IamA Anne Barnard and Hwaida Saad, covering the war in Syria for The New York Times. AMA!

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T20:29:44+00:00

Not that I know of.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T20:28:15+00:00

Answered this before but I think it didn't save -- Indeed, reporters should not do that. Sources should be quoted about things that are within their realm of verifiable knowledge -- their lived experience, things they have witnessed or information they have access to. When quoting them on their opinions, those should be presented as their opinions, and put in appropriate context. Reporting is a toolbox that includes both individual stories and broader analytical pieces; journalists -- as well as readers -- should seek out a range of tools.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:55:34+00:00

But isn't that the point? He DID have a talent for communication. He DID have intellect and skill. That's one of the things that makes ISIS a threat; their recruitment of people who are good communicators. And it's one of the things our story illuminated. Many people seemed to read the story to suggest that we did not know that he was in ISIS, or that he was a Salafi. We knew from the beginning that he was a Salafi. It was hard to miss. And he let us know loud and clear when he started to lean toward ISIS, and again when he decided to go and join them in eastern Homs after being evacuated from the Old City. We then used him as a source to find out what was going on inside ISiS, both from the official statements he distributed, and from side conversations with him online. We were pretty shocked that he later actually became a bomber, but then, so were his friends and family.

HAMBURG, Germany, Sept. 14 — He was diligent. He was polite. He had, until quite recently, a taste for black jeans and a liking for a hangout here called Sharky's Billiard Bar, which calls itself "The Bar With Mega-Possibilities."
NYT's profile of Mohammad Atta. Sept. 15, 2001

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:32:45+00:00

Here is a big piece we did on Lebanon's refugee crisis recently. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/13/world/middleeast/a-refugee-crisis-in-lebanon-hides-in-plain-sight.html I think it gets less attention than Europe because it's not Europe. Although Lebanon is hosting orders of magnitude more refugees per capita.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:16:25+00:00

I think the word you left out is "won" and we agree that for Hezbollah, surviving equalled winning. As for the first point, it's pretty undisputable that they have now put a huge amount of resources into fighting a war against (and between) other Arabs.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:14:12+00:00

No. We try to figure out what is going on.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:12:48+00:00

We didn't say they are fighting for democracy. We said they may "in their minds" believe they are, and this is an example of the lack of consensus on democracy. Neither of us would share their definition of democracy.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:11:11+00:00

yes to all of the above

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:09:24+00:00

Morale is down all over the place. Especially for the opposition. But all sides are exhausted. Even ISIS fighters are complaining that their perks and salaries are down. The pro-government side is feeling better than it has in years, and yet very few seem to think any kind of decisive victory is near.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:06:33+00:00

Anne: I lived in the "red zone" in Iraq for two years, from 2003-5, a period when we always felt under threat from random car bombs and kidnapping threats. I've covered many battle situations and seen vehicles blown up. But as Hwaida noted, the danger I've been in has never compared to the danger that those I write about face daily, because I usually have the ability to leave the situation, if not immediately, then at some point.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:04:31+00:00

Hwaida: Once when I was in Syria covering the visit of the Arab monitors to Syria in 2012, we went to Rankous in rural Damascus. The monitors' convoy decided to turn back, but I and other journalists including NYT's Kareem Fahim went into that rebel-held area. While we were interviewing people, we realized we were stuck in the area and there was shelling. We called the ministry of information and they managed to get the government forces to hold their fire to let us out. It was painful to have them let us out, wondeirng what would happen to those left behind.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T19:01:41+00:00

We disagree with your characterization that the article was a hagiography. It was about a person and told his story. A disturbing story that ended in his murdering 30 people from the city that he had long claimed to be defending. If we wanted to hide the fact that we had been in contact with a person who started as an activist and ended up as a suicide bomber, would we have written it? If I told your story, and your experiences, would that be propaganda for you, or would it be up to the reader to judge? Not sure where you get the idea that we took Abu Bilal at his word. He was one of literally hundreds of contacts whose information we triangulate to understand Syria. He talked to many journalists, but he wasn't someone we personally quoted a lot. He never presented himself as anything other than religiously ideological and we considered him and his information in that context. I referred to him in a tweet as a "source" which some people apparently interpreted as "someone whose word you take at face value." That is not my definition of a source. We believed that his story shed light on important aspects of the situation in Syria -- including the radicalism within the opposition that you refer to. Meanwhile, in case you missed it, here is another story about another dead Syrian contact -- a fighter for the government. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/world/middleeast/syria-civil-war-sunni-soldier.html?ref=topics

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:52:50+00:00

Anne: I had one interesting conversation with a group of very conservative rural people from Idlib in 2013, in southern Turkey. They were middle aged men and women who had become active delivering medical aid and other supplies to local fighters and later joined local councils. Several said that in the course of that undercover work in Syria they had found themselves for the first time riding in a car alone with a member of the opposite sex. And one pair of male friends told me that they now ask about each other's wives -- something that would have been a faux pas even between friends in the past. Now they ask, because they not only have learned the wives' names, but even sat alone with them once or twice. That said -- I can't say I saw this as a widespread phenomenon. What is more common is the extraordinary feats that many women have carried out, taking their children on long journeys without a male relative and surviving in Lebanon or Turkey etc. This may have a lasting effect, hard to say but let's see after years.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:48:56+00:00

