Corruption and Reporting in Kurdistan

The following commentary originally appeared in Musings On Iraq

The three northern provinces of Iraq, Dohuk, Irbil, and Sulamaniyah, that make up the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) are often cited as the most successful part of Iraq. Yet, reports show that when it comes to corruption, the Kurds are no different from the rest of the country.

Accusations of corruption in Kurdistan are increasing, and are largely based upon the two party rule of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Since the Talabani and Barzani clans run the two parties, charges of nepotism are rampant. The BBC reported in January 2008 that contracts are often given to relatives and passed down through a series of companies, each one taking a cut of the money. In May, a PUK member of the Kurdish bloc in parliament admitted that corruption was rampant, but said it was no different from the rest of the country. He blamed it on the rule of the PUK and KDP who in turn he said, did not want to deal with the problem. In June, an editorial in the Kurdish Aspect accused KRG President Masoud Barzani of illegally taxing an oil pipeline to Turkey for his own gain. The lack of transparency in Kurdistan helps hide the graft.

The ability of the Kurdish press to report on such abuses is being curtailed. In April, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued orders that no members of his party could openly criticize the government in the media without facing expulsion. One of the reasons cited for this move was increasing reports of political corruption. Recently, the Financial Times said Kurdish journalists are being harassed and attacked for their coverage of the topic. One editor of the Lvin magazine doesn’t sleep at home anymore because he doesn’t feel safe. One of his reporters was shot and killed in July 2008 in Kirkuk after receiving threats for three months for his work on corruption. A U.S. official in Baghdad confirmed that Kurdish reporters had been threatened and arrested for their writings on graft.

Kurdistan’s political system is dominated by the PUK and KDP. That power has led to corruption and nepotism. The crackdown and threats against journalists and free speech are not good signs for a public debate on these problems. The fact that Kurdistan is largely free of violence, and has an expanding economy could in the long term give rise to new actors that want a more open system. Until then however, the safety and wealth of the KRG actually strengthen the rule of the PUK and KDP who are benefiting from the business, and are able to claim that they are the reason why the north is safe compared to the rest of the country that still faces violence. The trade off for these is the acceptance of corruption in the regional government.

SOURCES
Clark, Kate, “Corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan,” BBC News, 1/11/08
Fifield, Anna, “Kurdistan’s press pays for tackling corruption,” Financial Times, 10/3/08
Hama-Tahir, Wrya, “Iraqi Kurds frustrated with own leaders, security forces,” Middle East Online, 2/18/08
Kurdish Media, “Kurdish lawmaker defends corruption in Kurdistan administration,” 5/26/08
Mahmood, Azeez and Mahmood, Rebaz, “Talabani Supporters Rally Over Media Controversy,” Institute For War & Peace Reporting, 4/4/08
Naqishbendi, Rauf, “Iraq: Flourishing corruption under American occupation,” Kurdish Media, 6/26/08

Making It...Nasser Nouri's Story

Yesterday, I attended a briefing by the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs which included special guests Jonathan Finer and Naseer Nouri. Jonathan Finer worked as a journalist covering the conflict in Iraq in 2003 and again in 2005, in addition to covering the refugee crisis in Syria and Jordan. Naseer Nouri, the briefing's most prominent speaker, worked as an Iraqi journalist and interpreter for the Washington Post from 2003 to 2008.

The Tulsa, Oklahoma (USA) graduate, former pilot and aircraft engineer fell into a job with the Washington Post after a chance encounter with Anthony Shadid, the Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent who was covering the looting in Baghdad following the fall of the regime. After a number of meetings with Shadid, either at Nouri's house, where Shadid was welcomed by his family, or at the hotel where Shadid was staying, he introduced Nouri to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, the Washington Post Baghdad bureau chief, and then Nouri started working with him, which brought about his interest in journalism. The looters had broken into Nouri's travel agency and were hauling off anything of value. Shadid couldn't help but notice Nouri yelling at the looters, and they agreed to meet later to discuss the experience. When Shadid discovered Nouri's near-fluency in English, he offered Nouri a job as a translator for the Post's Baghdad bureau.

Nouri explains: "Until then, I had mostly used newspapers to clean windows. After a number of meetings with Shadid, either at my house, where he was welcomed by my family, or at the hotel where he was staying, I became very interested about journalism. With time, I moved from translation to writing."

Proud of his new career, in which he could ensure that the history of Iraq was written correctly, news of Nouri's career move spread throughout his neighborhood. Then, in the span of 15 days, events occurred that changed Nouri and his family's life forever. Twice, a group of men narrowly missed abducting his youngest daughter, while Al Qaeda succeeded in kidnapping his 15 year old nephew. In a separate incident, his nephue escaped his captors by claiming to use the restroom. Other family members were also targeted. His brother in-law was killed by men in police uniform when he was on his way to Baghdad from Kirkuk, at the north east of Baghdad. He came to bring Nouri's family some money so they could obtain passports and be able to travel to Amman.

Nouri took his family to Amman, Jordan to keep them safe. Facing numerous obstacles to a better life there, he knew he had to try to get his family to America. Applying to the UNHCR in February 2007, Nouri wasn't accepted until the 21rst of May 2008. In America, Nouri and his family still face tremendous challenges not unlike the other "lucky" refugees who make it to America, in a system not fully prepared to resettle families. Our Iraqi allies who make it to the United States have considerable talents, which if utilized contribute to society. Instead, many refugees are forced to take low paying jobs that don't match their professional skill sets and educational experience. According to Mr. Nouri, the best thing we can do is to set up a system that fully integrates Iraqi refugees into society, from getting them here to making sure that parents have proper jobs and their children are properly educated. Think about how frustrating it must be for an Iraqi teenager to have to start school many grade levels below their peers once they get to America.

