Gaza Journalists Both Witnesses and Victims of War
A mourner reacts as Palestinians attend the funeral of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, who according to the Arabic broadcaster was killed by an Israeli drone strike on Friday while reporting on the earlier bombing of a school sheltering displaced people but Israel's military did not respond to a request for comment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 16, 2023. (Reuters)
TT
TT
Gaza Journalists Both Witnesses and Victims of War
A mourner reacts as Palestinians attend the funeral of Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa, who according to the Arabic broadcaster was killed by an Israeli drone strike on Friday while reporting on the earlier bombing of a school sheltering displaced people but Israel's military did not respond to a request for comment, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip December 16, 2023. (Reuters)
Journalists in the Gaza Strip are paying a heavy price to cover the war between Israel and Hamas, with scores already killed and injured.
Those surviving face constant danger from the relentless Israeli bombardment of the Palestinian territory, as well as grappling with communications difficulties, concern for their families and shortages of basic goods.
"Our work is to document the war, to let the world know what is happening," Gazan journalist Hind Khoudary told AFP.
But they know it comes at a cost. On Friday, Al Jazeera cameraman Samer Abu Daqqa became the latest fatality -- killed while reporting in southern Gaza.
More journalists have been killed in the Gaza war over such a short period than in any other conflict in at least 30 years, said media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 64 media professionals -- including journalists, photographers, cameramen, technicians and drivers -- have been killed, most in Gaza, since Hamas militants stormed across the border into Israel on October 7.
Each day is "a question of life or death," said Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza.
Some have died in bombardments, at home with their families. Others have died while practicing their profession.
Three journalists were killed in Lebanon amid hostilities with Hezbollah along Israel's northern border, and four Israeli media workers were killed during the Hamas attack on their kibbutz.
According to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures, some 1,140 people were killed in southern Israel that day, and around 250 taken hostage and dragged back to Gaza.
Vowing to wipe out Hamas, Israel has kept up a relentless bombardment of Gaza which has so far killed more than 19,400 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
Forced to flee
Like some 1.9 million Gazans, Khoudary has had to flee south, leaving behind her office and her home -- "a piece of my heart", she said.
She set out first for the Al-Shifa hospital, where thousands sought refuge, then trekked to Rafah on the closed southern border with Egypt. But she has never stopped documenting "the horrors" of the war.
What is happening in Gaza is "the suffocation of journalism," said Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF for the Middle East.
Even before the war erupted, journalists had a tough time in Gaza under the rule of Hamas, which gained control of the territory in 2007.
"Under Hamas, doing journalism has changed significantly from the situation under the Palestinian Authority" which is less restrictive, said Adel Zaanoun, a journalist with AFP for nearly 30 years.
"Hamas usually doesn't object to coverage of Israeli military operations, but completely banned any coverage of its own military activities, including of military posts, weapons and tunnels."
The group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, "has also banned any coverage of corruption in their government", and its "security forces do not condone any criticism on social media".
Since the fighting began, Rami Abu Jamus, a journalist and fixer for numerous French outlets, has been documenting life in Gaza -- "a duty" he calls it.
Losing loved ones
In between videos of bodies and pleas from the wounded, there are others when he plays with his daughter coaxing a smile from her.
Followed by more than 17 million people, photojournalist Azaiza also captures in his pictures and livestreams the distress of the displaced, as well as his own "despair".
Both witness and participant, he has also pulled bodies from the rubble or transported injured children to hospital.
All of the journalists AFP interviewed -- including two working with the agency -- have buried a loved one, relative or friend since the start of the war.
Sometimes tragedy strikes at work. While live on camera, Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh learned of the death of his wife and two children in an Israeli strike.
"My greatest fear was never doing my job, but rather losing my loved ones," he told AFP.
On Friday, Dahdouh was also wounded in the arm during the same strike that killed cameraman Abu Daqqa.
During the war Palestinian journalists "have experienced a life of displacement, homelessness, and forced relocation," Dahdouh added.
'Open the doors'
Since the war began, RSF has decried the "inability of Israel to protect the reporters on the ground, who have no safe refuge".
And while everyone in Gaza is suffering from a lack of fuel, food and water, journalists are in desperate need of electricity to charge phones, cameras and computers.
The grid is often down, and communications frequently cut.
"In cutting off the internet, the Israeli authorities are preventing journalists from working. It's a blow to the right to information," said RSF's Dagher.
Journalists have had to resort to ingenious methods to keep working - filing from rooftops to capture a signal amid frequent telecommunications blackouts.
RSF has urged authorities to "open the doors" of the Rafah border crossing, controlled by Egypt, so "journalists can finally come and go on either side of the border".
