When six Iraqi reporters who've worked in McClatchy's Baghdad bureau were awarded the International Women's Media Foundation Courage in Journalism Award in October, their fellow reporter, now bureau chief, Leila Fadel — who knows better than most what journalistic and survival skills those women needed — attended each of the ceremonies in New York, Washington, and Los Angeles.

She looked on with both pride and sadness, for only one of the six — Sahar Issa, whose acceptance speech was quoted at length in a New York Times editorial later that week — is still working for the bureau. All six lost close friends or family members, received death threats, and had become accustomed to sleeping with bulletproof vests and helmets by their beds at night.

Part of Fadel's job has been to find equally brave, competent, and trustworthy replacements. It's been that way since she took over the bureau last February, at the age of 25.


"It was a difficult first month," admits Fadel, who had covered Iraq on three previous rotations starting in June 2005. She had already been through a lot. Seven days into her first rotation, the bureau's well-regarded translator, Yasser Salihee, was killed by American soldiers who mistook him for a suicide bomber; a week into her second rotation, the bureau's hotel was bombed. "People started to joke they would leave on my seventh day," she says ruefully.

When she took over the bureau early this year, she did so with "one experienced reporter, one who'd been there a month, and no women." She notes that when a 6-foot-5, blond male reporter arrived, the first thing the staff said, was: "Where are we going to hide him?" Trusted female reporters are essential, says Fadel, whose father is Lebanese-American. She grew up in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and speaks conversational Arabic — but "at checkpoints, [men] won't address a woman, and that's an advantage."

Now she has assembled an "amazing" staff of five, including two women; Sahar Issa was one of her first hires. Because of the intractable sectarian divisions, Fadel must ask prospective hires whether they are Sunni or Shiite, to avoid sending someone into the wrong neighborhood. Sahar, who had no journalism background but speaks perfect English, answered "I'm Shunni."

That fragmented social structure makes story assigning a critical task. "There are killings you can't predict and don't understand," says Fadel. "Fiefdoms have sprung up, protected by their own groups. If you're a stranger in that neighborhood, people know. It's frightening as bureau chief, that maybe I would make a decision to go with a staff member, and realize too late it's a mistake."

Fadel notes that as the war has dragged on, the challenge is not only to report the current events, but also to explain its history, especially what it meant to be a Sunni or Shiite before the war.

"People want shorter stories, and tell me they're 'numb' to the story," she protests. "I think it's unacceptable to be numb to the story. We have 168,000 [troops] there, we're spending huge amounts of money." It's especially frustrating for Fadel, who has always wanted to be a foreign correspondent, to find the news hole shrinking as the complexities grow: "Americans don't understand the war in the context of their own lives," she says, especially the massive displacement of Iraqis from their homes. "Imagine it happening here, living in the U.S., and finding you are no longer welcome in your own hometown. Americans forget the very human element of this war." (Her blog, "Baghdad Observer," and one managed by Sahar and other Iraqi staffers, "Inside Iraq," can both be found via www. mcclatchydc.com.)

In a story that contrasted the everyday lives of Iraqis with President Bush's September statement that normal life is beginning to return to Baghdad, she interviewed half a dozen residents, including a 28-year-old Shiite in Sadr City. "Two days ago, his friend Mustafa was kidnapped from his computer shop," she wrote. "He was later found dead, shot in the head. It wasn't unusual. In his neighborhood — controlled by the Mahdi Army militia, loyal to cleric Muqtada al Sadr — he sees bodies every day."

Fadel's ability to convey what the war has meant to ordinary Iraqis has impressed Tina Susman, bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, who lives upstairs from her. "Even though I've been doing this kind of work a lot longer than she has, she has become one of my main advice-givers since I took on the Baghdad assignment at the start of this year," Susman tells E&P in an e-mail. "I admire her because she is so young, yet she's managing a bureau and covering a very difficult story with a very human touch. She is always out there talking to Iraqis — regular people as well as political and religious leaders. ... When I read her stories, I feel like I'm reading the stories that Iraqis would like people to hear. That isn't something that always comes through in conflict reporting, where there often is a tendency to focus on men in suits and uniforms."

Tom Lasseter, Iraq war correspondent and now McClatchy's Moscow bureau chief, had worked with Fadel on previous rotations and in February was struck by the smooth transition from bureau chief Nancy Youssef. "Running the day-to-day affairs of the bureau is a huge undertaking," he says. "You've got the local staff, reporters coming in, safety issues constant. She's a terrific reporter and a strong manager, and she took to it quickly, managing all the complexities, big and small."

Like the two Arab-American bureau chiefs before her (Youssef, now McClatchy's chief Pentagon correspondent, and Hannah Allam, currently McClatchy's Cairo bureau chief and Fadel's mentor during her internship at the St. Paul Pioneer Press), Fadel brought language, a knowledge of the culture and religion, and the ability to blend in. "We don't send people to Iraq lightly," notes John Walcott, McClatchy's Washington Bureau chief.

But it was her experience reporting on the war between Hezbollah and Israel in the summer of 2006 that convinced Walcott that Fadel could be the next Baghdad bureau chief.

While on a dark rooftop near Sidon, struggling to transmit pictures to her Washington editors, Fadel heard a gun cocking, and a voice asking in Arabic, "Who's out there?" A Hezbollah patrol had spotted her and another reporter. After convincing the group that they were indeed journalists and not spies — and pointing out, "If you want the story of your group told, how do you think it would make you look to hold a gun up to women?" — she got the leader's phone number.

She later interviewed him for a story "that gave insight into the thinking of people who are leading Hezbollah," says Walcott. He added that Mark Seibel, managing editor/international, agreed: "Here is a woman who has what it takes to go to Baghdad. If she can handle a group of guys holding AK-47s and even get a story out of it, then she can handle what Baghdad is likely to throw at her."

Fadel's first newspaper job after graduating from Northeastern University in 2004 was as a crime reporter for the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram, where she started lobbying to be sent to Iraq almost immediately. Six months later, she was on her way.

"I don't think anything prepares you for Iraq," says Fadel, who visited Lebanon every summer as a child, and recalls her father pointing to bombed-out buildings and describing what they had once been. "I have the same goals, though, as with police reporting: to humanize the victims."
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