BAGHDAD, 18 May 2003 — Newspapers are sprouting in Baghdad as political parties and independent publishers scurry to fill a vacuum left by the sudden collapse of Saddam Hussein’s media along with his regime. No sooner had the regime evaporated when US forces took over the capital on April 9 than newspapers started appearing, and street vendors in Baghdad now peddle around 20 publications, including two sports magazines.
With its color front page and generous pictures, the daily Az-Zaman (Time), which is edited in London and prints just 2,000 copies here, is the newspaper that conforms most to the standards of international journalism. But the mouthpieces of the two main Kurdish factions, with a much larger circulation and well-organized teams brought into the capital from the northern Kurdish region, are most in tune with the concerns of ordinary Iraqis.
“Only local pages are now being edited here, but we are planning to move our entire operation to Baghdad,” said Az-Zaman publisher Saad Al-Bazzaz, puffing a Cuban cigar. Bazzaz, one-time top information official in the deposed regime who shifted to the opposition around a decade ago, said his newspaper would soon set up shop on the premises of one of the many media that used to be run by Saddam’s elder son Uday.
Al-Taakhi (Brotherhood), the daily newspaper of Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), is a returnee, rather than newcomer, to the Baghdad media scene. “We published in Baghdad from 1967 to 1974 before being banned. We continued to put out the newspaper clandestinely in Kurdistan, and then began publishing freely in Kurdish in 1991” when the region came under Western protection and slipped from Saddam’s control, said chief editor Falakadeen Kakaee.
But continued publication of the newspaper after the mid-1970s ban came at a price. “Our first chief editor, Saleh Youssefi, who had sought refuge in Kurdistan, was killed by a letter-bomb in 1981. His successor, Darah Tawfik, went missing the same year,” Kakaee told AFP. Al-Taakhi is now printing 20,000 copies of its Arabic edition in Baghdad. “There is strong demand but we are encountering many difficulties.
Al-Ittihad (Union), the newspaper of Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the other main Kurdish faction, is currently printing 30,000 copies in Baghdad. Along with a television and radio broadcasting from Iraqi Kurdistan and the several magazines also published by the PUK, Al-Ittihad is part of a “publishing house,” said Azad Jindyany, the party’s media boss.
Assaah (the Hour), backed by Ahmad Al-Kubaissy, a rich Dubai-based Sunni Muslim cleric, is a quality newspaper, according to Adeeb Shaaban, its controversial editor in chief who assisted Uday Saddam Hussein before moving to the opposition. “We have just one car for 22 reporters, but I promised them a bonus for every article quoted by international news agencies. People don’t know which newspaper to buy, and we must carry balanced articles from the start in order to keep our readers,” he said.
