Profiles of Courage

Twenty months ago her son was gunned down on the streets of Baghdad in a senseless, random act of violence. He was 18 years old. Sahar Issa has two remaining children. Each morning she leaves her home in the Iraqi capital, her hair covered in a black hijab, her body concealed under heavy black trousers and jacket, looking in her words like an "appropriately bewildered elderly lady who goes to look after ailing parents across the river," instead of a journalist who reports the news in Iraq for the Baghdad bureau of an American newspaper chain.

She glances back at her home, now partially destroyed by an IED, and wonders if she will see it again, if this will be the day the eyes of an enemy will find her. She smiles as she sends her children off to school, but when they turn away, her eyes fill with tears, knowing they too are at risk. "So why continue?" she asks. Honored in New York and Los Angeles by the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF), Sahar said, "It's because I'm tired of being branded a terrorist: tired that a human life lost in my country is no loss at all. This is not the future I envision for my children. They are not terrorists, and their lives are not valueless."

Sahar is one of six Iraqi women journalists receiving Courage in Journalism awards from the IWMF. As co-chair of the organization, I attended the ceremonies and heard Sahar's story along with the other awardees from Mexico, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Sahar is not her real name, and photographs were forbidden, to shield her identity. Her English is flawless, the product of her fine Iraqi education, and she communicates with the soul and verbal ease of a natural poet. She is the only one of the six Iraqi women returning to Baghdad to report for McClatchy Newspapers, even as she knows every interview she conducts could be her last. McClatchy arranged safe passage out of Iraq for the others, as one by one their identities became known and their lives endangered. One of the women is now a U.S. citizen, living in Oklahoma City with her son, having gotten political asylum after her husband, four-year-old daughter and mother-in-law were shot by insurgents.

Setting aside the big policy questions, we have a moral responsibility to the people of Iraq, whose lives we have so terribly disrupted. President Bush continues to cling to the belief that the rival ethnic groups will accommodate each other, but he has done little to resolve the humanitarian crisis resulting from the U.S. invasion and occupation. Two million Iraqis have left the country and are living hand to mouth in surrounding countries that can't absorb them. Another 2 million are refugees in their own country and living like beggars. "We had a country, of sorts," Sahar says. "We had a life—now we don't. We have only death." Unknown thousands of her people—we don't really know for sure how many—have died. Her country is lawless; civil society has collapsed. "Even though the war has cast a dark shadow upon your nation and mine," she said, speaking for the six Iraqi women awardees, "it is never too late." Actress Meg Ryan stood off to the side, having introduced the Iraqi women at Tuesday evening's ceremony at the Beverly Hills hotel.

Sahar had confided earlier that the glitzy slice of America she's seen helps her understand why we don't do more about Iraq. The war is distant, and Americans are too comfortable. "From myself, and from these ladies, I say to you, raise your voices to put an end to this misery, this slaughter that is still happening in my country," she said, an appeal that got a standing ovation. As Sahar and the others stepped off the stage, they hugged each other and reached for tissues to dry their eyes, as did many in the audience. Sahar plans to use her award money to rebuild her house and buy a generator. She gets electricity only one hour out of every 12. Shiite neighborhoods get better services, she says. And her only water comes from a small tap in the backyard, which takes forever to drip-drip-drip for cooking and makes taking a bath a real challenge.

The contrast between Hollywood glamour and the gritty work of these journalists was on display when actress and humanitarian Angelina Jolie presented a Lifetime Achievement Award to Peta Thornycroft, a journalist in Zimbabwe. Thornycroft said there were no bullets or bombs in her country, "only [President Robert] Mugabe's war against his own people, and the people are too hungry and fearful to protest." With the economy in free fall and inflation at 8,000 percent, there is no food in the stores, only Jell-O and lavatory cleaner on the shelves, she said. Mexican journalist Lydia Cacho, another of the awardees, summed up the evening by saying the IWMF didn't bring "a bunch of foreign brave women" to America just to arouse moral indignation. Cacho is under security protection because of death threats resulting from her having put the ringleader of a child sex trafficking ring in prison. With knowledge comes the responsibility to act, she said, whatever the price.

© 2007