In Strategic Iraqi City, a Week of Deadly Turmoil
At least 15 people died in Basra and more than 200 were injured in protests against unemployment, crumbling infrastructure and rampant crime.
By Margaret Coker and Falih Hassan
Margaret Coker
Margaret Coker was the Baghdad bureau chief from 2017 to 2018. She has been a foreign correspondent for 18 years — 12 of which she has spent covering the wider Middle East, most recently as the Turkey bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, where she spearheaded coverage for a 2016 series that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting.
Ms. Coker started her reporting career in the former Soviet Union. Days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she flew on a rickety old Soviet military helicopter with the Northern Alliance into Afghanistan, where she covered that war and then the Iraq conflict for Cox Newspapers. In 2008 she joined the Journal team in the Middle East.
Ms. Coker has reported in depth on counterterrorism, cyberwarfare and corruption. Previous investigative work revealed secret communications between Al Qaeda and the aggressive upstart that became the Islamic State. After the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, she was the first to report how C.I.A. contractors were running covert operations without Libyan approval.
In addition to the Pulitzer citation, Ms. Coker was part of the Wall Street Journal reporting teams that were awarded the a 2013 Edwin M. Hood award for diplomatic correspondence from the National Press Club, and a 2011 Malcolm Forbes award from the Overseas Press Club.
A military brat, Ms. Coker grew up around the United States, but considers Georgia home. She studied international affairs and Russian and graduated from Lewis & Clark College.
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Turkish Airstrike in Iraqi Territory Kills a Kurdish Militant Leader
The attack killed Zaki Shingali, a leader of a group that Turkey calls a terrorist organization, but he was considered a hero to the Yazidi minority in Iraq for his efforts to help them.
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Iraqi Leader Offers to Help Family of Spy Who Infiltrated ISIS
Relatives of the spy, who was killed behind enemy lines, have struggled to receive death benefits without his body as legal proof of death.
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The Iraqi Spy Who Infiltrated ISIS
The story of the mole who posed as a jihadist in the Islamic State, and the most important antiterrorism agency that most people have never heard of.
By Margaret Coker
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