Huda Ahmed is a reporter for McClatchy Newspapers in Baghdad Iraq. During the course of the Iraq war she has assisted in covering and translating a wide variety of breaking news and feature stories for McClatchy Newspapers and the Washington Post. She was on the front lines of the bloody siege of Najaf, on the ground in Baghdad during the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, and on the streets during Iraq's historic elections. She is the recipient of the Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship, sponsored by the International Women's Media Foundation, and will also be the recipient -- along with five of her colleagues at McClatchy's Baghdad bureau -- of the IWMF's 2007 Courage in Journalism Award.
Ahmed is one of hundreds of courageous Iraqi men and women who put their lives at risk every day. Western media outlets -- TV, newspaper, radio and internet -- rely on these local employees -- drivers, cooks, security personnel, translators and reporters like Ahmed -- to cover the war in Iraq. She shares some of her experiences as a working journalist in Baghdad with the Huffington Post.
California -- During the past three weeks, many reports in the news media and other sources focused on the situation of Iraq. None of the reports agree on one thing: What kind of intelligence were they relying on that make their reports so controversial? It is good to be skeptical, but there must be some point they can agree on.
All these reports are confusing enough to make one wonder: what should be done to ease the tension in Iraq? What did the reports miss? Should the American forces withdraw from Iraq, or stay to keep up the slow progress that Gen. David Petraeus says they are making?
There is slow progress, that is true, but where? If you follow the news you can find that some of the progress had been seen only in two places: Al Anbar and Baghdad. In Al Anbar province though the situation appears to have improved some, but still there are problems with the police force. And if the Iraqi government does not want the insurgency to come back to this area again, they should fulfill their promise to reconstruct what has been demolished during the fights, and provide job opportunities for the locals. As far as Baghdad, the country's biggest population center and home to government facilities and the international zone, there is a little more security. But there is still no protection from the random killings motivated by sectarianism. This added security does not appear to be the result of Gen. Petraeus' surge, but rather because the militias of both sides have no reason to fight.
Many Iraqis say the country has became safer for the American troops but not for the Iraqis. The Red Crescent says the last three months were more dangerous for the Iraqis than during the same period last year. It is no wonder that many Iraqis are more frustrated than ever and more disillusioned in their government. They attribute talk about the improved security situation to government propaganda in the local media.
The last sudden visit of the President Bush to Iraq had the whiff of desperation. Does he really think he can win this war before his presidential term is over? Was his visit to defend the White House's latest report on Iraq's progress against independent reports to the contrary?
President Bush confirmed again his support for Nouri Al Maliki's government because he does not have an appropriate alternative to change the Iraqi prime minister nor the time. It is also a hard time for Al Maliki who is trying to pull the strings altogether in his government. It seems that whenever he tries to fix a problem, he finds other obstacles before him. He is torn between the Shiite and the Sunni and the Kurdish powerful parties. If he tries to satisfy one side, the other side will rise against him, accusing him of being sectarian. Al Maliki is under huge pressure to meet the American benchmarks set and the demands of Iraqi militias and political parties. The American administration is playing a very dangerous game with the different Iraqi political parties by conducting separate meetings, whether in Baghdad or in D.C. They are using the policy of dividing and ruling, a policy that makes the hopes even dimmer for reconciliation in Iraq.