Category Archives: Blog

A response to the Jerusalem Post

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BEIRUT — A response is in order to the Jeru­asalem Post’s story today, in which Michael Tot­ten is inter­viewed and my name comes up in the arti­cle.
The _Post_ says, “Chris Allbrit­ton, who some­times works for Time Mag­a­zine, briefly men­tioned on his blog dur­ing the war that sev­eral jour­nal­ists he knows were threat­ened by Hizbul­lah because of what they were writ­ing.“
Let’s look at what I “actu­ally wrote”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/07/tales_from_the_south_sort_of.php:

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbol­lah is launch­ing Katyushas, but I’m loathe to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist’s pass­port, and they’ve already has­sled a num­ber of us and threat­ened one.

In a “follow-up post”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php, I expanded on this, as this one com­ment was taken com­pletely the wrong way by many, many right-wing blogs and pub­li­ca­tions (Such as Totten’s and the JPost.)
The begin­ning of my response was this:

Let’s set aside that the Lebanese Inter­nal Secu­rity also has pho­to­copies of our pass­ports. The rea­son for the has­sling and the threat was that a reporter had filmed or described either a launch­ing site or Hezbol­lah posi­tions. (I’m not sure which.) To the best of my knowl­edge, that’s been the extent of the has­sling. I’m going to get in trou­ble for this, but I think it’s a rea­son­able restric­tion. This is the exact same restric­tions placed on jour­nal­ists by the Israeli army and by the Amer­i­cans in Iraq. I don’t think threat­en­ing jour­nal­ists is cool at all, and it cer­tainly doesn’t endear me to them, but that has been the extent of Hezbollah’s inter­fer­ence in our coverage.

You can read the rest of it, and I hope you do, “here”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2006/08/silence.php.

Taking a break

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BEIRUT — Hello every­one. Long time, eh? Sorry for the radio silence, but I really had to step away from the blog for a while. Emo­tion­ally, it was too much to do one’s best to cover the war here fairly while still main­tain­ing a sense of truth, only to be flayed by peo­ple who accuse me of shilling for Hezbol­lah. Kha­las, enough.
One thing I’ve learned from this war is that when it comes to Israeli-Arab rela­tions, most peo­ple don’t want the truth: they want words that con­form to their pre­con­ceived notions. I.e., that Israel is a aggres­sive, colo­nial con­struct with designs on the Litani’s water, or that Hezbol­lah is full of blood­thirsty sav­ages who don’t deserve to live.
Nei­ther or these car­i­ca­tures is, of course, accu­rate. But sub­tlety doesn’t seem to have much place in the blo­gos­phere any­more, where you get the most atten­tion and the most hits by putting out what­ever half-assed opin­ion one can muster. You only have to shout loudly enough and play to what­ever audi­ence you want to get the atten­tion. Blog­ging these days seems to resem­ble bad vaude­ville rather than thought­ful com­men­tary.