Nouri and Finer agreed that, even if the U.S. meets its goal of admitting 12,000 Iraqi refugees for this fiscal year, in addition to admitting another 5,000 Iraqis through the Special Immigrant Visa program, the U.S. effort is a drop in the bucket considering both the scale of the crisis, over 2 million refugees and over 2.7 million internally displaced, and the U.S.'s moral obligation to its Iraqi allies. No matter you feel about the war, we can all agree that the U.S. must do more to raise its admittance goals and take care of vulnerable Iraqis, even once they make it to the United States. Vulnerable Iraqis should not be forced to choose between a life of poverty and mortal danger.

Photo Caption: A recent photograph of Nasser Nouri

ABC News Loses Two Journalists; Iraq Loses Two of Her Finest Sons

Iraq continues to be the most dangerous assignment in the world for journalists, especially for local Iraqi journalists and media support professionals.

Last Thursday, ABC News lost two of its broadcast journalists. Unidentified gunmen in two cars ambushed and killed cameraman Alaa Uldeen Aziz, 33, and soundman Saif Laith Yousuf, 26, on their way home from the network’s Baghdad bureau.

"They are really our eyes and ears in Iraq," ABC's Terry McCarthy said of the contribution each made to ABC News. "Many places in Baghdad are just too dangerous for foreigners to go now, so we have Iraqi camera crews who very bravely go out … without them we are blind, we cannot see what's going on."

"Today we've lost two family members. It really hurts," McCarthy said.

Aziz is survived by his wife, his two daughters and his mother. Yousuf leaves behind his fiancée, his mother and brothers and sisters.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that "at least 104 journalists, including Aziz and Yousuf, and 39 media support staffers have been killed in Iraq since March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press in CPJ’s 26-year history. About four in five journalist deaths there have been Iraqis."

Where have all the journalists gone?

In an article in last weekend's WaPo Outlook, Pamela Constable, a foreign correspondent with an impressive track record, lamented a growing trend in U.S. journalism: Media outlets are systematically scaling back on quality foreign reporting and replacing it with captions and snapshots that only tell part of the story.

Constable describes it as "a false economy and a grave mistake." And from what I observe in the news, I wholeheartedly agree.

According to Constable’s tally, you can literally count on two hands the number of U.S. newspapers with foreign bureaus: The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today and the McClatchy newspapers (owner of the Sacramento Bee, The Miami Herald and The Kansas City Star, just to name a few). To add insult to injury, the number of foreign reporters has diminished from 188 to 141 since 2002. Hardly a good showing.

Ironically enough, as U.S. media scales back its international coverage, America and Americans are becoming increasingly globally engaged. Thanks to the global war on terror and improvements in the quality and accessibility of technology, we have the opportunity to know more about the world now than ever before.

Too bad U.S. media isn’t contributing much on this front. Constable notes that this is partly due to the fact that mainstream news outlets are beginning to suffer as more and more people are turning to blogs, web sites, and other alternative sources for news and information.

But really, doesn’t it seem counterintuitive to scale back quality coverage in the face of waning profit margins? I understand that overseas bureaus are costly – Constable estimates a minimum $250,000 a year – but if media tycoons need to trim the fat, why would they start with one of their most important appendages?

The problem is that what we are being offered instead is hardly a viable substitute. Rather than sending reporters to work on the ground, investigate breaking news and produce critical, solid reporting, we are being given a photo here and a caption there, and even those are increasingly selective. It’s like, after eating filet mignon for your whole life, you're suddenly forced to survive on Big Macs. Constable is right to call this “flimsy” and “superficial,” not to mention completely unhealthy.

Here's the bottom line: International engagement is critical for our country and our countrymen, and media outlets should be first in leading the way. Cutting international coverage is not the way to recover losses and regain an audience. I just wonder how grim their profits will get before the news industry realizes it, too.

Two steps forward...

In defense of the current state of affairs in Iraq one can always claim that at least the Iraqi people are better off now than when they lived under Saddam. However, as the New York Times recently reported, not much has changed for Iraqi journalists.

As if the threat of violence from militias wasn’t enough -130 have been killed since the 2003 invasion- the Iraqi government recently enacted a new set of laws criminalizing speech that ridicules the government or its officials. These new laws, some drawn verbatim from Saddam’s penal code, have been used to charge at least a dozen Iraqi journalists in the past year. The punishment for publicly insulting a government or public official can be up to 7 years in prison. In addition to this government crackdown, dozens of journalists have been kidnapped by criminal gangs or detained by the US military.

There is some silver lining to this whole story. The article goes on to say that despite these threats, Iraqi journalists have “achieved a new level of professionalism by working closely with Western journalists …[and] have become increasingly aggressive… Despite the danger, Falah al-Mishaal, the editor of Al Sabah, the government-run newspaper in Baghdad, said he enjoyed his job now because he felt like a real journalist. ‘Now, we are free,” he said in an interview in late July. “We can write whatever we want.’” But it may just get them killed or incarcerated.