Colin Freeman

Courage and conviction

Her extraordinarily courageous reporting from Basra, Chechnya and Sri Lanka put other correspondents to shame. Until it all finally went wrong in Syria in 2012

issue 01 December 2018

When Britain finally lowered the flag in the Iraqi city of Basra in 2007, the army’s top brass valiantly claimed that they were leaving it to ‘self-rule’ rather than all-out anarchy. Despite the militiamen in the streets and the mortars in the skies, this was what success looked like in Iraq they told the invited press pack.

Nobody really believed them, of course; but only Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times could actually prove them wrong. Ignoring the ceremony invites, she donned an abaya and went into Basra to report unembedded, the first western correspondent to dare to do so in nearly two years. Her coverage on the 48 women murdered by death squads in the previous six months embarrassed the army’s top general into admitting that he ‘didn’t think it would end this way’.

It embarrassed me too. As chief foreign correspondent on the rival Sunday Telegraph, I too was in Basra at that time.

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