A blinkered view from the Baghdad Hilton

THE thought is heretical, but I’m having it all the same. Iraq, notwithstanding future setbacks that will undoubtedly occasionally spin it off course, is slowly turning into a good-news story. You might ask how this is possible so soon after the convictions of four British soldiers for abusing Iraqi prisoners and with deaths through roadside bombs still an almost daily occurrence. Surely with Baghdad one of the world’s top troublespots, there is nothing to report but horror?

While horror there is in plenty, horror is not the whole story. According to the quirkily named Bartle Bull, writing in this month’s Prospect magazine, it is not even half the story; it is simply the only story in which most of the western press corps is interested.

The good news in Bartle Bull’s piece is that, since the elections, "Iraq is not about America any more". Bull recounts his experiences on 30 January, the day Iraqis turned out in their millions to vote on their country’s future, missing out none of the violence, but also telling other stories, for example of the moment when the "floodgates burst", as he puts it, and the roads were thronged with brave voters; and how the streets, empty of traffic, were turned, after the polls closed, into temporary football pitches full of impromptu games. One Iraqi girl described the day to Bull as "orgasmic".

In Bull’s assessment, the elections turned into a success story the moment people learned of the heroism of the Baghdad policeman who was killed pulling a suicide bomber away from a polling station. "The queues rose tenfold as the story of the policeman’s martyrdom spread," says Bull, and the huge turnout "has cemented the new Iraqi state as an accomplished fact".

Within this new Iraqi state, the most radical groups, both Sunni and Shia, have "shifted their rhetoric to make demands within the new paradigm. It is a momentous shift."

You would never guess that from some British media reports, which are about as cheerful as coverage of a funeral. There is no difficulty telling the difference between the BBC’s Caroline Hawley and a ray of sunshine. You get the impression that most commentators are disappointed that the elections happened at all and, when they did, were secretly hoping for an outrage so dreadful it would turn 30 January into a day of wailing rather than cheering.

There was a brief flicker of hope for the press pack when a British Hercules aircraft crashed, killing nine RAF personnel and one soldier.

At once the British media made it the main story of the day, which, despite the tragedy for the families, it was not, particularly as there was no proof that the crash, though claimed by two separate terrorist groups, was caused by terrorists.

But never mind that. The crash gave commentators what they wanted: an excuse to downplay the success of the first democratic elections in which many Iraqis had ever taken part, and imply that they were a failure.

The truth is that hatred for George Bush and all he stands for is so entrenched in the eyes of bien pensant western commentators, that using the word "success" about Iraq would choke them. If word ever slips out, in relation, for example, to the highly influential Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani’s rejection of an Iranian-style theocracy, or that both Sunni and Shia openly state that they must get on together and not destroy the country through civil war, it comes hedged with such portentous and lugubrious caveats that it sounds more like a distasteful disease.

Most reporters "on the spot" couldn’t raise even the tiniest hint of joy when followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, the fiercely anti-United States young cleric, poured out to vote, clearly with their leader’s blessing, or when it became clear that al-Sadr had decided to send representatives to the new national assembly.

Of course, one trouble is that in Iraq most reporters are never actually "on the spot". Journalism from Baghdad is not, for obvious reasons of safety, real journalism, but is "hotel journalism", reflecting far more the correspondent’s view of what he or she supposes is happening, or even wants to happen, than what really is happening. When such journalists tell us from their hotel bedrooms, with appropriate gloom-doomery, what "most Iraqis are saying", they use the word "most" in the loosest possible way.

Hotel journalism has come into its own in Iraq. On 17 January, In Counterpunch, an American political newsletter, the Independent’s Robert Fisk made the rather dubious claim that Baghdad and the Iraqi National Guard were being taken over by insurgents, and described how impossible it was for reporters to get about. He explained that, although they never tell their audience, they get much of their information by telephone from US military sources.

These sources, so Fisk contended, barricaded into their heavily fortified Green Zone, are even more isolated from "real" Iraq than the questioning journalists, and their information is partial. Unsurprisingly, given his political stance, in Fisk’s opinion, this kind of reporting hugely benefits the Americans.

However Bartle Bull, who has actually been living in Sadr City, has a different opinion. Far from promoting the Americans, he believes hotel journalism is inaccurate because of "wilful" bad reporting, which is "weirdly personal" and based on the notion that Iraq must fail.

I’m with Bull on this one, as there is no evidence, at least in the British media, of pro-American bias. Rather the opposite. It was not until BBC’s Newsnight revealed late last week, through clenched teeth, that independent Iraqi television had taken off since Saddam’s downfall, that any reporting about Iraq had been remotely positive.

However, even Kirsty Wark had to smile at the new Iraqi soap opera, Modern Day Pashas, a pantomime romp, and the proliferation of new reality TV shows about everything from reconstruction to wedding days.

The former was a little strange, as the Iraqi presenter assured a weeping widow that "everything would be as before", a claim which made the poor widow cry, but the latter was as normal as reality TV shows ever are. Much to the disappointment of western journalists, it seems that, under the country’s new thick rash of satellite dishes, Iraqis are actually enjoying themselves.

This longing for the failure of Bush’s Iraq policy is understandable but rather childish. It is also behind the times. US policy has certainly not been perfect. There are blackspots and boiling points, particularly in Baghdad. Yet somehow "on-the-spot" journalists fail to remind us that Iraq is more than Baghdad and that, in vast swathes of the country, not only is normal life resuming, but it is resuming with hope for a democratic future that was impossible under Saddam.

And if you do not believe me, listen to Walid Jumblatt, the patriarch of the Druze Muslim community in Lebanon. He has stated publicly that, although he is cynical of the US invasion of Iraq, the election has turned out to be, "the start of a new Arab world". He went on: "The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it." If this is heresy, I’m happy to own it. There may be trouble ahead, but Iraqis are now making sure that Iraq is on its way.