INTERVIEW: Safaa Khalaf’s experience of being an ICORN resident and ICORN staff

While Khalaf’s poignant and in-depth analysis of the political, cultural, and social reality of Iraq and the Middle east has resulted in intimidation and harassment, it has equally brought him wide recognition. His article ‘The Future of Mosul, A City Stripped of its Diversity’ published in Assafir Al Arabi won the Naseej Prize in 2017. Most recently, in May 2022, Safaa was nominated for the prestigious Samir Kassir Award for his article on ‘climate violence’ in Iraq in the Middle East Eye. You can read more about his work here.

Throughout his ICORN residency, Khalaf has continued his insightful research and journalistic work and since February 2022, his analytical and investigative skills have been an invaluable addition to the ICORN Secretariat. Bridging the worlds between being an ICORN resident and ICORN staff, Safaa reflects on his journey, experiences, and inspirations.

ICORN: Having studied history and social sciences at university, how and when did you decide to turn to journalism?

Safaa Khalaf: In the beginning, it was Journalism. My essential passion since childhood was becoming a writer and journalist. Unlike growing up in the cities, Village life is imbued with imagination and tales. Consequently, people instinctively learn to tell stories and narrate the news.

In this atmosphere, the folk tales of the village’s grannies fascinated me; simultaneously, my inquisitiveness drove me to figure out the world's news eagerly.  

In Peru and Moscow, two coups that occurred in 1993 have irreversibly altered my life. These two events were a great inspiration and helped me discover the path to enlightenment that would take me from the hamlet to the world. I vividly remember writing my first news coverage as a child. Consequently, I realized that journalism is my career path.

The absence of freedom of expression under a strict totalitarian regime that dominated media outlets to produce governmental propaganda before 2003 made my beginning fraught with challenges and obstacles. The secure option was a Cultural Critique Journalism.

After the collapse of the Iraqi regime following the US invasion of 2003, the Iron Curtain era ended. A new stage began that necessitated the establishment of hundreds of media outlets representing multiple political trends. Therefore, my research and journalistic tools have evolved by combining academic study in history and social sciences with journalistic work.

I tried to create a new style of journalism in Iraq based on social and historical analysis, considering journalism as not just a news service. Rather, as a space for generating ideas, conceptualization and investigation using the excellent tools of the social sciences. Therefore, I think my majors in history, social sciences, and journalism were integrated and produced a new style of journalistic writing I became known in Iraq and the Arab world.

ICORN: In contrast to journalism and research, you have also published poetry. Was there a particular event and/or a person that inspired you?

Safaa Khalaf: I grew up in the shadows of a rustic ambience that was swapping stories and folk poetry. I say what I see, such as visions, prophecies, and occasionally new readability of daily life.

In my opinion, poetry is a profound means of expression, a powerful means of communication, and a daily exercise to test the flexibility of language in creating new meanings that breathe life, hope, humanity, and a strong sense of solidarity.

For many people, poetry serves as a form of meditation. Poetry is a spiritual journey, a warm and luminous place amid darkness and gloom. Poems cannot be written because someone or something inspires the poet to do so. In other words, poetry is a form of human spirituality unique to each individual and the spiritual radiance that humans are born with.

My grandmother and the women in the house I lived in were a great inspiration for my poetry; they were a third eye opening overlooking the world in my childhood. Those were the happiest moments of my life ever. So all poetry I write is a product of that stored positive energy from that foundational stage.

ICORN: You arrived in Stavanger as an ICORN resident in the height of COVID. How did that affect you, your work and what you were hoping to make out of your ICORN residency?

Safaa Khalaf: It was a challenging period. Within the first seven months of 2020, I was confined at home, obeying social distancing measures, and then relocated to Stavanger, where the city and most public places, such as cafes and restaurants, were COVID-19 semi-locked. This stage, perhaps, was the most difficult of my life. A person cannot live alone, isolated, as if in solitary confinement.

For three years (since September 2017), when I left Iraq, I had been impatiently waiting to reach a safe destination within the ICORN network. Unfortunately, the protection grant came during the global pandemic, which affected my participation in events, activities, or social communication which were mostly cancelled.

During more normal conditions, I hoped to reach Norway and be able to make the most of my first two years with the ICORN grant; nevertheless, the first year ended with almost no activity or achievement, no matter how minor.

Therefore, I hope that the future will come with more opportunities to compensate for the COVID-19 crisis that caused events and activities to be obstructed.

ICORN: Having been an ICORN Resident in Stavanger, Norway, for nearly 2 years now, how have you been able to maintain your previous journalistic and research output? Have you found any new avenues for exercising your freedom of expression?

Safaa Khalaf: Currently, Norway is ranked first on the Press Freedom Index, while Iraq (my country) is ranked 172nd out of 180 countries in RSF's 2022 Index, down 10 points from last year's ranking. That means that natural rights, including the liberty of expression, have an essential place in Norway's political thought, as reflected in the Declaration of Independence. However, in Iraq, journalists face terrorism, political instability, protests, and militia influence; threats from all sides come up in light of the weakness of the state, which is failing in its duty to protect them. When journalists and writers belong to any society, this must be conditioned on how they can express their opinions while preserving their lives.

As an independent journalist and writer, I have the natural right to express my opinions without incurring serious consequences in Norway. Perhaps this will become obvious in the future when I have the opportunity to travel and begin journalistic investigations into Iraq and the Middle East region in general. Therefore, Norway will defend my freedom of expression and writing as one of my natural rights in a society that values all viewpoints and preserves all facts.

ICORN: Finally, you recently joined the ICORN Secretariat. What does it feel like to be on the flipside and be putting your rich experience and skills towards ICORN’s work in protecting and promoting other persecuted journalists, writers, and artists?

Safaa Khalaf: Working within ICORN's Secretariat, I believe, is a tremendous responsibility and an enormous duty which necessitates significant concentration and effort and a lot of hard work. Consequently, it requires sincerity and honesty in preserving the values and principles of ICORN and evoking the human spirit to stand in solidarity with the threatened writers and artists.

Therefore, I do not consider it just a career opportunity. Rather, it is part of the values that I defend with the need for thinkers, authors, artists, and opinion owners to have the safe atmosphere they deserve.

Perhaps my experience in academia and journalistism as well as my activities as a defender of freedom of expression and human rights, and residency in various countries provided me with extensive knowledge of the conditions of countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. This enables me to appreciate the hardships, risks, and sorts of persecution faced by those seeking an ICORN protection grant.

Although I am now practically on the flipside of the suffering, the ICORN Secretariat and I feel that we are at the heart of the suffering of each applicant; we are part of them and understand the difficult circumstances they are going through. The work of the ICORN Secretariat requires a lot of patience and a great moral responsibility to give a fair chance to writers and artists who have been threatened and persecuted.  

To find out more about Safaa Khalaf, please visit his ICORN resident profile.

For updates, visit Safaa’s blog or Facebook and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

This interview was conducted by Elizabeth Mashova, Communication and Outreach Coordinator at ICORN.

‍