By Iason Athanasiadis

On a typical Baghdad news day, an Arab-English journalist working for an international news network is sent out by his editor to a blast site where a missile has struck a house.

By the time he arrives, US troops are already there, but they are having trouble communicating with the residents. The journalist speaks fluent Arabic, so he begins to translate back and forth between the angry locals and the American major in charge.

Later, as he goes over the incident in his mind, he pin-points the moment when he crossed the near-invisible line between reporting an event and being a part of it.

Soon, the angry crowd presses closer, shoving and heckling him.

"I was mobbed, told that I was a traitor," said the journalist last week in a telephone interview from Baghdad.
"I felt that they were going to kill me because I was translating for an American."

Following that incident, the journalist concluded that "if you work for Western organizations, you're as much, if not more, of a target". He is now back in London after completing two tours of duty in Iraq. He does not expect to return a third time.

Richard Wilde was not as lucky. The 24-year-old freelance cameraman was shot dead on a stiflingly hot day, last summer, in Baghdad. The attack happened in broad daylight in front of the busy National Museum. Wilde had just stepped away from a US-manned roadblock where he had been talking to a soldier.

His death was one of the more poignant recent examples of journalists being killed at a time when international news networks in Iraq have been spending millions of dollars to safeguard their staff.

"It looks like they've really tried to increase guarantees as much as they could during this last war," said Cezarine Sazes, the Middle East desk officer for Reporters Sans Frontieres. "Many journalists were sent to training courses, though the situation is very different depending on the size, resources and nationality of each media outlet."

The wealthier networks have embraced private security in a move that sealed a relationship that had heretofore largely been restricted to training courses outside war zones. With the dangers of asymmetric warfare apparent everywhere in Iraq, private security advisers were hired to accompany journalists, triggering off heated debate in the process. "It's a great time to be a former SAS [Special Air Services] soldier," said Dima Hamdan, a Jordanian journalist working for the BBC's Arabic service, who was recently in Iraq. "But it's only the American networks that have armed security. The British would tell you that it's wrong because the last thing you want is to have a shootout, which could aggravate the situation."

Not only is it wrong, but once media workers are accompanied by armed security advisers (critics call them mercenaries) the profession may be viewed with even greater suspicion by outsiders. The journalists who will be placed under the greatest danger are usually those unsupported freelancers who cannot afford to shell out around $500 a day on armed advisers.

"It's important that the difference between journalists and the military remains very clear," said Sazes. "Having armed guards could muddy the waters between the two different professions in the minds of the [Iraqi] people."

Paul Rees does not agree. The director of Centurion Risk Services revolutionized the field of security for media workers when he introduced the concept of hostile environment training courses which taught journalists the basics of keeping safe in the middle of a riot or a war-zone.

"In Iraq, the Saddam loyalists are not going to give up. Nor will the coalition. Journalists get caught in the middle and they need protection," he told Asia Times Online. "We know media want to be seen as being neutral, it's part of their occupation. I think that they should have armed advisers because they're not working in a typical war, one in which they know who they're fighting against. This is an unforeseen enemy."

Dealing with an invisible enemy does not come cheap. Six months before US tanks rolled across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, CNN summoned its Middle East bureau chiefs for a meeting at its London headquarters and announced it would be spending a million dollars safeguarding its staff.

The recent killing of two CNN employees in an ambush in Baghdad has prompted a review of security measures, amid claims by some Iraq-based journalists that not enough was done to protect the local staff and normal security procedures were not followed.

"They haven't been speaking since the incident, while they've been reviewing safety measures," said Nigel Pritchard, a CNN spokesman in Atlanta. "When we do, we want it to be with one voice."

Although neither CNN nor the BBC discuss their security arrangements, a Canadian journalist who was recently in Baghdad reported that the British organization had just taken delivery of two new armored vehicles, costing over $150,000 each.

"I don't think that the Iraq story is losing prominence," the Canadian journalist said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "A lot of news organizations began realizing a few months ago that Iraq is going to continue to be a major story for at least another year, maybe two. Now everyone's trying to figure out how they're going to be able to maintain coverage, do it safely and somehow manage to afford it."

With expensive private security remaining the only option for news networks that are financially hemorrhaging after a budget-sapping war, cutbacks will occur. "That's inevitable, you'll always get that," said Centurion's Rees. "Cutbacks happened in Iraq in 1991, the Balkans, Bosnia, Macedonia and Afghanistan, where even the government cut back. You've got to cut back somewhere and security may be part of that procedure."

"Armed security can cost thousands of dollars a day to maintain," said the Canadian journalist. "At that price, networks from smaller countries with smaller budgets can't even afford a single guard, and for most of them it's a struggle to even find the money to keep a correspondent in Iraq to cover the story. In the absence of armed protection or an armored vehicle, sometimes it's just too risky to venture very far. And that can really limit your ability to get out and about ... especially outside of Baghdad."

The starkest warning comes from Rohan Jayasekera, the director of British non-governmental agency Index on Censorship's Baghdad operations. He believes that protecting journalists by giving them armed escorts will actually lead to more deaths.

"One day very soon four people are going to get out of a 4x4 marked Press somewhere in the world and a nervous, inexperienced, armed paramilitary is going to make an immediate decision about what to do next on the basis ... that three out of the four will be journalists and the fourth will be a highly trained ex-special forces soldier armed with an automatic weapon. All four will be in civilian clothes. What will he do? Shoot first and ask for accreditation later."

Jayasekera believes that "reporters may be robbed, dumped in the wilderness, arrested, even raped or killed, but as long as it was understood that the Press sign also meant 'unarmed', journalists had time to at least try and talk their way out of trouble."
 
 

Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd.