Risks rise for Iraqi journalists

Ahmed Abdul Amir Kassim tenses up when approaching a US checkpoint. "The soldiers are always so terrified. Anything can happen,'' says the driver for Al Arabiya, the Arab satellite news channel based in Dubai.

But shortly after 10 p.m. on March 18, Mr. Kassim was already starting to relax. He had parked about 100 yards shy of a US military checkpoint. Reporter Ali al-Khatib and cameraman Ali Abdel Aziz had approached the soldiers on foot for permission to film the scene of a rocket attack on a hotel. They were denied access.

After they got back to the car, Kassim says he U-turned, gently easing his Kia van over the low median dividing the road. He was putting more distance between himself and the soldiers when he caught a white blur out of the corner of his eye. A white Volvo on the other side of the road was flying towards the US checkpoint. As the Volvo plowed into the first Humvee and two soldiers opened up with their weapons, Kassim stepped on the gas to get as far away from the shooting as possible.

But as bullet holes blossomed on his windshield he realized that his van was also under attack. He turned a corner, thinking they might have made it out unscathed - until Khatib slumped over onto his shoulder, dead from a bullet to the head. Glancing at the back seat, he saw Aziz also stricken with a head wound.

The incident has widened the gap of mistrust between the Arab media and the US-led coalition that has persisted from the day of the invasion. Arab journalists say they face greater dangers than their Western colleagues because they are often in the crosshairs of both the coalition forces and Iraqi insurgents. And they can and will travel to places that Western journalists consider unsafe. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 11 journalists - all Arabs or Iraqis - have died in Iraq this year.

Reporters at Al Arabiya and its major competitor, Al Jazeera, complain of frequent arrests at the site of attacks on US troops, with soldiers accusing them of having foreknowledge of attacks.

Arab journalists say they do get tips from locals about attacks. An Arab media stringer in the Sunni Triangle recalls getting a phone call one day from a man who told him "we've just attacked a US Humvee" and gave him the location. He rushed to the spot, took some footage, and was briefly detained by US soldiers who accused him of getting there "too soon" after the attack.

After he was let go, he dispatched the tape to Baghdad. But the editors decided not to use the film. That evening, the reporter was paid a threatening visit by local insurgents complaining that their attack didn't make the news.

Three reporters for the US-backed Al Diyala TV station in Northern Iraq were killed by unidentified assailants on March 18, and both Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya journalists complain of threats and intimidation from insurgents. Kassim says one day in Fallujah last year, insurgents fired a volley over his car and ordered the Al Arabiya crew out of the area.

He also says he's been detained three times by US forces in the past eight months, once for nine hours. Al Arabiya was banned from broadcasting for two months last fall following US anger that the channel had broadcast a statement from deposed dictator Saddam Hussein calling for attacks on the coalition.

"We know the law and journalistic standards very well,'' says Al Arabiya's Baghdad bureau chief Wehad Yacob. "We're doing the best to stay neutral and just show the facts, whether negative or positive. That's all we're here to do." Mr. Yacob says the station is now considering legal action against the US.

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