Al-Jazeera Stumbles Down Haifa Street

Let's watch together as Al-Jazeera reports on the Iraqi government's latest push to deal with the security crisis in Baghdad. On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera's anchor was speaking by phone with the news service's man in the Iraqi capital, Jassim Abdullah. The anchor noted official reports that 50 armed men had been killed by U.S-backed Iraqi forces during a battle on Haifa Street, and Abdullah responded that the figure was probably correct. But he added that the area targeted is a residential area and that there was no way the Iraqis and the Americans could do anything without harming women, children and old men.

Indeed, Abdullah insisted that the Iraqi forces were entering homes, and setting some of them on fire. He further charged that the Iraqi forces had attacked two Sunni mosques and killed two men who were in the midst of prayer. Abdullah did not say that he had learned any of this information first hand. He quoted no sources. In the great tradition of Arab journalism, he described dramatic events while speaking off the top of his head. Of course, if what he said was true, it would indeed be terrible.

Was it true? Even as he was speaking, the wire services – not exactly an arm of CENTCOM public relations – were reporting that Iraqi forces had come under fire on Haifa Street, and had called in U.S. forces to back them up. If that was true, then Al-Jazeera's version of events would seem to be backwards. That is, if "women, children and old men" were in the line of fire, it was not "the Iraqis and the Americans" who had put them there.

Wednesday's New York Times offers a yet fuller version of events on Haifa Street. According to its story, US military officials claimed to have "solid evidence to suggest that Sunni insurgent leaders were using the neighborhood as a base of operations." The NYT added that "One Sunni resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, confirmed as much, saying that insurgents had taken over to such a degree that a top-ranking official of Al Qaeda had even seized control of the Rafadin [sic; it's Rafidain] bank, set up an Islamic court and began handing out death sentences."

So there's an Al Qaeda kangaroo death court in the neighborhood, and all Al-Jazeera can do is tell a story about the harm that Iraqi and US forces are supposedly doing to "women, children and old men"?

Back to the NYT account. The US and Iraqis closed in on Haifa Street before dawn, according to the story, and started arresting people, including several Syrians. "Nearly as soon as they began making arrests, they came under heavy bombardment from small-arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades and indirect fire, probably mortars, according to an American military official. As the fighting intensified, insurgents began moving to the rooftops in order to shoot at the armored American attack vehicles on the roads below."

So we have two very different Haifa Street narratives to ponder. One of them, from Western sources (which I've had occasion to criticize in the past) appears to be based on a variety of sources, including (ostensibly) residents of the Haifa Street neighborhood. The other narrative, Al-Jazeera's, is preconceived, and apparently built on a foundation of prejudice.

That's not unusual. Correspondent Jassim Abdullah told Al-Jazeera's huge audience a story suggesting that vengeful Iraqi and American soldiers were being allowed to kill whomever they pleased, especially "women, children and old men." That he had no sources to offer didn't seem to be a problem. By contrast, if Al-Jazeera reports on "insurgents" who explode car bombs at vegetable markets with the intention of killing civilians, such as the Dec. 18th attack that killed five people and injured several, it manages to contain its crocodile tears. In Al-Jazeera's world, such deaths are the result of the chaos unleashed by brutal foreign occupiers and their local collaborators.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that "Another roadside bomb missed an Iraqi army patrol in Mosul but wounded an 8-year-old girl nearby...." If there was a hysterical Al-Jazeera reporter on the air that day to talk about the innocent child and her injuries, I missed it.