The insurgents hate us

They play a crucial part in helping journalists to cover the Iraq war but their highly dangerous work is largely unheralded. Here an Iraqi 'fixer' tells his story Ayub Nuri Monday August 6, 2007 Guardian I became a fixer shortly before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A man drove me to a house in the northern town of Sulaimaniya where two American journalists needed an interpreter to do an interview. They worked for the New York Times Magazine: Elizabeth Rubin, a writer, and Lynsey Addario, a photographer. They were sitting with a local Kurdish commander, waiting for someone to help them talk to him. When the interview was finished, they asked me to be their "fixer". In a war zone, a fixer is a journalist's interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional life saver. I was offered $100 a day, about 25 times what I could make as an English teacher. I spent the next three years as a fixer and watched as my country learned a painful lesson: sometimes when you try to fix something, you break it even more. When Baghdad fell, in April 2003, I went south to the capital. I quickly became friends with fixers for National Public Radio, Knight Ridder, the Boston Globe, the BBC and the Times. I supported the war, as did many of my countrymen and pretty much all the fixers. We thought that only a powerful outside force could take on the job of ousting the dreadful Saddam. The war also brought an economic boom. In some streets, the pavements were piled with boxes containing TV sets, air conditioners and other appliances. People thought Iraq would become a kind of 51st state of the US. But then the war entered a new phase. A few weeks after President Bush's announcement that combat operations were over, American troops were battling insurgents across Iraq. My responsibilities as a fixer were rapidly expanding. I was not only taking reporters around the country and interpreting for them and then choosing safe routes home, but I was also finding people to be interviewed. Then, five months into the new phase of the war, I met Quil Lawrence, an American reporter for the BBC who worked for the show The World. Every morning, Quil and I would set out for interviews along with our driver, Abdulrazzaq. We did political reports as well as human-interest stories on reconstruction, the printing of new textbooks, the release of new albums by local singers. From the beginning, I watched carefully as reporters asked questions. When I began working with radio reporters, I also learned the techniques of recording. Other Iraqi journalists were getting a similar education. During Saddam's regime, the media were controlled by the state, and journalism was not an enviable profession. But only a few months after Saddam was toppled, there were more than 100 newspapers being published in Baghdad alone. It was a turning point in the history of the Iraqi media. Soon, however, the situation in Iraq grew much worse. The insurgency spread to cities, and all foreign nationals became targets. The insurgents hated fixers. They called us "collaborators". They broke into my apartment three times in Baghdad, but luckily I wasn't there. Many of my fixer friends received letters from armed groups ordering them to quit their jobs or they would be killed. At times, fixers have been killed without warning. Just two weeks ago, Khalid W. Hassan, a 23-year-old interpreter and reporter with the New York Times in Baghdad, was on his way to the bureau when he was stopped by gunmen and shot dead. Though fixers run as many, and often more, risks than western reporters, we haven't had the same protections. There have been no guidelines on what we should wear or when it is OK for us to travel for a story. As Iraqi natives, we have been expected to use our judgment about these things. And while American news organisations have often supported fixers' applications for visas to the US, the US government does not see itself as having a special obligation to them. Many Americans don't realise how central Iraqis are to bringing them the news they read every morning. But most of the journalists we worked with knew, even before we did, that they would come to rely on us more and more. One day, Quil and I were sitting in our hotel-room studio when he turned to me and said it was time for me to learn how to edit sound on the computer and file radio pieces myself. I asked him why. "One day we won't be able to come to this country any more," he said. "You fixers will have to replace us." I began going out with the radio equipment to interview the police, militia leaders and people on the street. I would take the tape back to the hotel and give it to the reporter or reporters I was working for. Sometimes a reporter would call me on my cellphone and tell me whom to interview and even what questions to ask. And sometimes I would do my own article. Some fixers had so much autonomy that after doing interviews and research for an article they would get a byline in a foreign paper. In the autumn of 2004 Iraq's political parties were preparing for general elections. At the same time, American troops were preparing for their second attack on Falluja - to make the city "safe for voters," they said. In this assault many hundreds of Iraqis, including civilians, were killed. Quil told me it was time for me to do my own radio pieces. With the recording equipment in my bag, I went to the headquarters of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. A man in a blue suit introduced himself as the party's spokesman. Over the next two days I met a range of politicians and people in the street. The Iraqis I talked to were angry about the plan to attack Falluja. I took the tapes back to the office, and I sat down to write my script. Finally it was time to read my piece over an ISDN line that would allow me to be recorded in the studios in Boston. The only way for me to listen to my story was via the internet, so I logged in and listened to it over and over again. I was not paid for that story because I was still in training, but my "sign off" dream had finally come true. "For The World, this is Ayub Nuri, in Baghdad." There was so much for me to learn. I especially wanted to improve my writing skills so that I might one day write for foreign newspapers. My American journalist friends encouraged me to apply to Columbia University's journalism school. Last summer, I received a scholarship from Columbia. I was very excited to begin that new experience and get away from the war for a while. Several other Iraqi fixers have also gone to the US to attend journalism school. When we left Iraq, we were all planning to go back after graduation. But the worsening war has made return all but impossible. We are stranded here. Every time we speak with our families on the phone, they tell us not to come home. "At least one less person to worry about," they say. Many of the fixers fled Iraq and are now refugees in neighbouring countries. Some of those who remained have big families to feed, so they stay. But some fixers I know refuse to leave the country merely out of loyalty to their trade. We welcomed the US war with a lot of hope. We changed careers and became fixers to help Iraq. Some of us paid with our lives. Now we are no longer sure we will ever be able to fix anything. · This article first appeared in the New York Times magazine