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Unembedded

Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq

by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson, Rita Leistner

Foreword by Philip Jones Griffiths

Interview

CBC Interview with Rita Leistner

Download a video clip of Rita Leistner talking about her capture in Iraq and the women she met in Baghdad's Rashad Psychiatric Hospital. Go to the CBC Web site and click on the video link with the description "Rita Leistner talks about her capture in Iraq."

In Focus

The struggle to remain unbiased leads to unembedded decisions

The Hague Amsterdam Times
By Kim Chandler
Friday 2 December 2005

Unembedded: Four Independent Photo-journalists on the War In Iraq is a stunning new photo/essay book produced by photo journalists Ghaith Ahdul-Ahad, Kael Alford, Thorne Anderson and Rita Leistner. Prior to his second sold out authors talk, this newspaper had the opportunity for a Q & A session with one of the photographers, American, Thorne Anderson.

Over the past two to three years, there has been no way to avoid news about Iraq; and nor should there have been. However, 'what kind of news' is a different question. In print media, was it this newspaper, The Independent (UK) The New York Times? It makes a difference, even Judith Miller knows that. Did the information come from televised news; was it from the BBC, CNN or Fox News? Or, perhaps the information came from the internet; was that a ‘mainline’ news or blogger site? The output of each is quite different. However, the input of news from reporters in the field can be different too. In particular, in Iraq. there are differences between the 'embedded' and 'unembedded' journalist. An 'embedded' journalist is assigned to travel with a particular military unit during an armed conflict. Thorne Anderson was unembedded, spending time with the Medhi army during the siege of Najaf for instance, and it made a difference. "I work for everyone, Times, News Week, The Guardian; I'm one of the freest freelancers I know. It helps me maintain some level of freedom."

How did an American journalist end up in Amsterdam?

I had been living in the Balkans covering Bosnia. Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo and Bulgaria for 7 years. I like living in Europe but I was looking forward to living somewhere with high speed internet and a slightly more comfortable life. I had some Dutch journalist friends that I'd known from the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq and my sister was working in Maastricht at the time so the move seemed logical.

Did you have a stance on the war before it began and do you have a stance on it now?

I'm very willing to engage in political dialogue, but I don't consider myself partisan in any way. American foreign policy in Iraq has been incredibly destructive since the 1980’s. Is that a political statement or is it just an observation? It seems pretty clear to me, but I don't have any domestic political goals. It seemed very clear the US was going to go to war and I personally thought it would be a bad idea. I'm a journalist, I've seen this kind of thing happen before and I have an idea about what war looks like. I don't think that was communicated very well to the average American. Words like surgical strike sound so sanitary, safe and helpful. I know that its not like that because I've seen the affects of bombing campaigns and of removing a government from power. It seemed to me that it was one of the worst case scenarios for solving the problem in Iraq as it is.

As a war correspondent, are you a war/adrenaline junkie?

I don't know many people who do the work that I do that like the term, war correspondent. From an outsiders point of view that's what I do, but for me, my work is not all about war. I think you can see from the book that it's an example of this. It's really about what life is like at the Frontiers of American foreign policy. Unfortunately that means it's a war book in today's time, but really I try to report on the human condition, I'm not so interested in just following the heat of battle, in fact I really hate it. I'm not sure what it means to be an adrenaline junkie. I get in very tense situations where I'm been flooded with adrenaline. It can be very dangerous under gun-fire. I've been attacked by crowds of angry people. There's a lot of times when you're facing flight or fight. I don't like it, I actually hate it, I prefer to be calm and collected and observe what's going on around me. When I hear people talk about American Foreign policy in easy and highly sanitised terms, I feel privileged to have a perspective that allows me to cut through that bullshit.

Some of the photos in the book are quite harrowing and certainly your essay explains some of the drama of the situation. Have you had or will you get counselling to deal with whatever emotions you have to deal with?

If I could afford counselling I would. But I have a lot of good friends here in Amsterdam who do a similar kind of work that I do. They understand me quite well and we do a lot of journalist to journalist counseling - we have a lot of dinners together. I can really talk about things the way I don't talk about them with my family for example, because 'regular' people don't want to know all the details. With my journalist friends l can just tell them what happened. They’re not shocked by it, they understand and they can help me process it.

Why did you initially decide to go to Iraq?

