Jane Arraf

Jane Arraf is a journalist currently based in the Middle East for Al Jazeera English. She previously served for the Christian Science Monitor. and as CNN's Baghdad Bureau Chief and Senior Correspondent. During the war in Iraq she covered live the battles for Fallujah, Samarra and Tel Afar and was the only television correspondent embedded with U.S. forces fighting the Mehdi Army in Najaf in 2004. She also covered live the bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad and the first Iraqi elections in 2005. Arraf headed CNN's first permanent Baghdad bureau in 1998 and for several years was the only Western correspondent permanently based in the Iraqi capital. She was posted as Istanbul bureau chief in 2001-2002, returning to Baghdad before being expelled by the Iraqi government in November, 2002 for what it termed hostile reporting. Returning through northern Iraq, she covered the war live as the front line shifted, including extensive coverage of Iraqi civilians and live coverage from Mosul before the arrival of US forces. She also covered India, Albania, NATO, Afghanistan, Jordan and the Gulf States for CNN.

Arraf joined the Council on Foreign Relations in New York as the 2005-2006 Edward R Murrow Press Fellow, focusing on Iraq and counter-insurgency, and was later adjunct senior fellow before returning to Iraq as an NBC News correspondent. She has also written extensively for magazines, and produced stories for NPR's 'All Things Considered' and Britain's Channel Four television. Before joining CNN, Arraf was a Washington D.C.-based correspondent for Reuters Financial Television, covering Congress, the White House and the United States Treasury Department. She had previously served with Reuters as a correspondent/editor in Washington, DC, New York, Amman, Jordan and Montreal, with extensive reporting assignments in Haiti and Bosnia. She reported from Iraq while based in the region from 1991 to late 1993 before returning to the U.S. Arraf studied journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa.

External links

• Profile at CNN
• Profile at CFR