In praise of stringers

Please take a moment to study the photo to the left.

It was taken in the aftermath of yesterday's bombing in a speck of a village called Albu Mohammed, in the Diyala province northeast of Baghdad. The families were waiting in line for the gravedigger, who had a busy day with up to 60 people killed in the blast.

If any old picture is worth a thousand words, this one must be worth at least a million. This image, one moment frozen in time, encapsulates the heartbreak of Iraq. Apologies because it's so small, but this blog platform can't support larger images.

Still, you can see that the woman in black in the foreground is not wailing or beating her head in grief. She appears stricken and silent. There's a barefoot little girl in the background. The woman standing solemnly near the truck has her eyes closed, as if in prayer. The young boy in the camouflage vest and scarf is carrying a gun; he looks like a miniature mujahid. The men in the scene appear unsure of what to do -- one just gazes at the scene with his arms crossed while the other offers an embrace. Do they feel ashamed, emasculated because there is nothing they can do to stop the slaughter of their relatives? And look at the top of the photo, toward the desert. There's an Iraqi soldier, gun cradled to his chest, unable to do much more than watch. What crime did they commit to deserve this, these villagers from a place so remote we couldn't find it on any of our maps?

Other photos came in from the bombing scene last night, much bloodier images with someone's hand here, someone's foot there. But it was this image that mesmerized me. I wish I could tell you about the brave and intrepid photographer who drove 70 perilous kilometers to the village so we could bring these pictures to you.

But I can't tell you about him. I can't even tell you his name. He's already spent 17 days in captivity after militants from al Qaida in Iraq caught him with a camera. Unlike Western colleagues who've been kidnapped for even a few hours, his abduction never made the news. And still he continues to report.

Our Diyala correspondent is one of several "stringers" hired by our bureau chief Leila Fadel and dispatched to every corner of Iraq. Stringers are local journalists who don't work in the main Baghdad bureau and, while some are on retainer, they mainly work on a story-by-story basis. Most do not want their names attached to their work for fear of retaliation. Exceptions are the excellent stringer in Kurdistan or the fearless young stringer in Najaf, places that are relatively calm.

But from the violent southern Shiite city of Basra to the bloody Sunni triangle north of Baghdad, we get our news from men who call themselves nicknames such as Abu Iraq, which is Arabic for "father of Iraq." They visit morgues, dodge militias and insurgents, count body parts at bombing scenes, attend tedious political meetings and then call in their notes by phone, or send them via email if they can make it to an Internet cafe.

Our core Iraqi staff members in the Baghdad bureau are peerless in their institutional knowledge, their compassion for ordinary Iraqis and their contacts with every group that matters. But we would not be able to bring you news from outlying provinces without the cadre of stringers, our own militia of courageous Iraqis who know words and images can be just as powerful as guns.

 

Comments

[Pakinam Amer]

Wow Hannah. I wish I could thank you on behalf of every journalist who works with these brave souls and unsung heroes, the "stringers." But I can only speak for myself.

To give this tribute to stringers, often forgotten in the big picture, says as much about you as it does about them.

Truly, your humanity can not be captured in an image or a million words.

[Manar]

Beautiful post.

[Tom Traubert]

Thanks for this profoundly touching tribute.

[Jon Husband]

Thank you, and thank them.

[Susan]

Please thank them for trying to bring us the truth, and for risking their lives to do so.

And thank you for telling us about them.