My friend James Glanz wrote a piece for last Sunday's New York Times about "the menacing, half-lit world inhabited by the network of Iraqi stringers that Western news organizations rely on." One of those stringers, a man who worked with Glanz, was murdered earlier this month.
As important as they are for people around the globe who want to know what is happening in Iraq, the stringers cut only a shadowy profile outside the newsrooms where they send their reports – by choice, because their lives are continually under threat. Who the stringers are, how and why they do their work comes into much sharper focus for the Western journalists who work with them. And, sooner or later, the Western journalist gains a vivid appreciation of the risks the Iraqis run in helping to collect the news. But even with us, there are limits; we aren't seen much together outside of work; we do not share their family celebrations.
One week ago, a different stringer from the one who had been merely warned met with a much more tragic fate. Men claiming to be police officers showed up at the home of Fakher Haider, a stringer in the southern city of Basra who worked primarily with The New York Times, and took him away in front of his family. Mr. Haider was found dead hours later.
Exactly why Mr. Haider was murdered, and whether it was related to his work for this newspaper, have not been determined. But he had just filed a report on clashes between British forces in the area and members of a militia that has infiltrated the Basra police force but is loyal to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Mr. Haider's killers arrived at his home in at least one police car.
The advocacy organization Reporters Without Borders reported on its Web site last week that when Mr. Haider's death is included, 72 journalists and "media assistants" – stringers – have been killed in Iraq since the American-led invasion. The great majority were Iraqi, but not all: Steven Vincent, an American freelance reporter, was shot and killed in Basra in August after being taken away, also by men in a police car.
