redzone
His second book, Red Zone: Five Bloody Years in Baghdad, is an extension of what Oliver Poole, the former head of the Daily Telegraph's Baghdad bureau was trying to do with his journalism from 2004-6: communicate the realities and diversity of the country, he tells Journalism.co.uk.

Poole has recently won US literary award, the Montaigne Medal, for the book published last year, which followed his first, Black Knights: On the Bloody Road to Baghdad.

He has now left newspaper journalism to work as editor of the global business intelligence service Diligence. He is currently developing an Iraqi Citizens Network for the United Nations, in an effort to promote cross-communitarian work and break down sectarian and religious divides. The question, he says, is 'how do you get these communities reconnecting?' 

Poole tells Journalism.co.uk it was part chance, part circumstance, that took him to Iraq in the first place; then several times in 2003-4; and later as head of the Telegraph's bureau from 2005-6.

It was the diversity of various scenarios that stayed with him: the Hispanics and white Americans from under-privileged backgrounds he encountered while embedded in the US army; the everyday realities for the citizens 'with dreams and aspirations' around him.

He was shocked, he says, to realise how much of the fighting 'occurred in villages, towns and eventually cities, where people live', something he had not 'really properly grasped before'.

He describes the chaos in the city itself: "You could do whatever you like - there wasn't anyone who was going to know."

It was of paramount importance he says, to acknowledge the role of the Iraqis working with him and to protect the stringers on the ground, risking so much.

His latest book describes the pressure on his translator, Ahmed Ali, 'from the militias hunting him for the aid he was providing the international press'.

Ali had members of his family killed, was forced from his home and had to flee as a refugee to Syria. Poole later helped him to relocate and start a new life in the US with his family.

Poole decided to leave the Telegraph on his return as he disagreed with the new foreign editor's stance on the Iraq war. "It didn't gel with what I'd seen on the ground around me," he says.

Starting a family also prompted him to leave such dangerous locations: while it sounds cliched, he says, seeing Iraqi families in such desperation forced him to realise he would rather be at home with his own family.

Poole is accepting, if saddened, by current cutbacks in foreign bureaux by news organisations: "My view is quite traditional," he says.

By being there, the 'one thing' he knew was that information back in the UK or US 'bore no relation' to what he was seeing on the ground.

This is, in part, what has driven him to write his books, he says: "People didn't have a clue. I don't think people knew what happened there; what that meant to individual Iraqis, and I believe that is important. There is no 'Other'." 

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