A Tribute to Sarwa and Sahar: Two Valiant Iraqi Journalists

They were full of life, they loved to joke, they sang, they appreciated small favors, but, above all, they were passionate about their work as journalists and about their war-torn country Iraq. They lived and died to tell its agonizing story.

Sarwa Abdel Wahab Thanon and Sahar Hussein Ali Haidari were brave women brutally murdered in the city of Mosul almost a year apart, presumably the victims of sectarian violence.

Sarwa Abdel Wahab Thanon (Abu-Fadil)

I was privileged to meet both women when they and 13 other print, broadcast and online Iraqi reporters and editors of different sectarian colors and from various regions of Iraq came to Lebanon to attend a workshop I'd organized in 2005.

Journalists' safety in war zones as well as political considerations and common experiences between Iraqi and Lebanese media permeated the workshop in media skills funded by the German Heinrich Boll Foundation.

The Iraqi journalists represented Nawa Radio, Kurdish Satellite TV, Al Diyar TV, Azzaman newspaper, Voices of Iraq News Agency, Yanabeeh magazine, Al Jeel magazine, Iraqioun News Agency and As-Sabah newspaper. The Baghdad correspondent of The Washington Post was also among them.

Participants spent the first five days of the ten-day course engaging in lengthy discussions about whether journalism was worth pursuing as a career in a war-torn country, how reporters cover tragedy and bloodshed, how Iraqi journalists often publish under pseudonyms to avoid being targeted, and, the dangers of mixing spot news with editorials and analysis.

Over the weekened, the journalists, who hailed from Baghdad, Mosul and Dohuk visited Lebanon's historic Roman ruins in Baalbeck, the Jeita grotto and the ancient port city of Byblos of Phoenician alphabet fame.

The last three days of the workshop were spent visiting different Lebanese print and broadcast media. The journalists also reveled in Lebanon's heady nightlife and abundant shopping, albeit on their very limited budgets.

We also discussed our families, our children, our lives and how we managed to survive in countries where strife was our daily bread.

Sahar had spent her free moments buying a trousseau for her soon-to-be-wed daughter.

Ironically, the journalists found Lebanon, with all its political and sectarian baggage, heaven on earth compared to their super-stressed out lives in Iraq.

It amazed me they had no medical or travel insurance. It was a luxury none could afford, and fatalism was their constant companion.

That fact almost ended Sahar's life in Beirut when she began bleeding the eve of their return to Iraq via Jordan, as there were no direct flights to Baghdad. We couldn't admit her to hospital in Lebanon since nobody could pay the upfront fees.

Sahar Haidari (Abu-Fadil)

Sahar's colleagues managed to get her to Amman the next day -- with difficulty -- and she eventually returned to her country.

The only time I heard from her after that episode was an email she sent saying she was undergoing treatment for cancer.

Sahar, a Shiite, was 45 when assailants gunned her down June 7, 2007 as she left her home. She'd been threatened repeatedly for her audacious coverage of Mosul's internecine fighting and had been roughed up on several occasions before her death.

She wrote for various media, sometimes under a pseudonym, and took the threats seriously, after which she moved with her husband and four children to Damascus. But she returned on a brief visit to Mosul, only to meet her fate.

Sarwa, 36, was a Kurdish Sunni freelancer for an Iraqi news website and different TV channels who had trained as a lawyer.

She was a bubbly petite woman with an eagerness to learn new things and to bombard her interlocutor with questions.

Unidentified gunmen apparently executed her May 4, 2008 in front of her mother.

Both women were courage personified. They will be sorely missed.