They work as stringers in Iraq for the Associated Press, or Reuters, or NBC, CBS, CNN, the BBC, etc., etc. etc. Most of them are Iraqi civilians who are doing one of the few jobs that actually pays good money in a country where the CIA claims the unemployment rate is roughly equal to Bush’s approval rating, but which in fact may be significantly higher, as much as 60% according to Congressman Stephen Lynch.
So what do these lowly Iraqi stringers and photographers and cameramen get for signing on to work for Western media outlets like the AP, besides a paycheck and the universal scorn and derision of the wingnutosphere? They get the chance to be killed on a daily basis, that’s what:
BAGHDAD, Iraq – The body of an Associated Press employee was found shot in the back of the head Friday, six days after he was last seen by his family leaving for work. Ahmed Hadi Naji, 28, was the fourth AP staffer to die violently in the
Iraq war and the second AP employee killed in less than a month. He had been a messenger and occasional cameraman for the AP for 2 1/2 years.“All of us at AP share the pain and grief being felt by Ahmed’s family and friends,” said AP President and CEO Tom Curley. “The situation for our journalists in Iraq is unprecedented in AP’s 161-year history of covering wars and conflicts. The courage of our Iraqi colleagues and their dedication to the story stand as an example to the world of journalism’s enduring value.”
The circumstances of Naji’s death were unclear. Dozens of Iraqis are found slain almost every day in Baghdad, many believed victims of sectarian death squads.
Naji’s wife, Sahba’a Mudhar Khalil, reported him missing Dec. 30 when he did not return that evening. He had left home by motorcycle in the Ashurta Al Khamsa District in southwest Baghdad at 10:30 a.m., telling her he was going to the AP office. Naji’s body was found in a morgue.
In addition to his wife, Naji is survived by 4-month-old twins, a boy, Zaid, and a girl, Rand.
The death came as colleagues were still mourning Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, 35, an AP cameraman who was shot to death by insurgents while covering clashes Dec. 12 in Mosul. He was the second AP journalist killed in that northern Iraqi city in less than two years.
On April 23, 2005, cameraman Saleh Ibrahim was killed after an explosion in Mosul. He was a father of five in his early 30s. AP photographer Mohammed Ibrahim was wounded. The circumstances surrounding the death and injury are still unclear.
I’m sure the wingnut war bloggers will simply write off these deaths of AP employees as well deserved since they no doubt believe these individuals were terrorists, insurgents or mere Islamic jihadist thugs. Which is too bad. Because the reason Western News organizations use Iraqis to cover news stories there is because it is impossible for Western reporters to move safely within the country unless they are surrounded by a large US military escort. And fitted out with the same body armor our troops wear, and surrounded by dozens of highly armed veteran soldiers they still may be get themselves killed or wounded.
(cont.)
Like, for example, the sad tale of ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and his cameraman Doug Vogt. Almost a year later and Woodruff still hasn’t recovered sufficiently from his injuries to return to his job as an anchor, and he may never do so. And he was one of the lucky ones. Unlike the Iraqis working for AP, Ahmed Hadi Naji, Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah and Saleh Ibrahim, Woodruff is still alive, his children have not been left fatherless, nor has his wife been widowed.
Indeed, 2006 was the bloodiest year ever for reporters, journalists and other news media employees, thanks in large part to the number of them who have been killed in Iraq.
If you’d like to live out 2007, you could do worse than go to Iraq as a western news correspondent. Don’t be an Iraqi or part of a camera crew, though, or your chances of surviving unscathed dwindle.
No western reporters died in Iraq last year, although the British cameraman Paul Douglas and sound engineer James Brolan were killed in May in a car-bomb attack against US soldiers of the 4th Infantry Division, with whom they were embedded. The other 32 journalists killed in the country were, according to the latest report by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), all Iraqi. Reporters with the protection afforded by a major media employer are obviously safer, but not outside the fortified compound or Green Zone. […]
Most of the journalists killed during the 2003 invasion of Iraq were western, and their killers invariably American. Last October, a British judge concluded that Terry Lloyd, the ITN correspondent killed along with his cameraman and interpreter in March 2003, had been the victim of an “unlawful killing”. Now, the balance has tipped. Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, a CBS cameraman working for Associated Press Television News, was shot and killed in Mosul last month. He, like most staff in the field, was Iraqi. Iraqis have become the Gurkhas of the western press corps: heading into areas where westerners (who would be killed or kidnapped the moment they walked out of their compounds) cannot go to bring back images, interviews and information.
The Gurkhas of the western press corps. That’s a telling line isn’t it? Because if they aren’t white skinned Americans, their deaths and injuries can be discounted, overlooked or even mocked by those who sit safely at their computer terminals, and whose only experience with gun fire is when they go to the local shooting range to fire off a few dozen rounds from their semi-automatic pistols at paper targets. Odd that they feel so strongly about how America liberated the Iraqi people from Saddam giving them freedom and democracy, yet they feel so little for individual Iraqis who are victims of the violence in Iraq which was the direct result of Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
Well, not really odd, I suppose. Hypocrisy is a common human failing, especially among the dwindling supporters of Bush’s folly. As for me, I will mourn for Ahmed Hadi Naji, Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, Saleh Ibrahim and all the other Iraqi reporters who died covering a war that becomes increasingly violent, increasingly horrific and increasingly meaningless each day that passes. May God have mercy on their souls, and may that mercy be extended also to those they left behind.
Peace.
