When I decided to make the announcement in early December, the tension in the newsroom was searing. Almost six months from the day we launched Iraq Today, now Iraq's sole English-language newspaper, I had to admit the obvious: we were sinking.
We had ridden in on a wave of excitement, with a vision of one day becoming a major paper in a country that had known only state-sponsored media. We were all Iraqis, and we aimed for authenticity. We lived in homes with our families, not in hotels like most western reporters. We faced the daily challenges of living in Iraq and understood what made it so difficult. We saw the good news and the bad, and we sought to tell a story that was as nuanced as it was clear.
But in Iraq, telling the truth is the hardest job. Everyone seemed to have a vested interest, a dark secret or a security problem. We found that getting answers to basic questions was a giant task; getting a newspaper into readers' hands was even tougher.
On 10th December, the ten reporters in our newsroom, ranging in age from 22 to 35, wanted answers. "Guys," I said, "we're in trouble." Our British backers were losing interest, I explained, and we weren't able to cover our costs. It was unclear how much longer we had to turn things around.
To my surprise, however, this was the moment that the group had been waiting for. When I asked for suggestions, I was deluged with good ideas. I was being treated to a lesson that those in charge of the occupation should heed. For despite the best intentions of many soldiers and administrators, the occupation has been a mess. Iraqis who had invested heavily in the US arrival were disheartened when a superpower proved incapable of keeping the lights on. We expected a Ferrari in the showroom of democracy, we got an old Skoda instead. Hearts and minds grew cold.
But the lessons I have learnt at Iraq Today over the past few months offer hope for how things could be turned around. In the microcosm of our newspaper, I grew to understand how high-handed western ways had hurt us and how Iraqis, if given a say, could make their institutions flourish.
In 1919, my grandfather, Nuri Fattah, was imprisoned by the British while helping to organise the resistance leading up to the 1920 revolution. He later came to establish a large textile mill, and with the proceeds helped to bankroll countless business projects, seeking to make Iraq an industrial power. He refused to sneak his money out of the country as many of his business associates did in the 1950s and 1960s. When his assets were nationalised in 1964, ours became a riches to rags story, one that would tear the family out of Iraq. Yet even after 40 years away my name is still recognised as belonging to one of the great Iraqi business families. And our family retained a keen sense of being Iraqis. We had funny accents when we spoke Arabic and were the eternal outsiders as we moved from Beirut to Amman and then to Berkeley, California in 1979. But we took with us nostalgic tales of life in Baghdad in the 1950s. And from early childhood, I dreamed of going back to the country my grandfather had helped to build.
On 9th April 2003, my moment of destiny arrived. Within weeks I was in Baghdad, and suddenly the countless questions I had about myself and my family were being answered. Like my grandfather, I felt an obligation to the long-battered nation. As a journalist, I had both an opportunity and a responsibility to chronicle its experience under occupation.
That was the inspiration for starting a newspaper. The idea became a reality thanks to a chance meeting with Stephen MacSearraigh, an editor turned businessman, who was looking to launch a newspaper in Iraq. Backed by Mina Corp, a London-based investment firm, we planned an English-language weekly that was free of political connections. Our initial targets were the thousands of expats, administrators and soldiers who have flooded into Iraq over the past ten months, as well as the Iraqi elite who might buy a local newspaper in English. With such a large group of English readers in the country, and with their hefty spending power attractive to advertisers, we thought we could not fail.
What sets Iraq apart from most other nations in transition is the level of risk. Violence occurs at the most inauspicious moments: at a mosque during Friday prayers; at a school; while queuing for a security check. Iraqis and even US soldiers have taken to leaving their fear to fate. If it is written for you to die, most Iraqis will tell you, there is nothing you can do about it.
For us, the lesson came early. A day before we published our first issue on 7th July 2003, I woke up with a gun barrel in my face. Seven men were standing over me, holding Kalashnikovs and demanding money. They had nothing against the newspaper; they just saw us as westerners with cash. They tied me up and took our $12,000 stash of money.
