My son is a coin collector and was quite impressed [with the shop in the al-Rasheed Hotel] and said out loud, "Mum , let's go down to the al-Rasheed tomorrow (my day off) and look up this place, the items are good and the prices are right. Let's Mum!"
"I'm sorry baby, we can't. I will take you to another shop near al-Mutanebbi, you might find similar things."
"Why, Mum? Why can't I go to this shop?"
"Because it's in the green zone baby, and you're Iraqi."
I could see the words forming on his lips; I could hear them ring in my head.
His rebellious look locked with my own sadly understanding eyes - but he just looked away, defeated.
-- "Sahar IIS," McClatchy Newspapers' Inside Baghdad blog.
Iraq is one of the most dangerous places on Earth to be a journalist. According to the international organization Reporters Without Borders, 205 journalists and "media assistants" (i.e., camera operators, sound technicians, photographers, etc.) have been killed since the start of the war, two are MIA, and 14 have been kidnapped. It currently ranks 154th out of 168 in terms of press freedom -- among the lowest scores in the world. Iraq is the most deadly war for journalists since WWII.
If there's good news coming out of Iraq, it's this:
Editor and Publisher:
Six Iraqis who have worked in the McClatchy (formerly Knight Ridder) Baghdad bureau received the International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award on Tuesday at a luncheon at New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel.
Some of them have written for the "Inside Iraq" blog that McClatchy publishes online...
In presenting the award to Shatha al Awsy, Zaineb Obeid, Huda Ahmed, Ban Adil Sarhan, Alaa Majeed, and Sahar Issa, ABC News reporter Bob Woodruff (who also knows how dangerous Iraq is for reporters) said, "These six Iraqi women have reported the war in Baghdad from inside their hearts. They have watched as the war touched the lives of their neighbors and friends, and then they bore witness as it reached into the lives of each and every one of them."...
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