His untimely death silences one of the best Middle East reporters.
We at the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore, along with the global Middle East Studies community, mourn the loss of the brilliant, gifted Anthony Shadid, whose reporting of the Middle East over the past two decades enlightened all of us.
Perhaps he was not well known in Southeast Asia, except for readers of The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Boston Globe. But Shadid was a “must” for anybody seriously following the often bloody events in our region. The Middle East is a dangerous beat for journalists. Anthony, quietly fearless, braved the chaos of Iraq, suffered a gunshot wound in the West Bank, and almost lost his life having been kidnapped in Libya. He was operating under cover in Syria, risking his life, when—ironically—he died of an acute asthma attack.
Academics sometimes disparage “mere journalists” who allegedly only scratch the surface of Middle Eastern complexities and convey more stereotypes than sound analysis. (We should be careful of such generalizations.) Anthony Shadid was no mere journalist. He brought a breadth of understanding and a gift for uncovering the deeper significance of the daily events he was covering that earned him the respect and admiration of the best scholars in our field. He belongs in that very small group of Western journalists whose analysis of the Middle East stands so far above the average: one thinks of Eric Rouleau of Le Monde, David Hirst of The Guardian, Robert Fisk of The Independent, John Cooley of The Christian Science Monitor and a younger generation of reporters like Nir Rosen, who writes for The Nation, not to mention writers for Middle Eastern papers like Ha’aretz, Al-Nahar, Al-Masry Al-Yaum, and others.
It was heartening that his brilliance was recognized and celebrated: he won two Pulitzer prizes, among other honors, and had been nominated by The Times for a third Pulitzer in 2012 for his coverage of the Arab uprisings.
I came to know Anthony when we invited him to speak at Georgetown a couple of years ago. We had a common interest and many common friends in Lebanon: his forebears had come from Merjayoun in south Lebanon and were distantly related to the family of my late wife. We were to have met again last June in Lebanon but he was called away to Ankara, where he was looking in to Turkey’s rift with Bashar al-Asad’s regime in Damascus—an issue that we was continuing to follow at the time of his death on February 16th. We were planning to invite him to Singapore this year.
Fluent in Arabic, comfortable in Middle Eastern society, admiring of its heritage and contemporary culture, Anthony Shadid was not only a keenly observant reporter; he also conveyed that indispensable but elusive ingredient: context.