On September 11th I was in the middle of filing a small story for Time, which would have run in their style section about the fashion of the Albanian rebels, when I turned on the TV. I just closed the computer knowing they wouldn't be running Style Watch that week. I knew that at some point in the near future the US was going to confront Iraq. Some of the most aggressive elements in US foreign policy were given voice on that very day. Paul Wolfowitz, for example, within hours of the attack, was already advocating an invasion of Iraq. First I had to cover the news so I went to Afghanistan for five or six months, but I'd been reading about the sanction regime in Iraq and it was one of those stories bubbling in the back of my mind. I initially went to Iraq in Oct 2002 to do a story on sanctions knowing there was also a potential for war. Some of the photographs in the book are from that trip. Then I left and published a small booklet about the sanctions, through Voices in Wilderness where I looked at life in Iraq under the sanctions and discussed the bombing that was already going, all these things that weren't being discussed. Unembedded had the same motivation - press coverage in the US. I went back just before the bombings started, calculating that the war would begin soon and I wanted to be there to cover the war from Baghdad. It had become clear there was a lot of pressure for journalists to leave Iraq, so it was already clear that that side of the war was going to be largely under-covered. I think there were 800 journalists that were embedded with the US army and fewer than 100 in Baghdad itself.

What is your opinion of your colleagues who were either embedded or did not ask the right or tough questions?

I'm really happy that the Embed Program exists, I want it to continue and I think many of the journalists who are embedded do great work and they try as hard as possible to provide context to the stories that they report from their embedded position. However, if you look at American media coverage of Iraq, and the rest of the world, it's heavily skewed, in that much of the information they get is from official sources. Not just from embedded journalists but from the White House, the Defense Department and the State Department. The embedded reporters are over represented, its not that they're bad reporters it's just that their perspective from that position is very limited, in that they can only see from the perspective of the American soldiers. My experience in Iraq is so much larger than that.

Was it your choice to be unembedded?

I did have a brief embed, but I was really frustrated. It was very difficult to make real contact with Iraqi people, and feel what Iraq feels like from an Iraqi perspective. I think it's a perspective that is under represented and there aren't so many journalists that are willing to do it. I was willing to do it, I felt like I had the contacts because of my previous experience in Iraq from before the war and I had motivation because I felt that that perspective was under reported. I didn't have any choice; I felt that if I was going to work in Iraq I had to work in that way.

How did you gain the trust of the young Medhi warriors?

I'm not the only journalist whose worked with them, most made contact at the same time and we shared these contacts. My personal contact is a man I write about in my essay in this book, Haider. I knew him before he joined the Medhi army, before the army even existed. We weren't friends, we were just acquaintances, but we had a couple of experiences where we developed a trust.

Why did Haider initially decide to protect and guide you?

When he joined the Medhi army we had some conversations about why he did it and I also, from a strictly utilitarian point of view as a journalist, saw this as a point of access. This was a way I could get in there and see who these people really are, how they function and why it is they fight against the Americans, even 'how' they fight against them. He was the one who represented me to the Medhi army and vouched for me.

Why didn't Haider tell anyone that you were American?

Iraq has been cut off from the outside world for so long, largely due to the sanctions that preceded the war. There is a segment of Iraqi society that is very well educated and cosmopolitan. They've traveled, they've been educated abroad, mostly in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, before the sanctions period so. However in the Medhi army in particular, which is made up of young, poor, fairly poorly educated men they're not very cosmopolitan. They don't really realize the difference between an American spy and an American journalist. My con- tact understood, so he didn't have a problem, but he also understood that many of the fighters we were going to meet couldn't make that distinction. So, with many of the low level fighters he would not tell them I was an American. I tried not to lie to anyone, when someone asked me where I'm from I'd say I live in Amsterdam and hope that's where the questioning stopped. At one point in your essay, you mention that Haider admired Oprah Winfrey, did you find that odd? It was very surreal, once he made me be quiet when Oprah was on. The thing is, he's from Sadr city, he's poor and has felt discriminated against his whole life. He explained to me, in a round about way, that Oprah was like the Shia of Sadr city. She was of the underclass, but had somehow broken through the system and achieved success. That was his dream as well.

What eventually happened to Haider and his family?

I know that Haider survived through the Shia uprising of 2004, which was a period of very heavy violence. He had decided that he was willing to move out of his role as a communications officer into more of a front line fighting position. Just because of the passion that he had developed and his anger towards what he perceived as an illegitimate occupation. However, he indicated to me that he would not strap himself with a bomb and blow himself up in a crowded market place. That's a tactic that he finds abhorrent, he doesn't believe in the killing of civilians to achieve political aims. What he meant was that from that point forward he was willing to throw himself fully into the battle with, at that time, the Americans. I hope that he is safe and losing his family, but his mobile phone was taken, making it impossible for me to contact him at this point.