I never wanted that from blogs. I had a vision of blogs stand­ing along­side the so-called _mainstream media_ and being the gar­nish of a well-balanced media diet, as I said in a lot of radio inter­views. I never thought of blogs as a replace­ment or actively hos­tile to the Big Guys. Con­sid­er­ing my back­ground, that would be ridicu­lous. I’m a jour­nal­ist. I’m a proud main­stream media jour­nal­ist. My back­ground is with the Asso­ci­ated Press, the New York Daily News and TIME Mag­a­zine. I’m very proud to be asso­ci­ated with such pub­li­ca­tions now and in the past and I’m proud of the work they’ve done, with or with­out my con­tri­bu­tion.
But now, it seems the blo­gos­phere has become more con­cerned with “gotcha” pol­i­tics and “fact check­ing your ass,” mantras by arm­chair photo ana­lysts who have no clue about what hap­pens in a war or how pho­tographs are made and dis­trib­uted. They just want to score points in what seems to be, at best, a debat­ing club rather than real life and death sit­u­a­tions. Con­grat­u­la­tions, your team won. Yay. Peo­ple are still dead, you know. It’s hap­pened in Iraq and it’s hap­pened here, and I don’t really feel like being part of that cul­ture any more.
That said, I’m also proud of the work done on this blog, even in this war, despite some com­men­ta­tors say­ing I know noth­ing of Israel or that I only wrote what my “min­ders” let me. (For the record, there was never any “min­der” from Hezbol­lah that I saw, and cer­tainly not attached to me. Any ret­i­cence I exhib­ited was based on my my own judg­ment of the sit­u­a­tion.)
Which brings up one of the frus­trat­ing things about report­ing here — or any­where in the Mid­dle East, for that mat­ter: know­ing things but being unable to say them openly. Some­things have to be kept back for secu­rity rea­sons or you don’t want peo­ple to know you’ve been to places that would get you in hot water. The Israelis, for exam­ple, don’t much like see­ing a pass­port with a lot of stamps from Arab states in it. They’ll has­sle you. Hezbol­lah, like­wise, prob­a­bly wouldn’t look too kindly on a reporter who’d openly been to Israel.
This was a major obsta­cle in this war for me, but I’d hoped that my rep­u­ta­tion and past record — which has been one of hon­esty, fair­ness and, yes, accu­racy — would have car­ried me through. That was not the case, how­ever, and a bunch of angry pro-Israel read­ers who didn’t know my work accused me of say­ing things that I didn’t know to be true. _This is not accu­rate on their part._ When I say some­thing on this blog, it’s backed up by report­ing. I may not always be able to openly source it — the rules of pro­tect­ing sources or myself don’t change sim­ply because the work is online —  but I know what I’m talk­ing about. Read­ers can accept that or not; I really don’t care any more.
Which is why I took a break. I got tired of defend­ing myself to anklebiters who frankly had no idea what they were talk­ing about. I got tired of going out every day, risk­ing the life of my dri­ver, trans­la­tor and myself, only to be told I can’t do any­thing put par­rot Hezbol­lah pro­pa­ganda. It was insult­ing and it pissed me off. To all you peo­ple who think you could do bet­ter in a war zone, bring it on.
This will be the last entry on B2I Edi­tion du Liban for a while. I’m work­ing on a novel now and I want to focus on that and my other, pro­fes­sional work. I’m also going to focus on rebuild­ing a life here and tak­ing care of the peo­ple I love. Something’s got to give and the blog — or what’s left of it — is it. I have real­ized that life is short.
To every­one who wrote ask­ing if I was OK, thank you for your con­cern. It means a lot. But farewell, for now.