The tension between the occupiers and the press can produce situations almost as frightening. Last August, a quarrel with a US soldier guarding the entrance to a press conference given by the coalition-backed Iraqi governing council led to my arrest. The soldier had decided I was late and stopped me, even as countless foreign journalists, who had arrived after me, entered. Iraqi journalists are regularly pushed around or simply refused access. The western press has far less trouble reaching the top echelons at the coalition provisional authority (CPA). "This is how you lose an occupation," I bellowed to the guards as they dragged me out. "Aren't you ashamed that armed men need to be doing this?"
"Aren't you ashamed for being late?" one of them replied.
One fact is virtually unchallenged about Iraq now: it is the freest nation in the Arab world. Amid the pandemonium, Iraqis revel in their new-found free speech. They exercise it in demonstrations, in religious ceremonies, political parties and, of course, in print and broadcast journalism. Within days of the fall of the regime, satellite dishes (once strictly illegal) sprouted everywhere receiving international Arabic stations like Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya. Internet caf?s popped up in the big cities.
Iraqis were desperate to tell their stories. When I arrived in May, words were flowing out of people in torrents. Many had never spoken frankly to a friend, much less to a reporter. Most were desperate to recount stories of terror and anguish. Everyone seemed to have had a relative killed in war, many had relatives executed by the regime, and others just wanted to explain life under Saddam.
Stories fell off trees like dates in August. Word got around in my neighbourhood that a journalist was living there, and people came to talk - beseeching me to deliver their voices to the world.
Within weeks of the collapse of the regime, as many as 150 newspapers were circulating in Baghdad alone. There was no licensing regime; anybody could start a newspaper or magazine and, for a while, it felt as if everyone had. (For radio and television, licences are required. To date only the CPA-backed Al-Iraqiya TV, BBC Radio, Radio Free Iraq, and the US's Information Radio have been operating in the country. Several others are expected to be on air by summer.)
Most of the newspapers proved to be one-print wonders. They were backed by political parties or special interests: many were pushed by the CPA, which has teams of propagandists, and others were put out by Islamic groups. The dozen or so real newspapers that survived the initial shake-out are a varied collection. The first daily newspaper to land on the streets of Iraq was Al-Zaman, published by Saad al Bazzaz, former editor-in-chief of Saddam's paper Al-Jumhuriya before he fell out with Saddam and moved to London. Al-Zaman has been published out of London since the mid-1990s, but entered Iraq with the British forces. The newspaper established a northern and southern edition, combining local coverage with world and business news. It is a decent source of local information, but tends to avoid criticism of the occupation.
The daily paper with by far the biggest circulation, and a print run of 50,000 a day, is the CPA-backed Al-Sabah, regarded as the newspaper of record for the authority. Though a far cry from the papers of Saddam's day, Al-Sabah nevertheless has the feel of a government newspaper. For Iraqi readers who have grown used to a state-run press, Al-Sabah may well be the most palatable of all the new Iraqi papers.
The third contender among the dailies is Al-Sharq al Awsat, the London-based pan-Arab paper which made a late arrival in the autumn. Printed in Baghdad with its smart Islamic-green front page, it includes local reporting as well as weighty international coverage. It has given Al-Zaman a competitor to reckon with, and added heat to the advertising market. But its traditionally pro-Arabist stance is often greeted with ambivalence.
The most populist paper is the twice-weekly Al-Shahed, a crude tabloid. In 12 pages, the paper offers a mix of rumours, conspiracy theories and sexy tales on everything from Saddam's mistresses to the CPA's secret plan to split the country into four parts. Much of its coverage is picked up from other media.
Other weekly or bi-weekly papers include Al-Mada, Al-Saah, the Kurdish-backed Al-Taakhi, the Iraqi National Congress's Al-Muatamar and the Independent Democrats' Al-Nahtha. These papers carry a clear political line, often highlighting speeches by party leaders. Most Islamic organisations publish a paper and there are several published by the CPA, including Baghdad Now, a half-English, half-Arabic paper that offers only good news.
In the early days the journalistic quality was poor. Many papers carried stories that were simply made up. The CPA's secretive style nurtured such irresponsibility. There was a story about US soldiers with X-ray glasses peering through women's clothes. Another claimed that helicopters were dropping body bags of US soldiers into Iraq's rivers at night to hide the massive death toll.
