‘Expect numerous power cuts, the local telephones not to work, the Internet connection to be woefully inadequate, and the general infrastructure to be nothing short of hopeless. There was a joke when the capital moved from Yangon to Nay Pyi Taw a few years back that there had been a “shift in power” quite literally, as all the electricity was moved to the new jungle lair of the junta. Take a torch.
‘The city abounds with rumours. Did you hear this, did you hear that? When you first arrive you’ll be seduced by these rumours. They flesh out the life of a country that few people know little about. However, it will not take long for you to gather that roughly 90 per cent of them are simply hot air.
‘I have lived through a civil protest where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in a peaceful demonstration and were cruelly beaten down. I endured a cyclone that claimed the lives of many thousands of people and left swathes of the country utterly devastated. Yet for me, Myanmar is still the safest country on Earth. Arriving here feels like stepping back in time. This is obviously a nuisance for the locals, who would like their country to develop a little more to ensure a better life for them and their children, but from a visitor’s point of view, it does not get any better than Myanmar.’
/NORTH KOREA
Donald Kirk first visited Seoul, the capital of South Korea, in 1972 for the Chicago Tribune, and has been reporting on the region for international media outlets ever since. He has a unique ability to cut through the dense rhetoric and misunderstanding surrounding news from North Korea. At the moment he is the Korea correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He offers the following insights.
‘North Korea is undoubtedly one of the most dangerous countries on Earth, but that’s only if you’re a citizen of it and living in constant fear of the dictatorship of “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il. About 200,000 people live in a vast gulag for political prisoners, and thousands more are imprisoned for lesser crimes. Public executions and torture are common, and millions are suffering from hunger and disease. As a visitor, however, you will see none of this while spending a few nights in a luxury hotel and dining out in fine restaurants in the capital city of Pyongyang.
‘The real difficulty in writing about North Korea is posed by tour guides, who monitor your every move and will not let you out of their sight. I had my most trying encounter in September 2008, when I taped a brief conversation with a guide in which he insisted that Kim Jong-il was not sick, had not suffered a stroke and that all the reports about his illness were “lies” spread by CNN and the BBC. He knew that I was taping the conversation, but a few hours later asked me to delete the recording or give him the tape as he was not “authorized” to speak for the regime. I refused. That evening, at a meeting of the members of my group, he and his superior again asked for the tape, and again I refused. They reminded me of the severity of the “security agency” and said agents might stop me from leaving when I got to the airport the next morning at the end of my standard four-day visit. I decided to take my chances. When I got to the airport the next morning, no one said anything, and I was able to leave without a problem.
‘The threat, however, was a reminder of the difficulties of covering North Korea even when all you have done is to record a conversation with a tour guide who merely repeated the propaganda of the regime. Tour guides also warned us of expulsion from the country if members of the group went on their own in search of interviews.
‘On one of my four visits to Pyongyang they had us list our occupations and the names of the companies for which we worked. Since American journalists were banned, I had told the tour organizer in Australia to list me as a teacher, even though he knew I was a correspondent. I said I worked for “The School of Hard Knocks”. Nobody questioned that affiliation.
‘On my longest trip to Pyongyang, in 1995, I accompanied a group of Korean–Canadians, who were there ostensibly to attend a sports festival. They actually hoped to see long-lost relatives whom they had last seen in 1950, before fleeing from invading North Korean forces with their parents.
‘In North Korea all foreign visitors, however they list their professions, are targets for propaganda. Visits get to be repetitious since you’re escorted to many of the same sights every time. Day one, your group will have to pay respects before the great bronze statue of Kim ll-sung, Kim Jong-il’s father, who died in 1994. You’re expected to bow respectfully while a member of your group tosses a bouquet at the base of the statue looming atop Mansudae, the hill that rises in the centre of Pyongyang. You’ll then visit the home where the late Great Leader grew up, and probably go to Panmunjom, the “truce village” that straddles the line with South Korea. From the North Korean side you’ll see tour groups on the South Korean side, while a North Korean officer tells you how the South Koreans and the Americans started the Korean War. And you’ll learn that North Korea inflicted terrible defeat on the “enemy” before they had to “surrender” in the armistice signed at Panmunjom in July 1953. You’ll also hear more about the “crimes” committed by the vanquished Americans during a visit to the war museum in Pyongyang, another standard stop.