After 73 days of war, AFP's Zaanoun is exhausted. His only wish is to "get my family to safety".
A Saddam Hussein mural is seen in Baghdad in 1991. (Getty Images)
People in Iraq often wonder dejectedly: What if Saddam Hussein were alive and ruling the country today? Many will reply with fantastical answers, but Saddam’s era would have responded: Iraq is isolated, either by siege or by a war that he launched or was being waged against him.
Many people cast doubt on whether actual change has been achieved in Iraq since the US invasion in 2003. The invasion ousted the Baath version of Iraq and Saddam was executed in December 2006, leaving questions to pile up over the years with no one having any answers.
After a quarter century, Iraq is accumulating questions. It casts them aside and forges ahead without addressing them. At best, it reviews itself and returns to that moment in April 2003 when the US launched its invasion. Or it asks new questions about the 2005 civil war, the armed alternatives that emerged in 2007, how ISIS swept through the country in 2014, or the wave of protests that erupted in 2019. It also asks new questions about Iran’s influence in the country that has persisted for decades.
The questions are many and none of the Iraqis have answered them.
A US marine wraps the American flag around the head of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad. (Reuters file)
Saddam and the alternative
The September 11, 2001, attacks shook the United States and the entire world. They struck fear in Baghdad. Saddam had that year claimed that he had written a book, “The Fortified Castle”, about an Iraqi soldier who is captured by Iran. He manages to escape and return to Iraq to “fortify the castle”.
The terrifying Saddam and the terrified Iraqis have long spun tales about escaping to and from Iraq. It is a journey between the question and the non-answers. That year, when Baghdad was accused of being complicit in the 9/11 attacks, Saddam’s son Uday was “elected” member of the Baath party’s leadership council. The move sparked debate about possible change in Iraq. Bashar al-Assad had a year earlier inherited the presidency of Syria and its Baath party from his father Hafez.
The US invaded Iraq two years later and a new Iraq was born. Twenty-five years later, the country is still not fully grown up. Twenty-one years ago, on April 9, 2003, a US marine wrapped the head of a Saddam statue in Baghdad with an American flag. The Iraqis asked: why didn’t you leave us this iconic image, but instead of an American flag, used an Iraqi one?
Baghdad’s question and Washington’s answer
As the Iraqis observe the developments unfold in Syris with the ouster of Bashar from power, they can’t help but ask how this rapid “change” could have been possible without US tanks and weapons. Why are the Syrians insisting on celebrating “freedom” every day? They are also astonished at the Syrians who scramble to greet Abu Mohammed al-Golani, who has not yet managed to put this image behind him and fully assume his original identity of Ahmed al-Sharaa. The Iraqis wonder how the Syrians are managing this transition so far without a bloodbath.
They ask these questions because the Iraqis view and judge the world based on their own memories. They keep asking questions and await answers from others instead of themselves.
The Iraqis recall how in August 2003, after four months of US occupation, that the Jordanian embassy and United Nations offices were attacked, leaving several staff dead, including head of the UN mission Sergio de Mello. The Americans arrested Ali Hassan al-Majid, or “chemical Ali”, Saddam’s cousin, and 125 people were killed in a bombing in al-Najaf, including Shiite cleric Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim.
During that bloody month, the Iraqis asked questions about security, forgetting about Saddam’s alternative, democracy and the promised western model. Later, the facts would answer that the question of security was a means to escape questions about transitional justice.
Sergio de Mello (r) and Paul Bremmer (second right) attend the inaugural meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council in Baghdad on July 13, 2003. (Getty Images)
The question of civil war
Paul Bremer, the American ruler of Iraq, once escorted four opposition figures to Saddam’s prison cell. They flooded him with questions. Adnan al-Pachachi, a veteran diplomat, asked: “Why did you invade Kuwait?” Adel Abdul Mahdi, a former prime minister, asked: “Why did you kill the Kurds in the Anfal massacre?” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a former national security adviser, asked: “Why did you kill your Baath comrades?” Ahmed al-Halabi simply insulted the former president. Saddam recoiled and then just smiled.
Saddam’s opponents left the prison cell with answers that should have helped them in running the transitional justice administration, but they failed.
The following year, Washington appointed Ayad Allawi to head the interim Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) that had limited jurisdiction so that it could be free to wage two fierce battles: one in Najaf against the “Mahdi Army”, headed by Moqtada al-Sadr, and the other against armed groups comprised of “resistance fighters” and “extremists” in Fallujah.
The opposition in the IGC got to work that was already prepared by the Americans. They outlined the distribution of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds in the country, with historic questions about the majority and minority, and the “oppressed” now assuming rule after the ouster of the “oppressors”.
