Interpreting "Good News" from Iraq

Uncovered or recovered cache? The 9th Iraqi Army Division headquarters shows off a weapons cache seized from insurgents this month. Maybe some of the weapons include parts of the 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols that American forces had earmarked for the Iraqi military, but fell in insurgent hands instead. (Photo by Khalid Mohammed - Pool/Getty Images).

It's a wave of good news out of Iraq. "[I]t is now plain," The Economist wrote last week, "that over the past several months, while Americans have been distracted by their presidential primaries, many things in Iraq have at long last started to go right." The Wall Street Journal editorial board, which, to be accurate, has rarely detected bad news from Iraq, noted on June 6 that "good news in Iraq is increasingly undeniable, even to the media." Even the more skeptical New York Times was asking on June 21, "What’s going right? And can it last?"

It has been quieter in Iraq. But only comparatively so. Comparisons can be deceiving. The Journal notes, for example, that "For three consecutive weeks, the number of violent incidents have been at their lowest level since the spring of 2004." The line suggests that the number of incidents is something Iraq can live with. But 45 insurgent attacks a day, as opposed to 70 in the spring of 2004, is an improvement only numerically. It has its political benefits in the United States. To the ordinary Iraqi, it's not the kind of improvement that defines safer streets.

Setting out the spring of 2004 as a benchmark also suggests that the situation is returning to some kind of more bearable normalcy. But rewind a moment to the spring of 2004. Here's what The New York Times was reporting on April 8, 2004: "The barrage of violence that has seized Iraq over the last few days has jolted many Americans, causing deep anxiety and prompting many people to re-examine their positions on how the United States is handling the war." The question the Times asked on June 21, in other words, is as pertinent as ever: can any moment of relative calm last in Iraq, when the fundamental conflicts that inflamed the country remain?

The point is made by Mudhafer al-Husaini, a member of the Times' Baghdad bureau, who contributed a reality-check post to the bureau's blog today:

It was around five PM when I arrived home — tired and weary, at that. I decided to take a quick nap to rest my body before going to the gym to exhaust myself more and not think of anything else because there are no more options during the night but to stay home. I was about to put my head on the pillow when a huge sound of explosion rocked the whole house. “No, not again… please God… make this explosion be away from any human,” I was thinking and trying to convince myself that this explosion could be detonated by the concerned authorities and away from civilians.

He tried to convince himself that he could sleep on. But he couldn't. Out he went into the streets of the capital: an incidental detail that tells you a lot about the reality of the situation on the ground: Al-Husaini could do what a Western reporter cannot in Baghdad. He could leave his home without an escort and rush out to the scene of an incident. A westerner would be picked out and very possibly harmed. Safer Baghdad? Not until a Westerner could do what Al-Husaini was doing, without worrying about his safety. Then again, Al-Husaini wouldn't have been doing what he was doing--rushing to the scene of a deadly blast--if Baghdad was in fact safer. Nor would he be having to write lines like this:

I could smell the death from far away and I could tell that this explosion was big. People and security forces were rushing in different directions. Sounds of crying, groans and shouting mixed together as some buildings were still on fire and of course there were people burning inside alive. I didn’t know how to act during those moments; shall I act like a journalist or like a normal person? The problem here is I’m an Iraqi and those who are dying are my people. I started calling my friends who live there one after another; some were fine because they weren’t there at that time. Some were wounded but still fine.

The Journal and others may crow that "good news in Iraq is increasingly undeniable." But so is the persistence of bad news, to those willing to see it--and more to the point, report on it. One of the many problems in Iraq is the dearth of western newspapers either willing or able to take to the streets, unbound by fear or their own security rules, to report on the kind of scenes Iraqis must still live with every day.