‘The highway to Panmunjom is an eye-opener. It’s four lanes wide, but you’ll see hardly any traffic on the four-hour journey – just the occasional oxen pulling ploughs in distant fields. You’re likely to notice only one or two tractors, most likely manned by soldiers, as you pass by whitewashed buildings with few visible signs of life and no evidence of manufacturing or commerce. You won’t be able to get close to any of these, and you’re constantly warned not to take photographs anywhere that might seem to present a negative view of life in the country. Again, that’s the type of offence that could bring about expulsion along with confiscation of your film or videotape and possibly your equipment.
‘You get your first taste of the hazards of visiting Pyongyang when you’re told on arrival to hand over your cell phone. You’re sure to get it back before your departure, but until then you can forget about phone calls unless you want to spend inflated fees on a hotel landline, which you can be sure is tapped. After your tour guide meets your group and you’re seated in the van at the airport, you’re told to be sure not to throw away any newspapers and magazines. That’s because they all feature photographs of Kim Jong-il and Kim ll-sung, and it would be an act of extreme disrespect to sully either of their images by crumpling them up and tossing them into a waste-paper basket. Tourists get expelled for just this offence, and ordinary citizens have gone to jail for years for such a heinous crime.
‘Before you ever are exposed to these difficulties, however, you will have had to go through the hassle of getting a visa. You must apply through a travel agency in Beijing or possibly Australia, and there’s no certainty you will be able to take the trip at a time that’s convenient. All four of my visits were for special occasions. In 1992 I accompanied a large group on a tour by train to the special economic zone at Rajin and Songbon in the northeast. The zone has been a failure, but at the time North Korean authorities wanted to publicize the zone’s potential. On my three subsequent visits, I attended lavish festivals. The most spectacular is the Arirang festival, a display of 100,000 performers, half of them in the stands forming images with flash cards, the other half on the field going through an amazing series of routines. They perform night and day for weeks.
‘At one time tourists were able to go to Kumkang Mountain on regular visits arranged by travel agencies, crossing the border from South Korea by bus and van, after an elaborate customs procedure. However, the tours ended tragically in July 2008 when North Korean guards shot and killed a middle-aged South Korean woman who had wandered outside the tourist area to look at the sunrise. There could have been no better evidence of the horrors of life in North Korea – and the hazards of visiting the country even on a tightly constricted, organized tour.’
/YEMEN
When one of my colleagues at the Baghdad Bulletin went to Yemen to brush up her Arabic, I decided to pay her a visit and had my preconcept
ions about Yemen blown out of the water. Little is known or written about this magical country, an ancient world struggling to adapt to modern times. It has achieved notoriety because most of the Guantanamo detainees were Yemeni, many picked up in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, the 2009 ‘Christmas bomber’ was trained in Yemen. But the extreme views of those men, born out of uneducated, crippling poverty that is the wider fight in Yemen, hold sway with only a minority of the population.
Mystery and fear mean that the country has few foreign visitors, but my friend was accepted and embraced by the local population, her boyfriend too. I had just a peek, but they really lived in a medieval world. Due to the sensitivity of her current role in the region, she has decided to give her advice anonymously.
‘The first thing most visitors to Yemen have to survive is the landing at Sana’a international airport. At an altitude of around 2400 metres and ringed by jagged peaks, it’s rumoured to be one of the trickiest landings in the world. For the eager first-timer craning to get a glimpse of Yemen, the rusting Tupolev carcasses beached casually by the side of the runway provide scant reassurance.