What do you understand the concept of 'Jihad' to be?

I have a more nuanced perspective of Jihad than most of an American audience would have. By that I don't mean that I'm condoning it, I don't condone any sort of violence to achieve political aims. What I have is a cultural understanding of what that word means. When Muslims use the word Jihad, to American ears it sounds like terrorism or holy war, those things are equated together; but, they're only two interpretations of the word. I know from my conversations with linguists and Muslims who use the term a lot that Jihad just means a righteous struggle. In fact many Muslims will tell you that Jihad should exclude the use of violence. There are many types of Jihad. Haider and I could come together to discuss the violence and other ways to wage a righteous struggle, which is something I think most Americans would find admirable. In themselves they can also find the value of a righteous struggle, even if they disagree as to what the particulars of a righteous struggle are.

Is the struggle worth it?

I'm only concerned about the state of anarchy that is the legacy of this invasion. Iraq is in an incredibly violent struggle, not only with the United States and British forces and with some other forces of the coalition, as President Bush calls it - the coalition of the willing. They're also in a struggle between themselves, this has turned out to be one of the most violent and deadly aspects of the anarchy which followed the bombing. The people in Iraq don't have freedom of speech now. It’s not a free place, regardless of what some people would like to say for rhetorical purposes. You might say, rhetorically, that Iraqi women have rights enshrined in the constitution, and to an extent that may be true, but in actual fact the ability for a woman to leave her home and walk the streets is much diminished from the time before this invasion. We’ve seen a large increase in religious fundamentalism in Iraq, but for a society in the midst of anarchy this was predictable, which carries with it all kinds of implications for women and men. Iraq, from my perspective, is already in a state of civil war. It is being reported if you know where to look. Hannah Allam and Nancy Youssef from Knight Ridder have done some excellent reporting. Anthony Shadid, while he was still in Iraq for the Washington Post has done some reporting on this issue, as has Minka Nihouse who writes for Trouw in the Netherlands. Iraq is not slipping into civil war, it already is in a civil war. We have neighborhoods that are attacking and protecting against each other strictly along sectarian lines. We have what we saw in Bosnia in the 80’s. Sunnis and Shiites, while they can, are swapping areas so they can move from minority areas to their majority groups. The lines are being drawn ethnically in the early stages of the civil war. I don't think that the solution to that war is going to be provided by American forces being there. I think the solution really lies in the tribal connections which predate American involvement, the Ba'ath party and British involvement in Iraq. It will be solved but, unfortunately, it’s going to take many years. It’s unfortunate that they’re in this position of conflict in the first place.

You spent 10 months in Iraq, will you go back?

It's been very difficult for me personally, financially and in my relationships with the people around me. At the same time I had no choice and I had to do it. Possibly this book will be the punctuation of that period for me maybe now I can move on to do something else. Although every time I say that I see more news from Iraq and I feel again that responsibility to return, especially as more and more journalists are leaving. The book has provided an opportunity to make contact with people. It's a conduit through which I can speak at Universities and Community Centres. For instance, I spoke at my niece's high school and I appreciate, for now, being able to talk about something that's been such a big part of my life for three years. In December, January and February I'll be moving around the states with an exhibition of photography.

You mention in the book that you received a death threat from an American reader who felt you shouldn't have taken these pictures. How did you react?

I was quite shocked by it, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of what the role of a journalist is in a conflict situation. Our responsibility is to report as much as possible from as many different perspectives as possible. In this particular instance, it was a perspective and a view point that was highly under represented. The Prime Minister of Iraq had actually ordered all journalists out of the entire province of Najaf so that no journalist would see what was happening there. I should think that anyone who's really interested in what's happening would be interested in having that point of view represented.

Yet the U.S. administration has repeatedly stated that, using Vietnam as an example, the media can be responsible for winning or losing a war?

The US lost the war in Vietnam because there were hundreds of thousands of people willing to sacrifice their lives to fight and push the Americans out of Vietnam. Certainly the media has some influence, on a day to day to day level, on how opinions and policies shift but that's a relatively minor affect compared to having hundreds of thousands of people who want to kick what they perceive as a colonial power out of a country they feel is their own, ancestral land. Sure Judith Miller and The New York Times gave a platform for some of the most outrageous and incorrect claims about Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction. Still, the fundamental policy and the drive to go to war didn't come from The New York Times, it came from the American Government.