The Justice

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of the The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Haider Hamza, an Iraqi journalist who is currently studying for his doctorate at Columbia University, spoke Oct. 20 about the War in Iraq.

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of the The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Hamza, shown here posing with a group of students, feels that it is important to create dialogue about the war in Iraq between American and Iraqi citizens.

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of the The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism Before the event, Hamza spent time talking to students and answering their questions about his work as an Iraqi journalist.

During a time of war, said Haider Hamza, two industries survive: military and media. In 2003 when the United States invaded his home country, Iraq, Hamza chose the latter.

In a talk hosted by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism on Oct. 20, Iraqi journalist Hamza spoke about the war in Iraq and about his experiences living through it. The event was part of Schuster's Social Justice Leadership series, which is also sponsored by the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. The proceeds of the event will help displaced Iraqi families. Hamza addressed an audience of around 150 Brandeis students, faculty and other community members.

Before the war started, Hamza's father was a diplomat, and he himself worked as a teenage representative for the Ministry of Information in Iraq. Hamza, who has a warm, gap-toothed smile, was only 19 when he started working as a translator for foreign media organizations. He then worked his way up as a cameraman, television producer and photographer. Several of his photographs have featured on the front page of The New York Times.

Currently, Hamza is studying for his doctorate in security studies at Columbia University. Even though he feels that he is needed in Iraq to keep his family safe and to help his country, Hamza said he feels safer in the United States. His eventual goal is to relocate his family to a safer area. He said he realizes that it is "more important to live for a cause than die for one."

In the United States, living for a cause has come to mean engaging Americans in a dialogue about the war between the two countries. Hamza was featured on the television version of the radio show This American Life when he took a road trip to talk to people throughout the country. Hamza argues that as American citizens, all Americans are complicit in the war, whether they support it or not. In this sense, Americans have an obligation to be informed and engaged.

While working as a journalist, Hamza never knew where he would go or what he would cover each day. He did know, however, that he would follow a cycle of death. He and his colleagues would hear a bang, search for smoke and go to the site of the bombing to cover it. Then they would go the hospital to which the victims were being transported. The next day, they would go to the cemetery to cover the funerals.

Hamza never became numb to death, but he said he almost grew to expect it. Children marked the one exception. No matter what, seeing killed or injured children always felt wrong. Each time he saw a child who was killed or injured was like the first time.

Children, however, are the group that Hamza said has become numb to war. Hamza shared a photograph of a nine-year-old who joined a militia group after several of his family members had been killed. Hamza spoke with the child and tried to convince him not to join the group, but by the end of the conversation, Hamza wrote in an e-mail, he realized that he "wasn't quite sure if I had the right to judge or tell him what he should do or how he should react. None of us can tell what we would have really done in that position."

Back in 2003, Hamza said, Iraqis were optimistic about the war. They expected the Americans to come in "with a magic stick" and fix everything. But things went wrong in several ways. For one thing, Hamza wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "While [the American soldiers] were very highly trained and well equipped, they didn't have a good understanding of the country's culture, history, geography, language, religions and traditions." During his talk, Hamza pointed out that many people have the notion that "We are the same." While this idea is true biologically, he said, there are still huge differences between Iraqis and Americans.

Americans also came in, Hamza said, with ideas about the superiority of a democratic system of government, but he argues that what matters more than what kind of government a country has is how that system is implemented. "Here in the US," he wrote, "people tend to give the title of 'democracy' a round of applause regardless to the definition it carries, the implementation of it or people's understanding to the responsibilities it holds." What Americans intended to be a democracy has manifested itself as complete chaos in Iraq.

Hamza compared the differing concepts of freedom and democracy to ordering from a restaurant menu. When you go to a restaurant, you are free to order anything you want-within the menu. That kind of freedom, he said, is like American freedom. People have many choices about how to conduct their lives, but there are still rules of law and order. Hamza said that Iraqis have been presented with a completely blank menu. As a result, chaos has ensued. "Freedom was presented to Iraq without law and order," Hamza wrote, "which meant that anyone could do anything they want." This kind of freedom also means that people could kill whomever they wanted.

Hamza presented a photo to illustrate the extent of the chaos in Iraq. The photo featured a mix of Iraqi policemen and militant forces. When Hamza approached the policeman and asked him, "Why not stop the terrorists?" the policeman jokingly replied, "It's a democracy."

Jake Yarmus '10, who works at the Schuster Institute, wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "I thought that his presentation was very moving, especially considering how inundated we are with material from Iraq and the rest of the Middle East."

Hamza discussed the way his work as a journalist mediates his frustration with the situation in Iraq. "Every day you feel anger," he said after the presentation. But "every time you snap a shot, part of that anger goes away because you feel you've done something."

He added in an e-mail to the Justice, "Working as a journalist and covering these stories everyday was a way or [sic] releasing energy and feeling like I'm doing something about the violence tearing the country apart."

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