‘A pin-cushion of minarets, the tiny walled city of Old Sana’a is straight out of A Thousand and One Nights: wedding-cake houses, turbaned men dancing with daggers, camels grinding corn, and the deafening call to prayer as each muezzin tries to drown out his neighbour with throat-searing flourishes. And many of the dangers are equally archaic. Acid has been thrown at women wearing the trendy, black, Saudi burka because the silhouette of their chest is more visible than under the traditional multi-coloured chador. A boy who lived near me was horrifically scarred after his father set fire to him for talking to a girl who wasn’t a relative. There are also the never-ending tribal skirmishes, which are often lethal in a country where almost every man and boy has a gun. But these are dangers faced mainly by Yemenis.
‘The increasing terrorist threat aside, most visitors encounter few problems. You should take advice from a local tour agent and your embassy before arriving, but generally the north is off limits to foreigners. The situation in the rest of the country is very variable. Yemen still abides by the old codes of honour and hospitality, and discourtesy to a visitor is a shame on the community. Standards of conduct are rigorously imposed on the young, as I learnt from one twinkling old woman on a bus. “Young men are wild beasts these days,” she said, lifting her voluminous chador to show me a stash of rocks that she would hurl from the mini-bus window at any young man she saw behaving inappropriately. Even modern problems have old-fashioned solutions in Sana’a. With the same logic, while many female visitors don’t wear a headscarf, if you do, you’ll gain respect and be given greater protection.
‘No introduction to Yemen would be complete without a mention of qat, the mild amphetamine that many Yemeni men spend their days ruminating. Your cheeks may never be quite the same after a good qat hamstering, nor will you probably sleep for a day afterwards, but most casual users experience very little. With qat you have to cultivate addiction. And for most, one evening with a mouth rammed full of leafy cud while suffering insatiable thirst is enough.’
Do not ride roller-coasters in Sudan. Mary O’Shea
15/ Arming Yourself Against Trauma
For people who’ve worked in war zones there will always be a sense that peacetime is life with the volume turned down. More than anything, I miss the sense of camaraderie, of shared purpose, of optimism. I also miss the excitement that comes from living for the moment. Slowly, however, I have realized that it’s not the war that I pine for, but rather that youthfulsense of being able to go anywhere and do anything. James Brandon
Leaving a war zone alive is one thing. Leaving behind the worst of your experiences is quite another. This chapter offers you ways to prepare and work that will help you to avoid experiencing trauma – basic know-how that I was missing on my first entry into Iraq.
Fresh from my finals at university, I arrived in Jordan on the promise of a job if I could make it to Baghdad. The man who was going to get me there met me at the airport. He was a fellow recent graduate from Oxford, where he had survived three years of alcohol, kebabs, dancing, no sleep, last-minute, bullshit-crammed essays and still walked out with a First. I thought that was more than enough of a qualification to start up a newspaper in post-war Iraq. My new job.
I was taken to meet Mr Feras. He was the owner of the Soraya Hotel – a favourite hang-out at that time for NGO workers, human shields, Peace Corps people and freelance journalists. He poured tea and showed me photos of people, dead and alive, whom he had helped to find a reliable driver for the trip to Baghdad.
He told me that the suitcase at my feet was full of a dead man’s clothes. More tea. They belonged to a young photographer who had been shot dead at a protest in Iraq the week before. The suitcase was following his body home to his parents. He had been sitting in my seat looking for a ride into Baghdad only a fortnight earlier. I was told he had a shaved head and had been wearing combat kit. He had been mistaken for an off-duty soldier. ‘That wouldn’t happen to me,’ I told my mum. Overnight Western visitors to Baghdad threw away their combat trousers and boots and started to grow their hair.
A car would be available at four in the morning. And would I like another tea? He just needed another $500 and then we would go. I was told to expect a five-hour drive to the border, then another six hours, non-stop, all the way to Baghdad. Four o’clock came and went without a wake-up call. A convoy of Japanese missionaries had been car-jacked along the road. ‘It isn’t safe for the driver,’ I was told. And me, I thought.
