| Sunday, April 29, 2007 9:38AM | | | | Reporting from Iraq, Life in Terror | Posted By: Aaron Hamburger
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| Tags: Iraq, Reporting on Iraq, Living in Terror, Emcke, Danner | “When I’m distant from it, I understand it. When I’m there, I’m subjected to a blend of sensory experiences, and after a few days, I know nothing, and that’s where my work begins.”—Reporter Mark Danner.
What’s amazing about the current debate about our misadventure in Iraq is the surety with which politicians, pundits, and everyday people make pronouncements about it. After listening to American journalist Mark Danner and German journalist Carolin Emcke speak about their experiences reporting in Iraq, I realized how little any of us know because of how little it’s possible to know about today's Iraq. Danner compared the view the average reporter has of Iraq to looking at a vast history painting through a straw. One example. The typical image most of us have of reporters in Iraq is a well-coiffed man or woman standing with a mosque or palm tree in the background. The reality of that image is that the only time a reporter can venture out of doors in Iraq is either on the roof of a heavily fortified hotel (where the pretty pictures come from), or while padded down in an immense suite of armor, in the middle of a heavily guarded parade of security, and only in certain neighborhoods and areas of the country that are deemed safe. In these situations, it’s often difficult to tell the reporters in Iraq from the soldiers protecting them, which means that a reporter’s access to the average Joe or Jane on the street is severely curtailed. “Victims of the war don’t get represented because we can’t meet them, and then if we could, they don’t trust us. We’re perceived as part of the military,” said Emcke, who talked about the change in perception toward her as a German journalist. “Being German used to sound promisingly anti-Semitic to Arabs in the region,” she said jokingly. Now, however, Germans, Americans, and anyone with light skin are all part of a mass of Western non-Muslims who came to Iraq claiming to bring democracy, and instead brought chaos and Abu Ghraib. “People here don’t realize the profound effect those images had there,” Emcke said. “The West will be identified with Abu Ghraib for a very long time.” Iraqis’ disillusionment with the West is practical as well as ideological. “People say, after the first Gulf War, it took Saddam five weeks to get electricity back on,” said Danner. “Now, four years later, you only have four hours of electricity per day in Baghdad. Which means you can’t keep things in your refrigerator, which is why people mob the markets, even though they've been bombed so many times. You have to go there to get food, a couple of times a day, which makes them such a great target for the suicide bombers.” One of the first sounds you’ll hear after an explosion, Danner said, is the ringing of cell phones among severed body parts. It’s the families of the victims calling, trying to reach their now mangled loved ones, their bodies distorted beyond recognition. In fact, the cell phone has become one of the main ways to identify victims of the blasts. Danner also explained how going to claim the body parts of a family member can be a dangerous business. Vigilantes stalk the morgues and kidnap or kill people they think are dangerous. If you actually make it into the morgue, you’ll find the bodies organized into different stacks. There are whole bodies, upper halves of bodies, lower halves of bodies, and then random body parts in various piles. To find your loved one, you’ll need to sort through the parts yourself. Bear in mind that last year, 36,000 Iraqis died as a result of the fighting in their country. (This number does not include those severely wounded.) So multiply the scene above by 36,000, and you’ll have some idea of what daily life is like in the fledgling democracy of Iraq. To fathom the scale of the destruction in Iraq, imagine if 400,000 people in America died every year in violent attacks. The chaos has so permeated Baghdad, it’s impossible to predict where it will flare up next. “Security is also psychological,” Emcke said. “It’s about knowing what to expect, where to go. Home is the epistemological comfort of home, knowing your way around, the history of the neighborhood. The people of Baghdad live in terror. There’s no psychological sense of stability. People live in a permanent state of suspicion.” It’s no wonder that ten percent of the population has left the country. “There are padlocked shops everywhere. People are leaving and they’re not coming back,” said Danner. Reporters are leaving too, since it’s impossible for them to get around to do their work in the country. According to Danner, a few years ago when Paul Bremer used to hold press conferences there would be over a hundred reporters there. Recently John McCain held a press conference during his latest visit to Iraq, and the total of reporters in attendance? Eight. As for the famous surge we keep hearing about? Even if it were successful, it would be impossible to find out. First of all, how do you define success? How would you know if any reduction in violence were permanent or temporary? Does success include getting the electricity back on so people can have food in their homes and air conditioning, a necessity during the infernal summers? Second, how would you be able to measure it, when there are whole areas of the country where even the U. S. army will not go because it’s too dangerous? How will we know if the violence is going down in these places if no one can get to them to check because it's too violent? We as Americans, however, have been largely shielded from the carnage committed in our name, for which we one day may be held responsible. Why haven't we seen more of it? Is our government censoring our reporters? They don’t need to. The real censors are the TV networks and their broadcast standards, fearful of offending potential advertisers by showing images too “disturbing” to an American public who has voted for the administration that has waged this destruction in their name. Americans have more important things to do, it seems, than to face up to the havoc we've created. After all, some of us have real money riding on the outcome of American Idol. NOTE: I attended this discussion with two Marines who are studying at Columbia and writing about Iraq in their fiction and non-fiction. They’ll be sending me their thoughts on the discussion soon, and I’ll post them on this blog. | | | |
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