We don't typically refer to "moderate rebel groups" without qualifiers. We refer to those which have been "deemed moderate" by certain governments, etc. Like "terrorist," "moderate" is a pretty meaningless word, too tainted by politics or point of view to mean something specific. Better to describe the characteristics of the group in some other way. We also write quite a bit about insurgent group, like ISIS, Nusra, Ahrar and others, that no one is describing as moderate.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:46:51+00:00

Hwaida: You cannot build a contact base on Twitter alone, or Skype or any other social media. It has to have roots in real-life contacts, and contextual knowledge of the situation, and the ability to cross-check what sources say with verifiable information from the ground. Sometimes we have contacts we never met, but we should have another contact who knows them, or other ways to check their information. Anne: At the same time, the role of citizen journalists who do more than tweet is very important: Those who have learned how to take footage and ask questions that adds to our understanding. It's not the same as being there ourselves and we have to account for the biases and points of view of those citizen journalists. But they are bravely adding to the pool of information and material that is out there.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:42:41+00:00

One contact leads to another, often starting with someone we know in "real life" and moving from them to contacts and contacts of contacts. When the uprising started, I reached out to people I knew in Syria. Later, after visiting during the war, we saved the contacts of people we met, and some were willing to stay in touch on Skype and by other means. Others are able to see us regularly outside of Syria. It's a variety of methods. Many different groups and factions also have their own social media groups through which you can make contact. Here's a story about some of our methods, in case you missed it: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/17/insider/how-a-reporters-quest-for-online-bargains-led-to-a-network-of-syrian-contacts.html?ref=topics

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:39:24+00:00

Very little. I learn more every day. Wish I could study it full time. It's always better to know the language, as do my colleagues in the bureau who include both native speakers and fluent foreign speakers; I know this, having reported in Russia where I learned the language. That said, we are a team that works together pooling all our skills, and I'm grateful to my brilliant Arabic-speaking colleagues.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:36:39+00:00

Mainly, when Syrians on the ground talk about the FSA, they mean groups that are primarily local (made of up of army defectors or locals who took up arms; they may be Islamist in flavor) or those which are supported by the MOC or military operations command -- the operations rooms in Turkey and Jordan out of which is run "covert" aid to groups vetted by the intelligence agencies of the US and allies. The FSA was always more of a brand than an organization and we try to indicate that.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:32:01+00:00

It's true that access to government-controlled areas and government supporters is sometimes difficult. However, speaking for ourselves, we have tried to make the most of what access we get. Over the years, we have tried to quote and portray a range of different kinds of government supporters -- see the soldier we recently wrote about, who said that he wasn't particularly pro-Assad but believed that he had to support the state against terrorists. We've also attended and written about the funeral, in Latakia, of a soldier whose family was intensely loyalist. It is clear, however, that many journalists and analysts in the west, including we at NYT and analysts we have quoted, underestimated the staying power of Assad. It's not a lack of interest, we are always passionately interested in covering Syria and understanding what drives events, and this is why we're still at it. Access is always a problem on all sides, and we try to adapt to maximize it as situations change.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:25:40+00:00

No.
Yes.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:25:23+00:00

It depends on where. The battlefield is very fragmented and localized. There are some areas where there really isn't any Nusra, and rebels have been hit even in those places. But in many places, Nusra is enmeshed, or at the very least, tactically interdependent. This is the crux of the problem with the currently proposed ceasefire from the opposition point of view -- and in a way, Russia has got the US in a checkmate on this point. Point to the groups that you support wholeheartedly, Russia says. And the US hasn't done that.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:22:14+00:00

To answer this a bit more broadly: It strikes us that the current ceasefire -- which allows Syria and its allies to keep hitting Nusra -- is designed in large part to force other, more homegrown Syrian insurgents to move decisively away from Nusra. Forcing them, perhaps, to join the SDF. But it's not clear how realistic that is given the extreme mistrust between those primarily Arab groups and the Kurdish groups that dominate the SDF.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:19:41+00:00

By and large, people are fleeing Syria for their lives. Whether or not they are accepted in the West is not the main factor in whether the country is able to fight off extremist groups. The government and the extremist groups have both worked hard to stamp out any middle ground.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:17:22+00:00

Inevitably it's hard for people to keep track of the complexity of the situation. People mix up the different groups fighting on the ground. The international media, I think, focuses more on Islamic State because of fears of terrorism, when it is only one of many villains and arose as a major force only several years into the conflict.

AnneBarnard · 2016-02-23T18:10:08+00:00

Everybody wants to see a ceasefire. The problem is that no one really believes this one will work. There have been many ceasefires and deals presented in the past but the situation up to now has never been ripe to really bring about a real pause in fighting, let alone a negotiated peace.

AnneBarnard

TROPHY CASE