Days passed. More tea. More convoys were attacked. Kidnappings and robberies took place in crowded petrol stations. The drivers refused to go without more money and more tea. And all the time Mr Feras was spooning sugar into my cup and telling me stories of the people he had helped in and out of Baghdad.
Every night I would pack my bag and head to his office at midnight. ‘Are you prepared?’ he would ask.
‘As much as I can be.’
Mr Feras would shake his head. ‘If you were my daughter…’ Then more tea. More advice.
One night I knocked on his door to find him sitting with a grin on his face. Mr Feras was not a smiley man.
‘I can help you prepare,’ he said. ‘Stand up.’ He clicked his fingers and a worker came in with a measuring tape.
A bulletproof vest, I thought. Excellent.
‘For your coffin,’ he said, licking his finger to turn a page and note down my measurements. I was in a car heading to Baghdad four hours later.
At the time my lack of preparation seemed romantic. Exciting. I had done as much as any wannabe war junkie could do to warm up for the journey, I thought. Having survived a major car crash and all the pain that entailed, I was hardened to the possibility of death or injury; afraid of almost nothing. I was dangerous.
I didn’t know the risks and neither did my family. Within a month I, like many others around me, began to think my job was worth more than my life. I also thought that fear-clouded, snap decision-making based on instinct alone was the best way to operate.
I was not prepared for entering a war zone. But there are ways to get ready. Tricks to help you keep sane. And if you are sane, you will be able to do your job more effectively. If you understand that your job is just that, a job, it will help you in the early days of your new life. And eventually it will help you return to the life you had before you went to war, without experiencing trauma.
/WHAT IS TRAUMA?
The medical name for the long-term after-effects of trauma is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but there is nothing ‘post’ about trauma. It can happen at any time. The dictionary calls it ‘emotional shock’. Don’t underestimate shock. The physical kind can kill you. The emotional kind can manifest in a thousand different ways.
It didn’t hit Samantha Bolton until years after the event that caused it – the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by extremi
st Hutu forces. Two million refugees fled over the border into Zaire, now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sam was there to meet them.
‘Two years after the Rwandan genocide, and after a trip to Russia for a campaign on Chechnya, I had a severe PTSD attack that lasted a year. I was supposed to have gone into Grozny on a convoy, but a colleague went instead and was kidnapped and gang-raped. I felt guilty and afraid for her, and this triggered the attack. I was living in a fancy apartment in New York. Every time I went home I would get the shakes, convinced a Hutu axe-murderer was behind the door. I would search the whole flat for people – check the windows, check under the bed. It was a paranoid routine. Sometimes it comes back for a few days when I go back to insecure situations in the field. I can become paranoid about intruders and unable to relax. I just want to lock the door and curl up in as small a space as possible. A safe place.
‘You need to recognize the signs and work through it in your own way. I worked through it myself as I was too scared I would go completely insane if I spoke to someone. To each their own.’
James Brandon agrees with Samantha’s philosophy of self-help: ‘I think the golden rule when recovering from PTSD is to do what feels right and not to let people push you into doing things, such as therapy or counselling, that do not feel right to you. PTSD is your body’s defence mechanism: it is warning you against putting yourself in future danger – and telling you to give yourself time and space to recover.’
There is nothing cut and dried about avoiding trauma. But the experts I have spoken to tell me that it’s all about retaining normality and routine from your pre-conflict days in your war-zone life. And also, despite what James and Samantha say, being prepared to get proper help if you’re not coping on your own. Obviously, everything changes in a war zone, but if, for instance, you like getting a bagel from the corner shop in the morning to have with your coffee, try to find an equivalent to your corner shop in your war zone. If you normally like a bath before bedtime but that’s out of the question in your war zone, boil a pan of water and have a thorough head-to-toe wash before carrying on with your evening. Whatever your normal habit at home – reading for a while before going to sleep, listening to the radio while getting dressed – try to replicate it wherever you are. It is all about remembering the life you had outside of the war zone.
How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone Page 25
