Posted on 01/07/2006 1:38:41 AM PST by HAL9000
BAGHDAD, Jan 7 (Reuters) - A female Western journalist was kidnapped in Baghdad on Saturday and her translator killed, police said.They said she was on her way to a meeting with a Sunni Arab leader when a car carrying an unknown number of gunmen blocked her vehicle in the Adel district near Malik bin Anas mosque in west Baghdad.
The gunmen shot dead her driver, an Iraqi journalist who also worked as her translator, abandoned their car and drove off in hers.
There has been a spate of kidnappings of Westerners in Iraq over the past few months after a lull during most of 2005. Four Christian peace activists -- a Briton, an American and two Canadians -- are still being held captive. A French engineer is also being held.
Yep, pretty much every kidnapping over the past year has been about money. We can thank the Italians for that.
If it was any one of these, they might have kidnapped them so they could slap a burka over their ugly mugs.
| US journalist kidnapped, interpreter killed |
| MIL-IRAQ-KIDNAPPING US journalist kidnapped, interpreter killed BAGHDAD, Jan 7 (KUNA) -- American journalist Jewel Carrol was kidnapped by unknown militants on Saturday and her Iraqi interpreter Elen Al-Ghazi was killed in Al-Adel district, western Baghdad. |
Iraq's rising industry: domestic kidnapping
By Jill Carroll | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0422/p06s01-woiq.html
BAGHDAD – Abu Mohammed was chatting with a friend in an auto repair shop in Salman Pak two months ago when masked gunmen surrounded him and stuffed his 260-pound frame in their trunk and sped away.
He spent the next 10 days locked in a bathroom with a hood over his head, marking the passage of time by listening to his captors' prayers.
-snip-
Video was released showing the alleged shooting of the American from Alaska/S or N Dakota, but strangely enough there has been no confirmation of the death.
That shouldn't stop the presses here in America. Nothing ever does.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0318/p06s02-wogn.htm
Reporters on the Job
• A Changing Baghdad: Correspondent Jill Carroll (story, page 1) first set foot in Baghdad four days after the city fell to US forces. "The big danger then was at night when gunfire would break out between US soldiers and looters, or among gangs," she says. Iraqis, she recalls, wanted to get hold of a satellite phone, which most journalists had, to tell relatives they were alive. I remember one enterprising guy standing in the famous Ferdos Square with a satellite phone charging a dollar a minute - and a long line of people waiting. I could wade into the crowds in front of the Palestine and Sheraton hotels, interviewing anyone without fear, openly telling them I was an American reporter."
Jill eventually left Baghdad, and returned for a stint three months later in July. "I remember the day we heard the shocking news that an US convoy had been hit by a bomb on a highway. One reporter threw on his flak jacket and raced out to cover something that is so routine now that it's hard to remember it was once big news."
After another absence, Jill moved to Baghdad to freelance fulltime in fall 2004. "I was surprised the electricity was still not fixed and struck by the traffic. A few days after I arrived, a massive boom shook me out of bed. It was the first day of Ramadan and five car bombs went off across Baghdad."
Jill says it was the beginning of what would become a tragic routine. "But still, I would often go to impoverished Sadr City, even the to thieves' market, and feel safe interviewing anyone," she says. "That ended April 4, when a Marine siege of Fallujah and a Shiite uprising made it dangerous for foreigners. Suddenly I had to wear a hijab in the car."
After another trip away, Jill returned this January. "After a terrifying fall when kidnapping and beheading became common, many journalists and freelancers had left," she says. "There are only a few of the old stalwart freelancers around now. I can't walk in the streets anymore or drop into a shop to talk to average Iraqis."
The starkest difference is in Omar. Jill has gauged her time in Iraq partly by the sentiments of a 23-year-old friend who initially was excited about his country's future. She says he called US soldiers "my brothers" and collected anything with a US flag on it. "He felt real sadness at news of growing attacks on US troops," she says.
