "Correspondent Sahar" (no last name). Here, in her honor, are parts of some of them.

February 23, 2007


The price is not paid by those who made the decision and reaped the benefits, but by us. Democracy and freedom for the Iraqi people! I issue an invitation to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Come; experience firsthand the democracy you brought us. Come; partake of the freedom you so generously taught us. Come, I will offer you my home, there is room enough. I had a brother. He was killed (11 Aug, 2005 - 52 yrs). I had a son. He was killed (3 Dec, 2005 - 18 yrs)&hellip.

Come, there is room enough in my home to accommodate you; but there is no room in my heart to accommodate your lame excuses. Come, all those who participated in wounding our hearts; come, there are more than half a million places vacant of their occupants, we will accommodate you. There is room enough.

April 15, 2007

Have "they" come for me?? Good God, spare us - My kids!! Quickly I call both my daughter and son, "Get dressed! Quick!" As I open the door, I see a number of men in uniform, all tall, all indistinguishable in the dark. (Remember we don't have electricity.) "Please come in." Dressed in all-covering clothes and hijab, I step aside to let them in.

They enter. I count ten. The rest remain outside. They enter the living room, which has a large window, and I could distinguish three Americans. They look around, seeing my huge bookcase, one comments, "You read a lot Ma'am?", "Yes, in fact I do." "What's this? Heinlein? Asimov? Grisham?"

He turns to look at me again, this time, with a different expression in his eyes. "Do you have a weapon?" "Yes, of course. It's in that cabinet." He opens the cabinet and looks closely inside. "You play Diablo?! And what's this?! Grand Theft Auto??" He forgets all about the weapon and turns to us with a wide grin on his face, and astonishment in his eyes&hellip.

They went through every room, every cabinet, closet and drawer silently. After they accomplished their mission, in about thirty minutes, they walked out, gray shadows in the twilight.

April 18, 2007

A knock on the front door at seven in the morning is not predictable; I jumped. What now? I look out the entrance window hesitantly to find a small lady covered in black from head to toe, standing outside. Um Noor! Um Noor (mother of Noor) is a sweet soul in a tiny frame, who used to come help me with household duties once a week, from 2000 until I went away in Feb, 2003.

I am ecstatic! I have been trying to find her ever since I came back; she is so energetic and so proud of her faultless work. I open the door with a cry of welcome on my lips, and she comes in. She looks at me and bursts out crying. And the story comes pouring out.

She was happily married for 20 years, [and then] Iraq was occupied. After a while strange, little used words start flying around. Sunni &hellip Shiite &hellip Sunni &hellip Shiite &hellip Then fighting started breaking out because of this long submerged difference&hellip. She loses her husband, on his way to work, a Shiite. Being a Sunni herself, she is urged - very strongly - to move away; their part of Amil is Shiite controlled.

Having nowhere to go, she stays. A car stops in front of their home. BANG, BANG, BANG! She loses her son (20), her brother, and nephew. She takes her remaining children and flees, finding no haven - except in Abu Ghraib (Sunni controlled) where she lives in perpetual fear lest her dark secret be uncovered: that her kids are - of course - Shiite.

Her two remaining sons (16 and 10) live imprisoned in their hut; she has buried all their IDs and tells everyone that they got lost ...and as a result they cannot receive rations. They are starving to death. How, and why, has it suddenly become important, this Sunni-Shiite business; and since when did Iraqis care? I myself had not even heard the terms until I was an adult. How to help???????? Can anyone see a light at the end of this dark, dark, tunnel?

May 1, 2007

Would it interest anyone to know that another member of our extended family has perished? Or has death in Iraq become old, boring news? He was killed on his doorstep, in full view of his wife and three daughters. Our men couldn't attend the funeral, because the deceased was Shiite, and the ceremony was held in his brother's home in a Shiite neighbourhood.

My mother, my cousin and I decided that we would do our best to attend the women's ceremony&hellip. We entered the neighborhood. Slowly, slowly, we drove through the once familiar streets. I kept looking around. I wanted to recognize my surroundings, but they looked so unfamiliar. The streets were deserted. Most were blocked with half-length cement barriers. Plastic bags were being blown about. Stray dogs were roaming about freely. On our left was the Shiite community, and on our right, a no-man's-land.

A whole living district quite, quite empty. Hundreds of homes, quite, quite empty. Shops shuttered, schools hollow, and windswept courts, where the laughter of children used to fill the air. And the dust, a deep layer of dust, perhaps the most telling sign that these homes were homes no longer &hellip

We paid our respects, wept together with any who came in to show their sorrow. But in our hearts we knew - we were weeping for ourselves and for our sorry existence bereft of our loved ones.

May 15, 2007

I would suggest that "day off" should be re-named "day-on", when it comes to mums in general, and single mums especially.

My schedule started with taking both my mum and dad to the bank to receive their bi-monthly pensions, a task which we concluded at about ten thirty. The next task was taking my mum to the dentist; she had broken one of her very precious teeth the night before, and it was giving her a lot of pain. Bad news! Our regular dentist has fled the country! Where to now?? I called my acquaintances there and then to ask for the address of a good dentist. None were still around; none that we could reach, that is. There was nothing for it ... we must go to the hospital.

The hospital was surrounded with a blast wall. There was a small opening, hardly visible from a few meters away. I had to park the car quite a distance away, and because my mum can't walk any great distance, took a taxi to the tiny entrance, that was about three hundred meters from the dental clinic hidden inside. As we were walking very slowly towards the clinic, an ambulance stopped at the tiny entrance, its shrieking siren tearing up the atmosphere. My mum became very pale&hellip.

I took my mum in my arms and physically turned her so that her back was to the inhuman sights and dragged her, as gently as I could, out of the way, and kept her in my embrace. She was muttering incoherently; she had seen. Ages later, I eased my nervously tight hold; and looked her in the eye. Tear-filled eyes looked up at me from a pale face &hellip a weary look. "Please take me home." We started back towards the opening. Slipping, almost falling, she looks down, and so do I. We were walking in puddles of blood. I cut my "day on" schedule short. Dusty floors are not so bad.