Iraqi journalist sees threats to press freedom

Image by Walter Parenteau via Flickr

By Ernesto Londoño
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, February 26, 2010; A12

Before the U.S.-led invasion, billed as the liberation of Iraqis, newspaper journalist Nadjha Khadum was as close to a trailblazer in her field as the era permitted.

During the 1980s war between Iraq and Iran, she was embedded with the Iraqi army and filed dispatches from the front lines. Her 1991 exposé of corruption at the Iraqi tax agency led to a minister's dismissal.

Her latest venture -- launching an independent online news site -- offers a snapshot of the present travails of Iraqis who yearned for basic freedoms during years of dictatorship. As Operation Iraqi Freedom draws to a close, Khadum is finding that the brand of freedom the United States ushered in is at best tenuous, at worst a temporary illusion.

Iraq has been the world's deadliest country for journalists since the war began in 2003. At least 140 have been killed, many of them targeted by militia and insurgent groups, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Although freedom of the press is guaranteed in Iraq's 2005 constitution, lawmakers have not passed legislation to enforce it. Government officials and private citizens have increasingly resorted to litigation to muffle critical reporting. And a commission that reports to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently unveiled guidelines that Iraqi journalists and press freedom advocates call authoritarian.

"This can be described as disastrous," Khadum said, referring to the new rules. "We are now waiting and watching to see who is going to become the first prey."

New guidelines

Before the war, Khadum said, journalists could publish some tough stories if they had evidence. "At that time, nobody would kill someone else over a story without getting caught by the government," she said.

Image by Knight Foundation via Flickr

Last fall, one of Khadum's best friends, journalist Imad Abadi, barely survived an assassination attempt.

"This was an attempt to keep our mouths shut and to derail journalists from their real task," said Abadi, who was shot in the head after publishing stories about government corruption.

In recent years, as political competition intensified, litigation against journalists has also increased, according to Ziad al-Ajili, head of the Iraqi Journalistic Freedoms Observatory. At least 200 such lawsuits have been filed over the past two years, Ajili said, adding, "There is no freedom."

The guidelines that Iraq's Communications and Media Commission issued last month bar journalists from withholding the names of sources and threaten action against those who publish information that incites violence -- a criterion that is ill-defined. The rules also say news organizations must apply for licenses, register equipment with the commission and provide a list of employees.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called the guidelines "an alarming return to authoritarianism."

A commission spokesman, Majed Tofan, said the rules are not an attempt to stifle journalists, but rather a mechanism to regulate an industry that operates in a legal vacuum.

"The situation in the country is still unstable," he said. "There are those in the media who incite violence and promote terrorism."

Pulling punches again

Khadum was one of the few female journalists to cover the war between Iraq and Iran during the 1980s. After the war, she was tapped for high-profile assignments at her newspaper. Male colleagues referred to her affectionately as "one of the guys."

She was boisterous and opinionated. She smoked in public, which is something few Iraqi women do. And she had a knack for breaking hard-hitting stories without running afoul of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Although journalists operated in a highly restrictive environment, the unspoken rules were reasonably clear. Stories critical of Hussein and his family crossed a red line. Writing sympathetically about Shiite and Kurdish uprisings was out of the question, and the journalists who did disappeared.

Still, there was room for moderate criticism of the government.

One day in fall 1991, Khadum received a tip that officials at the tax agency were taking bribes from taxpayers. The informant told her about a room at the agency where she and a photographer found files containing compromising data. A few days after their exposé was published, the finance minister was fired.

"I was so proud," Khadum said. "It wasn't easy to make a minister lose his job over an article."

The provisional government established by the United States drafted laws to protect press freedom, but the parliament has not passed them, leaving Hussein-era laws in effect.

Soon after the occupation, a lively press corps emerged, with political blocs establishing and funding the most influential newspapers and television stations.

Khadum, who is Shiite, left Iraq in 2006 after her neighborhood -- Adhamiyah, in northern Baghdad -- became one of the main battlegrounds in the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis. Adhamiyah is predominantly Sunni.

She returned to Iraq in 2008 as violence ebbed. Last summer, she sold a plot of land in the south for $50,000 and launched the Ur News online news agency, designing the Web site on an old laptop in her bedroom.

Relying on a small network of correspondents around the country, she began filing stories on politics and violence. In the early days, she pulled no punches, naming names and sometimes singling out the corrupt. The site quickly became popular. Since its launch, it has been accessed more than 643,000 times, Khadum said, showing records.

After receiving a few letters and phone calls threatening lawsuits, she became more careful. After her friend was shot, she grew fearful. For now, Khadum said, she limits what she writes. "There are issues I cannot talk about," she said, lowering her voice.

A few weeks ago, she decided to leave her home of 40 years in Adhamiyah. Sectarian vitriol is creeping back into the neighborhood, she said, and killings have resumed.

As she was packing up her belongings to move to a smaller house in the adjacent, mostly Shiite neighborhood of Kadhimiyah, neighbors stopped by to say farewell.

"It's very painful to lose you," one said. "But what you're doing is the right thing."

Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim and Dalya Hassan contributed to this report.