E-mail a friendJane Arraf
airdate March 28, 2007
Now an NBC News correspondent, Jane Arraf spent 8 years as CNN Baghdad Bureau Chief and reported on Iraq from crisis through war. After the '91 war, she was the only Western correspondent based there. She was expelled by the Iraqi government in the fall of '02, but returned after major combat operations ended. Arraf began her career as a Reuters correspondent and went on to report/produce for Reuters Financial Television. She was also the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Jane Arraf
Tavis: Jane Arraf has been covering the war in Iraq for "NBC News" since last fall. For eight years, she served as CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, and during the late nineties was the only western reporter based in the Iraqi capital. She's also a former Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She joins us tonight from New York. Jane, nice to have you back on the program.
Jane Arraf: It's good to be back, Tavis, thanks.
Tavis: Let me start with this question of what this showdown, I presume, means with regard to the Senate and the House both now giving the president - or about to give him a date certain to get out of Iraq.
Arraf: Well, I guess the bottom line is it really means something on the ground in Iraq if, in fact, that's going to happen. It now looks that no matter what the politics going on here, those troops aren't leaving any time soon if President Bush has anything to do with it. So that's really what people on the ground there are looking at.
Tavis: Do folk in Iraq know - I'm talking about everyday people; not those who run the country, but the everyday people, are they aware of this debate about this date certain? And if they are aware, what's - I'm sorry to generalize, but what's your sense of their view about this debate, about this date certain to get out?
Arraf: Well, that's a great question. Like a lot of things in Iraq, if you ask Iraqis on the ground do they want the troops to leave they will say two seemingly contradictory things, and believe both of them. One is yes, they want the troops to leave immediately because no one wants to be under occupation, but underneath that a lot of Iraqis are really afraid about what would happen if those troops did leave. Because in a lot of places in that country the American troops are still the glue holding together whatever tenuous stability there is.
Tavis: I know you're not the Capitol Hill reporter for "NBC News," but let me ask you your sense of - back to this showdown - your sense of what this debate really means and what ultimately is going to come out of it. President Bush, to your point, has been very stern, for lack of a better word, about saying that he does not want to subscribe to that philosophy; that notion.
Arraf: And saying that he'll veto it if it comes down to that. I think what it really means is that it's this ongoing question that we're just now grappling with four years into this, going into its fifth year, which is basically are the sacrifices that Americans are being asked to make, are they worth it for what they expect to gain to continue to keep those troops in there.
And I wish I had an answer to that. I'm not sure anyone has an answer, but it's an equation that the American people have to decide based on the sacrifices those soldiers and Marines are making there, and on the progress they think might be possible if the troops stay.
Tavis: So on the anniversary or the commemoration, depending on one's word choice, of our being in Iraq just a few days ago, President Bush came out that morning in the White House and had a few words to say to the nation about this war that we're engaged in in Iraq. And so the president says we're making progress. Is the president telling the truth or is the president not telling the truth?
Arraf: It's like anything else - it all depends what you mean by progress. Now, we've been caught up with words during these whole four years of this war. They didn’t want to call it an insurgency; it's clearly an insurgency. No one wanted to call it a civil war; officials are now calling it a civil war. Progress is seen as key. Now indisputably, there is progress in some places.
There's some neighborhoods in Baghdad where my Iraqi friends tell me it's safer now; they can actually walk in the streets. There are other places, as we've seen today and almost every day, where there's still horrific acts of violence. So it seems to be one step forward, two steps back in a lot of places.
Tavis: I'm not sure that everybody in America even understands this, but as best we can understand it we know that there's something called sectarian violence going on. We know that there are three major groups of players here: the Sunni, the Shi'a, the Kurds. Tell me from your perspective again on this sectarian violence and whether no matter what we do, that particular issue is ever going to go away.
Arraf: Well, that's a great question because this right now is a country that is essentially tearing itself apart. The only reason that I retain some optimism, having lived in Iraq, having covered it for more than a decade, is that I'm not seeing that sectarian violence starting from hatred from the ground up. I'm not seeing neighbor against neighbor yet.
A lot of this violence, sectarian Shi'a against Sunni and then variations on that, is being driven, it seems, by political motives by either foreign fighters from outside, by militias inside tied to Iraqi political groups, and there are a lot of people who benefit from chaos in Iraq. Right now, it has not yet reached the level of Sunnis hating Shi'as just because they're Sunnis or just because they're Shi'as. There's so many Iraqis who are married to Shi'as who are Sunni and vice versa, it's really hard to disentangle that.
Tavis: so since you spent so much time there, what's your sense of whether or not - and I don't even like the way this question sounds, and I don't know any other way to ask it, because - well, let me just ask the question. Can the Iraqis govern themselves? And I ask that because I even hate the notion - and I see so many of us in the media asking that question, so let me just critique and criticize myself for that formulation 'cause I don't even like the notion of suggesting that anybody in the world - that any people don't have the capacity to govern themselves. So with that said, can they?
Arraf: No, I know what you mean, and I think really it depends on - we assume that yes, indeed, they can govern themselves. The question is are they being given the tools, are they being given the backdrop in which they can actually have a government that runs ministries that aren't associated with death squads, that provide services to people, whether they're Sunni or Shi'a or Arab or Kurdish, and is everything in place for them to be able to do that?
I would say even the most optimistic of people about Iraq say the conditions aren’t quite there yet. There is still too much violence going on in too many parts of the country for there to be a completely functioning, credible government free of corruption, for one thing. So I think the bottom line to that is yes, Iraqis can govern themselves - perhaps not quite right now.
Tavis: So where this - I could have started our conversation with this issue. Let me, as we draw to a close, raise it now. Of course, one of the big news stories of the day with regard to Iraq, at least connected to it, are the story of these 15 British hostages that the Iranians are holding. The British government, of course, has said that these British personnel were in Iraqi water space, not in Iranian water space, and yet they're being held.
We're hearing tonight as we talk that the Iranians are perhaps about to release the female hostage that they hold. What do you know that I don't know? I'm sure - well, that's an unfair question; there's a lot you know that I don't know. Tell me what you know about this, and how you see this playing out.
Arraf: Well it's obviously really quite potentially dangerous, because the last thing you want on top of that overlay of essentially what's a cauldron of seething violence in Iraq in some places and the potential for much more violence is to have Iran jump into it. Now Iran is getting as much mileage as it can out of this, as evidenced by the video that we've seen of the British soldiers and the female soldier with her hair covered in Iranian tradition.
So clearly they are making the most of this. They're also not stupid. Iranian leaders have proven to be quite careful, quite calculating in how they're playing this, and they're not expected, on the ground in Iraq, to do anything rash but they are expected to make as much mileage out of this as they can.
Tavis: When you say get knowledge out of it, if these British personnel were really not in, if they really were not in Iranian water space, what knowledge will they get out of this? What's the point of doing this?
Arraf: They could very well try to get an apology, at the very least, and in that part of the world a public apology counts for a lot. It is a power play that they are using. Obviously they're using the media to play into that with the release of essentially this video of these British soldiers, but at the very least, they would expect the British forces to apologize for being in that situation.
Tavis: Jane Arraf, "NBC News" correspondent. Jane, nice to have you back on the program. Thanks for your insight, as always.
Arraf: Good to be back with you, Tavis. Thank you.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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