Such bad journalism can have terrible consequences. Thanks to a report claiming that the dissolved army would receive salaries in one newspaper last June, a crowd of former soldiers assembled and marched to the gates of the Republican palace, now seat of the CPA. A rock was thrown at an oncoming American Humvee and by the end of the day two people were dead. It was a turning point - the day the liberation became an occupation.
Al-Saah had brought matters to a head two weeks earlier, publishing a shocking story alleging that 18 GIs had gang-raped two teenage girls in the southern Iraq town of Wasit, killing one of them. According to the story, published with no byline on the front page, the surviving girl was then killed by her own family, owing to the shame of the rape. The allegations were perhaps the most serious since the US military took control of Baghdad, and were completely fabricated. Ni'ma Abdulrazzaq, Al-Saah's editor at the time, said he discovered as much when he and his colleagues scoured Wasit. They tracked down the doctor who was said to have treated one of the girls, who told them it was a lie. That evening, Abdulrazzaq issued a retraction and the two reporters were fired.
What the US military did next changed everything for the Iraqi press. US central command investigated the report and declared it inaccurate and irresponsible. The investigation condemned Al-Saah as a newspaper which had supported Saddam while in power. A few days later, Iraq's administrator L Paul Bremer imposed a code of conduct on the press, banning publications that incite violence or support the return of the Ba'ath party. Those caught violating the decree can be arrested.
Bremer's aides point out that the press rules are in keeping with press laws in most western countries. The problem for Iraqi journalists is in the fine print: how violence is defined and who defines it. Bremer, as acting administrator of an occupying force, is bound only by the fourth Geneva convention. Under article five, he can impose restrictions on anyone who threatens public order, and his press restrictions took the broadest definition of the article. Bremer has let it be known that if you speak positively about an act of violence, you are in the same class as the perpetrator. In September, he shut down Al-Mustaqila, a virulently anti-CPA paper, after it had run an article allegedly encouraging Iraqis to strike back against their compatriots working for the coalition. That was enough to persuade many editors to think more carefully about their content.
Have such articles helped to embolden those who take up arms against the CPA? It seems unlikely. For a start, most Iraqis can't read. In the 35 years of Saddam's regime, the literacy rate among Iraq's 25m people plummeted from some 60 to 70 per cent in the 1970s to about 30 per cent. Most Iraqis therefore rely on television (93 per cent have one) and radio for their basic news. Although satellite stations such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera are widely despised for their seemingly pro-Saddam stance, they are also the primary news stations Iraqis watch, at least the one third with access to satellite television. But by far the most popular satellite channels aren't news broadcasters but the music video channels which provide an escape from life's travails.
The active resistance in Iraq is no more than a few thousand people, but there are probably several million with some degree of sympathy for them. The latest poll by the Iraq Centre for Research and Strategic Studies, which asked in October whether Iraqis supported or opposed the presence of coalition forces, found 50 per cent against and only just over 30 per cent in favour. In the same poll people were asked whether they considered the coalition an occupying force and 66 per cent said they did, compared with 45.9 per cent six months earlier. Similarly, while 42.8 per cent had regarded the coalition as liberators in the earlier poll, the figure is now down to 14 per cent.
There are many reasons for the growing impatience with the occupation. Reducing the secrecy of the new system of government will not solve all the problems, but it may help build confidence. If the CPA has been less than fully open, the CPA-appointed Iraqi governing council (IGC), which is supposed to hand over power to a senate in June, has been even more secretive. The council has ignored requests to have its debates televised and reporters have mostly been kept out. In November, the council forced the closure of satellite broadcaster Al-Arabiya's offices in Baghdad after the channel broadcast an audiotape purporting to be of Saddam's voice encouraging resistance to the occupation. The result was to give the resistance free rein to continue feeding the channel with its propaganda. And, even as it allowed Al-Arabiya to resume operating in Baghdad, it locked out Al-Jazeera, after the broadcast of a raucous show in which a guest accused various council members of being Israeli Mossad agents.