On the ground, the Ghazaliya neighborhood in western Baghdad with its Shiite and Sunni residents was in store for a bloodbath. On a winter night in 2005, an entire family was massacred and an enfant strangled to death. Soon after, lines drawing the Shiite and Sunni sections of the neighborhood emerged. The popular market became the tense border between the two halves. Two new rival “enemies” traded attacks, claiming several lives.
In Baghdad’s Green Zone, the IGC drew up a draft of the transitional rule. In January 2005, 8 million Iraqis voted for the establishment of a National Assembly.
Meanwhile, different “armies” kept on emerging in Baghdad. The media was filled with the death tolls of bloody relentless sectarian attacks. Checkpoints manned by masked gunmen popped up across the capital.
Those days seemed to answer the question of “who was the alternative to Saddam.” No one needed a concrete answer because the developments spoke for themselves.
Nouri al-Maliki came to power as prime minister in 2006. He famously declared: “I am the state of law” - in both the figurative and literal sense. Iraqis believed he had answers about the “state” and “law”, dismissing the very pointed “I” in his “manifesto”.
Nouri al-Maliki. (Getty Images)
The Maliki question
The American admired Maliki. Then Vice President Dick Cheney had repeatedly declared that he was committed to the establishment of a stable Iraq. Before that however, he had dispatched James Steele - who was once complicit in running dirty wars in El Salvador in the mid-1980s - to Baghdad to confront the “Sunni rebellion”. Steele set up the Shiite “death squads”. Steele was the man in the shadows behind Ahmed Kazim, then interior minister undersecretary, and behind him stood the new warlords.
In 2006, the political process was shaken by the bombing of the Al-Askari Shrine in Samarra. Questions were asked about the “need” to draw up new maps. Shiite high authority Ali al-Sistani said in February 2007 that the Sunnis were not involved in the attack. In July 2013, Maliki denied an American accusation that Tehran was behind it.
In those days, Maliki’s ego was growing ever bigger, and Steele’s death squads were rapidly growing greater in numbers.
The Iran and ISIS questions
Maliki tried to save himself as one city after another fell into the hands of ISIS. On June 9, 2014, as ISIS was waging battles in Mosul, Maliki met with senior Sunni tribal elders based on advice he had not heeded earlier and which could have averted the current disaster.
It was said that he made reluctant pledges to them and a third of Iraq later fell in ISIS’ hands. Sistani later issued a fatwa for “jihad” against the group, which later turned out not be aimed at saving the premier.
Maliki left the scene and Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) Quds Force, took over. Successive prime ministers would know from then on what it is like to be shackled by Tehran’s pressure as IRGC officials made regular visits to their offices.
Soleimani reaped what Steele sowed. By 2017, armed factions were the dominant force in Iraq. Running in their orbit were other factions that took turns in “rebelling” against the government or agreeing with its choices.
Today, and after 14 years, Iran has consolidated what can be described as the “resistance playground” in Iraq that is teeming with armed factions and massive budgets.
Protesters in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square in October 2019. (AFP)
The October question
The Iraqis were unable to answer the ISIS question and the armed factions claimed “victory” against the group. Many ignored Sistani’s “answer” about whether the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) was there to protect Iraq or just its Shiites.
Exhausted Iraqis asked: “What next?”
Next came Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government in October 2018. It was weighed down by unanswered questions and a year later, thousands of youths took to the streets to protest the state of affairs in Iraq, specifically the dominance of armed groups.
They were met with live bullets. Many were abducted and others were silenced. Abdul Mehdi acquitted the killers, saying instead that a “fifth column” had carried out the bloody crackdown on protesters.
After he left office, some Iraqi politicians were brave enough to tell the truth, dismissing former PM’s acquittal and pinning blame on the factions.
Sistani called for PMF members to quit their partisan affiliations. His demand was left unheeded. Mustafa al-Qadhimi became prime minister in May 2020. He left office months later, also failing in resolving the issue of the PMF and armed factions.
By 2022, everyone had left the scene, but Iran remained, claiming the Iraqi crown for itself, controlling everything from its finances to its weapons.
Question about post-Assad Syria
On December 8, Syria’s Bashar fled the country. Everyone in Iraq is asking what happens next. The whole system in Iraq is at a loss: Do we wait for how Tehran will deal with Ahmed al-Sharaa, or do we ask Abu Mohammed al-Golani about his memories in Iraq?
The Iraqi people’s memories are what’s ruling the country, more so than the constitution, political parties and civil society because they are burdened with questions they don’t want to answer.
And yet they ask: What if we weren’t part of the “Axis of Resistance”? Iraq’s history would reply that it has long been part of axes, or either awaiting a war or taking part in them.
