How will the world get the real story of the Iraqi elections now that the journalists are being driven out, asks Lara Marlowe
Media coverage of a conflict has rarely presented as great a dilemma as the Iraq war. Since the US-led invasion in March 2003, 54 journalists and media workers have been killed there. Amid daily suicide bombings and gun battles, journalists have become prime targets for kidnappers.
But to abandon hope of providing independent witness to the conflict would seem like betrayal; not only of Iraqis but of ideals of journalistic freedom and the duty to see and relate what is happening.
In trying to decide how to cover the upcoming Iraqi elections, correspondents and their editors are torn between the instinct for self-preservation and the desire to keep faith with their vocation.
The turning point in Iraq was the kidnapping and murder of the Italian journalist, Enzo Baldoni, last August 26th. A group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq said it had beheaded Baldoni because his government had refused to withdraw its troops from the US-led coalition.
Baldoni's killing, the four-month captivity of two French journalists and the disappearance in Baghdad on January 5th of the Libération correspondent, Florence Aubenas, and her "fixer", Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, have forced journalists and editors to reassess the possibilities of covering the Iraqi elections on January 30th.
At present there are no Spanish or Italian journalists working in Iraq, and just one German and three French. Even Arab satellite networks such as al-Arabiya are considering pulling out. The Islamic Army of Iraq kidnappers told former French hostages Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot they would have beheaded them if they'd been American or British.
The foreign ministries of France, Italy and Germany have put intense pressure on editors not to send correspondents. "The risk of kidnapping is very high," says a German diplomat. "We've done everything short of physically preventing them getting on the plane."
Such measures would be unthinkable for the US and British governments, who want positive publicity for what they are doing in Iraq. The Pentagon expects the number of US journalists "embedded" with US forces - currently around 100 - to increase for the elections.
"Embedding" is the most economical way to work in Iraq. (Private security firms charge $5,000 to collect a journalist at Baghdad Airport and convey him or her down the "road of death" - just 15 kilometres - to central Baghdad.) But there is always the implicit threat that an "embedded" journalist will be dumped if he criticises the US military.
Though unlikely to be kidnapped, the "embeds" run the same risks as the units they are with. A small-town newspaper journalist who was "embedded" for the November assault on Falluja was wounded by a grenade and died in a US military hospital in Germany.
"Embeds" travel in US convoys, which are attacked daily. This month, the insurgents began using massive roadside bombs capable of destroying Bradley fighting vehicles, the army's most heavily armoured troop carriers. In north-west Baghdad on January 6th, a roadside bomb killed all seven US soldiers inside a Bradley.
"The insurgents are using incredibly violent tactics, but they are limited to these incredibly violent events," a US colonel told me by way of reassurance.
Nor will "embeds" see much of the elections. US troops are to provide "third tier" security, waiting to be called in the event of trouble. The Pentagon is considering allowing journalists to "disembed" for brief periods to allow them to dart into polling stations, talk to people and run back to their armoured vehicles. Another plan is to ferry journalists by helicopter to the Iraqi electoral commission office.
The extreme violence of recent weeks has seen a rush by US media to the Hotel al Rashid, inside the protected Green Zone where the US, British and Australian embassies and Iraqi government are located.
Tony Blair's government has asked the British foreign office and ministry of defence to "embed" as many British journalists as possible for the elections. They will be based in Basra, but may be flown around the country. British networks were told they would be accompanied by the military to polling stations, on condition that they film only voters - not their armed escorts.
US commanders and the Iraqi government vacillate between admitting that some 40 per cent of Iraqis may not be able to vote because they live in the most violent provinces, and the claim that there are only "pockets" of territory out of control.
"In September, [the interim prime minister] Allawi said that 14 or 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were completely safe," says Patrick Cockburn, a senior correspondent for the Independent who has been covering Iraq since 1978. "All journalists and Iraqis knew it was a lie, but it was impossible to go out and refute it, because you'd get killed."
In the second week of January, Gen Mohamed Abdallah Shahwani, the head of Iraqi intelligence, made the stunning admission that 200,000 Iraqis are providing active support to 40,000 active fighters in the insurgency.
Large areas of Baghdad are "no-go" areas. These include the Sunni districts of Aadhamiya, Amariya and Mansur. Haifa Street, just 500 metres from the Green Zone, is considered the headquarters of the insurgency, and US forces do not go there. On October 30th, the body of Japanese drifter Shosei Koda was found in Haifa Street.
The Mansur Melia Hotel, where I stayed in July, sits at the end of Haifa Street and a few hundred metres from the Green Zone. It is headquarters for Agence France Presse and US network CBS. Florence Aubenas, the French journalist who was kidnapped on January 5th, stayed there.
Foreign staff of AFP, Reuters and AP are not allowed to leave their hotels or fortified villas. Television networks have recruited private armies, often composed of former Iraqi policemen. The BBC uses retired SAS commandos.
At the Hamra Hotel, another media "security zone", NBC has constructed an armoured room in its seventh-floor hideout, and staff are no longer allowed to use the hotel's pool or restaurant. Most non-embedded US media leave their hotels only to travel in armoured cars to press conferences in the Green Zone, or to the airport.
What the security firms dread is a "human wave" attack on a hotel they are guarding. The strategy was used by insurgents at the Al Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia last year, and in an attack on the Iraqi police station on the airport road, in which at least 17 policemen were killed in December.
Western media rely on Iraqi, Egyptian and Lebanese journalists and cameramen to gather news for them. The practice is morally questionable: stringers and fixers are asked to take risks that foreign journalists are no longer willing to take.
Most of the main British and US newspapers keep a correspondent in Baghdad. The latest security fad is a "chase car", hired at a cost of thousands of dollars per week, to follow journalists. Kidnappers usually block a road with a car. In theory, the gunmen in the "chase car" will jump out shooting.
The New York Times's villa in Abu Nawas Street has four watchtowers manned by gunmen wearing T-shirts emblazoned with "NYT". At least one correspondent carries a weapon.
A few brave journalists believe such measures only attract attention, that it is safer to sit in the back seat of an old car, accompanied only by a driver and an interpreter. To avoid notice, women correspondents wear headscarves. Male journalists who "look Arab" wear keffiyehs. Others hold Arabic newspapers in front of their faces. They avoid falling into habitual times and itineraries and stop to interview people for no more than five minutes, so the kidnappers' spotters do not have time to alert their bosses.
Kidnapping has become an industry in Iraq. Close to 100 foreigners and thousands of Iraqis are currently held hostage. One may be betrayed by hotel staff or a treacherous fixer. Patrick Cockburn travels on his Irish passport. "I'm not sure how much good it does," he says. "The great majority of kidnapping is done for commercial reasons."
Amidst this anarchy, Iraq is headed for the world's first virtual elections. Only a handful of the 7,200 candidates allow their names to be used on ballots. "We'll reveal the winners' identity when the results are known," the representative of a small Kurdish party told Florence Aubenas before she was kidnapped. Prime minister Ayad Allawi is the only candidate who allows his face to appear on posters. There have been no election rallies.
Almost all of the Iraqi ministers and their top aides live in Amman, Jordan. In late December, when the Canadian government attempted to recruit international observers for the Iraqi election, they concluded that it was too dangerous to monitor voting. Canada's chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, said his team would run an "assessment mission" rather than an "observer mission", from the safety of Amman. Not unlike the journalists who employ Arab stringers, the "assessors" will rely on news relayed to them by Iraqi monitors.