--- description: TIME's World Editor, Bobby Ghosh, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq until he moved to New York City six months ago. On the... title: Bobby Ghosh — TIME World Editor image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt2a4051b96ac996c7/698a50699d83e80ba5b99848/360_iraq5yr_reporters_0314.jpg?branch=production&width=750&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [World](/section/world/) # Bobby Ghosh — TIME World Editor by [Caitlin Thompson](/author/caitlin-thompson/) Mar 18, 2008 4:00 AM CUT  An Iraqi reporter interviews an Iraqi man in central Baghdad on March 11, 2008. An Iraqi reporter interviews an Iraqi man in central Baghdad on March 11, 2008.Ali Al-Saadi / AFP / Getty by [Caitlin Thompson](/author/caitlin-thompson/) Mar 18, 2008 4:00 AM CUT _TIME’s World Editor, Bobby Ghosh, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq until he moved to New York City six months ago. On the eve of the anniversary, Ghosh returned to Baghdad to write a follow-up piece to his 2006 cover story,_ Life in Hell. **On his latest assignment in Iraq** My trip has a very simple purpose. I’m tired of reading how the surge has brought violence down. Has it succeeded? Has it not succeeded? I think we need to look past the statistics to get a sense of what Baghdad feels like. So what I’m going to try to do with my story is apply some personal litmus tests to the surge. Can I go to the restaurants I grew very fond of in Baghdad that I could visit two and a half years ago? Can I go to the markets, the shops that I used to go to? Can I go to and visit friends in their homes without endangering them — foreigner coming to the neighborhood? Can I take a boat ride down the Tigris? Can I go to the street and buy books from the second-hand book market. Are my friends still there? Many of them had fled to Jordan this year. Are they coming back? Those who remained, are they more hopeful of their future? I want to get a very tactile and textured sense of what life is like in Baghdad now. Two years ago I wrote a cover story entitled [Life in Hell](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1223363,00.html "undefined") which served its exact purpose to get a sense of what life feels like in the city. This is [part two](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1722747,00.html "undefined") of that. I want to find out what it feels like. **On covering the war’s launch** I arrived in Baghdad on the day the statue came down. Some of us who had been there before the war started were kicked out during the war. So I came back and the city was still in a state of shock. People realized that something important and profound had happened but they’d gone through so many disappointments before that they couldn’t really come out and celebrate. So you had all these images on television of the [flag](http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1705818,00.html "undefined") being hoisted on top of the statue, the statue being pulled down, and some people in that square celebrating, but most of the city was very quiet. It was almost eerie. The first thing I did was look for friends of mine who I had known from before the war. These are people who lived for years in a state of terror, a state of fear. That was living in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. They had become so used to hiding their feelings and watching their words that it took them a while even after Saddam was gone to express themselves properly. **On the reaction to American military presence** The first weeks after the war were incredible. Once people got over the shock, once they had come to terms with the idea that Saddam Hussein was really gone, was not coming back, the sight of American soldiers in the streets, at checkpoints, American tanks and armor rumbling along the city. That was reassuring. In the months and years to come, those would be seen as signs of oppression and occupation. But for those first few weeks, these were reassuring signs. It meant that if there were American tanks in front of the presidential palace, that meant the president was not coming back. **On the looting and fires** In the immediate aftermath of the fall, some people expressed themselves by going and looting every government building that they could find. There was a lot of outrage and horror at this internationally, but I could understand where these people were coming from. I think they felt that this was their opportunity to take from the government. Yes, there was some basic criminal urge with some people, but for a lot of people it was a sense of vengeance. They couldn’t get their hands on Saddam Hussein. They couldn’t get their hands on the Baath party commanders who had oppressed them for so long, so they would steal the furniture. They would take the air conditioning. They would set fire to government buildings. It was their way — in a sort of peculiar way — it was a form of protest. **On America’s lack of political strategy** \[Military leaders\] had assumed that they would turn up in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein would be overthrown and there would be a group of Iraqis waiting to take over. Some of them would be these exiles É and others would be Iraqis from within and that there would be a smooth transition. But there wasn’t. There was complete chaos. People were looking for a way out of the chaos and the Americans didn’t have any better ideas than the average man on the street. **On the unmet expectations of the U.S. presence** In the Middle East, ironically, among people who distrust and maybe even dislike America, they also have an incredibly high opinion of what America can do. The same people — I’ve interviewed these kinds of people over and over again — the same people who say “Death to America! Death to George Bush!” — want to know why within three weeks, why the electricity wasn’t completely restored to Baghdad because after all it was America. If America couldn’t fix everybody’s problems in the first 5 months of the end of the war, it really doesn’t matter that 5 years later many of those problems remain unsolved. By this point, people have stopped marking their calendars to see how long it’s been since the fall and to measure America’s performance against a calendar. People don’t think like that. People vote with their feet. **On Iraqi refugees and lost talent** Most of those who have the means or the ability to leave the country have left. By that I mean the entire intelligentsia of the country Ð doctors, architects, engineers, businessmen, people with money or with university degrees that they can use or with family connections. You had an exodus of real capital because people have left with their life savings, all of which are now sitting in banks in Jordan and Syria. And you also have a drain of intellectual capital, which is a much bigger problem. The people who’ve left are the exact kinds of people Iraq needs to rebuild itself. You need to have your doctors, engineers, university professors to rebuild your country from chaos. Those are the people who have fled. **On how to succeed** I don’t know if there is a formula. I think the problem is that people have been pursuing formulas. Both the American government, the American military, the Iraqi politicians, the elected leadership there have been caught up in finding formulas. How many Shi’ites in cabinet? How many Sunnis? Should a Sunni be president? Should a Shi’ite be prime minister? These kinds of sectarian mathematics don’t work. They didn’t work in Lebanon, they won’t work in Iraq. I’m looking for straws in the wind. I’m looking for actual improvements where they can be measured. If people are coming back, you can measure that. **On the refugees who return** Most people come back because they’ve run out of money and they just don’t have a choice. The people leaving still outnumber those coming back, which is a bad sign. It means that people don’t have any expectations for these improvements to be sustained. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6942845/bobby-ghosh-time-world-editor/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6942845/bobby-ghosh-time-world-editor/"},"headline":"Bobby Ghosh — TIME World Editor","datePublished":"2008-03-18T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-22T07:29:00.012Z","description":"TIME's World Editor, Bobby Ghosh, was the longest serving print journalist in Iraq until he moved to New York City six months ago. 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