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Kaplow: Newsweek’s new man in Baghdad |
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By Albert Eisele
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Posted: 07/11/07 06:58 PM [ET] |
Lawmakers who travel to Iraq for a brief first-hand look at the war, as several members did over the Fourth of July recess, are likely to find it hard to gain a better understanding of the U.S. effort there, according to one of the most senior American journalists in Iraq.
“It takes a very discerning and open-minded effort to get something out of [a] quick visit here,” Baghdad-based Larry Kaplow said in a recent e-mail interview. “It’s possible but you have to look past what you see.”
Kaplow, who joined Newsweek’s Baghdad bureau in May after more than four years covering the war for Cox Newspapers, said most visiting lawmakers get a view of the war that “will necessarily be limited in time and scope. You do learn from it but any sweeping judgments take expertise or repeated visits over time.”
He has cautioned lawmakers that Iraqis “will speak strategically, each word measured for its effect on the listener. It takes a lot of conversation and reading between the lines — and experience — to get at their real sentiments.”
That said, the 44-year-old native of Falls Church, Va., thinks Congress and the American public know the war is not going well, regardless of what they hear from the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress. “In the broad sense, they understand that things have gone wrong here, which took a while to sink in. They’ve also become aware of the grim psychic and moral costs of occupation, which is very hard for idealistic countries to recognize.”
But Kaplow, the son of veteran television reporter Herb Kaplow, is also not sure journalists have been able to explain the complex reality of Iraq.
“I often hear people talk about how the ‘Iraqis are killing each other.’ But they’re not, really,” he said. “A small group will kill the non-violent civilians of the opposing sect, then the other sect’s minority militants will kill non-combatants of the first sect, which is what makes it so tragic. They aren’t having many open battles between armed factions. It just takes hundreds of stories to convey the reality of a place far away to a country the size of the United States — another fact that makes it fulfilling to be here.”
Kaplow, a graduate of Duke University, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala before going to work for The Palm Beach Post, a Cox newspaper. He arrived in Baghdad just before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
He said the biggest change he has seen is the deterioration of security.
“The intense Sunni-Shiite suspicion and animosity is one of the most destructive and tragic developments here. Most Iraqis still would rather live side by side, but the violence by small segments of the population — basically car bombers and the militias — has provoked fear and hatred even among former neighbors. The fear and chaos strengthens the identity politics, the militias and the extremists, and weakens the government and the U.S. influence. That in turn creates more chaos and fear.”
Kaplow declined to offer an opinion about the success or failure of the U.S. war effort. But he said it’s clear that the recent surge of additional troops, even if it succeeds, is “going to be a very long, hard and incremental effort. We’ve seen big operations before, and the crucial factor — and shortfall — has been in sustainability, whether the U.S. and Iraqi forces hold the ground they clear. In the past they weren’t able to, but they are doing some things differently now.”
He added: “As someone who knows a lot of Iraqis personally, I feel they deserve all the help they can get. On the other hand, it’s still unclear how much the U.S. is able to help, especially as this goes on.”
Kaplow arrived home Monday for a brief visit with his parents.
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