BAGHDAD — Lately, I’ve been get­ting a lot of email from aspir­ing for­eign cor­re­spon­dents who want to cut their teeth in Bagh­dad. I under­stand the sen­ti­ment, I really do. But at this time, I think it’s an unwise course of action and I’d like to take a lit­tle space to out­line why.
First off, about my sit­u­a­tion for the new­com­ers here: I started this blog in August 2002 after a dash into Iraqi Kur­dis­tan the pre­vi­ous sum­mer. I had a hunch that war was com­ing and I wanted to get some time in, at least where I wouldn’t be hanged if caught in Iraq ille­gally. It was a thrilling time, run­ning around Erbil and Suleimaniya, always wor­ried if those shifty guys in the lobby of the Suleimaniya Palace were Iraqi _mukhabarat_ or Kur­dish _pesh merga_ or both, war­ily eye­ing each other over cheap cof­fee tables and fake flow­ers. I jour­neyed to Hal­abja and found myself enor­mously moved by the plight of the vic­tims of the 1988 chem­i­cal attacks there. I met senior mem­bers of the Barzani and Tal­a­bani clans, all major play­ers on the Iraqi polit­i­cal scene now, and by my ques­tions annoyed the hell out of the cur­rent president’s wife, Hiro Tal­a­bani. (No hard feel­ings, ma’am!)
Next, I did the whole blog-raising thing, chang­ing the par­a­digm for DIY report­ing in a war zone in the process. Who knew? Back-to-Iraq became a phe­nom­e­non and dona­tions even­tu­ally topped more than $11,000 that all went to cover the war in April 2003. It was thrilling and dan­ger­ous — and sur­pris­ingly easy report­ing. I really just wan­dered around, fol­low­ing explo­sions and writ­ing about my day. In the process, I cap­tured a bit of the heart of Iraqi Kur­dis­tan in its strug­gle against Saddam’s regime. I was there when “Kirkuk”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2003/04/heading_south.php was taken back by the Kurds. I was in Tikrit when the last hold­outs melted into the land­scape, leav­ing the field to the Marines and “Arab fighters”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2003/04/inside_saddams.php more inter­ested in defend­ing their homes from Kur­dish loot­ers than shoot­ing wan­der­ing jour­nal­ists. (Some of the great­est hos­pi­tal­ity I’ve been shown in Iraq was at the hands of the Tikri­tis as they stood around two dead _pesh merga_ and offered me pro­tec­tion against the Marines, know­ing full well I was an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist. All they cared about was that I wasn’t Kur­dish.)
Ah, those were the days. Even “Baghdad”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2003/04/clutching_for_a.php imme­di­ately after its fall felt open and watch­ful instead of boarded up and scared as it does today. The Marines and the 3^rd ID walked the streets with­out hel­mets or body armor. They stood in queues wait­ing to buy food, amus­ing Iraqis to no end, for whom queues are a bit of an alien social arrange­ment. They’re more par­tial to crowds.
When I returned for the third time in May 2004, how­ever, things were dif­fer­ent. I had raised money again, this time as seed money for a more tra­di­tional free­lanc­ing career. I fig­ured the dona­tions and my sav­ings would see me through a cou­ple of months. How­ever, TIME Mag­a­zine snapped me up imme­di­ately and I’ve been work­ing with them ever since. So much for the two months I thought it would take to find a steady gig. And it’s a good thing, too, as by May 2004, the sit­u­a­tion had become very bad, with an insur­gency we all thought would not get worse but most assuredly did (and still is.) But even in those days, I remem­ber just hir­ing a cou­ple of guys to drive and trans­late and run around the city at all hours of the day and night. One of my best mem­o­ries was a drunken evening at Dragon Bay, the Chi­nese restau­rant out­side the Green Zone that had a karaoke machine. My col­leagues and I war­bled away until 1 a.m. or so and then made my poor dri­ver — who didn’t much like Chi­nese food — take us home. Along the way, we saw John Simp­son, of the BBC, doing a standup report in the dark­ness of the city. Drunken with cheap red wine and the thrill of the for­bid­den, one of my friends yelled out “John Simp­son sucks!” Sorry, John. Pro­fes­sion­al­ism did not rule the night. Hope the standup went OK.
