Reporting restrictions
- 25 Oct 06, 03:58 PM
BASRA: Visiting Iraq is a sobering experience but, as we get ready to leave after two editions of Today (which you can read about here), one particularly sobering thought lingers: once UK forces pull out, as they say they will "sometime soon", will any reporting from here be possible?
All of us would prefer to be here without the help of the military but, at the moment, that鈥檚 very difficult to envisage. In a land where some policemen are also members of the death squads which terrorise this city, where patrol cars are found carrying roadside bombs, where the long arm of the law may also be the strong arm of religious extremism or a criminal gang, the risks that local journalists run are terrifying. Without the military safety blanket, the risks to outsiders would be incalculable.
So we鈥檙e with the armed forces, and grateful for the protection they offer. But, at the same time, it鈥檚 hard to ignore the limits they impose. As journalists, we spend too much of our time glimpsing Basra through razor wire fences or the bullet-proof windows of a Land Rover. We get out of the fortified bases into the city and the villages beyond as often as we can, but each trip is immensely labour-intensive 鈥 and much more dangerous for the soldiers who accompany us than it is for us.
Maybe those who believe that the presence of British troops and diplomats here exacerbates the situation are right. They鈥檙e certainly a lightning rod. I鈥檝e lost count of the number of mortars and rockets that have landed on the base where we鈥檙e staying in the past four nights 鈥 perhaps it鈥檚 40 or 50 鈥 and each one runs the risk of falling short and landing instead on an Iraqi house much less able to withstand the impact than the breeze-block bungalows where we sleep. So, certainly, some daily acts of violence happen because the British are here. But, at the same time, we鈥檝e heard stories of lives that have been saved by their presence. And however appalling the state of the Basra police, is it really possible to imagine that they鈥檇 be better without the efforts of ex-coppers from Northern Ireland, South Wales and every other corner of the UK to train and improve them?
It鈥檚 too early for any final accounting of the British mission here, but the army is certainly one very strong thread in the fabric of what little security remains in Basra. If we pull it out, will what鈥檚 left support a society where foreigners can come and go in peace?
In Baghdad, of course, 大象传媒 colleagues do manage to move around the city independently 鈥 but the level of protection they need means it鈥檚 a fiercely expensive business. And even an organisation with the resources of the 大象传媒 couldn鈥檛 afford to do that everywhere.
Let鈥檚 be optimistic for a moment. Let鈥檚 assume that when the UK withdraws from this corner of southern Iraq the situation doesn鈥檛 get worse. Let鈥檚 assume that it even gets marginally better 鈥 that there are fewer death squads roaming the streets, that the police are less well-infiltrated by members of the violent militia. Even then, it will be far too dangerous to travel here independently.
And while Baghdad 鈥 the centre of everything in this country 鈥 continues to grab the headlines and catch the eye, the risk is that this city of nearly two million people slips from view.
In one sense, no surprise: there are plenty of cities of that size around the world that we barely hear from. But, without in any sense wishing more suffering upon this place, it鈥檚 possible that some pretty awful things will happen here in the years ahead 鈥 and it would be tragic if we didn鈥檛 know about them.
Ceri Thomas is editor of the Today programme
Thanks to some brilliant work by the 大象传媒's distribution department, the bandwidth issues finally got sorted and the channel on Freeview will look just like a proper one, as it already has done for years on cable and satellite. Sitting next to 大象传媒 News 24 on the EPG at channel 81, it makes that transition from the first part of a major statement or debate - which both channels are likely to carry - to the handover to 大象传媒 Parliament, both natural and easy. 
But it wasn't easy getting to this point. 