Such action has encouraged many media companies to scramble for broadcast licences now, before a sovereign Iraq places even more restrictions on the press. Whatever the constraints imposed by the CPA, this may be the golden age of press freedom in Iraq, and many are seeking to establish a strong fourth estate before a proper Iraqi government takes hold.
Creating a decent newspaper depends on establishing a reputation, which itself depends on building the right kind of journalistic culture. As we trained reporters at Iraq Today I tried my best not to fall into the same trap as many of the Arabic-language papers. With the world's attention on Iraq, our paper had to meet international standards of competence and reliability to be credible.
From the start, our guiding principle was no rumours, just facts. In drill after drill, we taught the reporters the dangers of innuendo and the risks of not checking allegations and facts. Forget the editorialising, just tell the story, I explained. If a story is good enough, it will tell itself.
At first, the story ideas were typical of many of the Arabic newspapers. One reporter pitched me the gossip about the body bags in the river, insisting his best friend had seen it; I insisted on videotape evidence. Another wanted to report on soldiers' mistreatment of Iraqis; I asked for documentation. In time, their stories became less sensational but more telling. The reporters began bringing in hard evidence of crimes and military operations gone wrong, of political scandal and innocent people detained without charge.
Our reporting team is made up of Sunnis, Shi'is and Christians but sectarianism does not exist in the newsroom, where we speak a mix of English and Arabic. All our reporters have faced trials and tragedies; all have seen war. Abdalrahman Aljuburi our military and regions reporter, was until April an officer in the Iraqi army. Before the war, he believed that the invasion would be good for Iraq. A tall, serious man with an officer's charisma, Abdalrahman had always wanted to be a journalist but refused to become one under the old regime. He was also one of the forgotten opposition to Saddam; his brother was linked to a coup attempt in the mid-1990s.
But in June, the occupation came to Abdalrahman's doorstep in Dhuluiya in the form of operation Peninsula Strike, touted as one of the most successful raids on the resistance. He reported how the operation resulted in needless deaths and the arrest of innocent villagers. The man the military was looking for was at a US checkpoint, trying to enter the town and turn himself in. Abdalrahman has since uncovered the hidden world of the Sunni triangle, showing how communities that were not initially against the US have grown more hostile after each raid. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," he often reminds me.
Zaid Fahmi, a gregarious 28 year old who weighs 18 stone, is another reporter with divided emotions. In 1991, Zaid went to Najaf to rescue some relatives. He found himself in a police station being forced to watch a family being knifed to death by the authorities. His father died a few weeks before the war, leaving Zaid as the breadwinner for the family. He has witnessed the gradual collapse of conditions in his once quiet neighbourhood of Amriya, next to Baghdad airport. A close friend of his, a translator for the coalition, was recently gunned down outside his home. Zaid's name has appeared on an ominous list of "traitors." None the less, Zaid has become the crime reporter, recently going undercover to investigate the growing sex slave business.
Sarmad Ali, who at 22 is the youngest on the staff, is also the most accomplished. He quickly distinguished himself as a talented reporter, tackling complicated subjects with ease. He reported on the breakdown in the health system under the coalition and soon rose to become my right-hand man.
Ali Shouk, the business reporter, was a chemical engineer before turning to journalism. He used to live in Russia and has never been exposed to the market system. Still, he has learned the grammar of business quickly, particularly the reconstruction business.
Ghada Butti was an architect before becoming a journalist. A Christian and a mother of three, she has chronicled the growing difficulties of life for parents. Meanwhile, the list of freelancers is long.
The product of such diversity has been a news-paper that is difficult to characterise. We are certainly critical of the occupation, but we also give praise when it is due and have treated Iraq's nascent leaders fairly. We have set the record straight on inaccurate stories by other papers. This has won us both supporters and enemies within the CPA, the military and the Iraqi halls of power - while Iraqis who don't read English tend to dismiss us as a coalition paper.
For all the successes Iraq Today has had in telling the story, surviving as a business has been a quixotic and often infuriating task. The rule of thumb about doing business in Iraq is to forget what you have learned abroad. Mafias, price rigging, and monopolistic practices define business here.
