The scene is one that Nancy Youssef, former bureau chief in McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau, remembers well. Even the strange juxtaposition of these activities was a momentary break for Awsy, a shot at retaining a semblance of a life untouched by war and destruction. When she wasn’t reporting, Awsy’s energy was focused on day-to-day survival for herself and her family. But her daily life – like the lives of the other Iraqi reporters – was never normal.
Awsy had been a reporter in the most dangerous country for journalists in the world. Just the fact that she was an Iraqi journalist made her nearly three times more likely to be killed while reporting on the war in Iraq. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, more than 100 journalists have been killed since the war began there in 2003. Approximately 80 percent of those killed were Iraqi journalists. But even under extreme threats from car bombs, road-side explosions, death threats to themselves and their families, Awsy and five female colleagues from McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau – Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed and Sahar Issa – have all felt a responsibility to share the story of Iraq, even as it dissolves around them. They are being honored collectively with a 2007 IWMF Courage in Journalism Award.
They have seen family members and friends killed. They have reported on the aftermath of bombs and explosions while at the same time mourning those killed in the blasts. They have been forced to uproot their lives; the majority of them no longer work as journalists in Iraq.
Still, they say that the experience has forged a bond among them. “Sectarian tensions didn’t bleed into the bureau,” Youssef said. Instead, the women of McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau quickly formed a second family, turning war reporting into an unlikely bonding experience.
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Each night in their homes, reporters from McClatchy’s Baghdad bureau sleep with bullet-proof vests and helmets beside their beds. And from the minute they walk out their doors, they are in danger.
So, they take different routes to work every day. They try to keep secret the fact that they are employed as journalists for a Western news organization, which is difficult to do in Baghdad. They constantly have their eyes and ears open, hoping to avoid potential bomb blasts. They’ve been trained to minimize bodily harm from explosions when – not if – they occur.
Despite their vigilance, all of the Iraqi women reporters and their American former bureau chief, Youssef, received threats over the phone. They’ve also been followed and have received letters containing bullets – a promise of more deadly confrontation – on their doorsteps.
Even the best precautions against violence are sometimes futile. Zaineb Obeid, for instance, was nearly killed when a bomb-laden vehicle detonated near her while she was on her way to work. She was thrown into the air and temporarily lost her hearing, but she returned to work only days later, driven to continue reporting on the war.
And in 2004, insurgents gunned down Ban Adil Sarhan’s husband, daughter and mother-in-law in an attack believed to be related to Sarhan’s job at McClatchy. After the murders, Sarhan’s life and that of her son were in danger, so she was forced to leave Baghdad. She was granted political asylum in the United States and has resettled in Oklahoma.
But the women’s shared passion for seeing and telling stories remained intact, Youssef said.
“They are the eyes and ears in their country,” she said, noting that because Iraq is largely closed to foreigners, Iraqi reporters are able to go places and gain insights to which other journalists don’t have access.
For example, in talking to other pregnant Iraqis and while planning her own C-section, Shatha al Awsy wrote about the increase of this procedure in Baghdad because it is too dangerous to make unplanned trips to and from hospitals.
Stories like al Awsy’s C-section piece get at the larger story of the war, said Youssef. News consumers, she feels, have become inundated with body counts and bombings and are growing “numb to numbers.” The mission of the McClatchy women, then, was to get at central themes and consequences of the conflict. To do so, they focused on the lives of ordinary people caught in the conflict. For example, Obeid wrote a story about how Iraqis have started to get tattoos so that it will be easier for families to identify their bodies if they’re killed.
The women also offer their personal insights about daily life in Iraq for the blog on McClatchy’s website, http://washingtonbureau.typepad.com/iraq. In one post, Sahar Issa wrote about her mother’s garden being destroyed in the war.
“I couldn’t tell her that the adjoining kindergarten with its beautiful playground was converted into a centre for investigating car bombs,” she wrote, “and that not a single plant remained alive on the grounds, apart from the hardy cacti and date palms, and that no sound of laughter was to be heard there any more.”
Issa, too, writes from deep personal loss. Her eldest son was shot and killed in a crossfire in late 2005. “It brought the war home to me,” she said in a June interview on the National Public Radio affiliate station in Seattle, Washington.
Issa has also faced the gruesome task of claiming the body of her nephew at the morgue after he was killed in a market bombing. She found his body in two pieces.
Still, as the only remaining Courage Award recipient still working in Iraq, Issa tries to navigate and report on Iraq as best she can.
“I have to be strong,” she said in the NPR interview, referring to keeping herself and her family safe while she’s reporting. “I have to be.”
Former McClatchy staffer Huda Ahmed also knows what it means to stay strong and keep calm in stressful situations. For instance, Youssef said, she compiled eyewitness accounts of a bombing in Musayyib even before allowing herself to grieve.
Ahmed, who was the 2006-2007 IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow, was also known for her tremendous fervor in covering the battle in Najaf in 2004.
“She’s not afraid to run right into the middle of a firefight,” said Youssef, citing Ahmed’s intelligence, persistence and aggressive pursuit of news. Ahmed, like others in the McClatchy bureau often slept in her office to help cover late-breaking news after curfew.
Being close to the other staffers – male and female – helped Ahmed cope with the stress and the sheer atrocity of war. “The bond was so strong,” she said, adding that the reporters helped each other out, supporting one another in their personal and professional lives.
The camaraderie among the staffers transcended the competitive nature of other newsrooms she’s seen, Youssef said. Though the women received some on-the-job training from visiting correspondents, most of their reporting grew from instinct and from relying on one another in learning the job. They developed their own areas of specialty and shared sources and resources.
Alaa Majeed, for instance, covered government; she quickly demonstrated a particular aptitude for understanding politics, Youssef said.
“She had no qualms about getting in the government’s face and asking tough questions.”
Majeed embraced journalism as a means to help her country, Youssef said. Because it allowed her to have a voice, journalism acted as “an avenue for her to be an independent woman.”
Youssef wanted to make sure the women’s voices came through in their stories. Being able to write about what’s happening in their country is powerful, and each of the women felt an obligation to do so, said Leila Fadel, current Baghdad bureau chief for McClatchy. [McClatchy has had three Arab-American women bureau chiefs: Fadel, Youssef and Hannah Allam, now McClatchy’s Cairo bureau chief.]
“The story's too important not to tell it,” Fadel said in the NPR interview in June.
And in telling the story, the Iraqi women journalists of McClatchy’s bureau define courage every day.
“They are the barometer of what’s happening in their country,” said Nancy Youssef. “They’re the conduit to the country.” They are telling stories that only they can tell, and they’re positioned to be the nucleus of coverage of the war.
Youssef hopes the IWMF Courage in Journalism Award will help acknowledge to the world the importance of their work.