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IRAQ: A Story Left Incomplete
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON, Jul 6 (IPS) - Alaa Hassan never did live to see publication of the last story he had filed. It got caught for a
while, as stories sometimes are, in that no man's land between what a correspondent could
reasonably get, and what an editor would really like.
The two do not often converge immediately, or at least find minimal
common ground, when someone has to report from a place where just
stepping out of the house - or staying indoors for that matter - is a
risk to life, and where access to 'official' information is usually
blocked.
Our correspondents in Iraq sometimes cannot tell what is 'official' any
more - a dubious occupation force, or an uncertain government with its
own record of running death squads. No journalism school in the world
teaches how to get a story in Iraq. And yet every story from Iraq too
must meet standards.
And so the IPS news desk looked greedily for more in the report filed by
Aaron Glantz working together with Alaa Hassan, the contributor to IPS
stories from Iraq, who was shot dead as he was leaving his house in
Baghdad Wednesday Jun. 28.
The report was on people being forced to move out to areas dominated by
fellow Shias or Sunnis, in the face of soaring sectarian violence. It
might just have been that kind of violence that claimed Alaa's life.
Aaron worked painstakingly with Alaa for them to dig out more and more between them.
Alaa was not a long-time career journalist, and that was his strength. He
was the alert, aware man about town, and an excellent partner to Aaron
Glantz, who has reported on Iraq at length for IPS over the past three
years.
Aaron's experience and extensive knowledge of Iraq have meant that
he could, and did, guide Alaa to find information along professional news
paths, just as Alaa could be the eyes and ears on the ground when Aaron
was not in Iraq.
The partnership worked remarkably, like those of other journalists who have teamed
up to report Iraq for IPS. The visiting and well-resourced foreign
correspondent of a large news organisation is now something of a rarity
in Iraq. Those around are barely able to step out of the Green Zone in
Baghdad where the occupation bosses and government leaders sit.
If Iraq is being reported at all, it is through new team initiatives that
step around the old mould.
Look at the kind of information Alaa helped bring out through his too brief
pursuit of the news story. We could see developments building up against
the governor of Basra through such sources as the president of the Iraqi
oil workers union. How many news providers know of such a group, never
mind reach one.
Through the Aaron-Alaa team we heard Fadil al-Sharra, spokesman for Shia
cleric Moqtada Sadr, giving a perspective on the Basra violence. "What
happened in Basra is that Ayatollah al-Sistani's representative talked
about the corruption created by the governor and his administration,
which caused the governor to say that the religious offices were
responsible for all the violence in Basra and that we are dividing people
against themselves."
This kind of close reporting opens up windows to a certain level of
differences and dissent within Iraqi society. Such reporting came with
local details that alone can tell the tone of Iraq.
As someone living next to two U.S. military bases, Alaa knew all about
violence coming from U.S. troops. And he could speak to people whose tone
gave us a sense of life in Iraq in a way that broad statistics never can.
In the report 'Multiply Haditha by Thousands', we heard Alaa speak to
lawyer Nezar al-Samarai about killings by occupation forces in that town.
"We describe this kind of incident as 'normal' because it has happened
over and over, not because it is normal or because the Iraqi people
accept it. It's happened a lot and there has been no reaction from the
U.S. government to stop it. So people will say it's normal."
Alaa was able to give us a sense what the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
might mean, along with some interviews that Aaron was able to conduct.
Fadil al-Sharra, spokesman for the Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr, was quoted
as saying: "After this the terrorism will be reduced. The terrorists now
know what their future is, and their future is they will be killed just
like Zarqawi... the terrorism will end and we will have an Iraq without
dictatorship, without problems and with stability."
Really? And so Aaron brought us also the view of Mathona al-Dari,
spokesman for the Sunni clerics group, the Association of Muslim
Scholars. "The issue is not the capture of Zarqawi. It's not related to
one person. It's that the occupation wants to destroy anyone that's
resisting them - armed group and political groups alike. (This killing)
is meant to hide the fact that the occupation is not meant to help Iraqi
people."
But quotes alone do not tell any story, and particularly not the Iraq
story. Alaa brought us the tone of the talk, the feel of the street.
Together with Aaron he brought us the voice of the people of Iraq, and
their suffering, as do our other teams of correspondents working in
Iraq - and as perhaps no other news organisation could.
True, we had the Haditha story broken by Time magazine. But Alaa did much
to make possible a report on the many unreported Hadithas; again going to
places and accessing information that more regular correspondents have
been unable to access.
Alaa became the more effective journalist for not being a journalist of
the usual kind. How much better for journalism too if he could have
continued with what he had just begun. (END/2006)
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