NYT reporter: Iraq 'off-limits' for Western journalists

Journalists are in danger everywhere in Iraq these days, making it nearly impossible to report, and it only seems to be getting worse, said New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, speaking on Sept. 14 at the offices of the Committee to Protect Journalists in Manhattan. Filkins, who will begin a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University this month and start work on a book, said that 98 percent of Iraq, and even most of Baghdad, has now become "off-limits" for Western journalists. Filkins, one of the longest-lasting and most-honored reporters in Iraq, said that many situations lately have become even too dangerous for Iraqi reporters to report on. He described the current climate as "anarchy," and, when asked if the country was already involved in a civil war, he said, "Yeah, sure." Asked what advice he had for a reporter from a small paper going to Iraq now without the kinds of money and backup that the Times was able to afford him (or previous reporting experience in Iraq), Filkins replied: "Don't go." The most that Times reporters can do these days, said Filkins, is "very carefully set up an appointment with someone" using back channels and meet with them under tight security. "We can't go to car bombings anymore," he said, describing how even getting out of a vehicle to report would expose a Western journalist to mob attacks and kidnapping. As a result, the paper increasingly relies on its 70 Iraqi staffers to go out into the streets and do the actual reporting. These Iraqi journalists, both Sunni and Shiite, do "everything" according to Filkins, and are paid handsomely (by local standards) for their efforts. But they live in constant fear of their association with the newspaper being exposed, which could cost them their lives. "Most of the Iraqis who work for us don't even tell their families that they work for us," said Filkins. "It's terribly terribly dangerous for them." He estimated that there are probably 50 murders and 20 to 30 kidnappings in Baghdad every day, and said that it had gotten to the point where it was no longer just Sunni-Shiite clashes or insurgent mayhem. "Nobody trusts anybody anymore," he said. "There's no law, and the worst people with guns are in charge." According to Filkins, the New York Times is burning through money "like jet fuel" simply to securely maintain its operations in the country. In addition to the 70 local reporters and translators, the Times employs 45 full-time Kalashnikov-toting security guards to patrol its two blast-wall-enclosed houses–and oversee belt-fed machine-guns on the roofs of the buildings. The paper also has three armored cars, and pays a hefty premium each month to insure the five Times reporters working there. US journalists, he said, spend their days piecing together scraps of information from the Iraqi reporters to construct a picture, albeit incomplete, of what life is like these days in the war-torn country. But he says that the work is slow and difficult, and it is hard in such an atmosphere for reporters to nail down specifics. "Five people doing a run-of-the-mill story takes forever," he said. Most troubling was Filkins' assessment that the US military may not know much more than the Times does about what life is like on the ground in Iraq. Soldiers barely leave their bases and they don't interact very much with average Iraqis, he said, so it is hard to say who, if anyone, has an accurate picture of the current situation. "Everyone is kind of groping around in the dark," he said.