Today, Omar openly says his generation is lost. "He doesn't feel anger at the US, just deep disappointment," says Jill. "He jokes all the time now and tells old stories to avoid talk of the future or the current news."
More on Jill Carroll:
http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=3829
Covering the war gives journalists an opportunity to recall the noblest tenets of their profession and fulfill the public service role of journalism.
The sense that I could do more good in the Middle East than in the U.S. drove me to move to Jordan six months before the war to learn as much about the region as possible before the fighting began. All I ever wanted to be was a foreign correspondent, so when I was laid off from my reporting assistant job at the Wall Street Journal in August 2002, it seemed the right time to try to make it happen. There was bound to be plenty of parachute journalism once the war started, and I didn't want to be a part of that.
I heard this early this morning and have not heard another word about it since, was it a hoax?
So people become foreign correspondents to "do good?" Now we know!
BTW, the Christian Science Monitor bureau in Pakistan was instrumental in publishing messages from AlQaida. I wrote to the Editor in the US to ask why they would help terrorists who had been driven into hiding, into getting their propaganda printed. I got a mealy-mouthed non-responsive answer.
CSM is on the same list with CNN as far as I am concerned.
I think things are quiet because the reporter who was kidnapped is a 20-something graduate of the University of Mass who is well-connected. This will be a PR problem for the Cindy Sheehan's and Michael Moore's of the world if the terrorist behead this young woman.
or feast on her, as was reported by an iraqi woman at saddam's trial....
regardless. prayers for her.
Based on her age, she's definitely rape bait for the terrorists. I wonder if Soros will pay her ransom in time. This will be a PR nightmare for the liberals if she's raped, then shot or beheaded.
or mutilated.
Isn't that the truth.
Jill had an article in yesterday's CSM:
from the January 05, 2006 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0105/p01s01-woiq.html
America's waning clout in Iraq
In 2006, the US is expected to cut troops and spending, leaving it with less sway in Iraq.
By Jill Carroll and Dan Murphy
BAGHDAD AND CAIRO - As the weight of the Shiite Islamist victory in Iraq's election is still being calculated, US influence in the country - in reconstruction, security, and politics - is steadily receding.
While a diminished US role in Iraqi affairs was inevitable, the speed of the retreat raises some risks to the establishing of a stable, US-friendly Iraq. The Shiite parties that dominated the vote in December have closer affinity to Iran than to the US. At the same time, the Bush administration is planning sharp cuts in reconstruction aid, a major point of leverage in Iraqi affairs.
"I think it's pretty clear our influence is waning as far as agenda setting," says Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University and a former top US adviser on the writing of Iraq's Constitution.
What then are America's best hopes for steering Iraq in a direction favorable to US interests? Some analysts say the US may reach out to its erstwhile enemies - the Sunnis.
"I wouldn't be the least surprised if the Americans cut a deal with Sunni [political figures with ties to the insurgency] to cut the Shiites down to size," says Dan Plesch, a research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
However, that tack could carry high risks in the form of greater short-term violence.
"Certainly the violence in Iraq has been much lower than it might have been, because there's been a fair deal of restraint among Shiite leaders," says David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute in Washington. "And that might end now - they may feel the need to really go after the Sunni Arabs as a diversion."
---snip---
A "setup" that includes killing the driver? I don't think so.
Thanks. Too bad it took 40 posts before some compassionate comments for this woman.
Good comment.........some rough voices on FR today.
I worry about this woman.
The fact that she's young, female, white, American and works for the Christian Science Monitor doesn't look good for her. Even though she's a Massachussetts liberal, the "freedom fighters" cheered by Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan have probably violated her in typical Iraqi fashingher numerous times already.
You can bet the liberal media will do all they can to keep the soon-to-come hostage video from being broadcast in the U.S. They can't let a young, white, female liberal U.S. reporter be seen in this condition. It doesn't suit their purposes.
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