Iraq’s Endangered Journalists

IN today’s Iraq, intellectuals are targets of a widespread, often ethnically driven campaign of murder. Many have fled their homes, or even the country, to protect their families. Doctors, engineers, professors and even teachers seek new careers in parts of Iraq where their ethnic or sectarian group is in the majority. But one class of professionals cannot escape the violence because its work is connected to it, and it is a group that has been attracted to, and cultivated by, the new Iraq. They are the news media workers. And I am one of them.

Under Saddam Hussein, I was a doctor. But I took up journalism in late 2003, when it was clear that the best jobs in post-Hussein Iraq were those in the news media. Building a free press in Iraq was one of America’s greatest achievements. When the American-led coalition installed itself in the Green Zone, it created the Combined International Press Center, where American soldiers issued press passes to Iraqis and Westerners alike.

Just like American reporters, we could embed ourselves with the United States Army and we could attend coalition press conferences, where we addressed critical questions to American officials as well as to Iraqi officials. Many of the biggest stories were either written by Iraqis or reported by them.

With American encouragement, Iraq produced a generation of young journalists who are decades ahead of their counterparts elsewhere in the region. Those who had the opportunity to work for Western publications or broadcast companies advanced the furthest, but many journalists working for local news media organizations also catapulted ahead in their careers. The two groups complemented each other, succeeding in the midst of violence and confusion to reveal the hidden atrocities in our country to Iraqis and the world.

In the last year, however, as successive short-term governments have taken power in Baghdad, American support for the Iraqi news media has waned. In May the United States ambassador announced the transfer of the International Media Center, which has served as a headquarters for the international and local news media, into the hands of the new Iraqi government, which is dominated by militias and regards the news media as akin to the insurgency, something that it must defeat and suppress. In mid-July, the Iraqi prime minister threatened to close any news media outlet that insufficiently supports the Iraqi government in its fight against sectarian violence. I fear that if this government survives, the press in Iraq will become similar to that in Iran, Saudi Arabia or Syria.