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Rafed Mahmood, a Shiite driven from his home by al Qaeda, and his Sunni friend have started a radio and television network in Iraq.
They say they are aware of the risks in a country where about 65 media workers were killed in 2006 and those working with US forces are especially vulnerable.
"Some of us may die. That may be the cost of freedom," Mahmood, 29, said in a speech at the opening ceremony in late March.
Mahmood and his friend Samir Kamis, a 29-year-old Sunni journalist, say they want to do something about the sectarian violence that threatens to pitch Iraq into civil war.
"Bullets and laws alone cannot stop the violence," Mahmood said.
So far the Independent Radio and Television Network (IRTN) has a staff of only five but Mahmood has big ideas -he wears a blue arm-band that he hopes will launch a "Blue Revolution" for peace inspired by Ukraine's "Orange Revolution".
"I wear the colour blue to remind myself that the blue sky is our only limit," he told US officials and soldiers and Iraqi and international media flown in to see the network's first live TV newscast on Sunday.
IRTN is based at a media centre north of Baghdad built by Saddam Hussein in 1986. The facility, in the volatile province of Diyala, is near Buhriz, where US forces have frequently battled al Qaeda insurgents.
Mahmood said he used to live in Baquba, the capital of Diyala. "But al Qaeda took my house. They came and wrote 'Get out Shiites' on the wall, so that was it," said Mahmood, whose wife is a Sunni Arab.
The media centre used to employ 55 people, but 13 have been killed and the rest stopped coming to work. Only Mahmood remained, refusing to leave his post as general manager.
IRTN co-founder Kamis has not been home in five months. Like all the staff, he lives on the site, surviving on supplies brought in by US forces and venturing out only occasionally.
"Of course I got threats," he said. "But I believe in this job, I can't quit because I want to help my people as much as I can. If I don't help and my friends don't help, who will help?"
His co-anchor on the TV news is Donia Abdel Latif, a 20-year-old Shiite law student whose pink-painted toenails, black sandals and chic embroidered black suit are at odds with her dusty surroundings - a spartan outpost with no running water and 20 or so US armoured vehicles parked outside the studio.
"I want to create hope for Iraqis. What they've suffered right now is too much and I need to help," she said. Kamis said the US forces were there only for protection.
"They do not control and they don't want to control our message," he said. "We need to be very independent."
Still, the station's financial survival depends on selling airtime and the main customers at the moment are the US military and the local government who buy time to broadcast positive stories about what they are doing in Diyala.
The reporters at IRTN have been mentored for nearly two months by a State Department official.
Kamis said the IRTN radio station reaches about 40 per cent of Iraq while the TV signal reaches all of Baghdad and Diyala.
Programming includes movies, cartoons, nature programmes and Koran readings and prayers, as well as news.
- REUTERS