In the newspaper business, the effects can be harrowing. Ten months into the occupation, phone lines in much of Baghdad are still not in operation. Satellite phones, at $1 per minute, are infeasible. So reporters often have to travel to locations just to make an appointment. Once they have gathered the facts, there is still the problem of getting them into the computer. With the power typically working for only three hours at a time, we bought a generator. But that soon proved a new headache: a diesel shortage and breakdowns of the generator wasted countless hours. Among the job titles at Iraq Today is that of generator boy, whose sole task is to run and maintain the machine.
The printers, too, proved a problem. With the high cost of paper and the jaded attitudes of people with more work than they could handle, we faced printing costs of 30 cents per issue. And for that, the printers would make simple errors that infuriated advertisers. So we station our designers at the printers each week to oversee every step.
Once the ink is on paper, distributing Iraq Today rem-ains the most difficult job. Mainstream distributors refuse to take it, sometimes mistaking it for a coalition-backed product. Typically they insist the price of the paper is too high, at the equivalent of 27p, though that hasn't stopped some from stealing copies from the printer and selling them for more than we charge. Many hotels refuse to handle the paper. One hotel manager insisted the paper was too expensive, despite requests by long-term guests to carry it. Bringing in advertising has been an equally tortuous affair. Many advertisers don't understand why they should speak to a western audience. Others simply want us to place their advertisements free of charge.
The only consolation is that most newspapers in Iraq are facing the same challenges. With unemployment reaching 60 per cent in some places, it has never been more difficult to get Iraqis to part with their money. Most share papers or read old issues. Indeed, most papers are lucky to sell half their print runs. Al-Zaman apparently prints under 10,000; Al-Sharq al Awsat is said to print only 6,000 copies per day. CPA-funded Al-Sabah has also fallen sharply in circulation, although its deep pockets have enabled it to survive and forced the other two to follow it in cutting cover prices to an untenable 250 dinars (about 8p). "Don't expect to make money in this business," my former printer told me in December as he handed me a $22,000 bill. In keeping with business norms, it was full of miscalculations, all in his favour.
As i ran through the calculations, the numbers looked untenable. It seemed as if breaking even, much less profitability, was getting further out of reach. It made no sense that the sole English-language paper in Iraq could not survive. Then the team showed me how.
That December morning, they explained to me the flaw in our strategy. We at the top had tried to do everything ourselves. For months, they had watched us trip up while they remained silent, feeling sidelined. As I opened up the meeting, ideas began flowing. Maher, a business reporter, outlined ways of improving distribution. Firas, the designer, had plans for getting closer to our advertisers. Ikhlas, the office manager, began pushing the idea of subscriptions. And so we formed a plan - their plan. We slashed advertising rates and the news-stand price. We turned the company from a Eurocentric one into an Iraqi-centric one. We invited people into our office and began building relationships with the community. Locals, not just the foreign press, began to praise us. Soon, business poured in and circulation inched up. We now print 2,000 issues and are viewed by thousands more on the web.
Most notably, as the team took greater ownership of the paper itself, the journalism improved. Zaid began producing strong investigative work. Maher began creating indices of Iraq's economic prospects. Even Sura, the office secretary, contributed articles.
When given a voice, Iraqis have used it responsibly and in the broader interests of the paper. And when handed a challenge, they can forget their differences to work for the common good. Yet far too often, Iraqis feel they are preached to, excluded from decision-making and served with platitudes. The plan for rebuilding the country and handing back sovereignty should not be a US one, much less one defined by Iraqi ?migr?s in the IGC. Only Iraqis can determine their fate. But by early February, the IGC was still wrangling over the terms of the final structure of an interim government that would take over from the CPA after 30th June. The process was, typically, full of intrigue and self-interest. Almost everyone seemed convinced that UN advisers brought in to study the feasibility of elections would rule them out.
The point is to understand that Iraq must still be Iraq at the end of the process, not another country. Instead of attempting to fashion the nation into an image of the US, American policymakers must refashion the country into a better Iraq.
By the beginning of February, I was confident that Iraq Today would survive for the long term. We were even talking about launching an Arabic paper. Prospects for the continuing occupation and the tussle over the future government were less certain.
