Anthony Shadid
Foreign Correspondent
The Washington Post

Citation
In his remarkable reporting from Iraq, Anthony Shadid gave voice to the experiences and views of ordinary Iraqis affected by the war and its aftermath. His coverage, which included 24 front-page stories in the 21 days between the start of the war and the fall of Baghdad, provided readers with a window into the war unavailable elsewhere. As such, Shadid’s dispatches were very much in the spirit of Michael Kelly’s distinctive journalism during the Persian Gulf War a dozen years earlier. Shadid’s coverage also foreshadowed the problems the United States would encounter in its occupation of Iraq. Early on, he described the ambivalence many Iraqis felt towards the United States and he was one of the first journalists to highlight Muqtada Sadr, the young Shiite cleric who would become a leader of Iraqi insurgents. In displaying both physical and intellectual courage in his reporting from Iraq, Shadid embodied the fearless expression and pursuit of truth and was the unanimous choice as the first winner the Michael Kelly Award.

Excerpts
‘We’re in a Dark, Dark Tunnel’
March 24, 2003

BAGHDAD _ The melancholy wail sailed across the city and pierced the walls of the middle-class Baghdad home. The sleepless family listened in silence until the mother, her faced lined with fear and pain, shook her head.
“Siren,” she whispered.
At that, her daughter jumped up and threw open the door. She ran to open the windows next, fearful the blast would shatter them. The son sprinted outside, hoping to spot a low-flying cruise missile that would send the family huddling, yet again, in a hallway.
And they waited for the bombs.
“It’s terrible,” the mother said, as the minutes passed. “We really suffer, and I don’t know why we should live like this.”
Her daughter nodded. “I get so scared, I shake,” she said. “I’m afraid the house is gong to collapse on my head.”
While the outside world has grown accustomed to detached images of fire and fury over Baghdad, and the government here boasts of victory over the invaders, this rattled family of five in the middle-class neighborhood of Jihad has watched war turn life upside down. Their world now is isolation, dread, and a bitter sense that they do not deserve their fate.
“We’re in a dark, dark tunnel, and we don’t see the light at the end of it,” the daughter-in-law said.

For an Iraqi Family, ‘No Other Choice’
August 1, 2003

THULUYA, Iraq _ Two hours before the dawn call to prayer, in a village still shrouded in silence, Sabah Kerbul’s executioners arrived. His father carried an AK-47 assault rifle, as did his brother. And with barely a word spoken, they led the man accused by the village of working as an informer for the Americans behind a house girded with fig trees, vineyards and orange groves.
His father raised his rifle and aimed it at his oldest son.
“Sabah didn’t try to escape,” said Abdullah Ali, a village resident. “He knew he was facing his fate.”
…In his simple home of cement and cinder blocks, the father, Salem, nervously thumbed black prayer beads this week as he recalled a warning from village residents earlier this month. He insisted his son was not an informer, but he said his protests meant little to a village seething with anger. He recalled their threat was clear: Either he kills his son, or villagers would resort to tribal justice and kill the rest of his family in retaliation for Kerbul’s role in a U.S. military operation in the village in June, in which four people were killed.
“I have the heart of a father, and he’s my son,” Salem said. “Even the prophet Abraham didn’t have to kill his son.” He dragged on a cigarette. His eyes glimmered with the faint trace of tears. “There was no other choice,” he whispered.

Biography
Anthony Shadid, 35, is the Islamic affairs correspondent for the Washington Post, based in the Middle East. Before that, he worked for two years in Washington with the Boston Globe, where he covered diplomacy and the State Department. Since September 11, he has traveled to Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Israel and the Palestinian territories. Prior to working for the Globe, he was the news editor of the Los Angeles bureau of The Associated Press. Shadid worked as a Middle East correspondent for the AP in Cairo from 1995 to 1999, reporting and writing from most countries in the region. The work ranged from day-to-day reporting on strife in the West Bank to interviews with the young fighters of the Taliban on the front in Afghanistan. From 1993-94, Shadid worked as an editor on the AP's International Desk in New York.
Shadid, an American of Lebanese descent, speaks and reads Arabic, offering him insights not available to most Western journalists working in the Middle East. A native of Oklahoma City, Okla., he studied Arabic at the University of Wisconsin and later as a recipient of a fellowship in 1991-92 at the American University in Cairo. He gained additional understanding of the region through graduate work at Columbia University in New York in 1993-94.
Shadid won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his work during and after the Iraq war. In 2003, Shadid was awarded the George Polk Award for foreign reporting for a series of dispatches from the Middle East. In 1997, Shadid was awarded a citation by the Overseas Press Club in the category of best newspaper or wire service interpretation of foreign affairs (The Bob Considine Award) for his work on "Islam's Challenge." The four-part series, published by the AP in December 1996, was the product of nine months of research and dozens of conversations with religious sheikhs, students, activists and politicians. The series formed the basis of his book, Legacy of the Prophet: Despots, Democrats and the New Politics of Islam, published by Westview Press in December 2000. It was reissued in paperback in April 2002.

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