English version of Reconciliation Plan

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BEIRUT — So, any­one have a link to the Eng­lish ver­sion of Maliki’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion plan? I’d like to actu­ally, you know, read it before shoot­ing off from the hip.
But: An amnesty for peo­ple who haven’t done any killing of Iraqis or other “ter­ror­is­tic activ­i­ties” “ter­ror­ist acts” isn’t much of an amnesty at all.
*UPDATE:* Well, thanks to a friend at the Embassy in Bagh­dad, I found a BBC media mon­i­tor “translation/summary of the main points”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/5114932.stm of the plan. It’s exas­per­at­ingly vague:
# Amnesty for detainees not involved in ter­ror­ist acts, war crimes or crimes against human­ity, as long as they con­demn vio­lence and pledge to respect the law. [This seems to exclude quite a lot, but it’s so vague. This might not be so bad, though as it allows plenty of room for, ah, _practicality_ in decid­ing to whom to grant amnesty. — CA]
# Nego­ti­a­tions with the US-led coali­tion to pre­vent the vio­la­tion of human and civil rights in mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.
# Com­pen­sa­tion for those harmed by ter­ror­ism, mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and vio­lence.
# Pre­vent­ing human rights vio­la­tions, reform­ing pris­ons and pun­ish­ing those respon­si­ble for acts of tor­ture.
# Ensur­ing that Iraq’s jus­tice sys­tem is solely respon­si­ble for pun­ish­ing mem­bers of the Sad­dam regime, ter­ror­ists and gangs guilty of killings and kid­nap­pings.
# Ensur­ing that mil­i­tary oper­a­tions take place in accor­dance with judi­cial orders and do not breach human rights.
# Com­pen­sa­tion for civil­ian gov­ern­ment employ­ees who lost their jobs after the fall of the Sad­dam regime.
# Mea­sures to improve pub­lic ser­vices. [Pos­si­bly the most pop­u­lar aspect of the plan for Iraqis — CA]
# Mea­sures to strengthen Iraq’s armed forces so they are ready to take over respon­si­bil­ity for national secu­rity from the multi­na­tional forces.
# Review of the armed forces to ensure they run on “pro­fes­sional and patri­otic” prin­ci­ples. [Mili­tias, he’s lookin’ at you. — CA]
# Ensur­ing the polit­i­cal neu­tral­ity of Iraq’s armed forces and tack­ling Iraq’s mili­tia groups. [Ditto — CA]
# Insis­tence that Iraq’s elected bod­ies, includ­ing the gov­ern­ment and par­lia­ment, are solely respon­si­ble for deci­sions on Iraq’s sov­er­eignty and the pres­ence of multi­na­tional troops.
# Insis­tence that all polit­i­cal groups involved in gov­ern­ment must reject ter­ror­ism and the for­mer Sad­dam regime.
# Return of dis­placed peo­ple to their homes and com­pen­sa­tion for any losses they have suf­fered. [This one’s going to be tricky. The Kurds have been demand­ing a set­tle­ment on Kirkuk for _ages_ and the var­i­ous Shi’ite gov­ern­ments have been drag­ging their feet on this. At the same time, the Kurds have been eject­ing Arabs from Kirkuk and I’ve heard reports of Shi’ites eject­ing Kurds from some neigh­bor­hoods in Baghdad. — CA]
# Improved com­pen­sa­tion for vic­tims of the Sad­dam regime and deprived peo­ple through­out the coun­try.
# For­ma­tion of a National Coun­cil for the Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and National Dia­logue Plan, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the gov­ern­ment and par­lia­ment as well as reli­gious author­i­ties and tribes. [Talk to Nicholas Haysom, former/current head of UNAMI’s con­sti­tu­tional advi­sory board in Bagh­dad. He was instru­men­tal in help­ing write South Africa’s con­sti­tu­tion and devel­op­ing the Truth and Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Com­mis­sion that seemed to work well there. — CA]
# Cre­ation of National Coun­cil sub­com­mit­tees at regional level
# Cre­ation of “field com­mit­tees” to fol­low up on the progress of the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process.
# A series of con­fer­ences of tribal lead­ers, reli­gious schol­ars, polit­i­cal groups and other mem­bers of civil soci­ety will be held to back the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion process. The con­fer­ence of reli­gious schol­ars is expected to issue _fatwas_ sup­port­ing the pol­icy. [Whoa. I know the cler­ics wanted a tight bond between the gov­ern­ment and the mosques, but I don’t think they expected the gov­ern­ment telling them what _fatwas_ to issue. — CA]
# Talks with other Arab and Islamic gov­ern­ments, espe­cially those that sup­port the ter­ror­ists, to inform them about what is hap­pen­ing in Iraq.
# Adop­tion of a “ratio­nal” dis­course by the gov­ern­ment and polit­i­cal par­ties to restore mutual trust and ensure the media are neu­tral. [But not independent? — CA]
# National dia­logue includ­ing all the opin­ions of those involved in the polit­i­cal process.
# Adop­tion of con­sti­tu­tional and legal legit­i­macy in resolv­ing the country’s prob­lems, includ­ing extra-judicial killings.
# Review of the de-Baathification com­mit­tee to ensure it respects the law. [This is long over­due. School­teach­ers who were forced to join the party should not still be pay­ing the price. — CA]
# Co-operation with the United Nations and the Arab League to pur­sue the work of the Cairo Con­fer­ence for National Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.
# Mak­ing it eas­ier for Iraqi cit­i­zens or groups to work on rebuild­ing the coun­try, as long as they have not com­mit­ted any crimes or been banned from the polit­i­cal process.
# Tak­ing a united stand regard­ing the ter­ror­ists and other hos­tile ele­ments. [Well, duh. — CA]
# Start­ing work on a large-scale devel­op­ment cam­paign for the whole coun­try, which will also tackle the prob­lem of unem­ploy­ment.
Well, it cer­tainly doesn’t lack for ambi­tion. I would like to see a bet­ter trans­la­tion before mak­ing any (more) snap judg­ments, though.