G.I.'s Ban Baghdad Paper Accused of Lies

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 28 — American soldiers shut down a popular Baghdad newspaper on Sunday and tightened chains across the doors after the occupation authorities accused it of printing lies that incited violence.

Thousands of outraged Iraqis protested the closing as an act of American hypocrisy, laying bare the hostility many feel toward the United States a year after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

"No, no, America!" and "Where is democracy now?" screamed protesters who hoisted banners and shook clenched fists in a hastily organized rally against the closing of the newspaper, Al Hawza, a radical Shiite weekly.

The rally drew hundreds and then thousands by nightfall in central Baghdad, where masses of angry Shiite men squared off against a line of American soldiers who rushed to seal off the area.

The closing of the newspaper illustrated the quandary Americans faced in trying to strike a balance between their two main goals — encouraging democracy while maintaining stability. But as the days wind down to the June 30 target date for handing sovereignty back to the Iraqi people, security seems increasingly elusive.

On Sunday, the Iraqi public works minister narrowly escaped an assassination attempt in the northern city of Mosul, and two foreign workers were shot to death nearby in front of a power plant.

Many Iraqis said closing down a popular newspaper at such a crucial time would not curtail anti-occupation feelings but only inflame them.

"When you repress the repressed, they only get stronger," said Hamid al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a prominent Shiite political party. "Punishing this newspaper will only increase the passion for those who speak out against the Americans."

The American authorities said Al Hawza could reopen in 60 days. The paper's editors, however, said they had been put out of business.

"We have been evicted from our offices, and we have no jobs," Saadoon Mohsen Thamad, a news editor, said as he stared at a large padlock hanging from the front gate. "How are we going to continue?"

Among Iraqi journalists, Al Hawza was known for printing wild rumors, especially anti-American ones. A broadsheet of about eight pages, the paper is considered a mouthpiece for Moktada al-Sadr, a fiery young Shiite cleric and one of the most outspoken critics of the Americans.

The letter ordering the paper closed, signed by L. Paul Bremer III, the top administrator in Iraq, cited what the American authorities called several examples of false reports in Al Hawza, including a February dispatch that said the cause of an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits was not a car bomb, as occupation officials had said, but an American missile.

Many newspapers and television stations have sprouted in Iraq since the fall of the Hussein government. But under a law passed by the occupying authorities in June, a news media organization must be licensed, and that license can be revoked if the organization publishes or broadcasts material that incites violence or civil disorder or "advocates alterations to Iraq's borders by violent means."

But the letter outlining the reasons for taking action against Al Hawza did not cite any material that directly advocated violence. Several Iraqi journalists said that meant there was no basis to shut Al Hawza down.

"That paper might have been anti-American, but it should be free to express its opinion," said Kamal Abdul Karim, night editor of the daily Azzaman.

Omar Jassem, a freelance reporter, said he thought that democracy meant many viewpoints and many newspapers. "I guess this is the Bush edition of democracy," he said.

Tom Rosenstiel, vice chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, said there was a basic irony in Americans' practicing censorship in Iraq.

"If you're trying to promote democracy in a country that has never had it, you have to lead by example," Mr. Rosenstiel said. "I'm not in Iraq. But it's hard for me to see how the suppression of information, even false information, is going to help our cause."

I expect it's a pragmatic effort, and to some extent an experiment: if the closure puts 100 people in the street, no problem. 1,000, encourging. 10,000: evidence of a significant political problem long term. 100,000... well, at least you tried.

So far, it's in the "significant future problem category", and that's something worth knowing, even if it's pretty unsettling

For the life of me, looking at the European colonial experience in such nations, I don't see a winning strategy for this one - our intentions may be different, but to the local populations they can be made to appear the same.

Ironic, and typical of NYT bias. The headline implies the US is deciding what is and is not "true" in Iraqi media. (It sure caught my eye.) The story tells the real reason. The headline should have read, "G.I.'s Padlock Baghdad Paper Accused of Advocating Violence Against G.I.'s."

"They will never understand it in that part of the world.....Violence is encoded in the Arab DNA."

Don't know about "never"; the Islamic world is being forced by events to traverse within two or three generations a path that took us around 800 years - and even today (when we no longer much tend to religious warfare between ourselves) a look back over the last 100 years of Western history suggests that whatever proportion of our violent behavior is encoded within human DNA was ladled out in a pretty evenhanded manner.

I hope our own government would step in if the majority of Americans were being led by the National Enquirer. The hope of theirs is to incite violence against Americans and put in a Islamic state like Iran. That's already a failure in Iran, but who can tell them that?

L. Paul Bremer III, the top administrator in Iraq, cited what the American authorities called several examples of false reports in Al Hawza, including a February dispatch that said the cause of an explosion that killed more than 50 Iraqi police recruits was not a car bomb, as occupation officials had said, but an American missile.

Printing something like this in Baghdad is like throwing gasoline on a burning house. There are vast numbers of people here sitting on the fence that easily could be swayed by lies and propaganda and commit acts of violence. It seems like almost every swinging al-Richard over here has an AK and an anger management problem. Many of them want us to help them; many are not yet sure.

Iraqis that buy into this stuff will be susceptible to joining groups that are trying to kill U.S. soldiers and destabilize the country. It is happening all the time. People on both sides deserve better, especially considering the circumstances. Right now is not the time for wild, baseless, incindiary publications.

I agree. The answer to the lies: print the truth. Show how debate works in an open society.

Bad move by Bremer.

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