Such stunts are unimag­in­able now. I don’t know any West­ern col­leagues who go out­side our com­pound at night. Our social life has been reduced to din­ner par­ties and pool par­ties. But the work is what’s even worse. Every day we ven­ture out with eyes peeled for kid­nap­pers (who like soft tar­gets such as jour­nal­ists), IEDs, Amer­i­can patrols and trigger-happy Iraqi troops. The ambi­ent threat has risen far past Con­di­tion Red. the Com­mit­tee to Pro­tect Jour­nal­ist has listed Iraq, for the sec­ond year in a row, as “the most dan­ger­ous place in the world to work as a journalist”:http://cpj.org/attacks04/mideast04/iraq.html. “Sixty–sevennine jour­nal­ists have been killed”:http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/08/28/iraq.journalists.reut/ here since March 2003, accord­ing to Reporters with­out Bor­ders. That’s more than the _20 years_ of the Viet­nam War (1955−1975). Some have been killed by Amer­i­can neg­li­gence and error. Oth­ers were “mur­dered by ter­ror­ist thugs”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2005/08/steven_vincent.php. Five of my friends have been kid­napped, but thank­fully all were released. One kid­napped jour­nal­ist, Italy’s Enzo Bal­doni, was killed. I didn’t know him.
My point is that this is no longer a freelancer’s war. I’m lucky. I have the entire secu­rity appa­ra­tus of TIME Mag­a­zine to back me up. I am pro­tected by guards, have access to cars, the entire secure com­pound, you name it. I have an edi­tor who would miss me if I didn’t show up. (All of the kid­napped jour­nal­ists have been free­lancers who didn’t check in reg­u­larly and peo­ple often didn’t know there were miss­ing at first.)
All of these pro­tec­tions cost money, some­thing most free­lancers are short of. It is sim­ply no longer advis­able to hire a dri­ver and trans­la­tor and go run­ning around the city like I did last sum­mer. I’ve been get­ting a num­ber of emails from young jour­nal­ists ask­ing to do just this, and I tell them not to come and do this unless they have the back­ing of a major media organization’s secu­rity infra­struc­ture. Steve Vin­cent ended up dead because he cow­boyed around Basra — and that’s one of the safe cities, we’re told.
One option, how­ever, is to embed with the U.S., British or other Coali­tion forces. You will be safe, rel­a­tively, and you’ll get to see parts of the coun­try other than Bagh­dad — which is thick with jour­nal­ists any­way. It’s an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, and I’ve found, in my expe­ri­ences, the accu­sa­tions of cen­sor­ship — with one excep­tion — to be grossly exag­ger­ated. If you get a cool com­man­der, he prob­a­bly won’t give you any grief.
(Of course, there are some common-sense and rea­son­able restric­tions: don’t give away troop posi­tions, don’t show the faces of dead sol­diers before their fam­ily has been noti­fied or 48 hours, whichever comes first. Things like that.)
Oh, and for­get about embed­ding with the Iraqi forces. The Min­istries of Inte­rior and Defense don’t allow this and they don’t oper­ate inde­pen­dently of Coali­tion troops any­way. Also, they’re often so poorly trained and pos­si­bly infil­trated you would be in even more dan­ger from the Iraqi troops than from ran­dom, street-level vio­lence in Bagh­dad — which is why the Coali­tion and Iraqi min­istries don’t allow embed­ding solely with Iraqis. A jour­nal­ist killed or betrayed by the troops he’s sup­posed to be embed­ded with is very bad PR.
This is all very frus­trat­ing I’m sure. I can still remem­ber the hus­tle that got me out here, and it pains me to dis­cour­age new peo­ple, but “I’ve already seen one friend die”:http://www.back-to-iraq.com/archives/2005/04/our_heart_and_c.php because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I’m in con­stant fear that it will hap­pen again. All the free­lancers I know, includ­ing me, now have long-term rela­tion­ships that pro­vide us the infra­struc­ture to “work.” And many orga­ni­za­tions seem to be cut­ting back on their cov­er­age and, thus, their hir­ing.
There are plenty of places that need ener­getic, young jour­nal­ists. Dar­fur, south­ern Thai­land, Indone­sia, even Syria (if you can swing the secu­rity appa­ra­tus.) For those with­out expe­ri­ence in extremely dan­ger­ous work con­di­tions, this is no place for on-the-job train­ing.

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