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| Steven Vincent |
Steven Vincent was a New York art journalist who turned war reporter
after witnessing 9/11 first hand from his apartment rooftop. He
went to Iraq as a freelance and had been living for several months
in Basra, wanting to report on stories that no-one else was covering.
While there, he began to uncover an increasingly dark side to
the ‘Serene South’, as The New York Times referred to the British-controlled
sector of Iraq. A steadily-growing tide of violent Islamic fundamentalism,
fueled by followers of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and
Iranian infiltrators was beginning to overwhelm Basra and its
environs.
On July 31 2005, Steven had an op-ed piece published by the New
York Times regarding the infiltration of the Basra police force
by Iranian-backed Shia fundamentalists: In it, he exposed the
fact that rogue elements on the force had formed assassination
squads and were driving through the city, snatching and killing
their victims with impunity. Two days later, he and his translator
were kidnapped off the street by men in police uniforms, driving
a police vehicle, taken to an undisclosed location, beaten and
then shot. His translator Nour al-Khal survived: Steven died.
While the infiltration of the Basra police force is now common
knowledge and the British Army moved in to cull extremists from
the force, Steven was the first to expose it as the only long-term
Western journalist working in the area. Initially he wrote on
his blog In the Red Zone (www.redzoneblog.com),
in several articles in the Christian Science Monitor and finally
in The New York Times. He well knew the risks he was running,
as a July 9th quote from his blog shows:
The Christian Science Monitor has been kind enough to run another
of my articles, this one on the religious parties which now dominate
Basra. When you read this, keep in mind that for various reasons
–not the least of which are safety concerns – the piece only scratches
the surface of what is happening here.
Says his widow, Lisa Ramaci: “My husband was not a foolhardy
man, but considered the information he was disseminating to be
extremely vital and worth pursuing as far as he could take it.
He lived courageously, and died courageously in an attempt to
bring what he was seeing and learning to a larger audience. There
is not much more we can ask of journalists and Steven truly gave
his all in the pursuit of truth and moral clarity.”
Steven Vincent’s book In the Red Zone – a Journey Into the Soul
of Iraq (Spence Publishing), describes a tormented society whose
inhabitants-troubling, infuriating, yet often inspiring-survived
the ghoulish dictatorship of Saddam Hussein only to face the death
cult of radical Islam. |
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