After Isis lost: It’s becoming more dangerous,rather than less,to be a reporter in Iraq as two generations of Iraqi journalists explain

An Iraqi journalist tells Laura Silvia Battaglia how reporting in Iraq is tougher now than it was in the 1970s

A local, young award-winning photographer Qamar Hashim takes pictures in Baghdad, 2011

WITH DECADES OF experience as journalists in Iraq under their belts, Ali al-Jafal and his son, Oteil, have seen many things change in their country. But one thing remains a constant: the extreme difficulty of working in one of the most dangerous countries in the world for journalists. It continues to be very easy to get yourself killed for not self-censoring and for daring to report in a negative way on prominent political figures.

The pair, from Baghdad, have been working for many years in both local and international media. Ali, now 60, has been a journalist since 1979 and is mainly a writer on cultural, political and society-related themes. He believes the current situation is “considerably more complicated and dangerous now than it was [in the 1970s], even though in those days we were under a dictatorship”.

“In my time, there was a ministry of information. This meant that there was censorship but it was perfectly centralised, as in a closed circuit,” he said. “It was possible to talk, for example, about internal problems, or the scarcity of services for citizens, but without ever mentioning as a cause, or pointing the finger at members of, the Ba’ath Party and, even more so, at the president, Saddam Hussein.

“Nowadays, the censorship business has multiplied. Since the ministries are assigned to different parties and … corruption is a common denominator, responsibility for any type of complaint falls on the journalist – putting him in danger of his life or of losing his job.”

We meet in Baghdad near where they both live. The city has changed massively in recent years and is no longer the warravaged city some people might expect. Instead, old districts such as Mutanabbi Street on the Tigris River – full of bookshops and coffee houses – compete with new commercial areas such as Mansour and Jadriya, with huge shopping centres, cinemas, restaurants and hotels. The al-Jafal family lives in Talbiyah, a neighbourhood of old houses and dirt roads similar to the majority of the suburbs in Baghdad.

Oteil, 31, who has been in journalism since 2004 and currently works at Al Iraqiya TV as an editor in the political section, agrees with his father’s view that things are getting worse. Both men say the past year has been particularly bad. Due to the military conflict with Isis, journalists have found themselves caught between politics and the business interests of the media industry, and have often paid bitterly.

“After the advent of the Islamic State, many satellite channels obliged us to cover the war. [This was] without our having ever received, nor the companies having organised, adequate training for us,” said Oteil.

“Many did not encourage or oblige us to wear essential protection such as helmets and bulletproof vests and, obviously, did not budget for them.”

This situation has resulted in the deaths of dozens of colleagues, photographers and cameramen. “Many of us refused, for example, to go to the frontline,” he said. “And if we refused, the company managers threatened us with dismissal. I myself was subjected to this threat.” So Oteil went to the frontline.

This was commonplace. In October 2014, I trained 50 journalists all over the country for work on the battlefield, distributing a survey as part of this training. All those journalists belonged to the main media from Baghdad, Samarra and Karbala. Most of them were young and male and told me that they were pushed, and at times forced, to go to the battlefield.

At that time, all of them went without body armour or helmets. They didn’t know how much time the assignment would take. Not one of them had any training before this, and no one knew basic first aid. One of my students saw his colleague dying in battle and couldn’t save his life. He didn’t want to go back to the frontline and, for that reason, his career took a step back.

Oteil was fortunate to survive. Others were not, and a name has emerged, “information martyr”, for those journalists who have lost their lives on the battlefield.

“The families of the information martyrs have been treated as less than nothing,” said Oteil. “They do not receive any supplementary monthly salary, nor any aid from the state, nor from the media in which these fathers of families were employed… the politicians and companies in turn use them to cite them when they need to, when selfglorifying their own contribution to this military campaign.”

Iraq currently ranks 160th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders 2018 World Press Freedom Index, down two places from 2017. Journalists are often targeted by gunmen from pro-government militias, as well as militant groups including Isis. The murder of journalists usually goes unpunished, with investigations, if they occur, resulting in little justice.

Of militias, Oteil said: “Every party has its own. If you make a mistake, they stake out your house, they threaten you, they abduct you. One way or another, they make you pay dearly for it.”

So, in order to work in today’s Iraq, is self-censorship becoming essential?

Oteil believes that “in Iraq, currently, one cannot write freely, but rather has to follow the political agenda imposed on the channels’ employees, on pain of dismissal”.

It is almost impossible to avoid propaganda. If you fight against it, you will experience threats and kidnapping. That’s the reason why investigative journalism is very difficult to practise in this country.

Even just getting around poses a risk for journalists, as security permits are difficult to obtain and are essential for reporters going about their business.

“Iraqi streets are full of army and police vehicles and checkpoints: many of our colleagues have been arrested for lack of a card, a stamp, a permit, simply because it is difficult to obtain them,” said Oteil. “Just as it is difficult to obtain access to transparent information from state institutions or to statistics.”

In June the Iraqi authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of journalist Hossam alKaabi for stealing documents. The journalist went into hiding, saying the documents were public and he had been quoting them in an investigation. And all this is happening because “despite the country being formally a democracy, an oligarchic logic prevails and there is a subdivision of power among the parties”, said Oteil. Each of these parties and interest groups tries to use its power for its own propaganda, employing national media channels, alongside its own private channels, social media and advertisements to advance its own cause.

He even questions the role of the journalists’ union now. “It is considerably more concerned with being a showcase for the powerful than a structure capable of defending our rights.”