Long having an interest in going and seeing for herself “the places that were being presented as the biggest challenges to American foreign policy,” journalist Anne Barnard – formerly the co-Iraq bureau chief for the Boston Globe in 2003-04 and currently a metro reporter with the New York Times – discusses in this interview what she calls the “most important single experience of [her] career,” that being her coverage (both embedded and non-embedded) of the Iraq War, and specifically of Operation Al Fajr: the November 2004 combined-joint assault to retake the city of Fallujah from insurgent control. Reporting from Iraq in April-May 2003, full-time from December 2003 through the summer of 2004, and then again in late 2004 and early 2005, she shares her wealth of experiences and insights into what she also described as “the greatest and most interesting journalistic challenge.” Beginning by reflecting on what it’s like to be a reporter in a combat zone and what role journalists play in informing the outside world about what’s transpiring in it, Barnard moves into a discussion of her early (April 2003) reporting from Fallujah, the lead-up to the first, ultimately aborted, April 2004 operation called Vigilant Resolve, and then finally the November 2004 Al Fajr operation, during which she was embedded with Captain Paul Fowler’s Alpha Company, 2-63 Armor, part of the Army’s Task Force 2-2 Infantry, and spent time riding along with soldiers and Bradley crew members who were actively engaged in high-intensity urban fighting. Barnard frames her discussion of the operation by pointing to what she considers the inherent disconnect between the coalition’s two stated goals: one, to retake the city as quickly and with as few casualties as possible; and two, to do so while causing as little destruction as possible to the city. “There was a lot of discussion between the officers and the enlisted men at the different levels of command,” she said, “about how the heck you do that.” Additionally, Barnard provides an extremely detailed and compelling narrative of the battle itself and her visibility of it, sharing the often very frank thoughts of the soldiers and more senior leaders she interviewed; how they reacted to the taking (and inflicting) of casualties; and how they related to the Iraqi Army soldiers they were allied with. She also shares her own experiences of being a civilian under fire as well as a journalist tasked with providing timely and accurate accounts of the battle to her editors back in the US – and often having to do so nearly simultaneously, giving new meaning to the word “deadline,” as it were. Barnard speaks at length to the battle’s aftermath as well, on the apparent lack of an adequate reconstruction plan; on her conversations with Fallujah residents who stayed and also those who were returning refugees; and, additionally, on the seemingly impossible job given to a small Marine Corps civil affairs unit (that she similarly linked up with) that was tasked with restarting everything from the city’s water and electrical systems to its banking apparatus and overall government. In closing, she shares her thoughts on the importance of embedding with military forces, the relationships she had with various units, and more generally reflects on her Iraq War experiences, which she considers “as pure an example of the journalistic mission as I could imagine.”

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited