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Iraq

20 June by  (June 2009)
’I think they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.’
Drawing back the curtain by Amanda Sebestyen (October 2008)
Wherever he has found himself – with the freedom fighters in the mountains of northern Iraq, as a prisoner in an Iranian jail, and now filling a whole room at the Imperial War Museum – Osman Ahmed has always gone on drawing. He spoke to Amanda Sebestyen about his passionate journey to make his art bear witness for the hidden people of Kurdistan
A different picture by Claire Davenport (June 2008)

An American soldier walks into a mosque, aims at an injured civilian and shoots, killing the man instantly. This is television news report number one. In the second report a military unit enters a mosque and patches up the wounded. Then a second unit arrives and speaks to the civilians. One man isn’t responding and fearing the man’s booby-trapped body will explode if he touches it, the soldier shoots the man in self defence.

You don’t have to be an expert in media studies to recognise the handiwork of networks with irreconcilable editorial positions in the presentation of this news item. The first was broadcast by Al-Jazeera Arabic, the second by the American Fox News Channel. How do we know which one is ‘true’? And how should journalists go about their job of reporting in a situation such as Iraq? Claire Davenport spoke to western and Iraqi journalists to gauge some of their views on how the media is reporting the Iraq war and occupation

Iraq’s homophobic terror by Peter Tatchell (December 2007)
Peter Tatchell reports on the plight of gay and lesbian Iraqis targeted for execution by Islamist death squads
Occupation without troops by Becca Fisher (November 2007)
The US and UK governments, the IMF and oil corporations are behind Iraq’s proposed Hydrocarbon Law, which would effectively privatise Iraqi oil. Becca Fisher investigates
Not only about the war by David Moburg (December 2006)
As the Democrats give contradictory signals on Iraq, the US anti-war movement prepares to exert pressure for withdrawal and compensation for war damage. But it’s not only on the military front that Bush is weakened. David Moburg reports
A warrior against the war by Leigh Phillips (December 2006)
Geoffrey Millard, 25, a former US Army sergeant, is president of the Washington DC chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War. He spoke to Leigh Phillips about how he became an activist in the anti-war movement
The road from Iraq and ruin by Oscar Reyes (December 2006)
With the Democrats’ victory in the US elections offering the chance of a change of direction on Iraq, Kamil Mahdi argues that the growing sectarian violence is a product of the occupation – and that only by fixing a firm date for the withdrawal of foreign troops will it be possible for a more peaceful political process to emerge. Interview by Oscar Reyes
Moqtada Al Sadr’s not-so-barmy-army by Katherine Haywood (July 2006)
The Sadr movement in Iraq is typically portrayed as a hard-line sect. But Sheikh Hassan al-Zarghani tells Katherine Haywood that its main goals are a united Iraq free from occupation.
Bridges to peace by Fabio Alberti (July 2006)
Fabio Alberti from the Italian `Bridges to Baghdad’ argues that the peace movement will have to keep Prodi to his commitment to withdraw from Iraq and calls for the government to initiate an international peace conference.

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